The texts at Nag Hammadi describe a variety of Gnostic viewpoints. Dated to the mid-fourth century C.E., these codices contain more than 50 ancient texts written in Coptic-with some of the texts themselves dated as early as the second century C.E. These codices date to the mid-fourth century C.E.-with some texts written as early as the first or second century C.E.ĭiscovered in 1945, the Nag Hammadi Library consists of 12 leather-bound volumes, plus eight leaves from a 13th book. Many of its books were banned, burned and lost to posterity-that is, until the cache at Nag Hammadi was discovered. Christian Gnostics thus placed a high value on Jesus’ sayings.Ĭondemned by the Christian Church as heresy in the fourth century C.E., Christian Gnosticism slowly died. To Christian Gnostics, this secret knowledge was the key to salvation-not faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Jesus was believed to be one of those select few (Luke 7:33–35). In the Hebrew Bible, Sophia (Wisdom) is personified as a confidante and collaborator with God she knew things hidden from the foundation of the world (Isaiah 48:6 Psalm 78:2–3), and she passes that gnosis (knowledge) into holy souls in every generation (Wisdom 7:26–27). The author/collector of the Gospel of Thomas, for example, stressed that Jesus’ words contained secret knowledge and wrote, “Whoever discovers the explanation of these sayings will never die” (Saying 1). They emphasize the importance of spiritual knowledge over material comfort. The religious stance they reflect is very different from what one reads in the four Gospels of the New Testament. For example, they contain texts from Greek wisdom literature, Sethianism, Hermeticism and Judaism. These texts may in general be described as heretical Christian Gnostic writings, but they are much more diverse than that. Written in Coptic on papyrus, the texts opened a window onto the diversity of early Christianity before the ascendancy of early orthodoxy in the fourth century C.E. Preserved by the arid Egyptian desert, the Nag Hammadi Codices contained 52 ancient texts. Ultimately the manuscripts were deposited in the Coptic Museum in Old Cairo. Originally the peasants did not think the manuscripts were valuable, but eventually antiquities collectors purchased the codices. Peasants, who were digging for fertilizer, accidentally discovered the codices in 1945 buried in a sealed jar about 6 miles east of the modern Egyptian city of Nag Hammadi, which is located about 35 miles northwest of Luxor as the crow flies. The Nag Hammadi Library consists of 12 ancient leather-bound books plus eight leaves from a 13th book.
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