lewis and blount

8/19/2019 Lewis and Blount

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Rethinking the Origins of the Nag

Hammadi Codices

[email protected]

Brown University, Providence, RI 02912

[email protected] Pacific Street, Brooklyn, NY 11216

Te amous find-story behind the Nag Hammadi codices, discovered in Egypt in1945, has been one o the most cherished narratives in our field. Yet a closeexamination o its details reveals inconsistencies, ambiguities, implicitly colo-nialist attitudes, and assumptions that call or a thorough reevaluation. Tisarticle explores the problematic moments in the find-story narrative and chal-

lenges the suggestions o James M. Robinson and others that the Nag Hammadicodices were intentionally buried or posterity, perhaps by Pachomian monks, inthe wake o Athanasius’s thirty-ninth Festal Letter . We consider, rather, that theNag Hammadi codices may have derived rom private Greco-Egyptian citizensin late antiquity who commissioned the texts or personal use, depositing themas grave goods ollowing a practice well attested in Egypt.

Te Nag Hammadi codices, discovered in 1945, have perhaps the most com-

pelling find-story o any ancient Egyptian book cache. When Mohamed Ali al-Samman, both the hero and the antihero o this story, discovers that his brotherhas ound a jar while digging or ertilizer, he immediately takes control o theoperation. aking the jar into his hands, the moment is tense. Should he open it?He is a cautious, superstitious man, clearly pious and araid o jinni; yet he also lovesgold, and as in those old Arabian nights tales, his curiosity gets the better o himand he smashes the jar, only to find—is it gold?!—pieces o golden papyrus, flyingthrough the air. Little does Mohamed Ali know, when he takes them home andtosses them into the little barn attached to his mother’s home, that he has discov-

ered thirteen books o more than fify “lost Gospels” representing a Gnostic library

JBL 133, no. 2 (2014): 399–419

399


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Lewis and Blount: Te Origins o the Nag Hammadi Codices 401

contend that their eventual placement in graves may not have been coincidental;the arrangement o certain volumes reflects eschatological as well as antiquarianinterests, meaning that at least some volumes may have been intentionally crafed

as unerary deposits, Christian “Books o the Dead” that only made sense in thecontext o late antique Egypt.

I. F-S S

A ull thirty years afer the initial appearance o the Nag Hammadi codices onthe Cairo antiquities market, James M. Robinson traveled to Egypt to survey thearea and to see i he might track down the person who initially made the discovery.4

Robinson’s efforts yielded a vastly entertaining account o the codices’ discoveryand brie sojourn in a “modern” Upper Egyptian village; riveting details includedthe burning o an unspecified number o papyrus leaves by Mohamed Ali’s mother(horrors! how could they not have known their value?) and his amily’s acts omurder and cannibalism. In this modern, Western recounting o 1940s ellaheen lie, we have not come ar rom W. Robertson Smith’s 1889 Religion o the Semites (where the “birth” o Judaism comes rom a primordial act o sacrifice and collec-tive consumption o a tribe’s totem animal in the desert),5 a text much beloved byFreud, who transmuted Smith’s postulated sacrifice and consumption o the totem

animal into a communal act o parricide in his otem and aboo (1913).6 LikeSmith’s account o primordial religion and Freud’s revisioning o it with an Oedipalcast, the Nag Hammadi find-story is one more appropriate or antastic literature,with parts surely lost in translation, other parts surely abricated.7

4Robinson, head o the UNESCO-unded project to generate critical editions and trans-lations o the Nag Hammadi codices, published numerous accounts o the find-story: seeJames M. Robinson, “From the Cliff to Cairo: Te Study o the Discoverers and Middlemen o theNag Hammadi Codices,” in Colloque international sur les textes de Nag Hammadi (Québec, 22–25août 1978) (ed. Bernard Barc; Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, “Etudes” 1; Québec: Lespresses de l’Université Laval, 1981), 21–58; idem, “Te Coptic Gnostic Library oday,” NS 14(1968): 356–401; and idem, “Discovery o the Nag Hammadi Codices,” 206–24.

5Smith, Lectures on the Religion o the Semites: First Series, Fundamental Institutions(London: A. & C. Black, 1889); 2nd ed. [posthumous], edited by J. S. Black (1894), repr., NewYork: Meridian, 1956; 3rd ed., introduced by S. A. Cook (1927); later edition with introductionby James Muilenburg (New York: Ktav 1969).

6Freud, otem und abu: Einige Übereinstimmungen im Seelenleben der Wilden und derNeurotiker (Leipzig: H. Heller, 1913); published in English as otem and aboo: Some Points o Agreement between the Mental Lives o Savages and Neurotics (trans. James Strachey; New York:

Norton, 1952).7Te sole scholar to have maniestly criticized the overtly colonialist and orientalizing

aspects o the Nag Hammadi find-story is Maia Kotrosits, “Romance and Danger at NagHammadi,” Bible and Critical Teory 8 (2012): 39–52.


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402 Journal o Biblical Literature 133, no. 2 (2014)

When we press at its contours, this amous and of-recounted find-story o theNag Hammadi codices becomes vexing because o its revisionist nature. It turnsout, to begin with, to have been rather late in coming; the very first account o the

codices’ discovery came rom the French scholar Jean Doresse, who, five years aferthe appearance o the codices in Cairo, traveled to the hamlet o Hamra Dum, closeto Nag Hammadi and the actual location o the codices’ provenance.8 Local villag-ers directed him to the southern part o an ancient cemetery at Qasr es-Sayyad. Itwas there, in the cemetery, that some had ound the codices, secreted in a jar.Doresse writes,

Was it in one o these tombs that the papyri were ound? Certainly, one cannot,even i one searches very ar around, see any other place—any ruin or sepulcher—rom which they could have come. Te peasants who accompanied us …showed us a row o shapeless cavities. Not long since, they said, some peasantso Hamra-Dûm and o Dabba, in search o manure, ound here a great zir—whichmeans jar—filled with leaves o papyrus; and these were bound like books. Te vase was broken and nothing remains o it; the manuscripts were taken to Cairoand no one knows what then became o them. As to the exact location o the find,opinion differed by some ew dozen yards, but everyone was sure that it was justabout here. And rom the ground itsel we shall learn nothing more; it yieldsnothing but broken bones, ragments o cloth without interest and somepotsherds.9

When Robinson returned to Hamra Dum twenty-five years later to pick up the trail,his persistence yielded more satisying results. He came up with names and a morespecific (and in act, quite different) find-spot: Mohamed Ali al-Samman was outthat day in December o 1945 on the Gebel al-ari, looking or sabakh, a naturalertilizer. He dug, according to Robinson, along a talus—a slope o debris along thecliff ace and just beyond the area o Nile cultivation. Tere he ound the jar. So letus start here with this puzzling detail. I the jar were embedded in alluvial soil atthe base o a cliff, it is highly unlikely that a papyrus codex would have survived orsixteen centuries o Nile inundations and shifing soil at the base o the cliffs. And

yet, i the jar had actually been ound up higher, inside a cave along the Gebel al-ari, this is hardly the place to dig or sabakh. In act, it is even debatable whetherthe base o the Gebel al-ari would have produced this sabakh, as the areas ocultivation around the Nile end abruptly and turn very quickly to desert, wherenothing exists but sand. Whatever Mohamed Ali was doing that day, it is sae to say

8Doresse visited Upper Egypt three times in the lead-up to his 1950 investigations—in 1947,1948, and 1949. See Jean Doresse, “Sur les traces des papyrus gnostiques: Recherches à Cheno-

boskion,” Bulletin de l’Académie royale de Belgique, Classe des Lettres, 5th series 36 (1950):432–39.9Doresse, Te Secret Books o the Egyptian Gnostics: An Introduction to the Gnostic Coptic

Manuscripts Discovered at Chenoboskion (trans. Philip Mairet; New York: Viking, 1960), 133.


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that he was not digging or ertilizer. It is entirely reasonable to suspect that he wassearching or illegal antiquities: tomb robbing. Te jar—one o the only details onwhich Doresse and Robinson agree—is equally mysterious; as the N scholar Mark

Goodacre noted recently, it grows in size rom 20 cm to 3–4 f in height, dependingon who is telling the story.10 At any rate, the jar no longer exists.11

A quick cross-reerencing o various versions o the story reveals many suchshifing details. In one account, a “party” o sabakh gatherers find the jar at the ooto a cliff sheltered by a large boulder.12 Te number in this party appears to change;sometimes it is Mohamed Ali and his brother Khaliah Ali and/or another brotherAbu al-Magid;13 sometimes Mohamed Ali is alone;14 sometimes more are present.15 Sometimes Mohamed Ali finds the jar; sometimes it is Abu al-Magid. Bart Ehrmanretains the detail that Abu al-Magid (unnamed in his account) digs and finds a

skeleton first, then a “large earthenware jar”;16 curiously, most modern versions othe story omit the detail o the corpse ound alongside.17 However, i we are search-ing or a “smoking gun” to prove that the Nag Hammadi codices were deposited

10Goodacre, “How Reliable Is the Story o the Nag Hammadi Discovery?” 305–6. Accordingto Robinson (“Discovery,” 214), the jar was 60 cm tall, with an opening o some 20 cm. He includesAli’s discovery o the jar on p. 212.

11Robinson reports that, although the jar was smashed, Mohamed Ali’s brother, KhaliahAli, kept the small bowl that he says sealed the mouth o the jar, affixed with bitumen (Robinson,

“Discovery,” 218). A photograph o it remains in Claremont’s archives. It is a airly standard pieceo ourth- or fifh-century pottery o the sort that litters the Tebaid, ully intact, and we remainskeptical that the artiact in Khaliah’s possession once sealed the jar.

12J. W. B. Barns, G. M. Browne, and J. C. Shelton, eds., Nag Hammadi Codices: Greek andCoptic Papyri rom the Cartonnage o the Covers (Coptic Gnostic Library; NHS 16; Leiden: Brill,1981), 1.

13Mohamed Ali and one brother: James M. Robinson, Te Nag Hammadi Library in English(New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 21.

14See, or instance, the Border elevision documentary produced in 1987 entitled TeGnostics, in which Gilles Quispel interviews Mohamed Ali, who reports that he was all alone

when he ound the jar, later returning alone to break it open, and finally returning with sixothers. “So I took it to the ministry over here and he told me, well we really don’t need it.” Teantecedent o “it” is unclear. Te Gnostics was written by obias Churton and produced anddirected by Stephen Segaller. It was aired on UK’s Channel 4 in November 1987. For a “transcript”o the interview (which, strangely, varies rom the videotape version), see obias Churton, TeGnostics (New York: Barns & Noble, 1999), 9.

15Bart Ehrman (Lost Christianities: Te Battles or Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew[Oxord: Oxord University Press, 1995], 52) says that seven people were present, ollowingRobinson (“Discovery,” 213), which lists three brothers and our camel drivers. Te FacsimileEdition (p. 5) lists eight camel drivers. Robinson (“From the Cliff to Cairo,” 37) mentions that ten

people were present (three brothers and seven camel drivers).16Ehrman, Lost Christianities, 52.17Te skeleton is mentioned in Barns et al., Nag Hammadi Codices, 2, where it is dismissed

as “modern.”


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with a burial, here indeed is one, with Mohamed Ali’s insistence that the jar wasnext to a corpse with oddly elongated fingers and teeth.18

Te “aferlie” story o the codices’ discovery, trapped as they were in a sort o

ugue state that was neither the protective dry soils o Egypt nor a proper museumconservatorship, points to a Western collector’s mentality that perdured in the fieldo Egyptian archaeology. Te reported incident o Mohamed Ali’s mother tossingsome o the ancient papyrus olios into the fire proved to Western minds thatpeasants—native Egyptians—could not be trusted with their own antiquities; onlyenlightened Europeans knew their true value. Te story has a remarkable parallelin Constantin von ischendor’s “rescuing” o the Codex Sinaiticus rom St.Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai in 1845. ischendor reports that the monks chargedwith caring or the precious manuscript tossed papyri leaves into the fire or

warmth.19 Te message was clear: native Egyptians could not be trusted to care ortheir own antiquities, which required “rescuing” by scholars and collectors in theWest. A similar colonialist meme emerges in the story circulated at the end o thenineteenth century concerning the Cureton manuscript, a fifh-century biblicalmanuscript discovered by Western travelers in a monastery in Nitria: apparentlyWilliam Cureton ound ancient papyrus olios being used as coverings or themonk’s butter jars.20 Concerning the Scottish explorer Agnes Lewis’s 1892 discov-ery o a precious Syriac N manuscript at St. Catherine’s in Sinai, the rumor alsoemerged that it was (mis)used to cover butter dishes at the monastery, although

Lewis hersel notes that in act the manuscript there was saely under lock and key.21But let us return to the Nag Hammadi find-story. Its details—particularly

salacious moments such as the blood vengeance scene and the ostensible tossingo the codices into the fire—dissemble; they deflect our attention rom key ques-tions: What were these texts doing together? Who could have put them there? Whatwas the relationship o the books to the corpse lying nearby?22 Egypt has a rich

18Robinson, “Discovery,” 213. Robinson writes that Mohamed Ali’s brother denied theexistence o a corpse, which makes some sense: Mohamed Ali’s insistence that the jar and corpsewere ound together on what looked like a “bed o charcoal” certainly looks like grave robbing.Either the assemblage had been sitting out in the open at the base o a cliff when the brothersound it, or they were exploring a burial cave. Tey could not have dug down to the level o a jarburied in rubble and also noted what material it (and the skeleton) were sitting on unless theycarried out some airly sophisticated archaeological investigation to reach the ground level o the jar.

19David C. Parker, Codex Sinaiticus: Te Story o the World’s Oldest Bible (London: BritishLibrary, 2010), 128–31.

20“Te Current,” 1, no. 1 (Dec. 22, 1883): 348.21Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole, Sacred rash: Te Lost and Found World o the Cairo

Geniza (New York: Schocken, 2011), 5.22Te corpse is a troubling detail, since tomb robbing has always been a serious problem in

Egypt; see Pascal Vernus, Affairs and Scandals in Ancient Egypt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UniversityPress, 2003). In addition, the likelihood o the body being identified as Christian would have


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history o books and corpses ound together, and indeed all our other so-calledGnostic manuscripts—the Berlin Codex, the Askew Codex, and the Codex chacos—came rom, or most probably came rom, burial sites. Yet, or the Nag Hammadi

codices, it is asserted that they were hidden or posterity by Pachomian monks, theresult o Athanasius’s Festal Letter o 367.23 Tis story is repeated again and again,as i it were not scholarly conjecture but rather a “believed” act o early Christianhistory: as i it were hand in hand with the Donatist controversy, or instance, withletters, trials, and creeds to go alongside it. Tere are no letters or trials or our“controversy,” and so we must rely on what we can saely piece together rom Pacho-mian monastic resources. Te role o these monks and the presumed monastic Sitzim Leben or these texts deserve more attention.

II. T N H C M:R L

Jean Doresse’s initial suggestion that what had been discovered near NagHammadi was a secret library o Egyptian Sethian Gnostics was airly quickly aban-doned. orgny Säve-Söderbergh suggested an intriguing alternative: perhaps theNag Hammadi “library” constituted a heresiological compilation o primary“Gnostic” sources rom which heresiologists could draw their ammunition.24 By

caused additional problems in the environs o Nag Hammadi, where tensions between Copts andMuslims historically run high.

23See Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library in English, 19; idem, in Facsimile Edition o the NagHammadi Codices, 12:20; Meyer, Gnostic Discoveries, 30; Elaine Pagels, Te Gnostic Gospels (NewYork: Random House, 1979), 120–21; Charles Hedrick, “Gnostic Proclivities in the Greek Lie oPachomius and the Sitz im Leben o the Nag Hammadi Library,” Nov 22 (1980): 93. Te notiono the texts buried “or posterity” trickles down into popular literature: see, e.g., Lewis Keizer, TeKabbalistic Words o Jesus in the Gospel o Tomas (Kindle Book; Amazon Digital Services, 2009),17; Jeffrey J. Kripal, Te Serpent’s Gif: Gnostic Reflections on the Study o Religion (Chicago:University o Chicago Press, 2006), xi (Kripal also mentions the detail o the skeleton: “was theskeleton a monk?”); Louis A. Ruprecht Jr., Tis ragic Gospel: How John Corrupted the Heart oChristianity (New York: Jossey-Bass, 2008), 132: Kenneth C. Davis, Don’t Know Much about theBible: Everything You Need o Know about the Good Book But Never Learned (San Francisco:Harper, 1999), 344.

24orgny Säve-Söderbergh, “Gnostic and Canonical Gospel raditions (with Special Reer-ence to the Gospel o Tomas),” in Le origini dello gnosticismo: Colloquio di Messina 13–18 Aprile1966. esti e discussioni (ed. Ugo Bianchi; SHR 12; Leiden: Brill, 1970), 552–53; and, moredeveloped, idem, “Holy Scriptures or Apologetic Documentations? Te Sitz im Leben o the NagHammadi Library,” in Les extes de Nag Hammadi: Colloque du Centre d’histoire des religions,

Strasbourg, 23–25 octobre 1974 (ed. Jacques-É. Ménard; NHS 7; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 9–17. HereSäve-Söderbergh argues persuasively that Pachomians had no reason to house the Nag Hammadidocuments based on what we know about Pachomian attitudes toward heresy; thereore, i in actPachomians kept them, they must have been kept out o circulation and thus “to study them in


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rom the jar’s ostensible find-spot29 and the tombs o two more Sixth Dynastypharaohs, Pepi I and II (2332–2184 ...) perched just above the talus where the

jar was ostensibly uncovered.30 Indeed, anchorites came to inhabit these burial

caves, which were still decorated with painted red crosses and inscribed lines romthe psalms in Coptic.31 Tey prayed in them; they also were buried in them.

he second piece o circumstantial evidence or a Pachomian provenanceis the cartonnage o the codices. he irst to have made this claim, papyrologistJohn W. B. Barns, died suddenly beore all the cartonnage was ully analyzed. Teteam o papyrologists assigned to complete the task concluded, against Barns, thatthey could not think o a satisactory single source or the wide range o documentscontained in the cartonnage other than a “town rubbish heap.”32 Te conclusion othe team was unequivocal: there is no evidence that the codices were created in a

Pachomian monastery.33 Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the connectionsbetween the Nag Hammadi codices and Pachomian monasticism are still virtuallyassumed by a wide range o scholars, no doubt because o the surety with which anearly generation o Nag Hammadi scholars asserted them in the first place.

III. T C C D P

Te Nag Hammadi codices were not the only set o late antique Egyptian writ-

ings discovered in Upper Egypt. Te Dishna papers, also known as the Bodmerpapyri afer their purchase by the Swiss banker Martin Bodmer, appear to havebeen ound in 1952 (seven years afer the Nag Hammadi discovery) in the Tebaid7.5 miles rom Nag Hammadi and a mere 5 km rom the major Pachomian site oPbow.34 Now dispersed rom Barcelona to Oslo with a substantial number in

29Facsimile Edition, 15:5; see also Robinson, “Discovery,” 212.30Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library in English, 21.31Ibid., 22.32Barns et al., Nag Hammadi Codices, 11.33Ibid., 2. See also Ewa Wipszycka, “Te Nag Hammadi Library and the Monks: A

Papyrologist’s Point o View,” JJP 30 (2000): 179–91, who similarly demolishes the Pachomianprovenance theory. More agnostic is Goehring in his unpublished paper “Some Reflections on theNag Hammadi Codices and the Study o Early Egyptian Monasticism”; he maintains the samecautious reusal to reject the Pachomian theory in virtually all his publications. See Goehring,“Te Provenance o the Nag Hammadi Codices Once More,” in Ascetica, Gnostica, Liturgica,Orientalia: Papers Presented at the Tirteenth International Conerence on Patristic Studies Held inOxord 1999 (ed. M. F. Miles and E. J. Yarnold; StPatr 35; Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 234–53; andidem, “Monastic Diversity and Ideological Boundaries in Fourth-Century Christian Egypt,” JECS

5 (1997): 61–84.34Te original circumstances o the find are hazy, since the seller o the hoard did not want

to reveal his sources; thus, indeed, the story o the provenance o the Dishna papers seems to usto be as potentially suspicious as that o the Nag Hammadi codices. At any rate, they are curiously


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Dublin at the Chester Beatty library, the original cache consisted o nine Greekpapyrus rolls, twenty-two papyrus codices, and seven parchment documents, dat-ing rom approximately 100 to 699 .. Te languages o the hoard show that its

audience was multilingual, moving not just between Greek and Coptic but alsobetween Greek and Latin. All told, we have in the Dishna papers an astonishingrange o materials: nine classical texts, including parts o Homer plus its scholia,Menander, Achilles atius, Tucydides, and Cicero,35 twelve papyri with writingsrom the Hebrew Bible; six with writings rom the N; three that include both. Wealso find a ew apocryphal and pseudepigraphical texts, plus a great deal o liturgi-cal and homiletic material.

Robinson, ascinated with the points o contact between the Nag Hammadicodices and the Dishna papers—both were ound in jars in the same vicinity—

hypothesized that the Dishna papers were buried or saekeeping ollowing theimposition o Chalcedonian orthodoxy.36 In effect, the case o the Dishna papersappeared to raise the likelihood that Pachomian monks, around 387 .., hadengaged in a dramatic purge o their libraries, at the same time ridding themselveso their clearly heretical Nag Hammadi books.

And yet we should not make the mistake o assuming that the two book cacheshad the same audiences or were deposited or the same reason. Regardless owhether the Dishna papers were rom the first Pachomian library at Pbow, they arear different rom the Nag Hammadi codices in content. For example, the Sahidic

Coptic Crosby-Shøyen Codex (ca. 250 ..) consists o fify-two leaves written in alarge bold Coptic uncial and contains three biblical texts (Jonah, 2 Macc 5:27–7:41,1 Peter) plus two other texts or liturgical use: Melito o Sardis’s Peri Pascha and anunidentified paschal sermon.37 Another codex, now disassembled and scattered to

various modern libraries, once contained the Nativity o Mary , apocryphal corre-spondence between Paul and the Corinthians, the eleventh Ode o Solomon, Jude,Melito’s Homily on the Passion, a ragment o a liturgical hymn, the Apology oPhileas, Pss 33:2–34:16 rom the LXX, and 1–2 Peter.38 Te Dishna papers and the

parallel. Furthermore, both accounts trace back to the research o Robinson. On the Dishna find,see James M. Robinson, Te Pachomian Monastic Library at the Chester Beatty Library and theBibliothèque Bodmer (Institute or Antiquity and Christianity Occasional Papers 19; Claremont,CA: Institute or Antiquity and Christianity, 1990).

35On Dishna’s classical sources, see Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History o Early Christian exts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 173; Juan Gil,Hadrianvs: P. Monts. Roca III, 29 (Orientalia Montserratensia; Montserrat: Publicacions del’Abadia de Montserrat y CSIC, 2010).

36Robinson, Pachomian Monastic Library , 28.37R. Pintaudi, “Proprietà imperiali e tasse in un papiro della Collezione Schoyen,” ZPE 130

(2000): 197–200; James E. Goehring, Te Crosby-Schøyen Codex MS 193 in the Schøyen Collection (CSCO 521, Subsidia 85; Louvain: Peeters, 1990).

38ommy Wasserman, “Papyrus 72 and the Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex ,” NS 51 (2005):140.


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perhaps even as examples o paideia, which experienced a revival in the secondcentury and remained popular among elites until the sixth century.

In summary, the evidence or a Pachomian provenance or the Nag Hammadi

codices is entirely lacking, as is any solid basis or their monastic setting. We areorced to concur with Stephen Emmel, who some time ago commented, “I—likemany others—am not convinced that the Nag Hammadi Codices, as particularbooks, as artiacts, are the direct products o a monastic milieu.”44 Emmel ollowsthe conclusions o Alexandr L. Khosroyev, who, through an intensive study o lin-guistic and codicological data, demolished the “Pachomian monastic milieu” the-ory in a 1995 volume that has not had the impact that it should have.45

IV. A B B:D M

Te theory that the Nag Hammadi codices ound their way out o their Pacho-mian setting in the wake o Athanasius’s thirty-ninth Festal Letter (367 ..) hasalso recently been revealed to be unounded. As David Brakke has convincinglyargued, the heretical writings with which Athanasius was concerned were not“Gnostic” but Arian and Meletian.46 Te idea that the letter in any way effected theremoval o the Nag Hammadi codices rom a Pachomian library is merely scholarly

conjecture too ofen taken as act. I we admit that the Pachomian, or even generallymonastic, context or the codices is entirely absent, then Athanasius’s letter becomesirrelevant. We are still lef with a final Sitz im Leben or which we do have clearevidence: the tomb sites o the Gebel al-ari. I the codices were not likely to have

d’origine du papyrus Bodmer de Ménandre,” ChrEg 66 (1991): 211–20; J.-L. Fournet, “Uneéthiopée de Caïn dans le codex des Visions de la Fondation Bodmer,” ZPE 92 (1992): 253–66;R. Kasser, “Status quaestionis 1988 sulla presunta origine dei cosidetti Papiri Bodmer,” Aegyptus 68 (1988): 191–94. Some would retort that obviously not all Pachomians were unlettered; seeElizabeth Ann Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Prince-ton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 54; it is certainly possible that monks took their bookcollections with them into the monastery.

44Emmel, “Te Coptic Gnostic exts as Witnesses to the Production and ransmission oGnostic (and Other) raditions,” in Das Tomasevangelium: Entstehung, Rezeption, Teologie (ed.Jörg Frey, Enno Edzard Popkes, and Jens Schröter; BZNW 157; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 36.

45Khosroyev, Die Bibliothek von Nag Hammadi: Einige Probleme des Christentums in Ägypten während der ersten Jahrhunderte (Arbeiten zum spätantiken und koptischen Ägypten 7;Altenberge: Oros, 1995), esp. ch. 4, “Zur Frage nach dem vermutlichen Besitzer der Bibliothek.”See, similarly, idem, “Bemerkungen über die vermutlichen Besitzer der Nag-Hammadi-exte,” in

Divitiae Aegypti: Koptologische und verwandte Studien zu Ehren von Martin Krause (ed. CäciliaFluck et al.; Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1995), 200–205.

46Brakke, “Canon Formation and Social Conflict in Fourth-Century Egypt: Athanasius oAlexandria’s Tirty-Ninth Festal Letter,” HR 87 (1994): 395–419.


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been buried by Pachomian monks or saekeeping, it is sae to say that the site oGebel al-ari does not represent an extension o Pachomian monastic lie and thatAthanasius’s letter was meant to address an entirely different phenomenon.

Brakke has examined the social contexts in which Athanasius wrote the thirty-ninth Festal Letter, pointing out that “teachers and Meletians” posed the greatestthreat to Athanasius’s authority as bishop and thereore were the target o many ohis letters.47 Brakke points out that “study circles,” an important eature o Alexan-drian lie since arguably the second century ..., represented the source o un-damental anxieties conronted by early Christian bishops like Athanasius becauseto ollow a charismatic teacher both undermined the emerging ecclesiastical author-ity and was dangerously like ollowing Christ—or, the wrong Christ.48 Indeed,Athanasius’s thirty-ninth Letter is tremendously important to the ormation o

early Christianity or all o the reasons Brakke outlines, but i we are to read thisletter as a warning against so-called heretics who read apocryphal literature (as thenarrative o the ate o the Nag Hammadi codices is interpreted), the attack is ratherinnocuous. In act, a close reading o the letter reveals an almost bureaucratic tone,as i Athanasius is sighing in the subtext, saying: “Must we go over this?”

Compare, or instance, Athanasius’s list o canonical texts in the thirty-ninthletter to Letter 40, o Adelphius, where he fights tooth and nail against Arianismand or his own orthodox Christology: “Where has this evil o theirs eruptedrom?” and “We do not worship a creature. Never!”49 Tese Arian “heretics” he calls

“enemies o Christ … urged on by their ather the devil.”50 Tis is the standardpolemic or which Athanasius is known and that is markedly missing in Letter 39. In this letter, those who do not read the Scriptures according to the list are merelycalled “heretics and … simple olk.”51 Here our argument is not much differentrom Brakke’s. Athanasius was concerned with Arianism and the threats that sucha belie posed to both his view o Christology and his right to authority. And regard-less o whether the community or which the Letter was written accepted thisauthority, it is sae to say that those who did not—the Arians, Meletians, and otherunnamed “heretics”—paid little attention to a list o canonical books.

Yet this is not the final point o our argument. We have attempted to removethe Nag Hammadi codices rom a Pachomian monastic origin and place them inthe hands o an Egyptian who commissioned them or private use. Once these textsare removed rom the ecclesiastical struggles against “heresy,” they belong to a littleexplored history o ourth-century Egypt. For even i Athanasius’s letter is meantto define a canon, what can be said o the Nag Hammadi codices i we venture to

47Ibid., 398.48Ibid., 398–99.49Khaled Anatolios, Athanasius (Early Church Fathers; New York: Routledge, 2004), 236.50Ibid., 236.51David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics o Asceticism (Oxord Early Christian Studies;

Oxord: Oxord University Press, 1995), 330.


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say that they were not being read in a monastic setting? Like the Teban MagicalLibrary, they exist beyond the reach o the episcopate. One o the purposes o thisarticle is to suggest, or recall, that ourth-century Egypt was not a landscape domi-

nated by ecclesiastical struggles. While such conflicts certainly played a major rolein the ormation o Egyptian Christianity, we argue that a significant portion o theEgyptian population was not concerned with these struggles. Te reason theydominate the literature o ourth-century Egypt is because voices such as that oAthanasius are dynamic ones that live on in the orthodox world. So dynamic is his

voice, in act, that we ofen orget that he was banished five times during his career,his ecclesiastical authority called into question by many in spite o his victory overArian theology. And so, while Athanasius remains a posthumous authority, hiswritings only reflect the politics o ourth-century Egyptian Christianity in propor-

tion to his turbulent career. Te archaeological record, not surprisingly, does notreveal the strict oppressiveness that scholars read into the literature o the era butinstead reveals a ruitul desert o newly commissioned books o all natures: pagan,Christian, monastic, liturgical, classical, and magical.

V. B T

Te Gebel el-ari, where the Nag Hammadi codices were discovered, was not

a monastic site; it was (and had been or millennia) a vast ancient burial ground.In the ourth century, numerous caves and rock-cut tombs were still in use orburials. wenty meters south o the Nag Hammadi find-spot, in Cave 1, excava-tors ound bones and pottery remains; in 114, eight hundred meters away, exca-

vators ound a burial shroud that yielded a 14C date o the fifh century ..52 Robinson himsel concludes, “at least the talus was used as a burial site at the timein question.”53 Even Doresse’s earlier, unelaborated account o the find-spot placesit in a cemetery, although in that case the cemetery was not a series o caves but aflatter plain.54 Although Doresse believed the cemetery to have been pagan and

thus earlier than the codices, there is some evidence that it was still in use by lateantique Christians.

Te concrete link between the Nag Hammadi codices and late antique graveshas largely, i mystiyingly, been replaced by the unounded assumption thatmonks intentionally hid the books or posterity. Is it not more likely that someoneput them in a grave as a unerary deposit? One scholar to have proposed the tombtheory was the esteemed Coptologist Martin Krause, who, in an article rom1978, commented,

52Robinson, “Discovery,” 213.53Ibid.54Doresse, Secret Books, 58.


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Das Auffinden der Bibliothek in einem Grabe spricht ür eine, und zwar wohlreiche, Einzelperson als Besitzer.… Es ist ein auch in christlicher Zeit nochnachweisbarer altägyptischer Brauch, dem oten heilige Bücher ins Grab

beizugeben.55

Krause maintained—and we present a similar thesis here—that a private individualwith eclectic and esoteric interests commissioned the collection, which was buriedwith him at the time o his death.56

I indeed the jar containing the Nag Hammadi codices came rom a burialcave rather than a ruinated monastic library, it would be in good company. TeBerlin Codex, which contains the Gospel o Mary , the Apocryphon o John, theSophia o Jesus Christ , and the Acts o Peter , appeared on the antiquities market in1896. Although the dealer claimed that the book had been ound in a wall niche,

the text’s first editor, Carl Schmidt, assumed it had been taken rom one o Akhmim’scemeteries.57 Te Codex chacos, which contains (among other so-called Gnostictexts) the Gospel o Judas, was discovered near El-Minya, in a amily tomb by GebelQarara. At this late antique Christian burial site, the Codex chacos was only oneo the books ound in a limestone box that tomb robbers unearthed; the three oth-ers do not survive intact, having been divided up by antiquities dealers. However,we know that one o these was a ourth- or fifh-century papyrus codex containinga Greek version o Exodus.58 Te second, dating rom the same period, was a Coptictranslation o Paul’s letters; the third, interestingly, was a Greek mathematical text

called the Metrodological ractate.59 “I nothing else,” comments April DeConick,their burial together

points to their privileged place in the lie o an early Christian living in ancientEgypt, a Christian who seems to have had esoteric leanings. Tis ancient personburied with these books had no difficulty during his or her lietime studyingcanonical avorites like Paul and Exodus alongside the Gnostic Gospel o Judas.As or the mathematical treatise, its burial along with these others should not bethat surprising given that both the Hermetics and Gnostics studied mathematicaltheorems in order to understand and map their universe.60

55Krause, “Die exte von Nag Hammadi” in Aland, Gnosis: Festschrif ür Hans Jonas, 243.Armand Veilleux cautiously seconds the idea (“Monasticism and Gnosis in Egypt,” in Te Rootso Egyptian Christianity [ed. Birger A. Pearson and James E. Goehring; SAC; Philadelphia:Fortress, 1986), 278–83.

56Krause, “Die exte von Nag Hammadi,” 242–43.57Schmidt, Die alten Petrusakten im Zusammenhang der apokryphen Apostellitteratur nebst

einem neuentdeckten Fragment untersucht (U n.F. 9/1; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1903), 2.58Te Greek papyrus now exists in pieces in private collections at the Schøyen Collection,

Yale’s Beinecke Library, and Ashland Teological Seminary.59Heavily illustrated, the codex was bisected, with hal being purchased by Lloyd Cotsen

and donated to Princeton University, and hal to an anonymous private collector.60DeConick, Te Tirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel o Judas Really Says (New York:

Continuum, 2009), 64–65.


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Tus, in the history o late antique Egyptian books, we have some intriguing com-monalities between the Nag Hammadi codices and the El-Minya find: a Christiantomb site, a durable container, and a cache o books. In the case o the El-Minya

find, we are clearly dealing with a private commission or collection o books, not amonastic library.

Tere are other cases o manuscripts ound in burial sites in late antique Egypt.Te parchment Codex Panopolitanus, which contained a ull Greek version o1 Enoch’s Book o the Watchers, ragments o an Apocalypse o Peter , and the Gospelo Peter , was excavated by a French archaeological team in the winter o 1886–87;it was ound in an eighth-century Christian grave in Akhmim.61 Interestingly, asin the case o the Codex chacos, the Codex Panopolitanus was ound along witha mathematical treatise.62 Among non-Christian texts, the ourth-century Teban

Magical Library—composed o both scrolls and codices—was, like the Nag Ham-madi codices, discovered by ellaheen under suspicious circumstances, almost cer-tainly tomb robbing in the Tebaid.63

Our hypothesis here that the Nag Hammadi codices were intentionally depos-ited in a grave or graves rather than buried or “posterity”—the latter practice, incontrast to the ormer, not attested in Egypt—raises an inevitable question: whatwas the rationale or burying a book in a grave? Put simply, as a grave good, a bookwas a luxury item that marked the prestige o the grave owner.64 It is helpul, per-haps, to think (as Emmel does) o the codices as artiacts rather than as books,

where the primary importance is the social meaning o the object rather than itscontents.65 In this way o thinking, there is no need to connect the content o a bookwith the practice o depositing it with a corpse. Tis explains why a mathematicalbook would be deposited in a grave with the Codex chacos and the Codex Pano-politanus; it also helps us to make sense o other book finds rom Egyptian graves.For example, W. M. Flinders Petrie reported having ound a copy o the secondbook o the Iliad , in Greek, on a papyrus roll tucked under the head o an elite

61Isaac H. Hall, “Te Newly Discovered Apocryphal Gospel o Peter,” Biblical World 1, no.2 (1893): 88.

62George W. E. Nickelsburg, “wo Enochic Manuscripts: Unstudied Evidence or EgyptianChristianity,” in O Scribes and Scrolls: Studies on the Hebrew Bible, Intertestamental Judaism,and Christian Origins presented to John Strugnell (ed. Harold W. Attridge, John J. Collins, andTomas H. obin; College Teology Society Resources in Religion 5; Lanham, MD: UniversityPress o America, 1990), 251–60, esp. 254.

63For more on the Teban Magical Library, see Jacco Dieleman, Priests, ongues, and Rites:Te London-Leiden Magical Manuscripts and ranslation in Egyptian Ritual (Religions in theGraeco-Roman World 153; Leiden: Brill, 2005); and also Roger Bagnall, Early Christian Books inEgypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). Both Dieleman and Bagnall note the inter-

esting parallels between the Teban Magical Library and the Nag Hammadi codices.64AnneMarie Luijendijk, “Sacred Scriptures as rash: Biblical Papyri rom Oxyrhynchus,”

VC 64 (2010): 232 n. 50.65Emmel, “Coptic Gnostic exts,” 32.


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woman in a grave at Hawara in the Fayyum.66 Te papyrus dates to the fifh century.. and was both well copied and well preserved. Te practice o placing the rollat the head o a corpse in a sense continued the Ptolemaic practice o placing brie

“Documents or Breathing”—the Greco-Egyptian orm o earlier “Books o theDead” written in Demotic, hieratic, and Greek—at the top o a mummy’s head atburial.67

However, because o Egypt’s rich history o unerary texts, there remains thepossibility that there was intended to be a connection between individual books’contents and their unction as grave deposits. Te speculation that archaeologistshad discovered a Christian “Book o the Dead” had already been made in the caseo Codex Panopolitanus, with its apocalyptic, “heavenly journey” writings.68 TeNag Hammadi codices are particularly interesting to consider rom this perspec-

tive, or a ew reasons. First, they are an apparently deliberate collection o docu-ments that are overwhelmingly concerned with cosmology and eschatology. Teycontain no “secular” writings, no Scripture, no correspondence, and precious littlehomiletical, ethical, or paraenetic material, with the exception o (or example) theGospel o ruth in Codex I and what remains (very little) o the Interpretation oKnowledge in Codex XI. Still, even these works are very ar in tone and spirit rom,let us say, Melito’s sermons and homilies, which we find in papyrus copies rom lateantique Egypt. Tereore, the Nag Hammadi collection as a whole is ar rom arandom one, but seems to specialize in obscure cosmologically and eschatologi-

cally ocused treatises with a liturgical dimension.69

66Petrie, Hawara, Biahmu, and Arsinoe with Tirty Plates (London: Field & uer, 1889),24–28.

67Werner Forman and Steven Quirke, Hieroglyphs and the Aferlie in Ancient Egypt (Norman: University o Oklahoma Press, 1996). Tese documents Quirke likens to “passports”held by the deceased to give them ree access into the next world; they contained a sort odeclaration by Toth that the traveler was to be allowed to pass through the stomach o Nutthrough the circuit o the otherworld. A standard line went, “O guardians o the Underworld, letme come and go.” Te last secure date or a “Document or Breathing” included with a burial islate first to early second century .., rom the amily grave o Soter, a governor o Tebes.

68For the site report, see Klaus P. Kuhlmann, Materialien zur Archäologie und Geschichte desRaumes von Achmim (Sonderschrif, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Abteilung Kairo 11;Mainz: von Zabern, 1983), 53, 62. Te codex was published by U. Bouriant, “Fragments grecs deLivre d’Enoch,” in Mémoires publiés par les membres de la Mission archéologique rançaise au Caire 9.1 (Paris: Leroux, 1892), 91–147, esp. 93–94. For additional manuscript inormation, plates, andthe editio princeps o both the Gospel o Peter and the Apocalypse o Peter , see A. Lods, “L’evangileet L’apocalypse de Pierre: Le texte grec du livre d’Énoch,” in Mémoires publiés par les membres dela Mission archéologique rançaise au Caire 9.3 (Paris: Leroux, 1893), 217–35 and plates 1–34. Forthe Christian “Book o the Dead” claim, see Nickelsburg, “wo Enochic Manuscripts,” 254.

69Some may argue that the existence o the Apocryphon o John in our different copiesargues against the obscurity o that text at least; the Gospel o Tomas is also present in multiple versions. See, however, the observations o Larry Hurtado, “Te Greek Fragments o the Gos pelo Tomas as Arteacts: Papyrological Observations on Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1, Papyrus


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VI. A N C: E P

Who, in late antique Egypt, might have been particularly interested in com-missioning an eschatologically oriented collection o texts to deposit in a burial?Tere exists a range o possible suspects, rom the Melitians to the class o monksJerome called the remnuoth (Ep. 22.34).70 Robinson has speculated that perhapsthe codices belonged to a monk or monks who began in the Pachomian monasterybut then moved out to an eremitic lie.71 In support o this theory, Robinson citesthe case o Hierakas o Leontopolis, a ourth-century monk o the Delta who wasboth a scribe and a biblical exegete. He was also a radical encratite—so radical, inact, that he was declared a heretic or his views.72 Te example o Hierakas, so ar

rom the Tebaid, reminds us only that the lines between coenobitic monks, ancho-rites, and private citizens were fluid in the ourth century.

Our intuition is that the Nag Hammadi codices belonged to private (i.e., non-monastic) individuals who commissioned them or their own purposes. Whetherthe scriptoria that composed them were monastic or not we cannot tell, but privatescriptoria certainly existed in the ourth century.73 Te “private individual” modelrequires that we break with our tendency to interpret the landscape o late antiqueEgypt as purely populated by monks, a perception largely influenced by Derwas J.Chitty’s highly influential Te Desert a City .74 Tese individuals may or may not

have been Christians; i it was correct in any sense to call them “Gnostic,” theycertainly did not ascribe to any sectarian Gnostic school.75

Oxyrhynchus 654 and Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 655,” in Frey et al., Das Tomasevangelium, 23, onthe total number o copies o Christian texts rom late ancient Egypt.

70 Veilleux first suggested the Nag Hammadi documents might have held special appeal orMelitians (“Monasticism and Gnosis in Egypt,” 10). See also Brakke, “Canon Formation,” 249:“while the nature o the apocryphal books accepted and used by the Melitians seems differentrom the texts ound in the Nag Hammadi codices, the undecided nature o the canon evidenced

in the debate suggests a period in which one can well imagine individual ascetics and asceticgroups involved in the sort o textual exploration that led to an interest in such texts.”

71Robinson suggests this (Nag Hammadi Library in English, 18).72Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library in English, 18; Wisse, “Gnosticism and Early Monas-

ticism,” 438–40.73Although Pachomians had scriptoria and copied texts, the evidence is later than the ourth

century. Tere is no evidence or ourth-century Pachomian scriptoria. For the earliest reerences,see Palladius, Lausiac History 32.12 (where working in the kalligreiphon is one orm o Pachomianmonastic labor) and John Cassian, Institutes 4.12 (which details how a Pachomian monk muststop writing immediately i called by a superior). We thank David Brakke or the reerences.

74

Chitty, Te Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study o Egyptian and Palestinian Monasticism under the Christian Empire (1966; repr., Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s SeminaryPress, 1995).

75See the loosely affiliated Christian ellowships discussed by E. Wipszycka, “Les conréries


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Tat the Nag Hammadi codices were commissioned by private individualswas the hypothesis o Krause, but also o Khosroyev, who systematically and pains-takingly demolished the theory o Pachomian provenance and argued instead that

the codices had been commissioned by urban intellectuals among whom they werecopied and exchanged.76 Tese intellectuals operated outside the reach o the devel-oping orthodox Christianity and represented the religious complexity o their day,like their contemporary Zosimus o Panopolis or those who read and circulated theTeban Magical Papyri. Indeed, the concept o paideia once again comes to mind.I elite education meant to instruct even Christian theologians, like Basil the Great,in the reading o classical Greek mythology, it is not difficult to suggest that someEgyptian elites were interested in the cosmological and eschatological writings othe Neoplatonic era, during which paideia experienced a revival, thus necessarily

including the so-called Gnostic writings o the second century in their learning inthe ourth century.

Emmel has also cautiously agreed with Khosroyev’s analysis, although he seesno reason to locate the Nag Hammadi codices in Egypt’s major urban centers asproducts o lie in the city. He posits, instead,

bilingual “Hellenized” Egyptians who grew up and remained in the largelyGreek-speaking metropoleis o the Nile Valley, where they were in communica-tion with like-minded members o the same “class” or “group” who shared aninterest in this sort o esoteric and in some sense also erudite literature.”77

In a different article, Emmel suggests that to understand the codices in their con-text, we need to “reconstruct the reading experience o whoever owned each o theCodices,” taking into ull consideration the culture o Upper Egypt rom the thirdto the eighth centuries and developing a “theory o Coptic reading and Copticreaders.”78 But Emmel raises a vital question: why are the Nag Hammadi Codicesin Coptic (and ofen poor Coptic, at that)? Rejecting the idea that they could havebeen translated rom Greek to Coptic or the benefit o those who could not readGreek (the tractates are unintelligible without an advanced knowledge o Greek

language and culture), he proposes an intriguing hypothesis:I think we have to do with the products o a kind o Egypt-wide network (moreor less inormal) o educated, primarily Greek-speaking … philosophically andesoteric-mystically like-minded people, or whom Egypt represented (even i

dans la vie religieuse de l’Égypte chrétienne,” in Proceedings o the welfh International Congresso Papyrology (oronto: A. M. Hakkert, 1970), 511–25.

76Tis is the central argument o Khosroyev, Die Bibliothek von Nag Hammadi.77Emmel, “Coptic Gnostic exts,” 36.78

Emmel, “Religious radition, extual ransmission, and the Nag Hammadi Codices,” inTe Nag Hammadi Library afer Fify Years: Proceedings o the 1995 Society o Biblical LiteratureCommemoration (ed. John D. urner and Anne McGuire; Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies44; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 34–43.


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only somewhat vaguely) a tradition o wisdom and knowledge to be revered andperpetuated … it is easy to imagine a kind o rush to create a new “esoteric-mystical Egyptian wisdom literature”—being “Egyptian” above all by virtue o

being in Coptic rather than in Greek (even i the Coptic was sometimes barelycomprehensible.79

I Emmel is right, then it seems that Egyptian, rather than Greek, would be the“natural” language or these new Christian Books o the Dead. Even though thecontent o the writings betrayed Greek thought, the language connected those whocommissioned such volumes with an archaic practice o leaving guides or theaferlie in Egyptian graves. In act, seen in this light, the sometimes poor Coptic,the mishmash o writings (Valentinian and Sethian; Christian and non-Christian),and the theological inconsistencies that vex modern scholars were likely to have

been o no concern whatsoever to a ourth-century elite who planned out in advancea “real, Egyptian” burial.

It is worth asking, in conclusion, what difference it makes i the Nag Hammadifind-story was, indeed, a scholarly fiction. o begin, we might do well to recognizeits many colonialist, orientalizing elements as relics o a bygone era in Egyptianarchaeology. Te narrative is a fine one or classroom telling, but it works less andless effectively as we become more sensitized to our own Western prejudices andassumptions. Egyptian peasants do not ear jinni in bottles or rip out each other’shearts and eat them on the spot—and shame on us or believing, even or a moment,

that they do.o those whose work has been in uncovering the second-century contexts o

the various tractates contained in the Nag Hammadi codices, it may not matter atall whether the books derived rom a grave or were secreted away by monks. Onthe other hand, the attention to the second-century, posited Greek “originals” othese writings has steered us down a path that virtually ignores the vital context othe writings in the only orm in which they have survived, as i this real, ourth-century setting means nothing and only our reconstructed and imagined Greek“originals” have anything to teach us about the development o Christianity. o be

suspicious o the find-story and the assumed Pachomian provenance is to allowthese late antique codices to belong to a uniquely Egyptian archaeological context,placing them in a unerary tradition that began in the dynastic era and endured,arguably, well into the Muslim era. o think o the Nag Hammadi codices as ourth-century artiacts that may have been intentionally created, in some instances, asgrave goods radically changes the way we think about late antique Egyptian Chris-tianity, where studies have been divided between those who study monasticism andthose who study documentary papyri. Yet what o the vibrant cultural lie o thelate antique Roman era, the systems o learning that ostered an interest in these

second-century heritages, be they pagan or Christian, Roman or Egyptian? I we

79Emmel, “Coptic Gnostic exts,” 48.


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group the Nag Hammadi codices with other similar products—namely, the chacos,Bruce, and Askew codices—we have a rather large corpus o late antique Egyptianbooks that stand in a class o their own and demand rom us not only contextualiza-

tion but also a deeper understanding o the diversity o the ourth-century Romanworld.

Reevaluating the true provenance o the Nag Hammadi codices also meansthat we need to change the way we think about so-called Gnostic texts as beingtheologically marginal writings that really only had one century o good use beorethey became dangerous curiosities that some theologically suspect monks elt com-pelled to hide. Contextualizing the Nag Hammadi codices in the grave o a privatecitizen removes them rom the background drama o ourth-century ecclesiasticalpolitics. It has been difficult or scholars o Gnosticism to avoid the temptation to

connect the Nag Hammadi codices with dominant figures such as Athanasius ormovements such as Pachomian monasticism; however, such a connection situatesour field o study conveniently within the narrative that Athanasius himsel propa-gated: a community o unified Christians, loyal to their bishops, all together fight-ing groups o renegade monks and teachers who commission heretical texts andthen, like demons, disappear into the night. Could there be any other way to under-stand the landscape o late antique Egypt? Yes, o course.

Our job has been to draw threads o connection, however tenuous, betweenone historical figure or moment and another. But i we sever these silken threads

and admit to what we simply do not know about late antique Egypt, the true reasonthat someone saw fit painstakingly to copy the Nag Hammadi codices and careullyto preserve them becomes a compelling mystery we might begin to consider witha resh set o eyes.