Introduction!
The Nag Hammadi library consists of a dozen leather-bound vellum codices discovered by two Egyptian fellahin searching for fertilizer and one jar full of texts. The texts discovered in 1945 have preserved Hellenistic philosophical texts, Hermetic texts, astrological texts, alchemical texts, and documents of ancient Gnosticism and early Christianity that were meant for destruction. It wasn't until 1947, after an unfortunate incident involving the sale of some texts that were part of the find, that the full discovery became known.
Gnosis is a Greek word, and its root gnosis means "knowledge." It was used by early Church fathers to describe people seeking knowledge beyond what the Church was teaching, as well as its revelation to initiate believers and single them out from the secular world.
Gnosis, according to Church fathers, was a direct knowledge of God as God, acquired not through conventional worship or tradition but by one's intuition and superior psychic faculties. Recurring themes in Gnostic texts include Valentinian Christian ideas, Hermetic speculation, middle Platonism, Stoic notions concerning cosmic differentiation and moral theory, syncretic religiosity, and Jewish Sapiential speculation.
An emphasis on secret teachings, an innovative explanation of creation and humankind (including mystical and soteriological elements), interest in cosmogony and apocalyptic speculation may be noted as well. Despite their stylistic diversity, Gnostic texts share a vision and range from a simple allegorical exegesis of a well-known biblical text to intense heretical debate with proto-orthodox accounts. And, although Gnostic texts appeal to readers as radically wrong, particularly from a particular orthodox perspective, they logically belong to the early Christian milieu, where orthodoxy, as well as heresy, became increasingly defined. Consequently, Gnostic texts represent a significant resource for charting the beliefs and practices of early Christian churches.
Background
The discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts in 1945/46 brought about an upsurge of interest in Gnosticism and Manichaeism, filling in major lacunae in the history of philosophical and theological thought. Redaction of these texts should contribute to the understanding of the complex history of early Christian efforts to authenticate and proffer interpretations of gospel materials, appropriated texts, and the overarching moral and religious theories that masqueraded behind the fictive names of famous individuals of scriptural lore.
It also makes possible an understanding of contemporary philosophical and theological thought, which can approximate some degree of continuity with the historic documents that are the progenitors of today's nearly innumerable findings that spring without equivalent vigilance. The search for these particulars is made context-sensitive by extra-canonical contents and the rewriting technique of which they form a part.
This introduction, which only touched upon those texts discovered in December 1945, begins with a brief sketch of datable events, which are arranged chronologically with reference to the first half of the 20th century, the mid-45th century, and a little beyond that time. The summary conclusion repeats a very few of the associations in an effort to now recast some central themes. Extensive characterizations will later be taken up, with the elucidatory opinion or conjecture stated by a scholar whose work on the sayings and actions of Jesus is presented here in literary and philosophical light.
Gnosticism comprises a vast and diverse body of religious thought dating back to the early Christian era and extending itself into the quite recent modern era through offshoots. It hardly identifies itself as a "religion," since it is traditionally the older religions, particularly Judaism and Christianity, that existed in its formative time and reacted to preset conditions.
However, Gnosticism is considered here as a belief system in its own right, with a separate existence apart from what it has influenced. Modern interpretations among scholars draw a distinction between the adherents of this belief system themselves and the scholars who currently study Gnostic texts and what is known about people who believed in them.
The literature of Gnosticism is vast and daunting, including a written tradition that extends through many centuries. It is part of the pseudepigrapha, writings adopting well-known labels from the past to bolster their legitimacy, or writers trying to lend credibility to their ideas or to entertain.
These can be from various religious or philosophical traditions, including Christian, Hermetic, or even Valentinian. This tendency was roundly criticized, as it makes the original authors anonymous and therefore assumes that their intended purpose in writing will be easily preserved in the popular mind without the use of even the slightest bit of original creativity in the conceptual realm.
Defining Gnosticism
The term 'Gnosticism', or 'Gnosis', derives from the Greek word 'gnosis' and Hebrew 'da'at', both meaning 'knowledge'. The Gnostic is the 'knower', and 'Gnosis' is not any type of knowledge but refers specifically to knowledge of God, a saving knowledge or knowledge of the way of salvation. Within Gnosticism, this is the supreme type of knowledge; the term 'Gnosticism' specifically refers to those religious systems offering 'salvation by knowledge'. In the most general sense, for the Gnostic, knowledge begets salvation, and the self is then transformed through the acquisition of this knowledge. Identifying 'Gnosticism' becomes very problematic; scholars struggle to offer a comprehensive definition.
One popular method often found in dictionaries is to list various features such as the role of secret knowledge, dualistic cosmology and morality, and docetic Christology, to establish a 'core'.
Clearly, there are very different systems to consider, as some of the features that some so-called Gnostic systems have are not to be found in others. Some systems are monotheistic and others emphatically not. Some appear to be anticosmic and others have a very positive attitude toward the world. Some seem to have a moralistic and ascetic ethical system, and others are antinomian.
They were diverse in the variety of ways in which they held human life as alienated from the divine, and also in their views as to how the alienation came about and what can be done to overcome it.
All that can be said on this matter is that 'Gnosticism' is a modern scholarly term, and that the word was not used by the Christian heresiologist until it was used in the second half of the second century, and even then, we cannot be sure that it is being employed in any kind of technical sense.
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