The Nag Hammadi Scriptures - Preface

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Preface

 

James M. Robinson

 

 

(xi) 'The Nag Hammadi Scriptures' is a collection of thirteen papyrus codices

[manuscript volumes]--bound books, not scrolls--that were buried near the city

of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt most likely in the second half of the fourth

century CE. They had been brought together earlier in that century and then

buried in a jar for safe-keeping at the foot of the Jabal al-Tarif, a cliff

close to the hamlet of Hamra Dum. In all, there are some fifty-two tractates

[treatises] in the collection of Nag Hammadi codices, and since six are

duplicates, there are forty-six different texts. Of these, forty-one are texts

that were not previously extant [still standing], but ten are very fragmentary,

so that one may say that the discovery has added about thirty-one new texts to

our knowledge of religion and philosophy in antiquity. This is indeed a dramatic

escalation of source material on early Christian, Neoplatonic, Hermetic,

Sethian, and Valentinian thought. The precise dates of the composition of these

texts are uncertain, but most are from the second and third centuries CE. All

were originally written in Greek and translated into Coptic.

 

The people who wrote, copied, translated, recopied, read, collected, and finally

buried these texts are unknown. Since most of the tractates are Gnostic, it is

assumed that there must have been a sympathetic community in the region that

collected, cherished, and then buried its library. The cartonnage--the discarded

papyrus used to thicken the inside of the leather covers--contains references to

the region near where they were discovered and dates on receipts just before and

in the middle of the fourth century. Thus, the time and place of the production

of the codices coincides with the emergence of the Pachomian monastic order,

with which there may be some association. In fact, fragments of a Coptic letter

from a Papnoute to a certain Pahome may be from Papnoutios, the " business

manager " of the nearby monastery, to its founder, Pachomius. In 367, Athanasius,

the orthodox patriarch of Alexander, wrote an Easter letter to be read in all

the monasteries of Egypt, calling upon them to eliminate from their libraries

apocryphal writings; in the letter he listed those books that were to be

included as acceptable--the oldest extant list of the twenty-seven books in the

New Testament. It has been suggested that the Nag Hammadi codices were among the

books that had to be excluded but were buried for safekeeping in a sealed jar by

those who valued them.

 

(xii) Another codex [manuscript volume], Papyrus Berolinensis 8502, which has

been in Berlin for a century, contains duplicates of two tractates in the Nag

Hammadi collection, the 'Secret Book of John' and the 'Wisdom of Jesus Christ',

as well as two other texts, the 'Gospel of Mary' and the 'Act of Peter'. They

have been included in the present edition, as have the texts from Codex Tchacos,

the 'Gospel of Judas' and the 'Book of Allogenes'.

 

The English translation of the Nag Hammadi scriptures published in the present

volume is the result of the close collaboration of three teams of scholars who

over the past generation have prepared English, French, and German translations.

The English-language team has had its center in the Coptic Gnostic Library

Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity of Claremont Graduate

University in Claremont, California. It was first to publish a preliminary

translation of the whole discovery. 'The Nag Hammadi Library in English', in

1977, in order to make the tractates available to a wider audience. The

Claremont team published a critical edition of the Nag Hammadi texts, The Coptic

Gnostic Library, as a subseries in the broader series Nag Hammadi Studies (now

Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies), in twelve volumes in 1975-95, followed by a

five-volume paperback reprint in 2000. The project was founded and directed by

James M. Robinson.

 

The German-language team has been based in the Berliner Arbeitskreis fur

koptisch-gnostische Schriften of the Theological Faculty of the Humboldt

University of Berlin. It published preliminary translations in the periodical

'Theologische Literaturzeitung, followed by a number of dissertations addressing

individual tractates, and more recently, in 2001 and 2003, the Berlin team

produced a complete two-volume German translation, 'Nag Hammadi Deutsch'. The

Arbeitskreis was founded by Hans-Martin Schenke and is currently directed by

Hans-Gebhard Bethge.

 

The French-language team has been centered in the Institut d'etudes anciennes

and the Faculte de theologie et de sciences religieuses of the Universite Laval

in Quebec, Canada. Founded by Jacques-E. Menard and Herve Gagne, the team is

currently directed by Louis Painchaud, Wolf-Peter Funk, and Paul-Hubert Poirier.

It is publishing critical editions with commentaries of each of the Nag Hammadi

tractates in its Bibliotheque copte de Nag Hammadi (1977-) as well as a

one-volume French translation edited by Jean-Pierre Mahe and Paul-Hubert

Poirier, 'Ecrits gnostiques', to appear in Paris in the Bibliotheque de la

Pleiade. The Laval team has enlisted Wolf-Peter Funk from the Berlin

Arbeitskreis and John D. Turner from the Claremont Project, and it has been the

congenial host of the meetings at which the present volume was prepared (August

2003, January 2004, August 2004, and August 2005). These work sessions were

attended by Wolf-Peter Funk, Marvin Meyer, Birger A. Pearson, Paul-Hubert

Poirier, James M. Robinson, John D. Turner, and others.

 

'The Nag Hammadi Scriptures' seeks to take advantage of the generation of

scholarship that has taken place at each of the three centers and elsewhere.

(xiii) The advisory board for this volume consists of James M. Robinson,

representing the American team, Wolf-Peter Funk, representing the German team,

and Paul-Hubert Poirier, representing the French-Canadian team. The translation

published here seeks to build on the contributions of these international teams

as well as other scholars around the world, and the contributors to the present

volume have attempted to incorporate the insights of the other scholars. The

translators have also smoothed out the often verbose formulations of the Coptic

texts into a more crisp, intelligible English rendition in order to produce a

volume in which the texts are presented as accurately as possible in readable,

contemporary English.

 

For many years our colleague Hans-Martin Schenke played a major role in the

collaborative work on the Nag Hammadi library. He not only organised and

directed the Berlin team, but also worked for two years in Quebec and taught

three semesters in Claremont, thus bringing his scholarly mastery of the texts

and his congenial goodwill into play in all three centers. With gratitude we

dedicate this volume to him.

 

The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (The International Edition)

Edited by Marvin Meyer; Advisory Board: Wolf-Peter Funk, Paul-Hubert Poirier,

James M. Robinson; Introduction by Elaine H. Pagels

Preface, p. xi-xiii

HarperCollins Publishers - New York

ISBN:978-0-06-052378-7

ISBN-10: 0-06-052378-6