An alternative theory of the history of Christianity
The Gnostic Discoveries: The Impact of the Nag Hammadi Library Marvin Meyer
Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia

'I am striving to give back
the Divine in myself
to the Divine in the All.'

--- Final words of Plotinus
to Eustochius (C.270 CE)

The Gnostic Discoveries: The Impact of the Nag Hammadi Library by Marvin Meyer

NOTES:



The Gnostic Discoveries:
The Impact of the Nag Hammadi Library
Marvin Meyer

INTRODUCTION

p.1

GNOSTIC WISDOM - Ancient and Modern

Since the discovery of the ancient texts that comprise
the Nag Hammadi library, the world of the historical Jesus,
the schools of Judaism and Graeco-Roman religion, and the
varieties of Christianity has begun to look remarkably
different than it did once upon a time."


"Prior to the discovery of the NHL, "gnosticism" typically
was considered to be an early and pernicious Christian heresey,
and much of our knowledge of gnostic religion was gleaned
from the writings of the Christian heresiologists, those
authors who attempted to establish orthodoxy and expose
heresey in the early church. The Christian heresiologists
disagreed vehemently with Christian gnostics on matters
of faith and life, and as a result they portrayed gnostic
believers as vile heretics."


p.2

"From these and other heresiological writers, who were
bristling with righteous wrath against the gnostic opponents
[vile heretics], we can hardly expect to read a fair and
balanced account of gnostic religion, and before the
discovery of the NHL this heresiological bias permeated
much of the discussion of gnosis"



(1) Nag Hammadi Library (coptic)

(2) Berlin Gnostic Codex 8502 (coptic)
    Discovered in Cairo 1896
    Published in German 1955

	gMary,
	The Secret Book of John,
	The Wisdom of JC
	the Act of Peter

(3) Askew Codex - Pistis Sofia - "The title 'Piste Sophia' is incorrect.
    Nowhere is this form found in the very numerous instances of the name in the text,
    and the hastily suggested 'emendation' of Dulaurier and Renan to read
    'Piste Sophia' thoughout has perforce received no support.

    Woide, in a letter to Michaelis (Bibliography, 4), says that Askew bought
    the MS. from a book-seller (apparently in London); its previous
    history is unknown. Crum informs us in an official description (Bib. 46, p. 173)
    that at the end of a copy in the B.M. of the sale-catalogue of Askew's MSS. is
    the entry: 'Coptic MS. £10. 10. 0.,' and that this refers presumably to our
    Codex--a good bargain indeed!

    The best descriptions of the MS. are by Schmidt (Introd. to his Trans., Bib. 45, pp. xi f.),
    and Crum (l.c.). The Codex is of parchment and contains 178 leaves = 356 pages 4to (8¾ x 6½ in.).
    The writing is in two columns of from 30 to 34 lines each. There are 23 quires in all;
    but the first has only 12 and the last 8 pages, of which the last page is left blank.
    It is, as a whole, in an exceptionally well-preserved state, only 8 leaves being
    missing (see ch. 143, end).

    The Scripts.The writing as a whole is the work of two scribes, whose entirely
    different hands are very clearly distinguishable. The first (MS. pp. 1-22, 196-354)
    wrote a fine, careful, old uncial, and the second (MS. pp. 23-195) in comparison
    a careless, clumsy hand with signs of shakiness which S. thinks might suggest the
    writing of an old man. They used different inks and different methods both of paging
    and correction, not to speak of other peculiarities. These scribes must have been
    contemporaries and divided the task of copying fairly equally between them. So far
    Crum and Schmidt are in complete agreement; they differ only as to the handwriting
    of a note on MS. p. 114, col. 2, of the superscription on p. 115 and of the last
    page (see pp. 105, 106 and 325 of Trans.).


    The Contents.From an external point of view the contents fall into 4 main Divisions,
    generally referred to as Books i.-iv.

    i. The first extends to the end of ch. 62, where in the MS. more than a column and a half
       has been left blank, and a short, but entirely irrelevant, extract has been copied on
       to the second column, presumably from some other book of the general allied literature.

       There is no title, either superscription or subscription, to this Div.
       Why the second scribe left a blank here in his copying is a puzzle, for the text
       which follows on MS. p. 115 runs straight on without a break of subject or incident.

   ii. The next page is headed 'The Second Book (or Section) of Pistis Sophia.'
       Crum assigns this superscription to the second hand, and the short extract on the second
       column of the preceding page to the first. But Schmidt thinks that both are later additions
       by another hand, and this is borne out both by the colour of the ink and also by the
       very important fact that the older Coptic MSS. have the title at the end and not at the
       beginning of a volume, conserving the habit of the ancient roll-form.

       And as a matter of fact we find at the bottom of MS. p. 233, col. 1, the subscription:
       'A Portion of the Books (or Texts) of the Saviour' (see end of ch. 100).


   iii. There follows a short piece on the Gnosis of the Ineffable (ch. 101), which is without
       any setting and entirely breaks the order of sequence of ideas and is the end of a larger whole.
       It is clearly an extract from another 'Book.'

   iv. After this again with ch. 102 we have a very distinct change of subject, though not of setting,
    from the ending of ii., so that, in my opinion, it is difficult to regard it as an immediate
    continuation. Later, at ch. 126, occurs another abrupt change of subject, though not of setting,
    preceded by a lacuna in the text. At the end of ch. 135 (bottom of MS. p. 318, col. 1) we have
    again the subscription: 'A Portion of the Books of the Saviour.'

    iv. The last piece has no title, either superscription or subscription. From the change of
    setting in its introduction and the nature of its contents it is generally assigned to an earlier
    phase of the literature. Here again a complete change of subject occurs with ch. 144, after a
    lacuna of 8 leaves. Finally, on the last page is an appendix, somewhat in the style of the
    Mark-conclusion, beginning quite abruptly in the middle of a sentence and presumably part of a
    larger whole. The contents, measurements and writing make it almost certain that it formed no
    part of the original copy. At the very end two lines surrounded by ornamentation are erased.
    These may have contained the names of the owner or scribes, or possibly a general subscript title.

    The Title.
    From the above indications and from a detailed study of the contents it is evident that,
    though the episode of the adventures of Pistis Sophia, her repentances and songs and their
    solutions (chh. 30-64), occupy much space, it is by no means the principal theme of the collection;
    it is rather an incident. The blundering heading of a later scribe, 'The Second Book of Pistis Sophia,'
    some two-thirds of the way through this episode, has misled earlier scholars and set up the bad habit
    of referring to the whole document as the 'Pistis Sophia'--a habit it is now too late to change.

    If there is any general title to be derived from the MS. itself, it should be rather
    'A Portion' or 'Portions of the Books of the Saviour.'



(4) Bruce Codex - two books of Jeu, and an untitled gnostic text

(5) Corpus Hermeticum

(6) Mandean Texts

(7) Manichaean texts

(8) study of "magical gems"


p.9

The novelist Dan Brown "The Da Vinci Code" .. a tale developed
from texts in the NHL and the Berlin Codex, chiefly the gMary
and the gPhilip.

     "According to these unaltered gospels it was not Peter
      to whom Christ gave directions with which to establish
      the Christian Church. It was Mary Magdalene." [17]


 ********
 Peter was peeved about Mary
 .

p.31

After introducing the known provinence of the NHL
including an examination of the physical cartonage :


"It is quite plausible, then, to conclude that one likely
scenario for the time and occasion for the burial of the
NHL  may be related to Athanasius' festal letter of 367.
When Pachomian monks heard the stern words of admonition
of the holy archbishop ... they simply could not destroy
them, so they gathered them and hid them safely away, to
be uncovered on another day."

Earlier ...

"Athanasius condemns the heretics and warns the faithful
to beware of the heretics and their dispicable writings.
Apocryphal texts, he maintains,

       'are fabrications of the heretics,
        who writie them down when it pleases them
        and generously assign to them
        an early date of composition
        in order that they may be able to draw upon them
        as supposedly ancient writings
        and have in them occasion to deceive the guileless.'
        [19]


p.38

A GNOSTIC LIBRARY?

Texts that seem not to be gnostic by any standard of definition
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'.


GNOSIS = Knowledge

The heresiologists admit that some heretics used the term gnostics
in a self-referential way. Irenaeus points to the Sethians (or
Barbelognostics) and followers of Marcellina. Clement also writes
about those who call themselves the gnostics. The Mandaeans to this
day speak of themselves as "Knowers"; that is gnostics.


				************************************************
				Editor Comments ....

				Who forgot the sign over the door at the academy
				of Plato and Pythagoras "Know Thyself" - and the
				divine knowledge Julian declares in Iamblichus,
				the last of the lineage of new Pythagoreans.

				And the Buddhists?
				And the Hindus?

				See below *****

				************************************************



p.43

Sub-Libraries within he NHL?

James Robinson ...

(a) Bargain basement covers, cheap papyrus, no flap =
    books 4, 5, 8

(b) High quality covers, leather reinforcement lining spine.
    Books 2, 6, 9, 10  (Color-coded purple in the above table)

(c) Undistinguished primitive covers
    Books 1, 3, 7, 11

(d) Book 12 poorly preserved,
    Book 13 reduced to 16 pages




p.44

The Secret Book of John occurs three times in the NHL
An additional copy is in the Berlin Gnostic codex


p.46

The NHL + Berlin GC contains 47 texts (plus fragments and duplicates).
"Most of the texts are christian texts of one sort or another".











**********************************
http://andrea65.tripod.com/gnostic1.html

THE GNOSTIC MYSTERY:

A Connection Between

Ancient and Modern Mysticism

By Andrea Grace Diem, Ph.D




Nearly two thousand years ago strong parallels between Gnostic thought
and Indian thought had been recognized. When the heresiologist Hippolytus
(died about 235 C.E.) wrote about his Gnostic opponents, he was quick
to include Indian religious thought as a similar source of heresy.

He asserted:

	There is...among the Indians a heresy of those who philosophize
	among the Brahmins, who live a self-sufficient life, abstaining
	from eating living creatures and all cooked food ... They say
	that God is Light, not like the Light one sees, nor like the sun
	nor fire, but to them God is Discourse, not that which finds
	expression in articulate sounds, but that of knowledge, or gnosis,
	through which the secret mysteries of nature are perceived by
	the wise. [1]

This particular passage from Hippolytus, which mentions the ideas of
"God is Light" and "God is Discourse" (or Sound), as well as vegetarianism,
brought to my attention the remarkable similarities between aspects of the
Gnostic traditions [2] and the Sant tradition of India. This Indian religious
tradition underscores several Gnostic themes, including cosmology, mystical
ascent, and, in some cases, ethics


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