DISCOVERIES AFTER THE NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY
AS WE HAVE SEEN throughout this book, the Nag Hammadi library is providing a remarkable opportunity to reassess religion in the ancient and modern world, and that reassessment is giving us new insights into the quest for knowledge and the wisdom of others and ourselves. The discoveries of the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex are showing that the world of Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian antiquity was a world of significant diversity, and gnostic and mystical themes permeated that world. The gnostic discoveries give voice to creative minds and spiritual ideas that have too easily been dismissed in the past, and the result is a fresh opportunity to encounter crucial questions about the nature of God, ways of salvation, and the place of Jesus and other saviors and revealers. These texts of knowledge, wisdom, and insight provide the occasion to reassess the role of spirituality in our own world, and to examine anew, as the Book of Thomas and other texts suggest, who we are, what our existence means, and what will become of us.
Since the uncovering of the Nag Hammadi library, more papyrus and parchment texts have been found in the sands of Egypt, and their impact has yet to be determined.
The Gospel of the Savior is the title given to a document described by its editors, Charles W. Hedrick and Paul A. Mirecki, as “a new ancient gospel.”1 When it was published in 1999, the Gospel of the Savior was received with great enthusiasm by those who hoped that here at last might be a gospel authored by Jesus himself. According to the report of the editors, the Gospel of the Savior was purchased for three hundred deutschmarks and obtained by the Ägyptisches Museum in Berlin in 1967, inventoried as Papyrus Berolinensis 22220. The text consists of an assemblage of parchment fragments, some of which can be arranged to form a more or less coherent text. The Gospel of the Savior includes materials that recall Q, the New Testament synoptic gospels, the Gospel of John, and the Gospel of Peter; and a saying of Jesus in the Gospel of the Savior resembles Gospel of Thomas 82. The Gospel of the Savior reads, “If someone is near me, that person will [burn]. I am the fire that blazes. Whoever is [near me] is near the fire; whoever is far from me is far from life.”2 On the parchment fragments are recorded lines addressed by the savior to his cross, some of which make use of terms and concepts familiar from gnostic texts:
[A little longer], O cross, and that which is lacking is perfected, and that which is diminished is full.
A little longer, O cross, and that which [fell] arises.
A [little longer], O cross, and all the fullness is perfected.
….….….…….
Do not be afraid; I am rich. I will fill you with my wealth. I will mount you, O cross.3
Stephen Emmel has argued that the Gospel of the Savior (called Unbekanntes Berliner Evangelium, the Unknown Berlin Gospel, by Hans-Martin Schenke) is identical with a previously known fragmentary text called the Strasbourg Coptic Gospel, and he calls for a new comparative edition of the fragments.4 A discussion of the texts is going on among scholars, and it is spirited.
More recently, in July 2004, the Coptologist Rodolphe Kasser announced at the 8ème Congrès International d’Études Coptes in Paris that he has access to a Coptic codex that has been known since the 1980s and includes several texts: the Gospel of Judas, the Letter of Peter to Philip (known from Nag Hammadi Codex VIII), and a Revelation of James.5 Both Irenaeus of Lyon and Epiphanius of Salamis allude to a Gospel of Judas (that is, Judas Iscariot, the infamous betrayer of Jesus in Christian tradition) that was read by a gnostic group called the Cainites—a group named after Cain, a character from the Jewish scriptures who is no less infamous than Judas. There may be, according to the heresiologists, connections between Cainites and Sethians, who (as we have seen) employed the name Allogenes (“Stranger”) in their writings.
Since the 2004 announcement, the story of this Coptic codex and its contents have become clearer. The Maecenas Foundation and the National Geographic Society have collaborated in order to publish the codex, now called Codex Tchacos, and the Gospel of Judas has been made available, initially in an English translation produced by Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst, and thereafter in a number of modern foreign language versions. While uncertainties remain about the story of the discovery of Codex Tchacos, it seems that it was found in the 1970s, in Middle Egypt, near al-Minya. Later, Codex Tchacos was moved from place to place and passed from hand to hand, as attempts were made to sell this ancient book. For sixteen years it was hidden away in a safe deposit box in Hicksville, New York, and for a time it was put in deep freeze, apparently in an attempt, misguided as it was, to separate the papyrus pages. Through these years and these unkind manipulations of the papyrus, the codex underwent significant damage. As best we can tell, Codex Tchacos may have been discovered in the context of several other codices (a Greek mathematical text, a Greek edition of Exodus, and a Coptic collection of letters of Paul) in a cave used for burial. The text entitled James within the codex turns out to be a version of the First Revelation of James from Nag Hammadi Codex V, and immediately following the Gospel of Judas there is another fragmentary text, provisionally entitled the Book of the Stranger (or Allogenes), in which Jesus appears as the stranger. Numerous additional fragments of the codex remain, and there may originally have been more Coptic text—perhaps considerably more text—in Codex Tchacos.
Thus far most of the discussion of Codex Tchacos has focused upon the Gospel of Judas. The Gospel of Judas appears to be an early Sethian text in which Judas Iscariot is the favored disciple who confesses, in good Sethian fashion, that Jesus is from the immortal realm (or aeon) of Barbelo. In the gospel, Judas receives a revelation that resembles the revelatory disclosures in such texts as the Secret Book of John and the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, and at the conclusion of the gospel Jesus announces that Judas will exceed the other followers of Jesus. Judas, Jesus affirms, will sacrifice the human who bears or clothes Jesus, and thus, it is implied, he will liberate the true spiritual person of Jesus. That is the real meaning of the betrayal of Jesus (or, more accurately, the handing over of Jesus) according to the Gospel of Judas.6
Again, in February 2005, yet another textual discovery was announced in the Egyptian periodical Al-Ahram Weekly.7 It was reported that a team from the Polish Centre for Mediterranean Archaeology found a collection of papyrus and parchment texts, Coptic ostraca, pottery fragments, and textiles at al-Gurna, near the Valley of the Kings in Upper Egypt. The texts were said to be from the sixth century. According to the article in Al-Ahram Weekly, the texts consist of two papyrus codices and a set of parchment pages assembled between two pieces of wood:
The head of the team, Tomaz Gorecki, said the books were well preserved except for the papyri papers, which were exceptionally dry.
The first book has a hard plain cover embellished with Roman text from the inside while the second includes no less than 50 papers coated with a partly deteriorated leather cover bearing geometrical drawings. In the middle, a squared cross 32 cm. long and 26 cm. wide is found.
As for the set of parchments, Gorecki said it included 60 papers with a damaged leather cover and an embellished wooden locker.
Immediately after the discovery, restoration was carried out in order to preserve the books, which will be the subject of extensive restoration by two Polish experts.
The head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt, Zahi Hawass, was quoted as comparing the significance of the discovery to that of the Nag Hammadi library. The only photograph initially available was published in conjunction with the article in Al-Ahram Weekly, and that Coptic page can be identified as coming from a Coptic version of the Acts of Peter. Although an Act of Peter is included in the Berlin Gnostic Codex and the Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles in the Nag Hammadi library, the page published in Al-Ahram Weekly comes from the text of the Acts of Peter that presents a polemic against Simon Magus, the figure often associated in heresiological sources with the beginning of gnosis.
So the land of Egypt continues to disclose ancient texts, like the Nag Hammadi library, that have been hidden away but now may shed light on our history and our world. The Nag Hammadi library was hidden near the Jabal al-Tarif probably by Pachomian monks over a millennium and a half ago and uncovered by Muhammad Ali in our time. Time will tell what new discoveries may be made in the future and how they will challenge us anew. We can only hope that with regard to manuscripts buried in Egypt too, the Gospel of Thomas may prove to be insightful when it states that “there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed,” and the Greek text from Oxyrhynchus adds that there is “nothing buried that [will not be raised]” (5).