![]() ![]() ![]() It has yet to be proven, however, that Pachomians either produced or read the codices. It would make sense for the codices to have been removed from a monastic library and hidden away in the time of accelerated evolution of the Christian orthodoxy and promulgation of the official canon of Christian Bible in the mid-fourth century that brought banning of apocryphal and heretic books. Some scholars link the codices with early Egyptian monasticism, specifically the nearby Pachomian monastery at Faw Qibli-due to monastic documents used as stuffing inside the covers of two of the codices and ascetic overtones in several treatises. ![]() Some other works reflect traditions of Jewish thought or are Christianized versions of Gnostic tractates. The most consequential text for New Testament studies is the Gospel of Thomas (see photo, top)-a collection of Jesus’s sayings that appropriately assumes its place alongside the hypothesized synoptic sayings source Q. Modern interpretations of Gnosticism range from viewing it as a Christian sect to a religion in its own right to a movement transcending any single religion. Understanding this-through a higher insight (gnosis, in Greek)-allowed one to liberate the transcendent divine spark trapped within the material world and imprisoned within the physical, human bodies of Gnostics, and let her return to the divine realm (i.e., achieve salvation). Generally, ancient Gnostics shared contempt for this physical world, which they accepted was created by the biblical God, but who they believed was a lower, jealous deity that resulted from a singular, higher, ultimate, transcendent deity. Although these illuminate ancient Judaism and early Christianity, they most importantly aid our understanding of Gnosticism, of which there were several schools. The writings include noncanonical gospels, acts, letters, apocalypses, revelatory dialogs, and philosophical tractates. Although the versions preserved in the Nag Hammadi codices were collected and written down sometime in the mid-fourth century, the original works must have been conceived during the first three centuries of the Christian era. These texts are all written in Coptic Egyptian, though it is generally assumed that they were originally composed in Greek. They contain a total of 52 separate texts, which make up 48 individual titles, as some works appear twice, in different codices. The collection consists of 12 papyrus volumes and fragments of another one. They are now in the Coptic Museum in Cairo.īecome a Member of Biblical Archaeology Society Now and Get More Than Half Off the Regular Price of the All-Access Pass! Explore the world’s most intriguing Biblical scholarshipĭig into more than 9,000 articles in the Biblical Archaeology Society’s vast library plus much more with an All-Access pass. Both the precise location and circumstances in this chance discovery story are questionable, with some scholars suspecting that the manuscripts come from an illicitly excavated grave (or graves). The codices were allegedly found buried in a ceramic storage jar. Reportedly, the discovery was made in 1945 by Egyptian farmers digging for fertile soil at the base of the Jabal al-Tarif cliff on the east bank of the Nile River across from Nag Hammadi. The codices (i.e., bound volumes) contain writings that shed light on the diverse religious and philosophical currents of the early Christian period. The Nag Hammadi Codices are a group of papyrus manuscripts discovered near the city of Nag Hammadi in southern Egypt, about 70 miles north of Luxor. ![]()
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