The Gospel of Judas  is part of a larger discovery now designated Codex Tchacos.  The Codex ("book") contains four volumes: a version of the Letter of Peter to Philip (also contained in the Nag Hammadi Library), a text titled "James" (corresponding to the First Revelation of James in the Nag Hammadi materials); the Gospel of Judas; and a heretofore unknown work provisionally titled the Book of Allogenes.

The originals were likely written in Greek, sometime in the mid-second century.  They were later copied in Coptic in the present book, which probably dates to the early part of the fourth century.

In 1978, some excavators digging in a tomb dug in the bank of the Nile River came upon the book.  Antiquities dealers were contacted.  An Egyptian named Hanna gained possession of the codex.  He set it out to display for a potential customer, but it was stolen from his apartment.  In 1982, Hanna recovered the book.

In his efforts to sell the book, Hanna contacted Ludwig Koenen, a member of the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan.  Koenen and other scholars tried to buy the book, but Hanna's asking price was too high.  On March 23, 1984, Hanna rented a safe-deposit box with Citibank in a Hicksville, New York branch.  He kept the book in this box until he finally sold it to Frieda Nussberger on April 3, 2000.  This was the worst possible storage for the ancient book, as the humidity of the area was extremely destructive.

Ms. Nussberger then offered the book to Yale University, which did not recognize its value and declined the sale.  On September 9, 2000, she sold it to an American antiquarian named Bruce Ferrini.  He froze the book, which nearly destroyed it.  He could not raise the money to complete the sale, and so returned it eventually to Ms. Nussberger.  But he kept some of the fragments, photographs of which are still circulating.

Finally the manuscript was sold to the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art in Basel, Switzerland on February 19, 2001.  For the last five years, scholars have worked with meticulous effort to reassemble the ancient book and translate it.  It will eventually be displayed at the Coptic Museum of Cairo.  The National Geographic Society has purchased rights to tell the world about the find, and has published several books which contain the Gospel and its story.  Thus the news release on the week before Palm Sunday, and the two-hour documentary which aired on April 9.