The Nag Hammadi Library Is Found

In October 1946 the Coptic Museum in Cairo bought a papyrus book from a man of the district of Nag Hammadi (Puech and Doresse, Nouveaux écrits gnostiques (1948), pp. 88–90). A year later its director, Togo Mina, showed it to the French scholar Jean Doresse, who recognised a collection of Gnostic writings in Coptic, among them a Secret Book of John (Puech and Doresse, Nouveaux écrits gnostiques (1948), pp. 87–88). Doresse and Henri-Charles Puech judged the handwriting to be no later than the second half of the fourth century (Puech and Doresse, Nouveaux écrits gnostiques (1948), p. 88). In their report, printed in 1948, they knew of at least five volumes from the same find, which they placed at the foot of a hill near Nag Hammadi (Puech and Doresse, Nouveaux écrits gnostiques (1948), pp. 88–90).

How the books were found was already uncertain. The report repeats what was being said: that peasants had chanced on a tomb with a jar full of bound manuscripts, that two had been burned and the rest sold cheaply to dealers. Its authors ask how far the story of the tomb can be trusted (Puech and Doresse, Nouveaux écrits gnostiques (1948), pp. 88–90). The account usually told today comes from James M. Robinson, who interviewed villagers some thirty years later. In it Muhammad Ali, of the al-Samman clan, and his brother were digging for fertiliser under the cliff of Jabal al-Tarif in December when they came on a jar, and Muhammad Ali broke it open and carried the books home (Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library in English, Introduction, section 3, The Discovery). The archive of Robinson’s project keeps photographs, dated 1975, of the man and of the cliff (Nag Hammadi Codices Claremont archive, photograph of Muhammad Ali (1975), description) (Nag Hammadi Codices Claremont archive, photograph of Jabal al-Tarif (1975), description).

The codices hold over fifty texts and are kept in the Coptic Museum (Nag Hammadi Codices Claremont archive, description of the collection). Codex II contains the Gospel according to Thomas, whose title stands at its end (Nag Hammadi Codices Codex II, pp. 50–51, photographed by Jean Doresse; description). It begins: “These are the hidden sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down” (Gospel of Thomas prologue). Some of its sayings resemble those of the New Testament: asked when the kingdom will come, Jesus answers that it is already spread out over the earth and people do not see it (Gospel of Thomas saying 113), which may be compared with (Luke 17:20–21). Another volume held a work called the Gospel of Truth, and Puech and Doresse asked at once whether this was the book of that name which Irenaeus, about 180, says the followers of Valentinus had written (Puech and Doresse, Nouveaux écrits gnostiques (1948), pp. 88–90) (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.9).

Until then, the report observes, such groups were known mainly from the polemical notices of their opponents and from three Coptic manuscripts made known in the nineteenth century; writings that came from the groups themselves were almost wholly lacking (Puech and Doresse, Nouveaux écrits gnostiques (1948), p. 93). In his Easter letter of 367 Athanasius had warned the churches of Egypt against books “called apocryphal”, which he said heretics wrote and passed off as ancient (Athanasius, Festal Letter 39.2, 39.7). Whether that letter had anything to do with the burial of these books is disputed; see the dating note. See also Irenaeus Sets Out the Rule of Faith and Athanasius Lists the Twenty-seven Books of the New Testament.