SOME OF THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS REMAINS UNPUBLISHED and is in a bank vault in Akron, Ohio, according to the Akron Beacon Journal:

A sizable chunk of that manuscript -- 10 to 20 percent, by one estimate -- is right here.

How did it get here?

The short version is this: The manuscript was discovered in a cave in Egypt in the 1970s and wound its way through antiquities dealers in Europe and the United States before being purchased in 2000 by Bath Township resident Bruce Ferrini.

Ferrini is an internationally known art dealer who filed for bankruptcy last September. He bought the ancient book, known as a codex, for $2.5 million. But because of his failing finances, the deal fell through.

Ferrini was at least $4.6 million in debt last year, according to court filings, and creditors began to battle for his holdings. Akron attorney R. Scott Haley was appointed to catalog and assess Ferrini's possessions.

In 2001, when the sale fell apart, Ferrini supposedly returned the whole codex to its previous owner. But according to Haley and National Geographic, which photographed the Akron pieces in February, a significant portion of the gospel remained in Ferrini's possession.

Ferrini referred a phone call to Akron lawyer Morris Laatsch, who said Ferrini returned everything he was given by the previous owner, and questions whether the National Geographic experts are correct.

``There's more than one series of writings,'' Laatsch said. ``The Gnostics apparently wrote lots of things. Possibly this could be from this same document. But if the experts do say it is, I guess perhaps you can rely on them or not rely on them.''

Manuscript's location

The delicate fragments are inside a special vault at FirstMerit. Only the bank has the combination to an outer vault, and only Haley has the combination to an inner vault.

Rumors about this have been circulating, but this is the most detailed account I've seen so far.