Another interesting story of the last week about a lost gospel was largely overlooked. The subject may have got a tendency to be stirred up by conspiracy theories, but it doesn't mean that we should completely ignore it.
According to a report by Kibris newspaper, the Turkish Cypriot police seized a 2000-year-old book, the so-called Gospel of Barnabas. Nine people were arrested and the experts are now evaluating the book.
Putting forward an idea about the historical importance of this religious book is outside my area of expertise. I just know that the Gospel of Barnabas is strongly anti-St. Paul and anti-Trinitarian in tone. Some say that the gospel, which is in accordance with the Islamic interpretation of Jesus Christ as a respected prophet, but not the son of God, was one of the most realistic accounts of Jesus' life; though it has naturally been forbidden for centuries by the Establishment of the Church.
I was more interested in the whereabouts of the original manuscript of the Gospel of Barnabas, after I read the legendary indictment of the Ergenekon case. Joking apart, all the claims about this gospel are seducing for anyone. Here is how it all started:
* In 1981, it was alleged that an original manuscript of the Gospel of Barnabas was found in southeast Turkey. The Kurdish peasants who discovered the book in a cave informed the Turkish gendarme.
* Veli Kucuk, a retired general and the alleged mastermind of the Ergenekon gang, popped in! He was the person who had paid to translate the gospel. Prof. Hamza Hocagil, a Turkish expert, was commissioned to translate the book.
* One of the advisors of Hocagil was Viktoria Rabin, the granddaughter of Israeli Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin. In Apokrifal, a book by Aydogan Vatandas, it is claimed that Viktoria Rabin had converted to Islam after she read the gospel and she was consequently murdered in Ethiopia where she conducted a research on the Old Testament.
* Prof. Hocagil says that Adem Tasdemir, the aide-de-camp of Veli Kucuk, was the person who made him contact a Greek publishing house, called Markos. Tasdemir was a friend of Tuncay Guney, the whistleblower of Ergenekon investigation and a gay journalist who claims to have converted to Judaism before becoming a rabbi in Canada.
* According to witnesses, Veli Kucuk and his comrades were trying to sell the gospel to a Greek group. However, the mediator, a cardinal called Mario, was killed before the deal was done. We know nothing about the nature or the motives of the Greek group, the demands of the Turkish part or the details of the deal, such as the question if it was a financial agreement or a different one.
* Meanwhile, St. Barnabas' tomb in Northern Cyprus was looted by some men, who had professedly got some links to the intelligence unit of the Turkish gendarme. Kutlu Adali, a Turkish Cypriot journalist, started to investigate the looting, but he was murdered shortly afterwards. It was reported that some dark figures of the Turkish Special Warfare Unit had arrived the island shortly before the murder.
After all the Da-Vinci-Code-style twists and turns, including three murders, Prof. Hocagil believes that the original manuscript is still in the vault of the Turkish General Staff.
Then what about the 2000-year-old book that was found in Northern Cyprus last week? Was the Hakkari manuscript a hoax or was it just a late copy of the Cypriot original? (It is claimed that the Hakkari manuscript is the original one and it even includes a passage which informs the reader about where the other four copies can be found.)
We'll see after the Turkish Cypriot experts finish their investigation.
At the end of the day, some conspiracy theories might indeed be true and just because you're paranoid doesn't mean you're not being watched... By the way, did I tell you that Prof. Hocagil couldn't be contacted by any journalist for the last two months?..
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