First of all, what
is meant by a ‘codex’?
A codex is a little
more than just a code, although the terms are often used interchangeably. In
Roman times, for the first time, books were made of individual pages of papyrus
whereas before that records had been kept on scrolls or rolls of papyrus. These
books were called codices.
This is why the Nag
Hammadi documents are correctly referred to as codices and not as scrolls. The
Berlin Codex, which contains the most material found to date on the Gospel of
Mary was bought in Egypt through the antiquities network in 1896 by German
scholar, Carl Reinhardt. It was not published until almost fifty years later
when the Nag Hammadi scrolls had come to light and had been found to contain
two copies of partial texts of the Gospel of Mary. Later, two other small
fragments of this gospel were discovered in northern Egypt.
Nag Hammadi is the
name of the town in Upper Egypt in which early Christian texts were
accidentally discovered in December 1945 when Muhammad ‘Ali-al-Samman and his
brothers were digging for soft fertile crop soil in a mountainous area where
there were many caves. They uncovered a large sealed jar which at first they
thought might contain a jinn (spirit), but thoughts of treasure overcame their
reluctance and the jar was smashed. It contained thirteen ancient papyrus
books. These were different from earlier finds like the Dead Sea Scrolls in
that they were not in scroll form but were books of bound pages with leather
covers.
Professor Elaine
Pagels of Princeton, author of Beyond Belief and The Gnostic Gospels, reports
that Muhammad’s mother, ‘Umm-Ahmad, admits to using some of the papyrus pages
as fire kindling. The brothers were at the time seeking to avenge the murder of
their father who had been killed in a blood feud. When they subsequently
savagely killed their father’s murderer, they feared that the police would
search their home for evidence and find the ancient documents. They therefore
asked a priest to help by taking the documents into safe-keeping.
A local history
teacher saw one of the manuscripts and was permitted to send it to Cairo to
have it assessed. When its worth was realised, other manuscripts from the find
began to appear on the black market and inevitably the Egyptian government,
alert to how many of its treasures had been lost to both local and foreign
treasure-seekers, became aware of the existence of the documents. They managed
to purchase one document and then confiscated another ten and a half books
which they housed in the Coptic Museum in Cairo.
Elaine Pagels
describes how a large part of the thirteenth manuscript – the
leather-bound books were now called codices – had been smuggled out of
Egypt and offered for sale in the United States and traces some of the
subsequent events. The amazing skulduggery involved in the acquisition and
selling of ancient documents renders most spy stories and international thrillers
somewhat pale by comparison.
Pressed to do so by
distinguished Utrecht scholar, Professor Gilles Quispel, the Jung Foundation in
Zürich purchased what was available of the thirteenth codex, but when Professor
Quispel found that some pages were missing, he went to the Coptic Museum in
Cairo in 1955 to attempt to locate them.
He was able to
borrow some photographs of the texts. When he began to decipher them, he was
flabbergasted to read: “These are the secret words which the living Jesus
spoke…” It appeared that before him was The Gospel of Thomas. Further, it
declared itself to be a secret document.
Quispel went on to
discover that some sections of text were similar to that in the New Testament,
but in contexts so unfamiliar that the material could be interpreted quite
differently. Other sections were quite different from any other extant
Christian texts. And The Gospel of Thomas was only one of the fifty-two Nag
Hammadi codices. What information would others bring to light?
The Gospel of
Philip, bound into the same codex, gives a different view of Jesus from the New
Testament, including the now much-quoted:
… the companion of
the [Saviour is] Mary Magdalene. [Christ loved] her more than [all] the
disciples, and used to kiss her [often] on her [mouth]. The rest [of the
disciples were offended]. … They said to him, “Why do you love her more than
all of us?” The Saviour answered and said to them, “Why do I not love you as [I
love] her?”
Since the words in
parentheses are meant to fill in the lacunae in a reasonably acceptable way, it
goes without saying that many do not agree with them. However, even if we
ignore them, we are left with a picture of an openly close relationship.
One reference in the
Gospel of Thomas is particularly telling. Furthermore, it is one that the
Christian Church would find unacceptable. The disciples ask Jesus about the
future of his mission: “We know that you will depart from us. Who is to be our
leader?” Jesus tells them: “Wherever you are, you are to go to James the
righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.” So there we have
it: if this piece of information in the Gospel of Thomas is true, then Jesus
intended that his brother, James the Good, was to lead the new church. A
further comment from Jesus makes it clear that ‘resurrection’ did not imply
physical resurrection after death, but resurrection of the spirit during one’s
lifetime.
The incomplete texts
offer critical comment on other issues beyond such dogmatic Christian beliefs
as the virgin birth of Christ and his physical resurrection and point to naďve
literal misinterpretations of metaphorical and mystical texts that had to be
deliberately rendered obscure because of the dangerous political climate of the
day.
A question that
arises is: why hide original texts in the early to middle second century in the
first place unless they were already being seen as heresy by orthodox
Christians at that time? The hiding of the later copies (possibly made after
Nicaea) discovered at Nag Hammadi suggests that the danger of being persecuted
for heresy and having the valuable documents destroyed by the orthodox Church
was as prevalent as ever.
In the centuries
after the Crucifixion, various ‘Christian’ sects were at loggerheads over what
constituted the true message of Jesus. Orthodox Christians began to denounce
Christians of other opinion as ‘heretics’ and to persecute them even to the
point of death. As is always the case with history, the records were written by
the victors.
In Bloodline of the
Holy Grail, Laurence Gardner describes the Nag Hammadi codices as being
“inherently Christian but with Jewish overtones”.
Written in the
ancient Coptic language said to have been used by Egyptian Christians during
the early Christian era, the Nag Hammadi Library appeared to be largely Gnostic
in approach. The documents turned out to be copies – Coptic translations
1,500 or more years old - of much older writings that had originally been in
Greek, the language of the New Testament, and included several Gospels unknown
to that point. These include the Gospels of Thomas, Mary Magdalene and Philip,
which in some instances agree with the Biblical Gospels and in others differ
substantially. Fragments of a Greek Gospel of Thomas had been discovered in the
1890s, but here was what appeared to be an entire text.
Dating of the Nag
Hammadi documents, widely accepted without contradiction, places their origin
as somewhere between 350 and 400 AD. There is, however, much less agreement
about the dating of the original scripts of which they were copies, although
there is solid evidence that they could not have been written later than
between 120 and 150 AD and might even have been written many years
earlier.
The Nag Hammadi
Library gives a somewhat different view of several well-known Biblical
accounts. Gardner mentions that Sodom and Gomorrah, far from being corrupt and
licentious cities, are portrayed as centres of wisdom and learning, and Jesus
“gives his own account of the Crucifixion”, while descriptions of his
relationship with Mary Magdalene allow for speculations beyond the limited
information offered in the four Biblical Gospels.
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