MORE DETAILS ON THE DISCOVERY OF THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS from the New York Times. The article also discusses the problem of dealing in looted antiquities.

How the Gospel of Judas Emerged

By BARRY MEIER and JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: April 13, 2006

When the National Geographic Society announced to great fanfare last week that it had gained access to a 1,700-year-old document known as the Gospel of Judas, it described how a deteriorating manuscript, unearthed in Egypt three decades ago, had made its way through the shady alleys of the antiquities market to a safe-deposit box on Long Island and eventually to a Swiss art dealer who "rescued" it from obscurity.

But there is even more to the story.

[...]

Details of how the manuscript was found are clouded. According to National Geographic, it was found by farmers in an Egyptian cave in the 1970's, sold to a dealer and passed through various hands in Europe and the United States. Legal issues in its transit are equally vague.

No one questions the authenticity of the Judas gospel, which depicts Judas Iscariot not as a betrayer of Jesus but as his favored disciple.

But the emerging details are raising concerns among some archaeologists and other scholars at a time of growing scrutiny of the dealers who sell antiquities and of the museums and collectors who buy them. The information also calls into question the completeness of National Geographic's depiction of some individuals like Ms. Tchacos Nussberger and its disclosure of all the financial relationships involved.

[...]

But scholars who have campaigned against the trade in artifacts of questionable provenance said they were troubled by the whole episode.

"We are dealing with a looted object," said Jane C. Waldbaum, president of the Archaeological Institute of America, a professional society. "The artifact was poorly handled for years because the people holding it were more concerned with making money than protecting it."

[...]

Read it all for the details. I don't know what the solution is to the problem of antiquities looting, but I do know that whatever it is, it has to involve keeping artifacts like the Gospel of Judas and the Dead Sea Scrolls from being lost. On the one hand, we don't want to encourage looters to destroy sites and tear artifacts from their contexts, and a great deal of that is happening all over the world. On the other hand, it would be tragically counterproductive if antiquities laws caused people like that farmer to decide that it's too much hassle to deal with that manuscript they found and to just use it for kindling.

UPDATE: David Meadows has lots more over at Rogue Classicism. The story of the history of the manuscript from the 1980s on just keeps getting weirder.