The Nag Hammadi Library in English : Revised Edition

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Summary: If you Study Christianity this Text is a Requirement
Review: The Nag Hammadi Codices is to Christianity as the Dead sea scrolls are to Judaism. This book is the aggregate work of dozens of scholars to translate and present this important collection to the public. Written roughly towards the end of the fifth century C.E. this is a collection of heretical gnostic texts written in Egypt most likely by a group of Valentinian Monks. This is the largest collection of primary sources of Gnostic writing ever found. It contains several extremely important early Christian texts such as The Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, The Apocryphon of James, and the Dialogue of the Saviour. The translation work is inspired and the introduction is superb. Occaisionally the lacunae in many of the writings can be very distracting making it harder to read through no fault of the editors. However, aside from that this is a highly engageing read. My hat goes off to the people who brought us this masterwork. Each tractate has an introduction and overview that greatly aids the reader in his/her understanding of the book overall. For those with an interest in Christianity or, more specifically in gnostic Christianity this book is an absolute must.

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Summary: Good History, Questionable Spirituality
Review: There is no doubt that the Nag Hammadi library is one of the major historical finds of the twentieth century, and I think that anybody who has an interest in the history of Christianity should give the book a serious read. It is well done from the scholarly point of view, and it provides us with a wealth of material on the Gnostic sects that inhabited Egypt in early Christian times.

It worries me, however, how many people are willing to pick up the ideas expressed in these scriptures and run with them. This book has a little bit of something for everybody that is into alternative Christian spirituality. For the feminist, there is Sophia and Mary Magdalene. For the seekers of magick, there are spells and incantations. For those that would argue the case of Christ's marriage and progeny, there are tantalizing clues.

Two things bother me about this. First of all, despite all the material that we have, I think that we still know very little about what the ancient gnostics really thought, and this book, consciously or not, encourages us to find whatever we want in their system of belief.

Secondly, it never fails to amaze me how many people are dissatisfied with Christianity as a system of thought, and yet rather than turning to alternatives they prefer to try to turn Christianity into something else. Please don't mistake me for an apologist for mainstream Christianity - far from it! But I believe that for better or worse it is more or less a closed system, and it is futile to attempt to turn it into a system of belief that accepts the idea of a "secret" knowledge, just the same as I believe that the widespread attempt to make Christianity more gender neutral is a project doomed to failure in anything but a superficial sense.

To sum up, this book is an excellent scholarly resource, but it doesn't stand up as an alternative bible, no matter how much anybody may try to make it one.

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Summary: A MUST HAVE book for all spiritual persons...
Review: An excellent book with concise, yet fullfilling information on the translations and on the texts themselves. I highly recommend it - very highly indeed.

Khrystene

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Summary: occasionally you wish they'd take a few more chances....
Review: The introduction points out that unlike in the bible or other texts where multiple copies existed to compare and then put down a good translation, this one damaged group of codecies and scrolls were the only thing available, and so there are alot of gaps in the translations. When Elaine Pagels (one of the translators) wrote her book "The Gnostic Gospels," she quotes from this Nag Hammadi library, but her quotes are more fluent. There are so many (...'s) in this that it is difficult to extract any meaning from lots of the texts. In some ways, this is understandable, because it is important for editors and translators not to try to add to the scripture, but some more notation and some possibilities for words would have been nice.
The gospel of philip, the gospel of thomas, the steles of seth, the gospel of wisdom, among others, are good to read. Sometimes, after reading this, you see how different John was from the other three gospels in the new testament, it was almost gnostic. I also, after reading some of St. John of the Cross recently, wonder whether gnosticism survived for longer than many people think among different Christian and Catholic communities in Europe and Africa.

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Summary: Ancient Truths in Modern Times
Review: The Nag Hammadi Library is literally an unearthed treasure of wisdom and insight into the minds, thoughts, and beliefs of the fourth-century Gnostic Christians who were smart enough to bury the truth of their beliefs until it was time for humanity to be given their insight. The Gnostics themselves were ostracized for believing more in the inherent spiritual connection we all have, as we create heaven on Earth with the divine power of our own minds, place less emphasis on material gain, and more on our service to humanity. This book is a wonderful historical account of wisdom and enlightenment that anyone who is interested in receiving the wisdom from sixteen centuries ago will find as a most amazing read. Highly recommended for applying what you find as truth into your life today.
Barbara Rose, author of 'Individual Power' and 'If God Was Like Man'

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Summary: An excellent reference
Review:
This is a book of more interest to scholars, perhaps, than to the general public. The Nag Hammadi library was discovered in the Egyptian desert, near Nag Hammadi, in 1945. The library was composed of scrolls buried by the Gnostics, who in the fourth century maintained a monastery nearby. They were contained in a buried clay jar, in an apparent attempt by Gnostic Christians to save them from destruction by the Constantinian Christians who had orders from the Christian Emperor, Constantine, to destroy all such writings as heresy, along with those who adhered to them.

Over the nearly 2,000 years buried in the desert sand, time took its toll, and many of the scrolls were fragmentary as a result. Yet the 38 scholars who undertook the translation from the ancient Egyptian (coptic) in which they were written, did a magnificent job: not only translating, but also making commentaries comparing them to those gospels which Constantine's scholars considered canonical, and discarding all others as heretical.

This volume is one of the results, with the various codices identified with the translators, and beginning with their commentaries.

Other volumes of a similar nature, including two books by Dr. Elaine Pagels--one of the translators--"The Gnostic Gospels" and "Beyond Belief," are also available on Amazon. Dr. Pagels taught at Barnard College, where she chaired the Department of Religion, and Columbia University. She is currently professor of religion at Princeton.

The Nag Hammadi Library consists of twelve codices as well as fragments of a thirteenth, and fifty-two separate tractates. A brief history of the effort to translate and edit the materials is included in the preface to this book.

The struggle to eliminate the Gnostics and their ancient literature, by the Constantinian Christians (who prevailed and became the universally accepted Christianm church) was highly succesful, so much so that the only evidence of the Gnostic literature, for centuries, were the disparaging remarks in the writings of the orthodox authors referring to the heretics.

Until the discovery of these scrolls, in 1945!

For those who are interested in this subject matter, this is a most interesting book, and one you will wish to own.

Joseph (Joe) Pierre

author of The Road to Damascus: Our Journey Through Eternity
and other books

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Summary: Now We Hear From The Other Side
Review: The Nag Hammadi Library is a collection of ancient religious texts which were discovered in Egypt in 1945. The people who collected and buried the library are believed to have been Gnostic Christians. The various scriptures are considered to be examples of texts used by them before Christianity achieved favored status during the reign of Constantine.

James Robinson's book is divided into chapters which include English translations of individual scriptures plus discussions of each by noted biblical scholars. A table is also provided to show the appropriate identifications for the texts comprising the thirteen Nag Hammadi Codices and Papyrus Berolinensis 8502. Among the contributors are Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King. For supplementary reading I recommend especially THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS and BEYOND BELIEF by Pagels as well as THE GOSPEL OF MARY OF MAGDALA by King.

I find the subject of Gnosticism to be extremely interesting and suspect that the study of it is just in its infancy. We know that Gnosticism is similar in some respects to primitive Christianity and various eastern religions. Gnosticism is also different in many ways from the orthodox Christianity which ultimately gained the upper hand in the fourth century.It is hard to overestimate the significance of Gnosticism.For anyone wishing to explore this topic, I believe that THE NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY is a good place to start the journey.

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Summary: NAG HAMMADI's books.....
Review: Too beautiful a book for a world like ours. These forgotten texts are like a diamond of light fallen into the dark muddy waters of society.
Extremely too few people will ever understand the beauty and praxis of these books.
This is not a book for the pigs, id est, for the masses,....The living dead (i.e. "normal humans") will always destroy the roses that are thrown to them from Heaven. That's why an advise has been given to us: "do not throw roses unto the pigs, because they will destroy them....".
Everything has its time. Not everybody is ready to see the light of these books, which is still too brilliant for the eyes...

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Summary: An obscure artifact of Christian History
Review: These 12 codices were buried soon after the creation of the New Testament was made Canon. They are a record of what thousands of Christians believed during the first centuries after Christ. The Nag Hammadi codices would never have survived the first thousand years of Christians killing Christians over religious doctrine if the Christian monks who buried them hadn't done so before they were, themselves, murdered over doctrinal issues and their monastary burned. This book is a worthy read for anyone interested in Gnosticism or Christian history.

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Summary: Ancient and enlightenment...
Review: This collection of texts gives a fascinating view of early Christian texts and views, particularly in light of the fact that these were not the writings that made it into the mainstream of church and biblical canonical development, but rather were influential in an underground, almost subversive way, in much of ancient and oriental Christianity -- were it not for the existence of texts such as these, indeed, we would not have the canon of the Bible which we have today (the political motivations behind deciding which books belonged in the Bible and which books didn't owe largely to texts such as those in the Nag Hammadi Library).

'This volume...marks the end of one stage of Nag Hammadi scholarship and the beginning of another. The first stage was concerned with making this library of texts available; the second stage has been characterised by the discussion and interpretation of the texts.'

This book represents an advance in both translation and analysis; this is part of the canon of the Gnostic sect, which saw more orthodox Christianity (from which Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant bodies derive) as the ones who were heretical.

'The Nag Hammadi library also documents the fact that the rejection was mutual, in that Christians described there as 'heretical' seem to be more like what is usually thought of as 'orthodox'.'

Gnosticism was ultimately eliminated from mainstream Christianity, save the occasional resurgence of underground and spiritual movements. Of course, Gnosticism was not an exclusively Christian-oriented phenomenon: many of the texts refer to Hebrew Scriptures only, and the question of Jewish Gnosticism is discussed by Robinson.

The Dead Sea Scrolls (of which these texts are NOT a part, despite the fact that they often get cited and analysed as part of that body of documents) shed light on the pluralistic nature of first century Judaism; the idea that there was a sect primarily of Jewish gnostics which had little or no knowledge or regard of Christianity (still at this point one sect of many, particularly in cosmopolitan centres such as Alexandria) is not a strange one.

The Nag Hammadi library consists of twelve books, plus eight leaves of a thirteenth book. There are a total of fifty-two tracts. These are now kept in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, and, as the name suggests, are written in Coptic, although it is clear that the texts are Coptic translations of earlier Greek works. Coptic is the Egyptian language written with the Greek alphabet; there are different dialects of Coptic, and the Nag Hammadi library shows at least two. The were found in codex form (book form rather than scroll form). They were discovered in the mid 1940s, just a few years prior to the discovery of the first Dead Sea Scrolls (another reason for the combination of the texts in the public imagination).

Included in these texts are The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Philip, The Gospel of Truth, The Gospel of Mary and other gospel contenders (alas, in fragmentary form--the translation in this volume however is the complete Nag Hammadi text). The Gospel of Thomas has perhaps been the highest profile text from Nag Hammadi; it has been translated and commented upon extensively, particularly in modern scholarship which discusses gospel development.

'Whoever find the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death.'

This gospel does not correspond to the narrative form with which modern readers are familiar; it is a collection of sayings (one modern scholar argues that the victory of the four canonical gospels was a victory of style, rather than substance).

This gospel also helps illuminate some of the early struggles in church formation (why exactly did it go from a house-based, relatively gender-neutral organisation to a male-exclusive-hierarchical model?).

Simon Peter said to them, 'Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.' Jesus said, 'I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.'

Other writings include various Acts of apostles, pieces of wisdom literature, parables and stories, most of which have some basis in Hebrew scripture or Christian scripture traditions.

The afterword, by Richard Smith, traces the idea of gnosticism through medieval and renaissance writers, through the enlightenment up to the modern day, in philosophy, theology, culture and the arts. From Blake to Gibbons to Melville to modern motion pictures, Gnostic ideas permeate many works, even before the Nag Hammadi library was available for study and contemplation.

'A quite self-conscious incorporation of Nag Hammadi texts into a science fiction novel appeared in Harold Bloom's 1979 novel The Flight to Lucifer: A Gnostic Fantasy. In it the reincarnated Valentinus and his companions fly to a planet called Lucifer. Quoting our gnostic texts, the heroes wage a violent battle against Saklas, the Demiurge who is worshipped in his 'Saklaseum'. Bloom, more successful as an interpreter of literature, later confessed that The Flight to Lucifer reads as though Walter Pater were writing Star Wars. But, then, so does much ancient gnostic writing.'

This is a wonderful collection, a truly fascinating view of texts that shared the religious stage with the proto-canonical Biblical texts. It gives insight into the varieties of early Christianity and Judaism. And it makes for interesting reading.