THE COLLECTION OF CODICES discovered at the Jabal al-Tarif is usually called the Nag Hammadi library, after the city close to the spot of the discovery. But this collection has also been termed the “Coptic gnostic library,” and that phrase or an approximation thereof has been used to name two of the research projects established to translate the texts (the Coptic Gnostic Library Project in the United States and the Berliner Arbeitskreis für koptisch-gnostische Schriften in Germany) as well as a set of volumes in the prestigious series of scholarly publications on the Nag Hammadi library (Coptic Gnostic Library, Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies, published by E. J. Brill in the Netherlands). But how is the library a Coptic library? Is the library gnostic? And to what extent is it a library?
A COPTIC LIBRARY?
Coptic means Egyptian, as noted before, and the Nag Hammadi library may be called a Coptic library, but with qualifications. The most obvious way in which the Nag Hammadi library may be described as a Coptic library is in terms of the language of the texts. In general, the texts of the Nag Hammadi library do not represent the perspective of the Coptic Orthodox Church as that has developed over the years, but all the texts in the Nag Hammadi library are written in the Coptic language. Occasionally a title of a tractate or a textual annotation is written in Greek, and Greek loanwords abound in the Coptic texts. In one instance, at the conclusion of the text Zostrianos (Codex VIII), there is another curiosity of language: a cryptogram that may be comprehended only when the twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet are divided into three groups of eight and the letters are reversed in each set (with modifications). Then the cryptogram may be understood to mean “Words of truth of Zostrianos. God of truth. Words of Zoroaster.”1
Nonetheless, in spite of these issues of language, the texts of the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex have been copied onto the pages of the codices in the Coptic language. The Coptic language is a form of Egyptian; it represents a stage in the history of the Egyptian language, which includes, in earlier periods, hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic. Coptic grammar is Egyptian grammar, but the main script employed in Coptic is Greek, to which have been added several letters from demotic for sounds not indicated by Greek letters. The Greek alphabet provided a fitting basis for the Coptic form of the Egyptian language, since from the days of Alexander the Great’s entrance into Egypt and establishment of the city of Alexandria, the influence of Hellenistic culture and Greek language upon Egypt was significant.2
The Coptic texts of the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex, along with other Coptic texts that have emerged from the sands of Egypt in recent years, are helping to increase our understanding of the Coptic language, including the various dialects of Coptic used in different times and places of Egypt.
Scholars generally concede, however, that none of the texts of the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex were actually composed in Coptic. Rather, they were composed in Greek and translated into Coptic. Some scholars have tried to argue that the Gospel of Thomas, which most likely was composed in Syria, may have been written in Syriac, but there is limited evidence for a Syriac Gospel of Thomas. The cartonnage within the covers of the codices indicates that the books themselves were probably produced sometime around the middle of the fourth century, so that if the texts of the Nag Hammadi library were translated from Greek into Coptic and subsequently copied into thirteen codices, the actual translation of the texts into Coptic must have preceded that date. Precisely how long a time before then the work of translation took place is difficult to ascertain. If the texts of the Nag Hammadi library were translated into Coptic, in Egypt, sometime around or before the middle of the fourth century, the original documents must have been composed earlier, perhaps much earlier in some cases, and possibly in locales close by or far away from Upper Egypt.
The determination of the place and date of the composition of ancient texts—their provenance—is an inexact science at best, and the question of the origin of the texts in the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex is no exception.3 The Greek language was widely used as a literary language throughout the Mediterranean region and into the Middle East in Hellenistic and Roman times, and only occasionally are there clear indications in a text of the place of composition. A few Nag Hammadi texts—On the Origin of the World and the Hermetic texts Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth and the Perfect Discourse—allude to sites in Egypt and may have been composed there. The Nag Hammadi excerpt from Plato’s Republic originated in the world of classical Athens. For most of the other texts in the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex, we must resort to historical conjecture for matters of provenance. Because of the rich cultural and religious traditions, including gnostic traditions, of Syria and Egypt, and particularly Alexandria, these places are often suggested as possible regions where the Nag Hammadi and Berlin Gnostic texts may have been composed. Thomas was revered in Syria, and it is reasonable to suggest that Thomas texts were written there. Valentinus was an influential figure in Alexandria, and some Valentinian texts, including the Gospel of Truth, may have come from Alexandria. On the other hand, the Valentinian Gospel of Philip discusses the meaning of Syriac words, so that a place of composition in Syria is plausible.
The dating of the composition of the texts in the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex is equally challenging, and sometimes contentious. Occasionally, as with Sethian texts exhibiting Platonizing characteristics, it may be possible to compare the Nag Hammadi texts with developments in the broader world of Middle Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy. We may be able to relate these Sethian texts from Nag Hammadi—the Three Steles of Seth, Zostrianos, Marsanes, and Allogenes the Stranger—to the debates about gnostics and their texts going on in the Platonic school of Plotinus in Rome in the third century.4 Gnostic texts mentioned in the Platonic literature include revelations of Zoroaster, Zostrianos, Nicotheos, Allogenes, Messos, and others, and most of these names are also to be found in the Nag Hammadi texts.
At other times the determination of what dates might be assigned to a given text in the Nag Hammadi library may be influenced by the historical and theological preferences of scholars and fought out on the battlefield of scholarly controversy. The dating of the composition of the Gospel of Thomas is the best example of such impassioned dispute over the date of a text. I believe that many of those who wish, for historical or theological reasons, to minimize the significance of the Gospel of Thomas and marginalize it in the discussion of who Jesus was and how the early church developed assign it a later date of composition for that reason. Conversely, many of those—and I am one of them—who wish to employ the Gospel of Thomas in the study of Jesus and Christian origins support their use of the text by arguing for an earlier date of composition. Points in support of either an earlier or a later date have been made by scholars, and the argument goes on. We shall revisit the argument in our discussion of the Gospel of Thomas in the next chapter.
All things considered, it is appropriate to describe the Nag Hammadi library as a Coptic library in the sense of a collection of texts all of which have been translated into Coptic.
A GNOSTIC LIBRARY?
It may not be quite as easy to call the Nag Hammadi library a gnostic library. Part of the reason is that the Nag Hammadi library incorporates texts that seem not to be gnostic by any standard of definition. Among the Nag Hammadi and Berlin Gnostic texts, non-gnostic works include the Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles, the Teachings of Silvanus, the Sentences of Sextus, the Act of Peter, and an excerpt from Plato’s Republic. Opinions vary on other texts. Whether the Gospel of Thomas and the Book of Thomas should be termed gnostic is debated among scholars. I prefer to describe them, in a more qualified way, as gnosticizing texts, and I suggest that the Gospel of Thomas has an incipient gnostic perspective. The jury is still out on the Gospel of Mary, though I believe a case can be made for a gnosticizing point of view in this text too. The same may be true for Authoritative Discourse.
But the issue of whether the Nag Hammadi library may be called a gnostic library goes much deeper than the mere identification of texts that are not gnostic works. Recent discussions have questioned whether we can use the term “gnosticism” and related words in any meaningful way whatsoever. The two scholars who have been most prominent in formulating their arguments against the category “gnosticism” are Michael A. Williams and Karen L. King.
When Michael Williams, in his book Rethinking “Gnosticism,” proposes that we reconsider ancient gnosis and dismantle “a dubious category,” the category he has in mind is “gnosticism” itself. “The term ‘gnosticism,’” he posits, “has indeed ultimately brought more confusion than clarification,”5 and he supports his claim by showing the multiplicity of ways—often contradictory—that scholars have tried, in vain, to define and describe “gnosticism.” “Gnosticism” has been seen variously as a protest movement that overturned traditional values and textual interpretations; a religion of innovators who adopted and adapted ideas from other religions; a religion of spiritualists who despised the body and the life of the body; and a movement of ethical extremists who opted for either an ascetic or a libertine way of life. In the face of such scholarly obfuscation and with no scholarly consensus, Williams recommends that we replace the old, vague category of “gnosticism” with “biblical demiurgical traditions”:
By “demiurgical” traditions I mean all those that ascribe the creation and management of the cosmos to some lower entity or entities, distinct from the highest God. This would include most of ancient Platonism, of course. But if we add the adjective “biblical,” to denote “demiurgical” traditions that also incorporate or adopt traditions from Jewish or Christian Scripture, the category is narrowed significantly.6
In her book What Is Gnosticism? Karen King also acknowledges problems with “gnosticism” as a term and category, but her approach is somewhat different and her arguments are directed at more fundamental issues. King sees difficulties with definitions in general, since definitions “tend to produce static and reified entities and hide the rhetorical and ideological interests of their fabricators.”7 How much more problematical, according to King, is the definition of “gnosticism,” with rhetorical and ideological interests lurking at the very foundation of the term. From the times of the ancient heresiologists until today, King maintains, terms like “gnosticism” and “gnostic” have functioned as rhetorical constructs employed to designate the religion of those with whom one disagrees as “the other” and to name it “heresy.” These designations have been tainted with anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, colonialist, and evolutionary prejudices. As King states, “gnosticism” never really was any “thing” other than a rhetorical construct, and the term simply reflects “the reification of a rhetorical entity (heresy) into an actual phenomenon in its own right (Gnosticism).”8
The term “gnosticism” is so flawed, King concludes, that it may need to be rejected outright. In a pluralistic and postmodern setting, we need new and different discussions of what has been called “gnosticism.” She states,
The analysis I propose here aims to get at practice rather than at origins and essence. It offers no larger connected totality but rather a set of episodes no longer linked in any causal-linear frame of origins and development…. These twenty-first-century historical practices would without doubt result in more than one possible, legitimate narrative of Christianity, based as they would be not only in the different perspectives of scholars and the communities to which they are accountable, but also in different ethical orientations.9
We can learn a great deal from the thoughtful presentations of Michael Williams and Karen King, and their scholarly contributions should make us more cognizant of the polemical bias and subjective point of view that have permeated the discussion of “gnosticism” from antiquity to modernity. We might wonder whether, after Williams and King, there is any more life left in the term “gnosticism” and related terms.
I suggest that these terms may not be dead and buried just yet, and that we still might be able to make good use of them in our discussion of texts from the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex.10 To be sure, the word “gnosticism” was apparently coined in the seventeenth century by adding the suffix “-ism” to an ancient Greek root word; but that root word, gn
sis, “knowledge,” and its derivative, gnstikos, “knower,” are well-known terms from the world of antiquity and late antiquity, and the word gnsis in particular is commonly attested in ancient texts. In acknowledgment of these issues of terminology, we might wish, if we choose to be especially scrupulous, to be reticent in our use of the word “gnosticism.” I choose to be scrupulous in this book, and I refrain from employing the word “gnosticism” in the discussion. The words gnosis and gnostikos, however, are found throughout the writings of the heresiologists, and when Irenaeus of Lyon mentions “falsely so-called knowledge”—taking the phrase from 1 Timothy 6:20—it is clear that he is referring to claims and counterclaims among his friends and foes about whose gnosis is true gnosis.
In his heresiological work Against Heresies, Irenaeus admits that some of those whom he opposes, especially Sethians (or Barbelognostics) and followers of Marcellina, used “gnostic” as a self-referential term and called themselves gnostics. Clement also writes about those who refer to themselves as gnostics. To the present day the Mandaeans in the Middle East and throughout the world speak of themselves as Mandaye, or “knowers,” that is, gnostics, possessors of manda, or gnosis. This use of “gnostic” as a term of self-designation functions as the groundwork for our appropriation of the same term. If these people call themselves gnostics and understand themselves to be gnostics, do they not deserve the benefit of the doubt? Since, according to Irenaeus, Sethians thought of themselves as gnostics, and since we now have the Secret Book of John, a central text of Sethian spirituality, readily available in the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex, we may analyze the Secret Book of John in order to gain insight into what the main points of gnostic thought are according to the Sethians. Sethian texts appear to be connected to other texts—for example, Valentinian texts—historically, and they resemble still other texts phenomenologically—that is, with regard to themes and characteristics—so that the term “gnostic” may also be applied beyond Sethian texts to Valentinian and other texts that fit the description of gnostic religion.
On the basis of leading themes of the Secret Book of John, I propose this description of gnostic religion, which may be used to evaluate and classify other texts as gnostic:
Gnostic religion is a religious tradition that emphasizes the primary place of gnosis, or mystical knowledge, understood through aspects of wisdom, often personified wisdom, presented in creation stories, particularly stories based on the Genesis accounts, and interpreted by means of a variety of religious and philosophical traditions, including Platonism, in order to proclaim a radically enlightened way and life of knowledge.11
Sethian texts, then, may be termed gnostic, as may Valentinian texts and any other texts that reflect these gnostic themes, while other texts may appear to be less than fully gnostic. Comparisons and classifications are like this; taxonomy is hardly a neat and precise enterprise. In Drudgery Divine Jonathan Z. Smith reminds us that comparisons and classifications are part of the imperfect and subjective world of scholarly research and creativity. Comparisons typically tell us more about the people doing the comparing than how things really are—recall Karen King’s observations. Smith goes on to note that when items—or movements—are compared, there is always an implicit statement of the degree of comparison (“more than”) as well as a reference to themes or traits being compared (“with respect to”). Comparison and classification are relative and contextual—yet that is what we as scholars do.
As a result, when we engage in careful and honest comparison and classification of Nag Hammadi and Berlin Gnostic texts, we may call many of them gnostic texts. Others may be described and qualified as more or less gnostic, and still others as not gnostic at all. Even among the gnostic texts there is considerable variation in perspective, as we shall see.
Thus the Nag Hammadi library is not gnostic in the sense that it contains a uniform set of gnostic texts. To be sure, all the texts in the Nag Hammadi library could have been read and interpreted from a given gnostic or gnosticizing vantage point, and it is also probable, as we have seen, that the Nag Hammadi library functioned in a Pachomian monastic community and could have been understood within that context. But for our purposes, the texts in the Nag Hammadi library are most significant for what they contribute to our appreciation of the diversity of approaches to gnosis.
A LIBRARY?
To what extent is the Nag Hammadi library even a library? The Nag Hammadi library is not a library in a modern sense of the term. It is a collection of codices that Pachomian monks apparently produced and eventually buried in a jar by the Jabal al-Tarif. The monks may have read the texts as a part of their own meditation and edification. If such a collection may be called a library, so be it. Within this collection of codices, however, there are clear indications of heterogeneity.
The differences to be observed within the Nag Hammadi library extend from the covers, the scribal hands, and the Coptic dialects represented to the contents of the codices. James Robinson has surveyed these covers, scribal hands, and dialects in the Nag Hammadi codices, and he judges that this collection of thirteen codices can be subdivided into several smaller groups or libraries that may have been merged to form the Nag Hammadi library as we know it.12 Nag Hammadi Codices IV, V, and VIII have bargain-basement covers, with cheap papyrus and no flap (or, in the case of Codex V, with a flap that was added later). Codices II, VI, IX, and X have high-quality covers, with a leather reinforcement (called a mull) lining the spine for strength. Codices I, III, VII, and XI have undistinguished and even primitive covers. (Nag Hammadi Codex XII is poorly preserved and lacks a cover, and all that remains of Codex XIII is sixteen papyrus pages of a single text, Three Forms of First Thought, and the opening of On the Origin of the World, placed inside the cover of Codex VI.) The handwriting styles of the various scribes who copied the texts in the Nag Hammadi library can also be identified, and Robinson submits that the hands of the copyists “diverge most clearly just where the bookbinding divergences take place.”13 The presence of different Coptic dialects—most notably Sahidic and Subachmimic—and different stylistic preferences in the Nag Hammadi texts underscores the observation that different copyists with different language skills worked on the texts.
All this suggests that monks brought the codices together at the time of their burial or before that, even a considerable time before that, out of several smaller collections. In this sense the Nag Hammadi library may be called the Nag Hammadi libraries.
The duplicate copies of texts in the Nag Hammadi library confirm the likelihood that smaller libraries were brought together. No fewer than three copies of the Secret Book of John survive in the Nag Hammadi codices, with an additional copy in the Berlin Gnostic Codex, and several texts are preserved in two copies. That fact, together with the uncertain reason for the order and arrangement of texts within the codices, raises new questions about the contents of the books in the Nag Hammadi library.
Ingenious theories have been proposed to explain the sequence of texts in a given codex or in codices of the Nag Hammadi library. It has been suggested that Nag Hammadi Codex I may be a Valentinian codex, with texts that all may be taken as advocating a Valentinian point of view. In a more pedestrian way, I once suggested that the Letter of Peter to Philip may have been added after Zostrianos in Nag Hammadi Codex VIII simply because it filled the space available in the codex.14
Now several more interesting and creative theories to account for the arrangement of texts in the Nag Hammadi library are presented and discussed by Michael Williams in Rethinking “Gnosticism.”15 Three times in the Nag Hammadi library the Secret Book of John appears at the beginning of a codex (in the Berlin Gnostic Codex it comes second), and Yvonne Janssens has guessed that the same may have been true for Nag Hammadi Codex XIII, where only the one text and fragments remain and the intact text was not the first in the codex. Within the Nag Hammadi library, Williams proposes, the arrangement of texts within a codex may have been quite deliberate. Far from merely filling space, the texts may have been arranged to rehearse the history of revelation, as in Nag Hammadi Codices IV and VIII (grouped together in terms of covers and other considerations), from the story of Genesis reinterpreted (the Secret Book of John), to the story of Seth (the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit) and other ancient testimony (Zostrianos), to the revelation of the risen Christ to his disciples (the Letter of Peter to Philip). Or the arrangement of texts may imitate the order of Christian texts in the emerging New Testament, as in Nag Hammadi Codex I, with an introductory prayer (the Prayer of the Apostle Paul), a gospel-like text (the Secret Book of James), a Christian exposition (the Gospel of Truth), and statements of eschatology (the Treatise on Resurrection and the Tripartite Tractate). Or the arrangement may follow a liturgical order, or the sequence of spiritual ascent to visionary knowledge of the end of all things.
Williams concludes,
In at least most of the codices, the way in which tractates are arranged may suggest that scribes perceived complete theological consistency within the volumes. Or to put it another way, the arrangement itself in most instances seems to be the scribal method of demonstrating or establishing the theological coherence among the works.
A few lines later, he adds,
In other words, the very repackaging and ordering of the material resolved, as it were, theological diversity among the writings. Each writing had its own function and could be interpreted in terms of that function in relation to the other works within the codex. Once this is seen, it is fair to ask whether there is really all that much more theological diversity within the Nag Hammadi library (or at least within its subcollections) than within, say, Codex Sinaiticus, or the Septuagint, or even the New Testament itself.16
THE DIVERSITY AND UNITY OF THE NAG HAMMADI AND BERLIN GNOSTIC TEXTS
The forty-seven texts (plus fragments and duplicates) of the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex make an extraordinary contribution to our knowledge of spirituality, and especially gnostic spirituality, in the world of antiquity and late antiquity. In the Appendix to this book I survey all the texts and attempt to characterize them by summarizing their contents and providing illustrative quotations. Here I give an overview of the texts and indicate some of the ways in which they differ from one another and—in the spirit of Michael Williams’s comment—some of the ways in which they may be understood to resemble each other.
Initially when we encounter the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex, we are impressed with the diversity of the texts. Most of the texts are Christian texts of one sort or another, but a number of texts exhibit few Christian features and some no Christian features at all. Those that are marginally Christian or non-Christian may show Jewish, Greco-Roman, Platonic, or Hermetic characteristics, often in fascinating combinations. The Christian texts include gospels—the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Truth, and the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit (also entitled the Egyptian Gospel)—and texts that are like gospels in certain respects—the Secret Book of John, the Secret Book of James, the Book of Thomas, the Dialogue of the Savior, and the Second Discourse of Great Seth. The Gospel of Thomas offers a series of sayings of Jesus, and the Second Discourse of Great Seth is ostensibly a discourse delivered by Jesus himself, something like a “Gospel According to Jesus.” There are other Christian texts: the Act of Peter, the Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles, the Prayer of the Apostle Paul, the Treatise on Resurrection, the Letter of Peter to Philip, and revelations, or apocalypses, galore—one of Peter, one of Paul, two of James. Another revelation, the Revelation of Adam, is more fully Jewish in perspective. Besides Jewish and Christian texts about the apocalypse, many other texts interpret the genesis of things: the Secret Book of John, the Nature of the Rulers, On the Origin of the World, the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, the Paraphrase of Shem. Several texts, like the Three Steles of Seth, describe how to ascend to a mystical vision of the divine. Liturgical passages aid in the celebration of the divine.
Many of the texts in the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex are gnostic or gnosticizing, but not all. Of the non-gnostic texts, the Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles describes the adventures of the apostles in a city far away across the water, the Teachings of Silvanus proclaims Christian wisdom with statements of advice, the Sentences of Sextus communicates words of wisdom in a text known for some time from other sources, and the Act of Peter tells a story of how Peter did—and undid—a miracle for his daughter. The fragment from Plato’s Republic may have been edited in a tendentious fashion with gnostic concerns in mind, but it comes ultimately from Plato, and Plato was no gnostic.
Research on the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex has disclosed a broad spectrum of perspectives among the texts that may be identified as gnostic or gnosticizing, and the texts seem to fall roughly into five groups. These five groups may reflect, for several of the groups, gnostic schools of thought embraced by teachers and students in communities.
The first group of gnostic texts in the Nag Hammadi library consists of the Thomas texts: the Gospel of Thomas, the Book of Thomas, and probably the Dialogue of the Savior.17 The texts in the Thomas tradition—what Bentley Layton calls the school of St. Thomas—grew out of reflections upon sayings of Jesus and their relationship to the figure of Judas Thomas, thought to be the twin brother of Jesus. Devotion to Thomas was strong in Syria, particularly in Edessa, and the Thomas tradition seems to have developed in a Syrian milieu. Eventually interests in Jesus and Thomas come to expression in the Acts of Thomas with the “Hymn of the Pearl” and the story of Thomas’s mission to India; a form of Thomas Christianity lives on to the present day in the church of St. Thomas in India. Within the texts of the Nag Hammadi library, the Gospel of Thomas consists of a collection of sayings of Jesus that may be compared with the sayings gospel Q.18 The Book of Thomas incorporates some of the sayings, as it has Jesus talk with Thomas about passions and punishments. The Dialogue of the Savior works some of the sayings of Jesus into a dialogue of Jesus with his disciples Judas Thomas, Mary of Magdala, and Matthew.
The second group of texts derives from the Sethian school of thought. Sethian texts reflect traditions of Seth, son of Adam and Eve, as a paradigmatic human being.19 In the book of Genesis, after the account of the family debacle with Cain and Abel, Seth was born as a new son for Adam and Eve, and it is said that then people began to call on the name of the Lord (4:25–26). Sethian texts build upon these traditions. Sethian texts frequently include a brilliant portrayal of the heavenly realm, with the pl
rma, or fullness, of the divine displayed in all its glory and manifestations. The divine human being is a part of that heavenly realm. According to Sethian texts, the primordial fall from grace may be understood as the fall of the divine through the folly of Sophia, wisdom, and from this cosmic mistake come the creation, fall, and redemption of the world of humankind. Sethian texts give substantial attention to the opening chapters of the book of Genesis and interpret these chapters in a creative fashion, blending their revolutionary interpretation with Greek philosophical and mythological ideas. Hans-Martin Schenke and John D. Turner are the two scholars who have led the way in the scholarly examination of the variety of Sethian gnostic texts and the development of Sethian gnosis, and they have begun to reconstruct the history of the Sethian movement from its origins to its multiple manifestations.
The most noteworthy Sethian text in the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex is the Secret Book of John, which is a Jewish gnostic text that has been Christianized. In the longer version of the Secret Book of John, divine forethought—or Jesus—reveals a threefold descent of the savior to the world below, and this threefold descent is described in detail in another, poetic, Sethian text, Three Forms of First Thought. Other Sethian texts, such as the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, are more fully Christian in their approach, and the Holy Book may also betray Hermetic elements. Platonizing Sethian texts, however, show fewer Christian themes, and they were among the works discussed in the school of the great Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus.
The third group of gnostic texts represents the Valentinian school of thought.20 Valentinus was a second-century Egyptian who became a Christian gnostic teacher and preacher in Alexandria and Rome. It is said that he aspired to be bishop of Rome. Blessed with a mystical and poetic eloquence, Valentinus may very well be the author of the Gospel of Truth. According to Irenaeus of Lyon, Valentinus took over leading ideas of Sethian thought and adapted them to fit his own spirituality. Such Nag Hammadi Valentinian texts as the Tripartite Tractate and the Valentinian Exposition demonstrate that Valentinians, like Sethians, made use of complex cosmological depictions of the pl
r
ma of the divine, and these descriptions of God’s world above were applied to our world below. Valentinus and Valentinian teachers and authors brought pleromatic speculation down to earth, to speak to the lives of Christians, as we can see in the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Philip, the Prayer of the Apostle Paul, and the Treatise on Resurrection. Two branches, or “denominations,” of the Valentinian school of thought are commonly distinguished by scholars, the western (or Italian) branch and the eastern (or Anatolian) branch, and names of leading teachers of these two Valentinian denominations are known: Ptolemy and Heracleon in the western denomination, Theodotus and Marcus in the eastern denomination. The Valentinian texts from the Nag Hammadi library may now be added to the commentaries, epistles, and other literary contributions of this Christian movement.
The fourth group of gnostic texts in the Nag Hammadi library comes from the Hermetic heritage. The Hermetic tradition has been known for a long time, and Hermetic texts, collected in the Corpus Hermeticum, have assumed a prominent place in discussions of mystical religion in antiquity and late antiquity.21 The Greek god Hermes, given the nickname “thrice greatest” in Hermetic literature, is the divine messenger and guide of souls; he is identified with the Egyptian god Thoth and assumes the role of teacher and mystagogue in Hermetic texts. Among these texts, the work entitled Poimandres (a name that may be compared with the reference to Poimael in the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit) has been especially influential.22 In this work, Poimandres (perhaps meaning “shepherd of men”) discloses a vision of the nature of the universe and the fate of the soul that resembles other gnostic visions and employs Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Platonic, and Jewish themes.
The Hermetic literature comes from the cosmopolitan world of Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, perhaps from the city of Alexandria itself. In these texts Hermes the mystagogue refers to the student as “my child” or “my son” or by such names as Asclepius (who was identified with the deified Egyptian architect Imhotep) or Tat (from the god Thoth), and the student in turn calls the mystagogue “my father.” Within the texts of the Nag Hammadi library there are three Hermetic texts, two previously known, an excerpt from the Perfect Discourse and the Prayer of Thanksgiving, and one new Hermetic text, the Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth.
The fifth group of gnostic texts in the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex is hardly a definable group, but instead consists of those gnostic texts that defy classification. These texts seem to incorporate leading gnostic themes, as suggested above, and may show similarities to other gnostic texts and traditions, but they do not fit neatly into the other groups of gnostic texts. Such is the nature of the texts and traditions that we organize and classify into taxonomic systems. Our orderly systems may not always reflect the realities of a complex and disorderly world. Thus, On the Origin of the World resembles the Sethian text the Nature of the Rulers, but it also seems to include Valentinian and Manichaean concepts. The Exegesis on the Soul is an account of the myth of the soul (Psyche) with general gnostic overtones. Eugnostos the Blessed is a Jewish discourse, with Greek influences, on gnostic themes, and the Wisdom of Jesus Christ is a Christian expansion of Eugnostos. The Concept of Our Great Power uses terms dear to the first-century teacher and gnostic patriarch Simon Magus and his companion Helena, but the text may not really represent their thought and remains difficult to classify. The title of the Paraphrase of Shem recalls the title of another text, the Paraphrase of Seth, known from the heresiological literature, but the Paraphrase of Shem has little that is Sethian about it. Likewise, the Second Discourse of Great Seth refers to Seth—great Seth—in its title, but the title may be the most Sethian aspect of the work. And so on.
The contributions of these groups of gnostic texts will be discussed and assessed in the following chapters.
With this rich diversity, the texts of the Nag Hammadi library, both gnostic and non-gnostic, may still have certain themes in common. There may be certain ways in which the texts resemble each other or may be understood as parts of a collection. Some themes would have been valued by the monks who collected the texts: an esoteric interest in the soul and its destiny, an ascetic tendency to promote the life of the soul and regulate the life of the body, and a preoccupation with the beginning and the end of the world.
Here I propose that the themes of knowledge—mystical knowledge—and wisdom are particularly prominent in gnostic texts and can even be alluded to in some of the non-gnostic texts of the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex. In a variety of ways—gnostic and non-gnostic—the term gnsis, “knowledge” (and Coptic sooun, along with synonyms), is employed in a great many of these texts. In the Exegesis on the Soul it is said that salvation does not come from practical knowledge, technical skill, or book learning. In the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Second Discourse of Great Seth, and other texts it is said that saving knowledge is explicitly mystical. In such non-gnostic texts as the Teachings of Silvanus and the Sentences of Sextus there is also an emphasis upon knowledge. In the Teachings of Silvanus, as in many gnostic texts, knowledge is portrayed as self-knowledge, and the famous maxim from Delphi, Greece, gnthi sauton, “Know yourself,” is invoked. For ancient Greeks such self-knowledge originally meant that people should know that they are mortals and not gods. For philosophers, and especially for gnostics, as we see from Nag Hammadi and Berlin Gnostic texts, the meaning of self-knowledge is transformed, and it is said that people should know they are essentially divine in soul or spirit.
In the Nag Hammadi and Berlin Gnostic texts, a discussion of wisdom frequently accompanies the discussion of knowledge. In these texts wisdom is understood variously—as the general disposition of the insightful and judicious person, or as a divine attribute that is often personified in the divine mother named Sophia (the Greek word for “wisdom”). In the Teachings of Silvanus, Christ is the word and wisdom of God, and it is said, “God’s wisdom—Sophia—took on a foolish shape for you, so that she (wisdom as Christ) might take you up, O foolish one, and make you wise” (107). In gnostic texts, Sophia is capable of falling from glory and may be in need of restoration, yet she is still mother and savior. In the Gospel of Philip, as in other Valentinian texts, there is a distinction between higher wisdom and lower wisdom: there is wisdom, Echamoth (cf. Hebrew hokhmah), and little wisdom, wisdom of death. The Gospel of Philip states, “Wisdom—Sophia—who is called barren, is the mother of the angels”(63). The final vindication of wisdom and of all is celebrated in a variety of gnostic texts, including the Wisdom of Jesus Christ, where the savior Jesus says to the disciples and the readers:
I have come from places above, by the will of the bright light, and I have escaped from that fetter. I have smashed the work of those who are robbers. I have awakened the droplet sent from Sophia, that it may produce an abundance of fruit through me, and be made perfect and never again be defective. Then the droplet from the light may be <whole> through me, the great savior, and its glory may be revealed, and Sophia also may be vindicated of what was defective, and her children may never again be defective but may attain glory and honor and go up to their father and know the words of the light of maleness. (III, 107–8)
These themes of knowledge and wisdom, specifically gnostic knowledge and wisdom, will be traced through the texts discussed in the following chapters.
THE AUTHORITY OF GNOSTIC TEXTS
The story of the production and the burial of the texts of the Nag Hammadi library is caught up, as we have seen, in the issues of the day, issues having to do with the authority of sacred texts. When Athanasius addressed the canon of scripture in his festal letter of 367, he did so in the context of his discussion of orthodoxy and heresy, and when in heresiological fashion he condemned the books of the heretics—like the gnostic texts of the Nag Hammadi library—he used his authority as archbishop of Alexandria to define orthodoxy and heresy and to condemn what was heretical. The gnostic texts of the Nag Hammadi library were fated to be damned as heretical.
But what are orthodoxy and heresy? What is the source of the authority of the “orthodox” texts in the canon of scripture? From an historical point of view, orthodoxy and heresy may be understood as rhetorical constructs, as Karen King states, fashioned in the arena of political debate. Understood in this light, orthodoxy and heresy have little to do with truth and falsehood and everything to do with power and position. In a vote, the majority defines what is orthodox, and the minority is charged with being heretical. Among competing political factions, the dominant force dictates what is orthodox; those less powerful are designated as heretical. And the winners define the Bible. Athanasius of all people should have been aware of the political and rhetorical aspects and implications of the discussions of orthodoxy, heresy, and canon. In the course of the fourth century, Athanasius was exiled as a heretic and recalled from exile as a champion of orthodoxy five times, depending on the latest vote of a council or the latest political move of a ruler. As a result, Athanasius spent much of the century packing and unpacking his luggage, until finally he was declared the victor in the battle for orthodoxy. Such are the issues that determine what sacred texts are considered authoritative and canonical—and orthodox.
The gnostic texts of the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex make claims to be authoritative and inspired, and their claims may be as compelling as the claims of biblical texts. No less than biblical texts, the Nag Hammadi and Berlin Gnostic texts lay claim to the heritage of Judeo-Christian apostles and other authoritative figures and patriarchs of the Jewish scriptures and the New Testament. No less than New Testament texts, the Nag Hammadi and Berlin Gnostic texts claim to be inspired with the words of Jesus, and they affirm that what Jesus says in these texts is authorized by apostles and siblings of Jesus. In a note at the end of the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, or the Egyptian Gospel, it is said, twice, to be written by God (in Coptic, shai ennoute; in Greek, theographos). The Revelation of Adam claims to be what Adam taught his son Seth, the Paraphrase of Shem what Derdekeas revealed to Shem, Zostrianos what is preserved through the person Zostrianos. At the end of Zostrianos the cryptogram refers not only to Zostrianos, but also to the Iranian prophet Zoroaster and “words of truth” and the “God of truth.” At the conclusion of Three Forms of First Thought there is appended, in Greek, “Sacred scripture written by the father with perfect knowledge” (agiagraph patrographos en gnsei teleia).
Thus, the gnostic texts of the Nag Hammadi library and the Berlin Gnostic Codex provide an occasion to reflect upon the politics and rhetoric of orthodoxy and heresy and upon which ancient texts are judged worthy of study and appropriate for spiritual guidance. The scriptural canon is often considered closed in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic heritage, and these newly discovered texts, hidden for so long, raise serious questions about the canon of scripture. These texts, too, though excluded from the canon, contribute to our understanding of history and spirituality. When today the Gospel of Thomas from the Nag Hammadi library is sometimes referred to as the fifth gospel alongside the four canonical gospels of the New Testament, what was formerly hidden away is brought into the light of day. As Jesus asserts in the Gospel of Thomas, “Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed” (5).