5. Lost Books of the New Testament (3)

The Nag Hammadi Library

In 1945 at Nag Hammadi [6], 300 miles south of Cairo in the Nile River region, two Arab brothers found 13 papyrus codices in a jar. The 52 separate writings contained in these scrolls are now known as the Nag Hammadi gnostic texts. In 1959 the first document from the library appeared – The Gospel of Thomas. Publication of the entire collection was completed in 1977.

The Nag Hammadi Library

These texts are all in Coptic, an Egyptian language written with the Greek alphabet. The general consensus is that these Coptic translations from original Greek texts date from 350-400 AD, but agreement between scholars ends right there! The original texts are dated earlier – but how much earlier is sharply disputed. Furthermore, most scholars conclude these Nag Hammadi texts do not compare to the significance of the New Testament texts, while some (such as the Jesus Seminar and the author of The DaVinci Code) believe they are more reliable than the NT.  This last group even claims that they might contain evidence of a major conspiracy of the (Roman) Catholic Church.

Apart from this discussion, two important issues pertain to the quality of the texts:

• The texts were translated one by one from Greek into Coptic. The translators were not always capable of grasping what they sought to translate. When there are duplications one can sense what a difference the better translation makes in comparison to the poor translation — which leads one to wonder about the bulk of the texts that exist only in a single version.
• There is a similar hazard in transmission of the texts by a series of scribes who copied them, generation after generation, from increasingly corrupt copies, first in Greek, later in Coptic. The number of unintentional errors is hard to estimate. When only a few letters are missing, they can often be filled in adequately, but larger holes must simply remain a blank.

The Nag Hammadi documents can be organized into several categories:[7]

• Gnostic Texts with Christian Orientation. Among these, receiving considerable attention is: The Gospel of Thomas. This series of sayings was thought at first by some scholars to be a source for the canonical gospels of Matthew and Luke (Q?).  Another is The Gospel of Truth which might have been written by the well-known heretic Valentinus; The Gospel of Philip contains unique teachings related to gnostic sacraments.
• Gnostic Texts with Less Than Clear Christian Orientation. Some scholars allege that these texts suggest a pre-Christian Gnosticism, but this seems unsubstantiated. The writings in this category are not considered relevant in the context of looking for new Christian writings.
• Non-Gnostic, Christian Documents. There are also several non-gnostic, Christian documents in the library.  These include: The Acts of Peter and the Twelve, The Sentences of Sextus, and The Teachings of Silvanus. None of these is considered a newly discovered text.
• Miscellaneous Documents. In addition, several documents are neither Christian nor gnostic, but likely were read with great interest by gnostic scribes.

Read on about: (4) Exhibit #14: The "lost books" were not lost 

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