Nag Hammadi

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Nag Hammadi A modern town in upper Egypt. It is the nearest town to Chenoboskion, where texts relevant to the early Christian Church were discovered in 1945, two years before the accidental discovery of the first scrolls by the Dead Sea. These twelve papyrus codices are as important for the study of early Christianity as the Qumran scrolls are for Judaism. They are Coptic translations of the original Greek; their literary genres are diverse—sayings, prayers, apocalypses, and epistles—and their theological stances as they wrestle with the problem of evil are also diverse. But notably they (especially the Gospel of Truth) are evidence for a flourishing Christian Gnosticism in the area, though some of the texts are not Christian at all, and in some there is a strong Jewish input. One work, the Valentinian Exposition, is named after the Gnostic teacher Valentinus (a native of Egypt who died in Rome about 165 CE). The codices themselves were probably copied and translated in the 4th cent.

Among the texts is the gospel of Thomas, which gives alternative versions of some of the sayings of Jesus preserved in the canonical gospels, together with new material. Some scholars have recently argued that Thomas is independent of the NT gospels and contains traditions of considerable historical value.

Nag Hammadi , a town in Egypt near the ancient town of Chenoboskion, where, in 1945, a large cache of gnostic texts in the Coptic language was discovered. The Nag Hammadi manuscripts, dating from the 4th cent. AD, include 12 codices of tractates, one loose tractate, and a copy of Plato's Republic —making 53 works in all. Originally composed in Greek, they were translated (2d–3d cent. AD) into Coptic. Most of the texts have a strong Christian element. The presence of non-Christian elements, however, gave rise to the speculation that gnosticism, which taught salvation by knowledge, was not originally a Christian movement. Until the texts' discovery, knowledge of Christian gnosticism was confined to reports and quotations of their orthodox opponents, such as Irenaeus and Tertullian. Among the codices are apocalypses, gospels, a collection of sayings of the resurrected Jesus to his disciples, homilies, prayers, and theological treatises.

Bibliography: See E. H. Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (1979); K. Rudolph, Gnosis (1983); B. Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures (1987); J. M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library in English (1988).