Nag Hammadi library



The Nag Hammadi library (less accurately known as the Gnostic Gospels ) are a collection of Coptic Christian and philosophical writings discovered in 1945 near Nag Hammadi, Egypt. The papyrus itself is generally dated to the 3rd or 4th century CE at the time of burial, though each individual codex has different dates of original composition.

The Christianity-based texts are mostly Gnostic in nature, and were likely buried at a time when the Church (specifically Egyptian Bishop Athanasius) made his decree that non-canonical texts be outlawed. Of the religious writing, the single most critical find was a near-complete copy of the Gospel of Thomas, a set of sayings attributed to Jesus written near the beginning of the Christ-churches (non-Pauline churches) that arose in the 1st century CE.

The texts also contain several non-Christian texts that would have informed Gnostic beliefs, including Plato's Republic and the Greek Hermetica. Despite the religious nature of the texts, they are a source of much secular woo and Conspiracy Theories.

Importance
Besides the simple archaeological thrill of "oooh, something really old," the texts have a profound impact on historical understandings of various branches of Christianity that would be destroyed by the singular Roman Empire's version, the Catholic Church. The texts, along with the inclusion of the Greek works, show how important and fully-developed Gnostic ideas were in early Christianity. The texts show a developing scheme of "high philosophy" about the world around, emphasis on the individual, and a new tradition of questioning everything — something unacceptable to the Pauline tradition that depended upon dogma and unquestioning acceptance of authoritative interpretations. A literal take of the texts suggests that Jesus himself was philosophically far closer to the Greeks and the developing Jewish Gnosticism than to the Jewish authoritarianism of Paul.

The wonders of Barbelo
The late Christopher Hitchens dedicates a segment of his book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything to exploring the fascinating implications of the Nag Hammadi texts, writing (in 2007):

Reception by modern Christians
Few, if any, American Christians are even aware of the texts, or they confuse them with the Dead Sea Scrolls. However, an interesting turn in the world of creationists has now seen the Dead Sea and Nag Hammadi texts referenced as some kind of "proof" of Jesus, in response to skeptics' question "what evidence is there that is not Biblical?". Yet at the same time, they will say they are not in any way the authentic words of Jesus. It must be nice to have your cake and eat it too.

Partial list of codices found at Nag Hammadi
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