Loading...In my last post I gave the story typically recited by NT scholars for the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library. As I pointed out, some scholars have doubted the story, most recently Mark Goodacre. He has agreed to do a guest post on the blog in which he shows why this story – which has been told by probably every NT scholar to every Introduction to NT class for undergraduates for the past thirty years! – is problematic and, well, possibly not true. That post will come by way of tomorrow’s blog.
For today’s post, first, I want to say something about the contents of the Nag Hammadi library. This, at least, is not in dispute. Here is what I say in my undergraduate textbook on the matter.
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What was this ancient collection of books? The short answer is that it is the most significant collection of lost Christian writings to turn up in modern times. It included several Gospels about Jesus that had never before been seen by any Western scholar, books known to have existed in antiquity but lost for nearly 1500 years. The cache contained twelve leather-bound volumes, with pages of a thirteenth volume removed from its own, now lost, binding and tucked inside the cover of one of the others. The pages are made of papyrus. And the books are anthologies – collections of texts compiled and then bound together. Altogether there are fifty-two treatises preserved among these volumes; but six of the treatises are duplicates, making a total of forty-six documents in the collection. They include Gospels by such persons as Jesus’ disciple Philip and secret revelations delivered to his disciple John and another to James; they include mystical speculations about the beginning of the divine realm and the creation of the world, metaphysical reflections on the meaning of existence and the glories of salvation; they include expositions of important religious doctrines and polemical attacks on other Christians for their wrong headed and heretical views — especially Christians we would call proto-orthodox.
The documents are written in…
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Just out of curiosity – what form of dating did the compilers of the books use, that would correspond to our “341 CE” and so on? I’m assuming they weren’t using Roman dates. But were the Romans themselves, in that era, still using dates “ab urbe condita”?
Sorry not to respond sooner. I didn’t know the answer and so asked my colleague Zlatko Plese, a bona fide expert on Nag Hammadi. Here is what he replied:
There are very few dates recorded in the papyrus scraps from the NHC bindings—they all belong to the mid-fourth ct. and are confined to the ‘cartonnage’ of Codex VII. There is a book dedicated to these papyrus remnants: J. W. B. Barns, G. M. Browne, and J.-C. Shelton, Nag Hammadi Codices: Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Cartonnage of the Covers. Leiden: Brill, 1981. From what I could see checking the incomplete Google version of the book, there are three types of dating used in these papyri: (i) a couple of references to regnal years (Constans and Constantius II; Aurelian or Domitius Domitianus); (ii) four references to consuls ranging from 341 to 348 (consular dating is used in formal dating clauses), and (iii) indiction years (three times). The material as a whole can be dated, mostly on the paleographical basis, between the late 3rd and mid-4th century.
Is the dating based on the binding of the books really conclusive? Couldn’t the book have been written earlier and rebound? I’ve had this done with a couple of old books that aren’t in print anymore, and of course in the ancient world EVERYTHING is “out of print” so to speak.
It’s technically possible, though I’ve never heard of any ancient book being rebound. The handwriting itself can be roughly dated though, and the fourth century date is not disputed by anyone, so far as I know.
If the provenance of the Muhammud Ali story is in doubt, is the age of the physical Nag Hammadi collection of texts also in question, or is there other evidence from destructive tests like codicography/paleography or carbon 14 providing some certainty? Further, if the poop-digging story is incredible, what’s the suggested reality-something along the lines of the brothers breaking into the monastery and stealing priceless manuscripts that the monks didn’t know about or something?
Yes, the age of the documents is secure: the books were produced in the mid-fourth century. Muhammad Ali and his brothers could not have stolen the texts from the monastery because the monastery has been in ruins for centuries.
I look forward to Dr. Goodacre’s post because I have found his New Testament website to be very helpful.
Thanks Bart, informative as always.
So you will be discussing (if you haven’t al ready and I missed it?) the Gospel of St. Thomas? Intriguing reading. Who made the most money from this find? Mohammad Ali probably died (albeit with blood on his hands) both ignorant and impoverished?
Good idea! I suppose it was the middle men who made money on the find. Muhammad Ali did not.