Nag Hammâdi is a village in the middle of Egypt, called Chenoboskion in classical antiquity , about 225 kilometres north-west of Aswan with some 30.000 citizens. It is mostly a peasant area where goods such as sugar and aluminium are produced.
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2 List of Codices Found in Nag Hammadi 3 References 4 External links |
Nag Hammadi is best known for being the site where in 1946 thirteen codices were found buried in a sealed jar. The writings in these codices are mostly Gnostic treatises, but they also include three works belonging to the Corpus Hermeticum and a partial translation of Plato's Republic. The codices are believed to be a library, hidden by monks from a monastery in the area when these writings were banned by the Orthodox Church.
The contents of the codices were written in Coptic, though the works were mostly (all?) translations from Greek. Most famous of these works must be the Gospel of Thomas, of which the Nag Hammadi codices contain the only complete copy. After the discovery it was recognized that fragments of these sayings of Jesus appeared in manuscripts that had been discovered at Oxyrhynchus in 1898, and quotations were recognized in other early Christian sources. The 1st or 2nd century date of the lost Greek originals behind the Coptic translations is controverted, but the manuscripts themselves are from the 3rd and 4th centuries.
The Nag Hammadi Library
List of Codices Found in Nag Hammadi
See also: The Sophia of Jesus ChristReferences
External links
