Fluent Essays

Several scholars have called into question the story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts.  Their arguments may have profound consequences for our understanding of these texts.  Read the following articles: Denzey Lewis, Nicola, and Justine Ariel Blount. “Rethinking the Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices.” JBL 133.2 (2014): 399–419 (PDF (Links to an external site.)) Goodacre, Mark. “How Reliable is the Story of the Nag Hammadi Discovery?” JSNT 35.4 (2013): 303–22 (PDF (Links to an external site.)) Your assignment is to summarize these articles and then analyze their conclusions.  Why does it matter where these texts were found, and by whom? How does our understanding of these texts change if Denzey Lewis and Blount are correct?  How should scholars evaluate accounts of the discovery of manuscripts? 1700 Words due at 8pm estRethinking the Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices nicola denzey lewis [email protected] Brown University, Providence, RI 02912 justine ariel blount [email protected] 1383 Pacific Street, Brooklyn, NY 11216 The famous find-story behind the Nag Hammadi codices, discovered in Egypt in 1945, has been one of the most cherished narratives in our field. Yet a close examination of its details reveals inconsistencies, ambiguities, implicitly colo- nialist attitudes, and assumptions that call for a thorough reevaluation. This article explores the problematic moments in the find-story narrative and chal- lenges the suggestions of James M. Robinson and others that the Nag Hammadi codices were intentionally buried for posterity, perhaps by Pachomian monks, in the wake of Athanasius’s thirty-ninth Festal Letter. We consider, rather, that the Nag Hammadi codices may have derived from private Greco-Egyptian citizens in late antiquity who commissioned the texts for personal use, depositing them as grave goods following a practice well attested in Egypt. The Nag Hammadi codices, discovered in 1945, have perhaps the most com- pelling find-story of any ancient Egyptian book cache. When Mohamed Ali al- Samman, both the hero and the antihero of this story, discovers that his brother has found a jar while digging for fertilizer, he immediately takes control of the operation. Taking the jar into his hands, the moment is tense. Should he open it? He is a cautious, superstitious man, clearly pious and afraid of jinni; yet he also loves gold, and as in those old Arabian nights tales, his curiosity gets the better of him and he smashes the jar, only to find—is it gold?!—pieces of golden papyrus, flying through the air. Little does Mohamed Ali know, when he takes them home and tosses them into the little barn attached to his mother’s home, that he has discov- ered thirteen books of more than fifty “lost Gospels” representing a Gnostic library JBL 133, no. 2 (2014): 399–419 399 400 Journal of Biblical Literature 133, no. 2 (2014) of heretical documents, carefully secreted away in the increasingly theologically oppressive atmosphere of late-fourth-century Egypt.1 But what if this famous story, which has become the canonical genesis for scholars of Gnosticism, is merely a fiction? Even the earliest and most direct versions of the story reveal unsettling inconsistencies. Elements are unstable, and the key witness, Mohamed Ali, himself recants and changes his account.2 While we may speculate on the reasons for these inconsistencies, it becomes difficult to believe Mohamed Ali at all, not to mention the orientalizing fantasy of his encounter with a papyrus-filled jar somewhere in the geese-grazing territories of Chenoboskion. Indeed, two prominent Coptologists, Rodolphe Kasser and Martin Krause, long ago went on record to distance themselves from the “official”—that is, much pub- licized and disseminated—find-story.3 We begin by reexaminJournal for the Study of the New Testament 35(4) 303 –322 © The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0142064X13482243 jsnt.sagepub.com How Reliable is the Story of the Nag Hammadi Discovery? Mark Goodacre Duke University, USA Abstract James Robinson’s narrative of how the Nag Hammadi codices were discovered is popular and compelling, a piece of fine investigative journalism that includes intrigue and blood vengeance. But there are several different, conflicting versions of the story, including two-person (1977), seven-person (1979) and eight-person (1981) versions. Disagreements include the name of the person who first found the jar. Martin Krause and Rodolphe Kasser both questioned these stories in 1984, and their scepticism is corroborated by the Channel 4 (UK) series, The Gnostics (1987), which features Muhammad ‘Ali himself, in his only known appearance in front of camera, offering his account of the discovery. Several major points of divergence from the earlier reports raise questions about the reliability of ‘Ali’s testimony. It may be safest to conclude that the earlier account of the discovery offered by Jean Doresse in 1958 is more reliable than the later, more detailed, more vivid versions that are so frequently retold. Keywords Nag Hammadi, discovery, James Robinson, Jean Doresse, the Gnostics The ‘Canonical’ Nag Hammadi Story The story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices in 1945 has attained near canonical status in scholarship of early Christianity. James Robinson’s compelling narrative of how Muhammad ‘Ali al-Samman and his brothers unearthed the jar containing the codices combines skilled investigative journal- ism with tales of intrigue and blood vengeance.1 It is a staple of introductory 1. James Robinson has told the story on multiple occasions but the three key versions are best represented in Robinson 1977: 21-25 (= Robinson 1988: 22-26), 1979 and 1981. See also Robinson et al. 1984. Corresponding author: Mark Goodacre, Department of Religion, Duke University, Gray Bldg/Box 90964, Durham NC 27708-0964, USA. Email: [email protected] Article 304 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 35(4) classes on Christian origins, particularly important for courses introducing the Gospel of Thomas. Books on the Nag Hammadi collection narrate the story to grab the reader’s attention and to set the scene. The story is comparable to the often-narrated, near contemporary story of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, a story that similarly sets the scene in discussions of Qumran and early Judaism.2 One of the most popular retellings of the story is told at the beginning of Elaine Pagels’s seminal Gnostic Gospels: In December 1945 an Arab peasant made an astonishing archeological discovery in Upper Egypt … Thirty years later the discoverer himself, Muhammad ‘Ali al- Samman, told what happened. Shortly before he and his br