Gnosticism: Encyclopedia II - Gnosticism - Sources

Gnosticism - Sources

Gnosticism - Heresiologists and gnostic detractors

Prior to the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945 (arguably until its translation and eventual publication in 1977), gnosticism was known primarily only through the works of heresiologists, Church Fathers who worked to chronicle those movements perceived to be deviating from the developing orthodox church, and to refute their teachings as they did so, with the ultimate aim of demonstrating their moral inferiority. The problems with such sources are immediately apparent: given the avowed antagonism of such writers to that which they reported, could they be trusted to maintain accuracy, despite their bias. Despite such concerns, and the tendency of heresiologists to summarize rather than reproduce gnostic sources, they remained almost the only material available for analysis.

The list below briefly details the works of several of the more significant of the heresiologists; however, the list could be expanded to contain Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Epiphanius of Salamis, and others. The analytical tactics employed by each heresiologist will also be given, where possible.

Justin Martyr (ca. 100/114 – ca. 162/168), the early Christian apologist, wrote the First Apology to Roman Emperor Antonius Pius, which mentions his lost 'Compendium Against the Heretics', a work which reputedly reports on the activities of Simon Magus , Menander and Marcion; since this time, both Simon and Menander have been considered as 'proto-gnostic' (Markschies, Gnosis, 37). Despite this paucity of surviving texts Justin Martyr remains a useful historical figure, as he allows us to determine the time and context in which the first gnostic systems arose.

Irenaeus' central work, which was written ca. 180-185 CE, is commonly known by the Latin title Adversus Haereses ('Against the Heretics'). The full title is Conviction and Refutation of Knowledge So-Called, and it is collected in five volumes. The work is apparently a reaction against Greek merchants who were apparently conducting an oratorial campaign concerning a quest for knowledge amongst Irenaeus' Gaulish bishopric.

Irenaeus' general approach in Adversus Haereses was to identify Simon Magus from Flavia Neapolis in Samaria (modern-day Palestine) as the inceptor of gnosticism, 'its source and root' (Adversus Haereses, I.22.2). From there he charted an apparent spread of the teachings of Simon through the ancient 'knowers', as he calls them, into the teachings of Valentinus and other, contemporary gnostic sects. This understanding of the transmission of gnostic ideas, despite Irenaeus' certain antagonistic bias, is often utilized today, though it has been criticized.

Against the teachings of his opponents, which Irenaeus presented as confused and ill-organized, Irenaeus recommended a simple faith that all could follow, 'oriented on the criterion of truth that had come down in the church from the apostles to those in positions of responsibility' (Markschies, Gnosis, 30-31). Therefore Irenaeus' work might justifiably seen as an early attempt by a Christian writer to posit the idea of a fully-formed orthodoxy transmitted from the apostles directly after Christ's death and which in support possesses a rigourously-defined hierarchical authority. From such a stable and superior authority heresies according divide by deviation from the norm it maintains, rather than developing alongside it by alterate yet related lines.

Hippolytus was an early Christian writer elected as the first Antipope in 217. He died as a martyr in 235. He was known for his polemical works against the Jews, pagans and heretics; the most important of these being the seven-volume Refutatio Omnium Haeresium ('Refutation Against all Heresies'), of which only fragments are known.

Of all the groups reported upon by Hippolytus, 33 are considered gnostic by modern scholars, including 'the foreigners' and 'the Seth people'. As well as this, he presents individual teachers such as Simon, Valentinus, Secundus, Ptolemy, Heracleon, Marcus and Colorbasus; however, Hippolytus rarely reproduces sources, instead tending only to report titles. Of greater interest, a sect known to Hippolytus as the 'Naasenes' frequently called themselves 'knowers': 'They take [their] name from the Hebrew word snake. Later they called themselves knowers, since they claimed that they alone knew the depths of wisdom' (Refutatio, V.6.3f).

Hippolytus considered the groups he surveyed to have become involved in Greek philosophy to their detriment; through its influence becoming hopelessly confused, having grievously misunderstood its foundations and arrived thus at illogical constructions (Markschies, Gnosis, 33).

Tertullian (Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, ca. 155–230) was a prolific writer from Carthage, the region that is now modern Tunisia. He wrote a text entitled Adversus Valentinianos ('Against the Valentinians'), ca. 206, as well as five books around 207-208 chronicling and refuting the teachings of Marcion.

Gnosticism - Gnostic texts preserved before 1945

Prior to the discovery at Nag Hammadi, only the following texts were availible to students of gnosticism. Reconstructions were attempted from the records of the heresiologists, but these were necessarily coloured by the motivation behind the source accounts (see above).

• Works preserved by the Church:
  • Acts of Thomas (Especially The Hymn of the Pearl and The Hymn of the Robe of Glory)
  • The Acts of John (Especially The Hymn of Jesus)
• The Askew Codex (British Museum, bought in 1784):
  • Pistis Sophia: Books of the Savior
• The Bruce Codex (discovered by James Bruce):
  • The Gnosis of the Invisible God or The Books of Jeu
  • The Untitled Apocalypse or The Gnosis of the Light
• The Berlin Codex or The Akhmim Codex (found in Akhmim, Egypt):
  • The Gospel of Mary
  • The Acts of Peter
  • The Wisdom of Jesus Christ
• Unknown origin:
  • The Secret Gospel of Mark
  • The Hermetica

Gnosticism - The Nag Hammadi library

For a complete list of the texts found at Nag Hammadi, please see the Nag Hammadi article; to see a list showing which texts were attached to the different gnostic schools, see below.

The story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945 has been described as 'exciting as the contents of the find itself' (Markschies, Gnosis: An Introduction, 48). In December of that year, two Egyptian brothers found several papyri in a large earthernware vessel while digging for fertilizer around some limestone caves near present-day Habra Dom in Upper Egypt. The find was not initially reported by either of the brother, who sought to make money from the manuscripts by selling them individually at intervals. It is also reported that the brothers' mother burned several of the manuscripts, worried, apparently, that the papers might have 'dangerous effects' (Markschies, Gnosis, 48). As a result, what came to be known as the Nag Hammadi library (owing to the proximity of the find to Nag Hammadi, the nearest major settlement) appeared only gradually, and its significance went unacknowledged until some time after its initial uncovering.

In 1946, the brothers became involved in a feud, and left the manuscripts with a Coptic priest, whose brother-in-law in October that year sold a codex to the Coptic Museum in Old Cairo (this tract is today numbered Codex III in the collection). The resident Coptologist and religious historian Jean Dorese, realising the significance of the artefact, published the first reference to it in 1948. Over the years, most of the tracts were passed by the priest to a Cypriot antiques dealer in Cairo, thereafter being retained by the Department of Antiquities, for fear that they would be sold out of the country. After the revolution in 1956, these texts were handed to the Coptic Musuem in Cairo, and declared national property.

Meanwhile, a single codex had been sold in Cairo to a Belgian antique dealer. After an attempt was made to sell the codex in both New York and Paris, it was acquired by the Carl Gustav Jung Institute in Zurich in 1951, through the mediation of Gilles Quispel. There it was intended as a birthday present to the famous psychologist; for this reason, this codex is typically known as the Jung Codex, being Codex I in the collection.

Jung's death in 1961 caused a quarrel over the ownership of the Jung Codex, with the result that the pages were not handed over the Coptic Musuem in Cairo until 1975, after a first edition of the text had been published. Thus the papyri were finally brought together in Cairo: of the 1945 find, eleven complete books and fragments of two others, 'amounting to well over 1000 written pages' (Markschies, Gnosis: An Introduction, 49) are preserved there.

The first edition of a text found at Nag Hammadi was from the Jung Codex, a partial translation of which appeared in Cairo in 1956, and a single extensive facsimile edition was planned. Due to the difficult political circumstances in Egypt, individual tracts followed from the Cairo and Zurich collections only slowly.

This state of affairs changed only in 1966, with the holding of the Messina Congress in Italy. At this conference, intended to allow scholars to arrive at a group concensus concerning the definition of gnosticism, James M. Robinson, an expert on religion, assembled a group of editors and translators whose express task was to publish a bilingual edition of the Nag Hammadi codices in English, in collaboration with the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity in Claremont, California. Robinson had been elected secretary of the International Committee for the Nag Hammadi Codices, which had been formed in 1970 by UNESCO and the Egyptian Ministry of Culture; it was in this capacity that he oversaw the project. In the meantime, a facsimile edition in twelve volumes did appear between 1972 and 1977, with subsequent additions in 1979 and 1984 from publisher E.J. Brill in Leiden, called The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices, making the whole find available for all interested parties to study in some form.

At the same time, in the former German Democratic Republic a group of scholars - including Alexander Bohlig, Martin Krause and New Testament scholars Gesine Schenke, Hans-Martin Schenke and Hans-Gebhard Bethge - were preparing the first German translation of the find. The last three scholars prepared a complete scholarly translation under the asupices of the Berlin Humboldt University, which was published in 2001.

The James M. Robinson translation was first published in 1977, with the name The Nag Hammadi Library in English, in collaboration between E.J. Brill and Harper & Row. The single-volume publication, according to Robinson, 'marked the end of one stage of Nag Hammadi scholarship and the beginning of another' (from the Preface to the third revised edition). Paperback editions followed in 1981 and 1984, from E.J. Brill and Harper respectively. This marks the final stage in the gradual dispersal of gnostic texts into the wider public arena - the full compliment of codices was final available in unadulterated form to people around the world, in a variety of languages.

A further English edition was published in 1987, by Harvard scholar Bentley Layton, called The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation with Annotations (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1987). The volume unified new translations from the Nag Hammadi Library with extracts from the heresiological writers, and other gnostic material. It remains, along with The Nag Hammadi Library in English one of the more accessible volumes translating the Nag Hammadi find, with extensive historical introductions to individual gnostic groups, notes on translation, annotations to the text and the organisation of tracts into clearly defined movements.

Prior to the publication of the translations of Nag Hammadi the only available sources for gnostic material were, as has been noted, heresiological writings. These suffered from a number of difficulties, not least the antagonistic bias the writers held towards gnostic teachings. Several heresiological writers, such as Hippolytus, made little effort to exactly record the nature of the sects they reported on, or transcribe their sacred texts, but instead gave us only titles and extended commentaries on their perceived heretical mistakes. Reconstructions were attempted from the available evidence, but the resulting portraits of gnosticism and its central texts were necessarily crude, and deeply suspect. The ability to overcome such problems provided by the Nag Hammadi codices need hardly be noted.

Of greatest difficulty was the fact that, prior to the publication of the codices, theological investigators, in order to proceed, could not help but to subscribe at least in part to the view of the heresiologists that gnosticism marked a heretical deviation from a fully-formed orthodox Christianity in the three centuries immediately following Christ's death. The availability of original texts not only allowed an unsullied transmission of gnostic ideas, but also demonstrated the fluidity of early Christian scripture and, by extension, Christianity itself. As Layton notes 'the lack of uniformity in ancient Christian scripture in the early period is very striking, and it points to the substantial diversity within the Chrisitian religion' (Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures, xviii).

Thus, although it is still correct to speak of early Christianity as a single tradition, it is also a complex network of competing sects and and individual parties, which express their competitiveness through differences in their scriptural interests. These differences may have arisen as much from differences in cultural, linguistic and social milieus, the coexistence of essentially different theological conceptions of Jesus, as well as the differences in the philosophical or symbolic systems in which early Christian writers might express themselves. As such, the Nag Hammadi libary offers a glimpse of the set of circulating texts that would have been of interest to a Christian in a gnostic milieu (rather than as a gnostic canon in and of itself) and thus potentially provides an insight into the gnostic mind itself.

It was only with the advent of emperor Constantine (272–337) and the Council of Nicaea in 325, which cemented the growing acceptance of Christianity as the officially sanctioned religion of the Roman Empire, that a structurally coherent and crystallized form of orthdox Christianity began to emerge. The Nag Hammadi library offers an intriguing source of texts whose intended exclusion as much drived the formation of an orthodox scriptural canon as did the desire to include certain other texts, now well known. 'Orthodox Christian doctrine of the ancient world - and thus of the modern church - was partly conceived of as being what gnostic scripture was not' (Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures; emphasis writer's own). Thus a study of gnostic scripture might also obliquely increase our knowledge of both early Christianity, the intentions of the orthodox formulators, the effect of social setting on early Christian expression, and the Judaic foundations it rests upon.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Sources", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki