Nag Hammadi

Nag Hammadi (näg hä`mädi), 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. A.D., 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. A.D.) 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).

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Nag Hammadi

Town in Upper Egypt on the Nile. In 1945 a collection of 13 codices containing 53 Gnostic texts (scriptures and commentaries) was found nearby at the site of an ancient settlement on the river's eastern bank. Written in the Coptic language, the texts were composed in the 2nd or 3rd century and copied in the 4th century. They include accounts of the life of Jesus and his sayings after his resurrection, predictions of the apocalypse, and theological treatises. As the only surviving documents written by Gnostics themselves, they constitute a major source of knowledge about Gnosticism.