Nag Hammadi library

The Nag Hammadi library (also known as the "Chenoboskion Manuscripts" and the "Gnostic Gospels"^[a]) 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.^[1] The writings in these codices comprise 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 Pachomian hypothesis has been further expanded by Lundhaug & Jenott (2015, 2018)^[2]^[3] and further strengthened by Linjamaa (2024). In his 2024 book, Linjamaa argues that the Nag Hammadi library was used by a small intellectual monastic elite at a Pachomian monastery, and that they were used as a smaller part of a much wider Christian library.^[4]

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. Most interpreters date the writing of the Gospel of Thomas to the second century, but based on much earlier sources.^[5] The buried manuscripts date from the 3rd and 4th centuries.

The Nag Hammadi codices are now housed in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, Egypt.

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^ Meyer, Marvin. The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition. HarperOne, 2007. pp. 2–3. ISBN 0-06-052378-6
^ Lundhaug, Hugo; Jenott, Lance (2015). The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ISBN 978-3-16-154172-8.
^ Lundhaug, Hugo and Lance Jenott. ‘Production, Distribution and Ownership of Books in the Monasteries of Upper Egypt: The Evidence of the Nag Hammadi Colophons’, in Monastic Education in Late Antiquity: The Transformation of Classical Paideia, ed. Lillian I. Larsen and Samuel Rubenson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, 306–335.
^ Linjamaa, Paul (2024). The Nag Hammadi Codices and Their Ancient Readers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-009-44148-3.
^ Van Voorst, Robert (2000). Jesus Outside the New Testament: an introduction to the ancient evidence. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans. p. 189.

[2] Meyer, Marvin. The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition. HarperOne, 2007. pp. 2–3. ISBN 0-06-052378-6

[3] Lundhaug, Hugo; Jenott, Lance (2015). The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ISBN 978-3-16-154172-8.

[4] Lundhaug, Hugo and Lance Jenott. ‘Production, Distribution and Ownership of Books in the Monasteries of Upper Egypt: The Evidence of the Nag Hammadi Colophons’, in Monastic Education in Late Antiquity: The Transformation of Classical Paideia, ed. Lillian I. Larsen and Samuel Rubenson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, 306–335.

[Linjamaa_2024-5] Linjamaa, Paul (2024). The Nag Hammadi Codices and Their Ancient Readers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-009-44148-3.

[6] Van Voorst, Robert (2000). Jesus Outside the New Testament: an introduction to the ancient evidence. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans. p. 189.

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