The Nag Hammadi Scriptures - Introduction

[Guest guest]

Marvin Meyer

 

The Nag Hammadi Scriptures

 

(p.1) The present volume, entitled 'The Nag Hammadi Scriptures', [1] offers a

new edition of some of the most remarkable texts that have come to light in the

last century. Since the discovery of the thirteen codices of the Nag Hammadi

library in 1945, the Berlin Gnostic Codex 8502 a few decades before, and Codex

Tchacos more recently, such texts as the 'Gospel of Thomas' and the 'Gospel of

Mary' have become a significant part of cultural and religious life, and they

have come to be known and read not only by students of early Christianity, but

also by a wide variety of people interested in religion in general and the early

Christian movement in particular. These and the other texts from the Nag Hammadi

library, the Berlin Gnostic Codex, and Codex Tchacos invite us to reconsider the

nature of our religious and philosophical heritage, the development of

Christianity and the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, and the enduring

questions raised by religious and philosophical inquiry.

 

'The Nag Hammadi Scriptures' includes nearly fifty texts that were read as

sacred literature and gathered in collections found near Nag Hammadi and

elsewhere in Egypt--hence the title of this volume. The texts published here,

however, do not constitute scripture in the narrow sense of a closed canonical

collection, as is the case with the Jewish scriptures, the New Testament, or the

Qur'an. Rather, the documents from the Nag Hammadi library, the Berlin Gnostic

Codex, and Codex Tchacos are scriptural in the broader sense of texts composed,

read, translated, and copied as books recognized as inspired--and inspiring--for

those seeking God. The texts included here were translated into Coptic, a form

of the Egyptian language used from the Roman period until more recent times,

though they were likely composed in Greek. (p.2) Portions of Greek editions of

the texts, some found in an ancient garbage heap at Oxyrhynchus and some from

other sources, are also translated and presented in this volume.

 

The Coptic texts included here have come from discoveries that have occurred in

southern and central Egypt. In 1896 a German scholar, Carl Reinhardt, bought the

Berlin Gnostic Codex from a dealer from Akhmim, in central Egypt, who claimed

that the codex had been discovered with feathers covering it in a recessed place

in a wall; Carl Schmidt, the first editor of the codex, suspected that it may

have come from a cemetery near Akhmim. Schmidt published the last text of the

codex--the 'Act of Peter'--in 1903, but it was not until 1955 that Walter C.

Till was able to see the first three texts of the codex--the 'Gospel of Mary',

the 'Secret Book of John', and the 'Wisdom of Jesus Christ'--through the press.

Hans-Martin Schenke published a second, revised edition of the Berlin Gnostic

Codex in 1972: 'Die gnostischen Schriften des koptischen Papyrus Berolinensis

8502'. [2]

 

Meanwhile, around the end of 1945, the texts known as the Nag Hammadi library

were discovered, not at the city of Nag Hammadi itself, but near the base of a

majestic cliff, the Jabal al-Tarif, which flanks the Nile River a few kilometers

from Nag Hammadi. The villages closest to the Jabal al-Tarif bear the names

Hamra Dum, al-Busa, al-Dabba (the site of the Monastery of the Angel, Deir

al-Malak), al-Qasr (the site of the Pachomian monastery at Chenoboskion), and

Faw Qibli (the site of the Pachomian monastery at Pbow). Five years after the

discovery, the French scholar Jean Doresse explored the region and tried to find

out the circumstances of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library. He published

his story in his book 'The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics'. According to

Doresse, he spoke with some people from the area, and they directed him to the

southern part of an ancient cemetery. They reported that peasants from Hamra Dum

and al-Dabba, searching for natural fertilizer (manure), found somewhere near

this locale a large jar filled with papyri bound in the form of books. Doresse

writes:

 

The vase was broken and nothing remains of it; the manuscripts were taken to

Cairo and no one knows what then became of them. As to the exact location of the

find, opinion differed by some few dozen yards; but everyone was sure that it

was just about here. And from the ground itself we shall learn nothing more; it

yields nothing but broken bones, fragments of cloth without interest and some

potsherds. [3]

 

He concludes:

 

(p.3) We have never been able to discover exactly where the Coptic Manichaean

manuscripts came from, nor the 'Pistis-Sophia', nor the Bruce Codex. So it was

well worth the trouble to find out, in a pagan cemetery a few miles from

Chenoboskion, the exact site of one of the most voluminous finds of ancient

literature; thus to be a little better able to place this library in the frame

of history to which it belongs; and to support, with concordant details, the

hypotheses that have been made about its antiquity. [4]

 

James M. Robinson has offered another version of the story of the discovery. For

a number of years, Robinson conducted interviews with people from the towns and

villages in the Nag Hammadi area, in particular Muhammad Ali of the al-Samman

clan, a resident of al-Qasr, and from the interviews he pieced together a

fascinating account of how the Nag Hammadi codices were uncovered. Where

possible, Robinson attempted to confirm dates and events from official records.

As Robinson has reconstructed the story, the discovery of the Nag Hammadi

library took place in about December of 1945, when several Egyptian fellahin

[agricultural laborers], including Muhammad Ali, his brothers Khalifah Ali and

Abu al-Magd, and others, were riding their camels to the Jabal al-Tarif in order

to gather 'sabakh', a natural fertilizer that typically accumulates around

there. They hobbled their camels at the foot of the Jabal, the account

continues, and began to dig around a large boulder on the talus, or slope of

debris, that had formed against the cliff face. As they were digging, they

unexpectedly came upon a large storage jar buried by the boulder, with a bowl

sealed on the mouth of the jar as a lid. Apparently the youngest of the

brothers, Abu al-Magd, initially uncovered the jar, but Muhammad Ali, as the

oldest, took control of the operation. In his account of what transpired,

Muhammad Ali has suggested to Robinson that he paused before removing the lid or

breaking open the jar, out of fear that the jar might contain a 'jinni', or

spirit, that could cause trouble if released from the jar. It seems that

Muhammad Ali also recalled stories of hidden treasures buried in Egypt, and his

love of gold overcame his fear of 'jinn'. He smashed the jar with his mattock,

and indeed something golden in color and glistening in the sunlight--fragments

of papyrus, we might conclude--flew out of the jar and disappeared into the air.

And when he looked into the broken jar to see what remained, he found only a

collection of old books--the codices of the Nag Hammadi library. [5]

 

Robinson's version of the story is carefully documented, and it includes

colorful anecdotes and detailed accounts of events. For instance, Robinson

reminisces about how he persuaded Muhammad Ali to return to the site of the

discovery, so close to Hamra Dum, where a family caught up in acts of vengeance

with the family of Muhammad Ali lived. Robinson recalls:

 

I had to go to Hamra Dum myself, find the son of Ahmad Isma'il, the man Muhammad

Ali had butchered, and get his assurance that, since he had long since shot up a

funeral cortege of Muhammad Ali's family, wounding Muhammad Ali and killing a

number of his clan, he considered the score settled. Hence, he would not feel

honor-bound to attack Muhammad Ali if he returned to the foot of the cliff. I

took this good news back to Muhammad Ali, who opened his shirt, showed me the

scar on his chest, bragged that he had been shot but not killed, yet emphasized

that if he ever laid eyes on the son of Ahmad Isma'il again, he would kill him

on the spot. As a result of this display of a braggadocio's fearlessness, he

could be persuaded to go to the cliff, camouflaged in my clothes, in a

government jeep, with me sitting on the " bullets " side facing the village and

him on the safer cliff side, at dusk in Ramadan, when all Muslims are at home

eating their fill after fasting throughout the daylight hours. [6]

 

More recently, in the 1970s (perhaps in 1978), yet another collection of

manuscripts was unearthed in Egypt. The details of the story of this discovery

remain shrouded in uncertainty, and the names of the fellahin have not been

disclosed. According to what the researcher and writer Herbert Krosney has been

able to reconstruct of the discovery, the manuscripts were found in Middle Egypt

near al-Minya, in a cave used for burial, at the Jabal Qarara. The cave

contained, among other things, Roman glassware in baskets or papyrus or straw

wrappings. Krosney writes:

 

The burial cave was located across the river from Maghagha, not far from the

village of Qarara in what is known as Middle Egypt. The fellahin stumbled upon

the cave hidden down in the rocks. Climbing down to it, they found the skeleton

of a wealthy man in a shroud. Other human remains, probably members of the dead

man's family, were with him in the cave. His precious books were beside him,

encased in a white limestone box. [7]

 

The ancient books contained in this collection of codices are reported to have

included (1) a Greek mathematical text, (2) a Greek edition of the book of

'Exodus' from the Jewish scriptures, (3) a Coptic set of New Testament letters

of Paul--and (4) a book now referred to as Codex Tchacos, with Coptic versions

of the 'Letter of Peter to Philip, James' (also called the 'First Revelation of

James'), the 'Gospel of Judas', and a text entitled, tentatively, the 'Book of

Allogenes'. For our purposes, Codex Tchacos is of particular interest, since it

is a Nag Hammadi type of codex with two texts known from the Nag Hammadi library

(the 'Letter of Peter to Philip' and 'James') and two texts that were previously

unknown or unavailable (the 'Gospel of Judas' and the 'Book of Allogenes').

(p.5) Unfortunately, Codex Tchacos later was moved from place to place and

passed from hand to hand, and the papyrus book suffered extensive damage due to

the greed and ineptitude of people. It was stored away in a safe-deposit box in

humid Hicksville, New York, for sixteen years and was placed in a freezer in the

Midwest in a misguided effort to separate papyrus pages.

 

At last the codex was acquired by Frieda Tchacos Nussberger and the Maecenas

Foundation; it was given the necessary support for its publication by the

National Geographic Society; and it was restored and conserved by Rodolphe

Kasser, Florence Darbre, and Gregor Wurst. What was a box of hundreds and

hundreds of papyrus fragments has become a legible codex once again. In the

spring of 2006 the 'Gospel of Judas' was released to the world, and it has

generated international enthusiasm and excitement. [8]

 

The circumstances of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library and the other

Coptic texts are debated among scholars, and the debate is likely to continue

into the future. However these various codices may have been uncovered, and

whatever may be the implications of the discoveries, the discoverers could not

have imagined the impact these texts would have on our understanding of early

Christianity and the world of antiquity and late antiquity.

 

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

Introduction p.1-5

HarperCollins Publishers - New York

ISBN:978-0-06-052378-7

ISBN-10: 0-06-052378-6

 

Notes:

 

[1] In this Introduction, Marvin Meyer is chiefly responsible for " The Nag

Hammadi Scriptures " and " Reading the Nag Hammadi Scriptures, " Elaine H. Pagels

for " What Are the Nag Hammadi Scriptures? "

 

[2] On the story of the discovery of the Berlin Gnostic Codex, see Karen L.

King, 'The Gospel of Mary of Magdala', 7-12; Marvin Meyer, 'The Gnostic

Discoveries', 19-20; Michael Waldstein and Frederik Wisse, 'The Apocryphon of

John', 2-3.

 

[3] Jean Doresse, 'The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics', 133.

 

[4] Doresse, 'Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics', 136.

 

[5] On this story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices, see Meyer, 'The

Gnostic Discoveries', 15-19; James M. Robinson, " From the Cliff to Cairo " ; " Nag

Hammadi: The First Fifty Years. "

 

[6] Robinson, " Nag Hammadi: The First Fifty Years, " 80.

 

[7] Herbert Krosney, 'The Lost Gospel', 10.

 

[8] See Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst, eds., 'The Gospel of

Judas'. On the full story of the discovery of Codex Tchachos, see Herbert

Krosney, 'The Lost Gospel'; James M. Robinson, 'The Secrets of Judas'.