The Nag Hammadi Library in English

The Nag Hammadi Library was discovered in 1945 buried in a large stone jar in the desert outside the modern Egyptian city of Nag Hammadi. It is a collection of religious and philosophical texts gathered and translated into Coptic by fourth-century Gnostic Christians. These texts have since been translated into English by dozens of highly reputable experts. First published in 1978, this is the revised 1988 edition, supported by illuminating introductions to each document. The library itself is a diverse collection of texts that the Gnostics considered to be related to their heretical philosophy in some way. There are 45 separate titles, including a Coptic translation from the Greek of two well-known books: The Gospel of Thomas attributed to Jesus's brother Judas, and Plato's Republic. The word "gnosis" is defined as "the immediate knowledge of spiritual truth", thus this doomed radical sect believed in being here now, in withdrawing from the contamination of society and materiality, and that heaven is an internal state, not some place above the clouds. That this collection has come back into the light of day at this historical juncture is more than likely no coincidence. --P. Randall Cohan

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The good news you were never meant to hear, - Rated
Formidable. Not an easy read.

For almost 2000 years, people have prepared us for the New Testament. There's been many books about it, many sermons, even many movies. Some of it may still seem unusual to us but it's familiar. The scriptures within it were carefully selected and ordered. Many of the writers seem to have gone to great care to make their messages accessible.

We've had little if any preparation for the scriptures in the Nag Hammadi library. They weren't supposed to be around any longer. They may not be a random collection but they seem as if they were. They aren't even all Christian Gnostic. There are some non-Christian Gnostic works, some Hermetic works, even a modified excerpt from Plato's Republic. It seems unlikely that they would have been judged readily understandable even when they were first written. We know little if anything about the people who wrote them, of the people who read them, of how they played a part. They may represent a poor subset of Gnostic works: we may never know whether some powerful, clearer, more accessible Gnostic works existed but were lost to us.

But even such as they are, it is a gift that these works were saved and found.

One reading seems hardly enough. Jumping into these works unprepared mayleave you baffled. But, even if you do just jump in, you may well recognize something there's something special about these scriptures.

As preparation (or after an initial reading) some works that may help you with these scriptures are:
* Elaine Pagel's "The Gnostic Gospels". It's an exceptional presentation of relevant early Christian history and a good overvew of what mattered to the Gnostics.
* The "Hermetica", also written in the first few centuries A.D. This Hermetic work is much longer but also much better presented than the Hermetic works in the "Nag Hammadi Library". The Hermetic writings generally have a more positive view of material existence but in many ways feel similar to the Gnostic works, both being quite philosophical religious writings with plenty of mythologizing.
* The "Enneads" by the Neoplatonist Plotinus. Long, but a very clear presentation some of whose terminology and themes can be found in the "Nag Hammadi Library".

The introduction to the library by James Robinson, the general editor, will provide some helpful context. The afterward by Richard Smith on " The Modern Relevance of Gnosticism" is exceptional and may well be worth reading before you read the scriptures themselves. This afterward doesn't depend on the scriptures and introduces many modern writers whose work has been shaped by an interest in Gnosticism.

One nit: there are "textual signs" throughout the scriptures which are undoubtedly useful to scholars but which seemed a distraction.

Each scripture is short. Each has its own introduction, often done by the translator of that scripture but sometimes not. Elaine Pagels ("The Gnostic Gospels") wrote some of the introductions. These introductions provide some helpful context and summary, but not as much as I could have used. An annotated "Nag Hammadi Library" would be useful. I'm afraid I missed a lot of references, although the introductions often helped.

The historical Jesus is not to be found in the Christian Gnostic texts: just the resurrection and, to a lesser extent, the crucifixion, are referenced. You can wonder why, in these scriptures, as in Paul, the historical Jesus seems of such little interest. Most of the works seem quite abstract, quite philosophical, with free myth-making. I found it very hard to imagine who would have used these texts; it seems unlikely they could have had a mass appeal. They all seem quite serious, quite heavy.

Many of the texts are noted to have come from Alexandria, seeming not very Egyptian but very Greek. It most have been quite a place. It's seems remarkable that religious thinking was so intense. Do many of us today think so deeply about our condition?

I had some "favorites" among these scriptures after this first reading. These works may have seemed more accessible. There seems to be no benefit to reading all the scriptures in this library in the order they appear. My favorites may not at all be yours but they may also seem more accessible to you:
* The Gospel Of Truth
* The Treatise on the Resurrection
* The Gospel of Phillip
* On the Origin of the World
* The Exegesis of the Soul
* The Letter of Peter to Phillip
Although philosophical, these works are religious and hence often emotional. I was struck most by the power of "The Exegesis of the Soul".

Don't be surprised if, on first reading, these scriptures make little if any connection or sense. They are indeed quite foreign. But the power of the effort at myth-making may reach you, in which case you may want to do some background reading (either what I suggested or other) and then return to these scriptures. Richard Smith's afterword may convince you that such writings describe a compelling alternative. The Gnostic view as shared here need not be an academic interest, but suggest ways of living in this world quite unlike what orthodox religion offers. If they didn't have a significant power, it seems unlikely the orthodox Church would have been so aggressive in trying to remove all trace of these scriptures.

Now We Hear From The Other Side - Rated
The Nag Hammadi Library is a collection of ancient religious texts which were discovered in Egypt in 1945. The people who collected and buried the library are believed to have been Gnostic Christians. The various scriptures are considered to be examples of texts used by them before Christianity achieved favored status during the reign of Constantine.

James Robinson's book is divided into chapters which include English translations of individual scriptures plus discussions of each by noted biblical scholars. A table is also provided to show the appropriate identifications for the texts comprising the thirteen Nag Hammadi Codices and Papyrus Berolinensis 8502. Among the contributors are Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King. For supplementary reading I recommend especially THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS and BEYOND BELIEF by Pagels as well as THE GOSPEL OF MARY OF MAGDALA by King.

I find the subject of Gnosticism to be extremely interesting and suspect that the study of it is just in its infancy. We know that Gnosticism is similar in some respects to primitive Christianity and a few eastern religions.Gnosticism is also different in many ways from the orthodox Christianity which ultimately gained the upper hand in the fourth century. It is hard to overestimate the significance of Gnosticism.For anyone wishing to explore this topic, THE HAG HAMMADI LIBRARY is a good place to begin the journey.

Ancient and enlightening... - Rated
This collection of texts gives a fascinating view of early Christian texts and views, particularly in light of the fact that these were not the writings that made it into the mainstream of church and biblical canonical development, but rather were influential in an underground, almost subversive way, in much of ancient and oriental Christianity -- were it not for the existence of texts such as these, indeed, we would not have the canon of the Bible which we have today (the political motivations behind deciding which books belonged in the Bible and which books didn't owe largely to texts such as those in the Nag Hammadi Library).

'This volume...marks the end of one stage of Nag Hammadi scholarship and the beginning of another. The first stage was concerned with making this library of texts available; the second stage has been characterised by the discussion and interpretation of the texts.'

This book represents an advance in both translation and analysis; this is part of the canon of the Gnostic sect, which saw more orthodox Christianity (from which Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant bodies derive) as the ones who were heretical.

'The Nag Hammadi library also documents the fact that the rejection was mutual, in that Christians described there as 'heretical' seem to be more like what is usually thought of as 'orthodox'.'

Gnosticism was ultimately eliminated from mainstream Christianity, save the occasional resurgence of underground and spiritual movements. Of course, Gnosticism was not an exclusively Christian-oriented phenomenon: many of the texts refer to Hebrew Scriptures only, and the question of Jewish Gnosticism is discussed by Robinson.

The Dead Sea Scrolls (of which these texts are NOT a part, despite the fact that they often get cited and analysed as part of that body of documents) shed light on the pluralistic nature of first century Judaism; the idea that there was a sect primarily of Jewish gnostics which had little or no knowledge or regard of Christianity (still at this point one sect of many, particularly in cosmopolitan centres such as Alexandria) is not a strange one.

The Nag Hammadi library consists of twelve books, plus eight leaves of a thirteenth book. There are a total of fifty-two tracts. These are now kept in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, and, as the name suggests, are written in Coptic, although it is clear that the texts are Coptic translations of earlier Greek works. Coptic is the Egyptian language written with the Greek alphabet; there are different dialects of Coptic, and the Nag Hammadi library shows at least two. The were found in codex form (book form rather than scroll form). They were discovered in the mid 1940s, just a few years prior to the discovery of the first Dead Sea Scrolls (another reason for the combination of the texts in the public imagination).

Included in these texts are The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Philip, The Gospel of Truth, The Gospel of Mary and other gospel contenders (alas, in fragmentary form--the translation in this volume however is the complete Nag Hammadi text). The Gospel of Thomas has perhaps been the highest profile text from Nag Hammadi; it has been translated and commented upon extensively, particularly in modern scholarship which discusses gospel development.

'Whoever find the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death.'

This gospel does not correspond to the narrative form with which modern readers are familiar; it is a collection of sayings (one modern scholar argues that the victory of the four canonical gospels was a victory of style, rather than substance).

This gospel also helps illuminate some of the early struggles in church formation (why exactly did it go from a house-based, relatively gender-neutral organisation to a male-exclusive-hierarchical model?).

Simon Peter said to them, 'Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.' Jesus said, 'I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.'

Other writings include various Acts of apostles, pieces of wisdom literature, parables and stories, most of which have some basis in Hebrew scripture or Christian scripture traditions.

The afterword, by Richard Smith, traces the idea of gnosticism through medieval and renaissance writers, through the enlightenment up to the modern day, in philosophy, theology, culture and the arts. From Blake to Gibbons to Melville to modern motion pictures, Gnostic ideas permeate many works, even before the Nag Hammadi library was available for study and contemplation.

'A quite self-conscious incorporation of Nag Hammadi texts into a science fiction novel appeared in Harold Bloom's 1979 novel The Flight to Lucifer: A Gnostic Fantasy. In it the reincarnated Valentinus and his companions fly to a planet called Lucifer. Quoting our gnostic texts, the heroes wage a violent battle against Saklas, the Demiurge who is worshipped in his 'Saklaseum'. Bloom, more successful as an interpreter of literature, later confessed that The Flight to Lucifer reads as though Walter Pater were writing Star Wars. But, then, so does much ancient gnostic writing.'

This is a wonderful collection, a truly fascinating view of texts that shared the religious stage with the proto-canonical Biblical texts. It gives insight into the varieties of early Christianity and Judaism. And it makes for interesting reading.

REVELATIONS OF THE HEAVENLY PLEROMA - Rated
This is an overwhelming body of work to digest - mercifully the explanatory introductions to each of the 45 chapters help a lot to make sense of it all. Not all the books are strictly speaking Gnostic Gospels, as it even includes a part of Plato's "Republic." The excellent introduction by James M. Robinson discusses what is known about the history of the Gnostics, the background to the documents and their theological significance.
The works that I find fascinating include The Gospels of Thomas and Philip, The Thunder: Perfect Mind, The Concept Of Our Great Power, Asclepius 21 - 29, and The Apocalypse of Peter. The afterword by Richard Smith: The Modern Relevance of Gnosticism, is particularly relevant and readable as it traces Gnostic ideas through Edward Gibbon, the Enlightenment writers, William Blake, W.B. Yeats, Helena Blavatsky, Carl Jung, Herman Hesse, Nicholas Roeg's film The Man Who Fell To Earth, science fiction writers, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and others. This is a brilliant piece and I am inspired by the excerpt from Jung's "Abraxas" poem to further investigate the Jung connection. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but this volume has enormous significance and will continue to increase in stature in the following decades. It is moreover not only of importance to historians and theologians but to all spiritual people who seek to broaden their knowledge.

Jesus' sayings can be seen, heard & felt today as a reality. - Rated
My daughter and I are scientists and have stumbled upon several unique phenomena during our research into all the conditions which influence the health and well-being of mankind. These, to our surprise are identical to many of the sayings spoken by Jesus in The Gospel of Thomas, included in James Robinson's book. They bring Jesus directly into today's world, not in terms of the gloom and doom of modern day prophets and scientists, but as an absolute confirmation of God's Presence, here and now, as real live sensations that can be experienced, no matter what your religious beliefs may be, or even if you have none. Would any readers of the book, the Editor or Publishers be interested in our research papers? These take us a step beyond belief into knowing and bring this historical document to life.