Nag Hammadi Library and Related Literature

The Nag Hammadi Codices are thirteen papyrus manuscripts discovered in the vicinity of the Upper Egyptian city of Nag Hammadi, probably in December 1945. Written in Coptic, the youngest and final phase of the native Egyptian language, they contain approximately fifty-two treatises, many of which show some kind of filiation with ancient Gnosticism: the evidence pertaining to individuals in antiquity who allegedly proclaimed themselves to be “knowers” (Greek: gnōstikoi), and who promulgated myths about malevolent world-creators and the divine nature of humanity. Upon their full publication in 1977, the Nag Hammadi Codices revolutionized scholarship on Gnosticism and early Christianity , as well as the history of Coptic language and literature. Other Coptic codices containing works relevant to the study of Gnosticism were discovered both before and after the Nag Hammadi find. The Bruce and Askew Codices appeared in Europe in the eighteenth century and were first published in the nineteenth; the Berlin Codex was acquired for a German collection in 1896, and first published in 1954; and the infamous Codex Tchacos was published by the National Geographic Society in 2006. Together, the Bruce, Askew, Nag Hammadi, Berlin, and Tchacos Codices may be helpfully designated as the “Coptic Gnostic corpus,” or simply “Coptic Gnostica”: the body of Coptic manuscripts that contain texts relevant to the study of Gnosticism. While many scholars today prefer to eschew the “Gnostic” label for these manuscripts and the literature therein, it is undeniable that they preserve much literature that is distinctive, interesting, and in many respects unintelligible without recourse to the ancient evidence, most often preserved by heresiologists, about the so-called “Gnostics.” It is worth noting that while the Nag Hammadi Codices are often referred to as the “Nag Hammadi Library,” it was not at all clear that they comprised a “library” until they were dubbed one upon their publication in the 1970s. The present article on the “Nag Hammadi Library and Related Literature” thus takes as its subject the Coptic Gnostic corpus: the Bruce, Askew, Nag Hammadi, Berlin, and Tchacos Codices.