NAG HAMMADi
The Nag Hammadi library (also known as the "Chenoboskion Manuscripts"
and the "Gnostic Gospels) is a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered
near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in
1945.
Thirteen leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local
farmer named Muhammed al-Samman The writings in these codices comprised 52
mostly Gnostic treatises, but they also include three works belonging to
the Corpus
Hermeticum and a partial translation/alteration of Plato's Republic.
In his introduction to The Nag Hammadi Library in English, James
Robinson suggests that these codices may have belonged to a nearby Pachomian monastery
and were buried after Saint Athanasius condemned
the use of non-canonical books in his Festal Letter of
367 A.D. The discovery of these texts significantly influenced
modern scholarship's pursuit and knowledge of early Christianity and Gnosticism.
The contents of the codices were written in the Coptic language.
The best-known of these works is probably the Gospel of Thomas,
of which the Nag Hammadi codices contain the only complete text. After the
discovery, scholars recognized that fragments of these sayings attributed to
Jesus appeared in manuscripts discovered at Oxyrhynchus in
1898 (P. Oxy. 1), and matching quotations were
recognized in other early Christian sources. Subsequently, a 1st or 2nd century
date of composition circa 80 AD or
earlier has been proposed for the lost Greek originals of the Gospel of Thomas.
The buried manuscripts date from the 3rd and 4th centuries.
The Nag Hammadi codices are currently housed in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, Egypt.
The site of discovery, Nag Hammadi in
map of Egypt
The story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945 has been
described as 'as exciting as the contents of the find itself'. In December
of that year, two Egyptian brothers found several papyri in a large earthenware
vessel while digging for fertilizer around the Jabal al-Ṭārif caves near
present-day Hamra Dom in Upper Egypt. Neither originally reported the
find, as they sought to make money from the manuscripts by selling them
individually at intervals. The brothers' mother burned several of the manuscripts,
worried, apparently, that the papers might have 'dangerous effects'
(Markschies, Gnosis, 48). As a result, what came to be known as the
Nag Hammadi library (owing to the proximity of the find to Nag Hammadi, the
nearest major settlement) appeared only gradually, and its significance went
unacknowledged until sometime after its initial discovery.
In 1946, the brothers became involved in a feud, and left the
manuscripts with a Coptic priest.
His brother-in-law in October that year sold a codex to the Coptic
Museum in Old Cairo (this tract is today numbered Codex III in the collection).
The resident Coptologist and religious historian Jean Doresse,
realizing the significance of the artifact, published the first reference to it
in 1948. Over the years, most of the tracts were passed by the priest to a
Cypriot antiques dealer in Cairo, thereafter being retained by the Department
of Antiquities, for fear that they would be sold out of the country. After
the revolution in 1952, these texts were
handed to the Coptic Museum in Cairo, and declared national property Pahor Labib,
the director of the Coptic Museum at that time, was keen to keep these
manuscripts in their country of origin.
Meanwhile, a single codex had been sold in Cairo to a Belgian antique dealer.
After an attempt was made to sell the codex in both New York City and Paris, it was acquired by
the Carl Gustav Jung Institute in Zurich in
1951, through the mediation of Gilles Quispel.
It was intended as a birthday present to the famous psychologist;
for this reason, this codex is typically known as the Jung Codex,
being Codex I in the collection.
Jung's death in 1961 resulted in a quarrel over the ownership of the Jung
Codex; the pages were not given to the Coptic Museum in Cairo until 1975, after
a first edition of the text had been published. The papyri were finally brought
together in Cairo: of the 1945 find, eleven complete books and fragments of two
others, 'amounting to well over 1000 written pages' are preserved there.[4]
The first edition of a text found at Nag Hammadi was from the Jung Codex, a
partial translation of which appeared in Cairo in 1956, and a single extensive
facsimile edition was planned. Due to the difficult political circumstances in
Egypt, individual tracts followed from the Cairo and Zurich collections only
slowly.
This state of affairs did not change until 1966, with the holding of
the Messina Congress in Italy. At this conference,
intended to allow scholars to arrive at a group consensus concerning the
definition of Gnosticism, James M.
Robinson, an expert on religion, assembled a group of editors and
translators whose express task was to publish a bilingual edition
of the Nag Hammadi codices in English, in collaboration with the Institute for
Antiquity and Christianity at the Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California.
Robinson was elected secretary of the International
Committee for the Nag Hammadi Codices, which had been formed in 1970
by UNESCO and
the Egyptian Ministry of Culture; it was in this capacity that he oversaw the
project. A facsimile edition in twelve volumes was published between 1972 and
1977, with subsequent additions in 1979 and 1984 from the publisher E.J. Brill in Leiden,
entitled, The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices. This
made all the texts available for all interested parties to study in some form.
At the same time, in the German Democratic Republic, a group of
scholars—including Alexander Böhlig, Martin
Krause and New Testament scholars Gesine Schenke, Hans-Martin Schenke and Hans-Gebhard Bethge—were
preparing the first German language translation of the find. The last three
scholars prepared a complete scholarly translation under the auspices of
the Berlin Humboldt University, which was published in
2001.
The James M. Robinson translation was first published in 1977, with the
name The Nag Hammadi Library in English, in collaboration between
E.J. Brill and Harper & Row. The single-volume
publication, according to Robinson, 'marked the end of one stage of Nag Hammadi
scholarship and the beginning of another' (from the Preface to the third
revised edition). Paperback editions followed in 1981 and 1984, from E.J. Brill
and Harper, respectively. A third, completely revised, edition was published in
1988. This marks the final stage in the gradual dispersal of gnostic texts into
the wider public arena—the full complement of codices was finally available in
unadulterated form to people around the world, in a variety of languages. A
cross reference apparatus for Robinson's translation and the Biblical canon
also exists.
Another English edition was published in 1987, by Yale scholar Bentley Layton,
called The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation with Annotations (Garden
City: Doubleday & Co., 1987). The volume included new translations from the
Nag Hammadi Library, together with extracts from the heresiological writers,
and other gnostic material. It remains, along with The Nag Hammadi
Library in English, one of the more accessible volumes of translations
of the Nag Hammadi find. It includes extensive historical introductions to
individual gnostic groups, notes on translation, annotations to the text, and
the organization of tracts into clearly defined movements.
Not all scholars agree that the entire library should be considered
Gnostic. Paterson Brown has argued that the three Nag Hammadi Gospels of
Thomas, Philip and Truth cannot be so labeled, since each, in his opinion, may
explicitly affirm the basic reality and sanctity of incarnate life, which
Gnosticism by definition considers illusory.
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