The Nag Hammadi Codices and Late Antique Egypt 3161539737, 9783161539732, 9783161552472

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Acknowledgements
Table of Contents
Abbreviations
HUGO LUNDHAUG AND LANCE JENOTT — Introduction: The Nag Hammadi Codices in Context
Part I: The Monastic Life
JON F. DECHOW — The Nag Hammadi Milieu: An Assessment in the Light of the Origenist Controversies
JAMES E. GOEHRING — The Material Encoding of Early Christian Division: Nag Hammadi Codex VII and the Ascetic Milieu in Upper Egypt
MELISSA HARL SELLEW — Reading Jesus in the Desert: The Gospel of Thomas Meets the Apophthegmata Patrum
BLOSSOM STEFANIW — Hegemony and Homecoming in the Ascetic Imagination: Sextus, Silvanus, and Monastic Instruction in Egypt
Part II: Egyptian Christianity and its Literature
DYLAN M. BURNS — Magical, Coptic, Christian: The Great Angel Eleleth and the ‘Four Luminaries’ in Egyptian Literature of the First Millennium CE
JULIO CESAR DIAS CHAVES — From the Apocalypse of Paul to Coptic Epic Passions: Greeting Paul and the Martyrs in Heaven
ULLA TERVAHAUTA — The Soul Flees to Her Treasure where Her Mind Is: Scriptural Allusions in the Authentikos Logos
Part III: Religious Diversity in Egypt
CHRISTIAN H. BULL — Hermes between Pagans and Christians: The Nag Hammadi Hermetica in Context
RENÉ FALKENBERG — What Has Nag Hammadi to Do with Medinet Madi? The Case of Eugnostos and Manichaeism
PAULA TUTTY — Books of the Dead or Books with the Dead? Interpreting Book Depositions in Late Antique Egypt
Part IV: Scribes and Manuscripts
HUGO LUNDHAUG — The Dishna Papers and the Nag Hammadi Codices: The Remains of a Single Monastic Library?
LOUIS PAINCHAUD — The Production and Destination of the Nag Hammadi Codices
MICHAEL A. WILLIAMS AND DAVID COBLENTZ — A Reexamination of the Articulation Marks in Nag Hammadi Codices II and XIII
CHRISTIAN ASKELAND — Dating Early Greek and Coptic Literary Hands
List of Contributors
Index of Subjects

Citation preview

Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum Studies and Texts in Antiquity and Christianity Herausgeber/Editors Christoph Markschies (Berlin) · Martin Wallraff (München) Christian Wildberg (Princeton) Beirat/Advisory Board Peter Brown (Princeton) · Susanna Elm (Berkeley) Johannes Hahn (Münster) · Emanuela Prinzivalli (Rom) Jörg Rüpke (Erfurt)

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The Nag Hammadi Codices and Late Antique Egypt Edited by

Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott

Mohr Siebeck

Hugo Lundhaug, born 1970; 2000 Cand. philol. in the History of Religions from the University of Oslo; 2007 Dr. art. in the History of Religions from the University of Bergen; currently Professor of Theology (Biblical Reception and Early Christian Literature) at the University of Oslo, Faculty of Theology. Lance Jenott, born 1980; studied History, Classics, and Religion at the University of Washington (Seattle) and Princeton University; PhD in the Religions of Late Antiquity from Princeton University; currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo, Faculty of Theology.

ISBN 978-3-16-153973-2 / eISBN 978-3-16-155247-2 ISSN 1436-3003 (Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum) Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

© 2018 by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. www.mohr.de This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was printed by Laupp & Göbel in Gomaringen on non-aging paper and bound by Buchbinderei Nädele in Nehren. Printed in Germany.

Acknowledgements The editors would especially like to thank the European Research Council, without whose generous funding of the research project New Contexts for Old Texts: Unorthodox Texts and Monastic Manuscript Culture in Fourthand Fifth-Century Egypt (NEWCONT) 1 this book would not have been produced. We are also grateful to the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oslo for hosting the project, and to our colleagues for making it such an enjoyable place to work. Special thanks go to fellow members of NEWCONT Christian Bull and Kristine Toft Rosland as well as close associates Paula Tutty and Lloyd Abercrombie, for countless valuable research discussions and feedback. In addition, Lloyd Abercrombie and Keiko Abercrombie Tomita produced the volume’s index. We would also like to thank the chief theology editor at Mohr Siebeck, Henning Ziebritzki, the series editors, Christoph Markschies, Christian Wildberg, and Martin Walraff, as well as the production manager, Susanne Mang, for their careful, patient, and efficient efforts. Countless colleagues around the world, far too many to mention, have also contributed through scholarly exchanges at conferences and seminars, and a special mention in this regard goes to all the participants of the NEWCONT meetings in Oslo 2012–2016. Above all, however, we would like to express our most sincere gratitude to all the contributors of the present volume. We very much appreciate the effort and patience put into this work by everyone involved. Oslo, December 2017

Hugo Lundhaug Lance Jenott

1 The NEWCONT project is funded by the ERC under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) / ERC Grant agreement no 283741. 

Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................... V Table of Contents ................................................................................... VII Abbreviations .......................................................................................... IX HUGO LUNDHAUG AND LANCE JENOTT Introduction: The Nag Hammadi Codices in Context ............................... 1

Part I: The Monastic Life JON F. DECHOW The Nag Hammadi Milieu: An Assessment in the Light of the Origenist Controversies .................... 11 JAMES E. GOEHRING The Material Encoding of Early Christian Division: Nag Hammadi Codex VII and the Ascetic Milieu in Upper Egypt .......... 53 MELISSA HARL SELLEW Reading Jesus in the Desert: The Gospel of Thomas Meets the Apophthegmata Patrum ..................... 81 BLOSSOM STEFANIW Hegemony and Homecoming in the Ascetic Imagination: Sextus, Silvanus, and Monastic Instruction in Egypt ............................ 107

Part II: Egyptian Christianity and its Literature DYLAN M. BURNS Magical, Coptic, Christian: The Great Angel Eleleth and the ‘Four Luminaries’ in Egyptian Literature of the First Millennium CE ........... 141 JULIO CESAR DIAS CHAVES From the Apocalypse of Paul to Coptic Epic Passions: Greeting Paul and the Martyrs in Heaven ............................................. 163

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ULLA TERVAHAUTA The Soul Flees to Her Treasure where Her Mind Is: Scriptural Allusions in the Authentikos Logos ....................................................................... 183

Part III: Religious Diversity in Egypt CHRISTIAN H. BULL Hermes between Pagans and Christians: The Nag Hammadi Hermetica in Context ............................................. 207 RENÉ FALKENBERG What Has Nag Hammadi to Do with Medinet Madi? The Case of Eugnostos and Manichaeism ............................................. 261 PAULA TUTTY Books of the Dead or Books with the Dead? Interpreting Book Depositions in Late Antique Egypt .......................... 287

Part IV: Scribes and Manuscripts HUGO LUNDHAUG The Dishna Papers and the Nag Hammadi Codices: The Remains of a Single Monastic Library? ......................................... 329 LOUIS PAINCHAUD The Production and Destination of the Nag Hammadi Codices ............ 387 MICHAEL A. WILLIAMS AND DAVID COBLENTZ A Reexamination of the Articulation Marks in Nag Hammadi Codices II and XIII ............................................................................... 427 CHRISTIAN ASKELAND Dating Early Greek and Coptic Literary Hands .................................... 457 List of Contributors ............................................................................... 491 Index of Subjects .................................................................................. 493

Abbreviations ActIr ADAI.K Aeg AGJU AJP AnBoll ANRW ANTF APF Ap. Patr. ASAE BAB.L BASP BCNH BCNH.C BCNH.É BCNH.T BEHE.R BETL BG BKP BIE BIFAO BJRL BO BSac BSAC ByzZ BZNW CBC CBM CBQ CCR CCSL CH CH ChrEg CM

Acta Iranica Abhandlungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Kairo, Koptische Reihe Aegyptus Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums American Journal of Philology Analecta Bollandiana Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt Arbeiten zur neutestamentlichen Textforschung Archiv für Papyrusforschung Apophthegmata Patrum Annales du service des antiquités de l’Egypte Bulletin de l’Académie royale de Belgique: Classe des lettres et des sciences morales et politiques Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Concordances” Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Études” Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Textes” Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Sciences Religieuses Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium Berlin Gnostic Codex (P. Berol. 8502) Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie Bulletin de l’Institut Égyptien Bulletin de l'institut français d'archéologie orientale Bulletin of the John Rylands Library Bibliotheca Orientalis Bibliotheca sacra Bulletin de la Société d’archéologie copte Byzantinische Zeitschrift Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft Cahiers de la Bibliothèque copte Chester Beatty Monographs Catholic Biblical Quarterly Coptic Church Review Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina Corpus Hermeticum Church History Chronique d’Egypte Cursor Mundi

X CNRS ConBNT CRAI CRINT CS CSCO CSCO.S CSQ CUFr ECCA ECF EPRO ETL ExpTim FH FRLANT G1, G2, etc. GCS GCS.NF GRBS Hors. Reg. HTR Hyp IBAES ICS JAC JAOS JARCE JBL JCoptS JCSCS JEA JECS JJP JNES JPT JRH JRS JSNT JTS LCL LEGC LTP MDAI MDAI.K MH MRE Mus

Abbreviations Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Coniectanea biblica: New Testament Series Comptes rendus de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres Compendia rerum iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum Cistercian Studies Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, Subsidia Cistercian Studies Quarterly Collections des universités de France Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity The Early Church Fathers Etudes préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l'Empire romain Ephemerides theologicae lovanienses Expository Times Fragmenta Hermetica Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments First Greek Life of Pachomius, Second Greek Life of Pachomius, etc. Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte: Neue Folge Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies Regulations of Horsiesios Harvard Theological Review Hypomnemata Internet-Beiträge zur Ägyptologie und Sudanarchäologie Illinois Classical Studies Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Coptic Studies Journal for the Canadian Society of Coptic Studies Journal of Egyptian Archaeology Journal of Early Christian Studies Journal of Juristic Papyrology Journal of Near Eastern Studies International Journal of the Platonic Tradition Journal of Religious History Journal of Roman Studies Journal for the Study of the New Testament Journal of Theological Studies Loeb Classical Library Letteratura egiziana gnostica e cristiana Laval théologique et philosophique Mitteilungen des Deutschen archäologischen Instituts Mitteilungen des Deutschen archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo Museum Helveticum Monographies Reine Elisabeth Le Muséon

Abbreviations NHC NHMS NHS NovT NovTSup NPNF2 NTOA NTS NTTS OCP OECGT OECS OGIS OLA OLZ OPIAC PAM PapyBrux PapyCol Paral. PatSor PEES.GR PG PGM PLB Pr. PTA PTS QSGKAM RB RGRW RHPR RHR RSPT RSR R&T S1, S2, etc. SAA SAC SBLSP SBLSymS SBo SC SGM SH SHR SNTSMS

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Nag Hammadi Codex/Codices Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies Nag Hammadi Studies Novum Testamentum Supplements to Novum Testamentum Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2 Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus New Testament Studies New Testament Tools and Studies Orientalia christiana periodica Oxford Early Christian Gospel Texts Oxford Early Christian Studies Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae. Edited by Wilhelm Dittenberger Orientalia lovaniensia analecta Orientalistische Literaturzeitung Institute for Antiquity and Christianity Occasional Papers Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean Papyrologica Bruxellensia Papyrologica Coloniensia Paralipomena Patristica Sorbonensia Publications of the Egypt Exploration Society, Graeco Roman Memoirs Patrologia graeca. Edited by J.-P. Migne Papyri Graecae Magicae: Die griechischen Zauberpapyri Papyrologica Lugduno-Batava Praecepta Papyrologische Texte und Abhandlungen Patristische Texte und Studien Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Altertums und des Mittelalters Revue biblique Religions of the Graeco-Roman World Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses Revue de l’histoire des religions Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques Recherches de Science Religieuse Religion and Theology First Sahidic Life of Pachomius, Second Sahidic Life of Pachomius, etc. Studia Antiqua Australiensia Studies in Antiquity and Christianity Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series Recension of the Life of Pachomius represented by the Bo, Av, S4, S5, S6, S7, etc. (compiled and translated by Armand Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, vol. 1) Sources chrétiennes Sources gnostiques et manichéennes Stobaei Hermetica Studies in the History of Religions (supplements to Numen) Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series

XII SNTW SPNPT STAC StPatr TC Theoph TLZ TS TUGAL TVOA TynBul VC WGRV WUNT YCS ZAC ZÄSA ZDMG ZNW ZPE

Abbreviations Studies of the New Testament and Its World Studies in Platonism, Neoplatonism, and the Platonic Tradition Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum / Studies and Texts in Antiquity and Christianity Studia Patristica TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism Theophaneia Theologische Literaturzeitung Theological Studies Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur Testi del Vicino Oriente antico Tyndale Bulletin Vigiliae Christianae Writings from the Greco-Roman World Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Yale Classical Studies Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik

Introduction: The Nag Hammadi Codices in Context HUGO LUNDHAUG AND LANCE JENOTT Somewhere in Upper Egypt in the fourth and fifth centuries CE someone manufactured and read the ancient papyrus books that are now known as the Nag Hammadi Codices. They are rather basic, mostly single-quire,1 codices, inscribed with texts in Coptic, and covered with protective leather bindings stiffened with cartonnage created by bits and pieces of used papyrus pasted together. Although there is sporadic decoration to be found both within some of the books and on one of the leather covers,2 they have a distinctly utilitarian look. They were clearly made to be read, not to be put on display. In order to understand who read them, and why, however, it is necessary to study them in the context of the religious and literary culture of late antique Egypt. Yet since their discovery in 1945 most research on these enigmatic manuscripts has been directed elsewhere. The bulk of scholarship on the Nag Hammadi corpus has focused on these texts as examples of “Gnosticism,” in the context of the diversity of Christianity in the second and third centuries. From this perspective, they have been interpreted in light of a range of hypothetical contexts of authorship distributed across the Roman world, from Rome to Edessa, Antioch, and Alexandria, to mention some of the most popular locations. Less attention has been payed to the Nag Hammadi Codices’ specifically Egyptian context and a reading of the texts as part of Egyptian Christianity at the time when the surviving manuscripts were used, in the fourth and fifth centuries. The contributions in the present volume aim toward remedying this situation by studying the Nag Hammadi Codices, and their texts, in light of the time and place where they were manufactured and read. Thus the following chapters focus on the texts as they appear in extant manuscripts rather than on hypothetical originals, in the Coptic language rather than in Greek, on the fourth and fifth centuries rather than the second and third, on Egypt, and especially Upper Egypt, rather than the 1 2

One exception being Nag Hammadi Codex I, which has three quires of unequal length. There is decoration on the cover of Codex II.

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rest of the Roman world.3 This approach, which places the producers and users of the manuscripts in focus, also entails an emphasis on monasticism, and on monastic literary culture and manuscript culture in particular. In short, this book participates in a significant turn towards the concrete material reality of these fascinating early Christian texts and the manuscripts that contain them.4 In recent years a driving force behind this turn in scholarly perspective has been the research project New Contexts for Old Texts: Unorthodox Texts and Monastic Manuscript Culture in Fourth- and Fifth-Century Egypt (NEWCONT) at the University of Oslo, a project generously supported by a grant from the European Research Council.5 The goal of the project has been to analyze the production, use, and contents of the Nag Hammadi Codices and similar Coptic manuscripts in the context of the early monastic movement in Egypt.6 The contributors to this volume consist of members of the NEWCONT project and collaborators who have contributed to the project through seminars, conferences, and scholarly correspondence. Most of the contributions to the present volume were first presented at the NEWCONT conference entitled “The Nag Hammadi Codices in the Context of Fourth- and Fifth-Century Christianity in Egypt,” held at the University of Oslo 16–17 December, 2013.

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This approach is much inspired by the recommendations of Stephen Emmel, “Religious Tradition, Textual Transmission, and the Nag Hammadi Codices,” in The Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years: Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration (ed. John D. Turner and Anne McGuire; NHMS 44; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 34–43; and Tito Orlandi, “Nag Hammadi Texts and the Coptic Literature,” in Colloque international “l’Évangile selon Thomas et les textes de Nag Hammadi”: Québec, 29–31 mai 2003 (ed. Louis Painchaud and Paul-Hubert Poirier; BCNH.É 8; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2007), 323–34. 4 Many of the contributions in the present volume can be said to employ a methodology inspired by the so-called New Philology. On the history of New Philology and examples of its application to early Jewish and Christian manuscripts, including the Nag Hammadi Codices, see Liv Ingeborg Lied and Hugo Lundhaug, eds., Snapshots of Evolving Traditions: Jewish and Christian Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New Philology (TUGAL 175; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017). 5 Funded by the European Research Council (ERC) through a Starting Independent Researcher Grant (Starting Grant) under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) / ERC Grant agreement no 283741. The grant was awarded to Hugo Lundhaug in 2011. 6 A representative example of this approach, and a substantial product of the NEWCONT-project, is constituted by the editors’ monograph The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices (STAC 97; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015). For an up-to-date list of the project’s publications and information regarding its members and activities, see http://www.tf.uio.no/english/research/projects/newcont/.

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The editors have organized the volume into four sections to highlight special themes: I. The Monastic Life; II. Egyptian Christianity and its Literature; III. Religious Diversity in Egypt; and IV. Scribes and Manuscripts. The chapters in Part I, The Monastic Life, focus especially on how the Nag Hammadi Codices and their texts supported those who sought transformation in the ascetic life and the monastic communities taking shape from the fourth century onward. The first chapter, by Jon Dechow, “The Nag Hammadi Milieu: An Assessment in the Light of the Origenist Controversies,” has a unique history of its own, as it publishes for the first time a paper he presented in 1982 at the AAR Western Region Annual Meeting, and which has often been cited in scholarship on the Upper Egyptian monastic environment of the codices. Dechow situates the codices within Pachomian monasticism and the theological controversies over the legacy of Origen that erupted toward the end of the fourth century. Through a detailed analysis of evidence from Pachomian sources, he illustrates the economic life of Pachomian monasteries and the logistics necessary for their operations. This picture, in turn, supports the view that the more economically-oriented cartonnage documents from the covers of the codices stem from the practical side of monastery life. In an extended appendix to the original paper, Dechow discusses how the Nag Hammadi Codices could have been understood within Christian orthodoxy of the fourth and fifth centuries before more rigid definitions of orthodoxy were formulated. The next chapter, by James Goehring, “The Material Encoding of Early Christian Division: Nag Hammadi Codex VII and the Ascetic Milieu in Upper Egypt,” discusses how Codex VII fits into the broader geographical, social, and religious environment of late fourth-century Egypt, which witnessed drastic development, conflict, and consolidation within the monastic movement. Through an intertextual reading of the five tractates in Codex VII, Goehring highlights the unique spiritual identity that the codex as a whole encourages readers to adopt. The design of Codex VII, Goehring suggests, reflects a spiritually-oriented minority group in conflict with clerical authorities, especially over issues of Christology and bodily resurrection. Next, the chapter by Melissa Harl Sellew, “Reading Jesus in the Desert: The Gospel of Thomas Meets the Apophthegmata Patrum,” explores how ascetics in late antique Egypt would have found the teachings in the Gospel of Thomas (NHC II,2) to be beneficial in their quest for selftransformation. Sellew points to a number of shared themes between the Greek collections of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apophthegmata Patrum) and the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, including the ancient genre of chreiai, which was designed to edify and instruct readers through pithy sayings and short stories unbound to any particular framing narrative.

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Readers would have found in the Gospel of Thomas, as in the Apophthegmata Patrum, guidance for discovering the authentic self, for making ethical progress, and for living the interior life of the monachos. The final chapter in Part I, by Blossom Stefaniw, “Hegemony and Homecoming in the Ascetic Imagination: Sextus, Silvanus, and Monastic Instruction in Egypt,” analyzes the Sentences of Sextus (NHC XII,1) and the Teachings of Silvanus (NHC VII,4) from the perspective of monastic textuality, i.e., the kind of instructional texts read by monks, comparable to the guiding literature produced by figures such as Evagrius Ponticus and Antony (as he appears in his Letters). Such books guided ascetics on the path to master bodily passions and achieve victory over the adverse forces of distracting, troubling thoughts. This path was understood by monks as leading to the ultimate achievement of a masculinity that was characterized by total domination of one’s self. Through progressive detachment from this world, the ascetic sojourner travels the road toward a spiritual homecoming with God. Part II of the volume, Egyptian Christianity and its Literature, presents three case studies which show how texts and traditions in the Nag Hammadi Codices display continuities in contemporary and later Egyptian Literature. The chapter by Dylan Burns, “Magical, Coptic, Christian: The Great Angel Eleleth and the ‘Four Luminaries’ in Egyptian Literature of the First Millennium CE,” traces lore surrounding angelic figures wellknown from Nag Hammadi texts within the much wider world of Egyptian magical spells, amulets, and homilies. Burns demonstrates that these angels took on a life of their own far beyond Nag Hammadi, and suggests that it may have been the popularity and power of such angels that, in part, attracted the interests of those who owned the Codices in the first place. The Four Luminaries, traditionally associated with Gnostic angelology, are thus revealed as important figures within the traditions and ritual practices of Egyptian Christianity. Next, Julio Cesar Dias Chaves, in “From the Apocalypse of Paul to the Coptic Epic Passions: Greeting Paul and the Martyrs in Heaven,” examines common motifs shared between the Apocalypse of Paul (NHC V,2) and other Coptic stories of heavenly ascent, especially martyr hagiographies with narratives of the hero’s post-passion entrance to heaven. Chaves pays special attention to the motif of greetings in these narratives, according to which the hero greets, or is greeted by, the heavenly saints upon arrival. According to Chaves, the greeting-motif is far less commonly found in older Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature, but is quite common in Coptic ascents. The Apocalypse of Paul thus reflects ascent traditions common to the Coptic literature of its manuscript context and beyond, which would have been recognizable and intelligible to Coptic readers. In-

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deed, Chaves suggests the potentially controversial theology of the text, with an assumed subordinate, even adversarial creator-god, may have been less important to Coptic readers than its account of the apostle Paul’s journey to heaven and his meeting with the saints. The final chapter of Part II, by Ulla Tervahauta, “The Soul Flees to Her Treasure where Her Mind Is: Scriptural Allusions in the Authentikos Logos,” examines how biblical imagery (e.g., the Wheat and the Chaff, and the Treasure of the Heart) are adapted and intertwined into the unique narrative of the soul’s turbulent experience in the world and her return to her heavenly home as narrated in the Authentikos Logos (NHC VI,3). Tervahauta provides a detailed study of four scriptural allusions in this treatise, with illuminating discussion of how the same images were interpreted by other early Christian authors, including Clement, Origen, and Didymus the Blind, whose writings provided important inspiration for later Egyptian thinkers. Part III, Religious Diversity in Egypt, features studies of potential interaction between Egyptian Christians and other religious traditions in late antique Egypt. Christian Bull, in “Hermes between Pagans and Christians: The Nag Hammadi Hermetica in Context,” investigates how the Hermetic tractates in Nag Hammadi Codex VI might have been understood by the Christians who produced and read the codex. Bull first treats the evidence for Hermetic cult practices in fourth-century Egypt, especially in Upper Egypt, contemporary with and in proximity to the Nag Hammadi Codices; next, he discusses how Christians in late antiquity interpreted Hermetic texts and incorporated them into their theological works; and finally, he offers suggestions for how and why the Hermetic treatises in Codex VI were included in that collection to serve the interests of Christian monks. The next chapter, by René Falkenberg, “What Has Nag Hammadi to Do with Medinet Madi? The Case of Eugnostos and Manichaeism,” explores the possibility of a literary relationship between Manichaean texts from Upper Egypt and the treatise Eugnostos as preserved in two copies from Nag Hammadi (NHC III,3 and V,1) and in a rewritten version entitled the Wisdom of Jesus Christ (NHC III,4 and Berlin 8502,3). Previous studies have suggested that Nag Hammadi texts may have influenced Manichaean thought, based on the assumption that the original versions predate Manichaeism. Falkenberg turns the relationship around, and from the perspective of New Philology, argues that Manichaean theology may have influenced the rewriting of Christian texts such as Eugnostos. The final chapter of Part III, by Paula Tutty, “Books of the Dead or Books with the Dead? Interpreting Book Depositions in Late Antique Egypt,” challenges the suggestion that certain Christian books, including the Nag Hammadi Codices, were discovered as grave goods and therefore

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might be interpreted as Christian ‘Books of the Dead’ for aiding the soul’s journey to the afterlife. Tutty provides a detailed discussion of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, its history, contents, function, variety of forms, and development, and its eventual demise prior to the Christian period. She critically examines the evidence for Christian books found in graves, and reminds readers that the exact setting in which the Nag Hammadi Codices were buried remains unknown. Part IV, Scribes and Manuscripts, features studies of the Nag Hammadi texts and other Egyptian manuscripts that focus on issues of codicology, scribal practices, and paleography. Hugo Lundhaug, in “The Dishna Papers and the Nag Hammadi Codices: The Remains of a Single Monastic Library?” explores the possibility that the Nag Hammadi Codices and the Dishna Papers may stem from the Pachomian monastic federation. After reviewing the ongoing scholarly debate over which texts belong to the Dishna discovery, Lundhaug provides a detailed comparison of the two manuscript collections, with attention to codicology, paleography, scribal practices, languages, dialects, dating, and doctrinal contents. He responds to alternative theories which have highlighted the differences between the two collections, and ultimately concludes that the diversity of readings found in both groups reflects what one should expect from monasteries such as those of the Pachomians. The next chapter, by Louis Painchaud, “The Production and Destination of the Nag Hammadi Codices,” argues against the notion that the Nag Hammadi Codices constitute a single library and focuses instead on the identifiable sub-collections, each of which had its own history prior to being united with the others (perhaps only at the time of burial). Through an analysis of duplicate tractates within the overall collection, scribal notes, paleography, dialects, book-binding styles, and cartonnage documents, Painchaud distinguishes between the producers of the various subcollections and their destinations – that is, the people for whom they were copied. Next, Michael Williams and David Coblentz, in “A Reexamination of the Articulation Marks in Nag Hammadi Codices II and XIII,” present a statistical analysis of apostrophe marks in NHCs II and XIII, casting new light on old questions concerning how many scribes worked on the codices, the nature of their copying habits, and the relationship of the extant copies to their exemplars. Their analysis suggests that variation in orthographic features found among the seven tractates of Codex II is the result of the scribes’ adhering closely to different exemplars wherein such markings were already present. Furthermore, they find that the noticeable variation in scribal styles as well as usage of articulation marks suggests a

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group of scribes who, despite a similar training, also maintained their own personal styles. The volume’s final chapter, by Christian Askeland, “Dating Early Greek and Coptic Literary Hands,” critically evaluates the scholarly practice of dating manuscripts by paleography and reassesses the time periods in which many of them, biblical and otherwise, may have been produced. Through a preliminary examination of manuscripts that can be dated on grounds other than paleography, he challenges the widely accepted theory that book-hands developed linearly over time, with a rise, peak, and decline. Other features relevant for dating manuscripts are discussed, such as dialects, djinkim points, material (papyrus, parchment, paper), radiometrics, codicology, and provenance. Askeland ultimately cautions readers that many manuscripts assigned by paleography to dates as early as the fourth and fifth centuries may actually come from later periods, even the eighth and ninth centuries. In summary, the chapters in this volume contribute to the recent trend in scholarship on the Nag Hammadi Codices that seeks to integrate them into the history of Christianity in Egypt, to understand them as part of Egyptian Christianity’s literature, practices, controversies, and cultural productions. It is hoped that the breadth of topics discussed, the sources examined, and the methods used, will inspire further research in this direction. Bibliography Emmel, Stephen. “Religious Tradition, Textual Transmission, and the Nag Hammadi Codices.” Pages 34–43 in The Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years: Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration. Edited by John D. Turner and Anne McGuire. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 44. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Lied, Liv Ingeborg, and Hugo Lundhaug, eds. Snapshots of Evolving Traditions: Jewish and Christian Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New Philology. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 175. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017. Lundhaug, Hugo, and Lance Jenott. The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices. Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 97. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015. Orlandi, Tito. “Nag Hammadi Texts and the Coptic Literature.” Pages 323–34 in Colloque international “l’Évangile selon Thomas et les textes de Nag Hammadi”: Québec, 29–31 mai 2003. Edited by Louis Painchaud and Paul-Hubert Poirier. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi: Section “Études” 8. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2007.

Part I The Monastic Life

The Nag Hammadi Milieu: An Assessment in the Light of the Origenist Controversies (with Appendix 2015) JON F. DECHOW1 The Nag Hammadi milieu, that is, the historical situation surrounding the burial of the codices found at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945, cannot be effectively considered apart from the late fourth-century controversy in Egypt over Origen’s theology and followers. To take up this matter in an American Academy of Religion session devoted to the theology and philosophy of religion is perhaps more appropriate than it might initially appear. Relative both to theology and philosophy of religion, what we are dealing with here is inquiry into the “definitional matrix” of theology in Western culture. Insofar as the Judeo-Christian basis of theology in our culture is shaped by the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creedal definition of 381 – to which our subject has direct relation – and insofar as the meaning of the word “God” in the philosophy of religion is extrapolated relative to that same traditional touchstone, still an ecumenical rallying point for most of the world’s Christians, to such an extent our investigation is dealing with basic principles in the history of theology and philosophy. Also, to the extent that theology and philosophy of religion bear fruit in the consideration of contemporary ethical issues, including critical problems of social and political order, the investigation has relevance. Those who seek to broaden the base for contemporary ethics and recognize the normative status of fourth-century and earlier Jewish and Christian struggles in shaping the character of Western culture, may benefit from consid-

1   The article here is basically the same as the paper presented at AAR Western Region, Annual Meeting, at Stanford University on 26 March 1982, including references to the 1975 version of my Dogma and Mysticism in Early Christianity, except for a few corrected typos and better formatting. For updates or adjustments to my original paper, see the Appendix. Dogma and Mysticism references in the Appendix are to the 1988 version unless otherwise specified. 

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ering the dynamic of ancient monasticism2 – with its aspirations for clearsightedness, earnestness of purpose, and meditative withdrawal sometimes reciprocating with self-extension to others – as well as the influence on that monasticism of gnostic interrelations. With this last I am in part thinking of Pachomius’ reaction to the gnosis of some “ancient” brothers; he tells them in effect that they are not so gnostic if they do not do anyone any good.3

Method Our primary concern here, however, is not theology, philosophy, or ethics, but the so-called facts of human history. Yet ideally anyway, we do not want our assumptions to stand in the way of our investigation, though we would be hard pressed even to express ourselves without them. The fact that one such assumption, that gnostic materials such as those found at Nag Hammadi should not be in Pachomian orthodoxy and perhaps not even in the context of discussion of Origen’s theology, shows how deeply both ecclesiastical and secular scholarship has been affected by the claims of subsequent Christian orthodoxy for the Nicene definition as the definition of what is Christian, and therefore commendable, in this period. So the burden of proof has seemed to lie on explaining how gnostic materials could “get into” (as if from the outside) the orthodox fourth-century milieu, in this case Pachomian orthodoxy. The possibility of locating the Nag Hammadi texts within Christian orthodoxy is harder to explain both for traditional Christianity and for world-religionists who like their gnosticism to be somewhat autonomous in the ancient world (Gnosis als Weltreligion). We can imagine what the reaction would have been if the extent of evidence thus far pointing toward a Christian orthodox milieu had instead pointed toward, say, Sethian gnosticism, or Valentinian gnosticism, or Manicheism in the Nag Hammadi environment. But if we allow ourselves to admit what the gnostic phenomena, on the whole, persistently suggest in this instance, that, analogous to the interrelations between Hellenistic, apocalyptic, and normative Judaism, in which gnostic features are also displayed, the Christian religion, the Christian movement, has likewise had gnostic features from very early (features that 2 As George W. Forell has done in his “The Ethics of Early Christian Monasticism: Symbol and Reality,” in The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics (ed. Thomas W. Ogletree; Dallas, Tex.: Society of Christian Ethics, 1981), 57–71. 3 G1 119 (trans. Armand Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia: The Lives, Rules, and Other Writings of Saint Pachomius and His Disciples [3 vols.; CS 45–47; Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1980–1982], 1:381–82).

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are, of course, not limited to Judaism or Christianity but may yet be understood as intrinsic to them and to their culture in the first four centuries of our era), the burden of proof changes. What we are now led to demonstrate is how the association of gnosticism with orthodoxy or, if you will, the presence of gnosticism as an integral element in Christianity as, like Judaism, one of the world’s great living religions, is thoroughly plausible. The style of “separating out” certain self-defined Christian groups and teachings as non-intrinsic to Christian tradition is what the early Christian heresiological tradition – from at least the Letter of Jude in the New Testament (other New Testament strains of heresiology could be mentioned here too); to Hegesippus (2nd century), Justin (c. 100–165 CE), and Irenaeus (c. 130–200) in the second century; to Tertullian (c. 160–225) and Hippolytus (c. 170–236) around the turn of the second and third centuries; even to borderline figures such as Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215) and Origen (c. 185–254) in the first half of the third century; and to the conservative Nicene tradition from Eustathius of Antioch (early 4th century) to Epiphanius of Cyprus (c. 315–403) (to mention only two of the more conservative Nicene traditionalists; Athanasius and Basil of Caesarea in this context would be considered more toward the center) – I repeat, the style of “separating out” is what the heresiological tradition tried so hard to do – I think unsuccessfully, if Christianity is taken in its total cultural manifestations and not simply in terms of Western Christian institutionalization. This effort was – and still is, when we see it pursued in our own time – an attempt to make autonomous what seems more basically a heteronymous cultural phenomenon, with symbolic transference, crossfertilization, and counter-ideation between and among the various Christianities and their cultural environments. The extent of the crossfertilization varies from age to age, and from group to group within a particular age, and, with respect to the fourth-century period we are considering, takes a definite step toward official narrowing – a turn to the fourth-century Christian Right, if you will – that has affected our interpretation of Christianity ever since the fourth century. But I would like to suggest that the narrowing of Christianity – on the one hand for heresiological polemics or apologetics, or on the other hand for philosophical and sociological critique of Christian claims where officially expressed – is sometimes hard pressed to do justice to the facts of history. The situation of Nag Hammadi and the Origenist controversies is particularly problematic in this regard. Both of the developments to which they bear witness, though involving viewpoints officially declared heretical, seem best understood here in terms of multiple currents within the Christian stream, of differences in Christian self-consciousness, mixing

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and interrelating to varying degrees with other religions, philosophies, and views in the cultural environment. Many of the diversities, often coexisting in Christianity from its inception, came into increasing conflict at the end of the fourth century under the pressure of centralization from the now united front of institutional church and institutionalizing empire.

Context In a book entitled Dogma and Mysticism in Early Christianity,4 which I wrote mainly in Princeton from late 1973 to early 1975 (though research for it extended off and on back into the last half of the sixties), and which was also accepted as a Ph.D. dissertation by the University of Pennsylvania in 1975, I attempted to follow the trail of early Christian controversy over orthodoxy and heresy from its roots in the first and second centuries to wherever it might lead. This involved work in Hellenistic Judaism, New Testament studies, Jewish Christianity, gnosticism, and the early Christian theologians, and on early Christian self-definition as a category in distinction from the opprobrious thrust of anti-heresy traditions that came to be associated with what we now call early Christian orthodoxy. The trail led into the problems of Christianity in the third century, past the Nicene struggles of the early-fourth century, and it stopped with the late fourthcentury Origenist controversies, at a crossroads, if you will, where Nicene dogma became solidified and monastic mysticism and spirituality, in transition from some of their earlier gnostic and Origenist forms, established parameters officially consistent with the classical Trinitarian dogmatic synthesis that have remained to our own time. In order to give the study a lively focus, it seemed best to write it in terms of real people and their ideas, in this case being the conflict par excellence between the man generally considered to be the greatest theologian of the early church before Augustine, Origen of Alexandria (c. 185– 254), and his vehement antagonist, Epiphanius of Cyprus (c. 315–403). In bringing to completion his massive summary of alleged Christian aberrations up to his own time, Epiphanius saw in Origen the epitome and exemplar of all Jewish and Christian heresies from the beginning of time. The culmination – or nadir, as some prefer – of heresy is what Epiphanius offers in his Panarion, or Medicine Chest (375–377 CE), a supply of remedies for all those unfortunate enough to be bitten by the serpents of heresy. It is not coincidental that the intensity of this heresiological opus should 4

Full title: Dogma and Mysticism in Early Christianity: Epiphanius of Cyprus and the Legacy of Origen (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1975).

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coincide, as it were, with the popular nerve-center of Christianity, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, confessed even today in the form transmitted to us in another writing of Epiphanius, the Ancoratus, meaning The Anchored Man (374 CE), anchored, that is, in what Epiphanius took to be the true Nicene faith, that which is directed toward the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, ὁμοούσιος (of the same substance) with God the Father. The book was accepted for publication in 1976, but I did not have opportunity to retype it at that time, incorporating the considerable notes I had accumulated from occasional research since its completion in 1975 and from its early readers, particularly Henri Crouzel, Patrick Henry, Robert Kraft, Ekkehard Mühlenberg, and the late Cyril Richardson. Now I am working on a second edition, prefaced by Crouzel, which will take into consideration research of the last seven years, particularly on Origen, gnosticism, the Nag Hammadi library, and monastic spirituality, and which I expect to have at the printer by summer. The first part of the book takes up the life and work of Epiphanius of Cyprus in the context of his relation to the early fourth-century Nicene conservatives, especially in Antioch of Syria, and of his methodology and rationale for the obliteration of all heresy. The second part of the book takes up his seven charges against Origen, the heart of the Panarion, whom he attacks especially in the light of Origen’s relation to the classical tradition and to gnosticism, his influence on Arian thought in the first part of the fourth century, and the inspiration he provided for monastic spirituality in the last half of the fourth century, particularly in Egypt. The charges, largely responsible for Origen’s condemnation in 400, are practically a compendium of the basic dogmatic issues facing Christianity in its first 400 years: 1. the nature of God and Trinitarian relations 2. the prexistence of souls and the precosmic spiritual universe 3. the nature of God’s image in people, the subject of incorporeality vs. corporeality relative to the existence of what Origen called the λογικοί 4. the interpretation of “garments of skins” (Gen 3:21) as bodies, against the background of gnostic speculation, particularly Naassene and Valentinian, on the same subject and in the light of gnosticized monastic praxis in Egypt 5. most importantly, the nature of the resurrection, notably the corporeal mode of the resurrected body against the background of docetism and monastic tendencies toward spiritualized resurrection experience 6. the allegorizing of the early chapters of Genesis, especially the nature of the heavenly paradise and its waters 7. the cosmological meaning of the waters above the firmament and the water under the earth

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In repeating the charges in 394 in his Letter to John of Jerusalem, Epiphanius adds an eighth charge, universalism, which, as Antoine Guillaumont has shown in his work on Evagrius,5 was a typical Origenist tenet hotly disputed in the last fifteen years of the fourth century. Relative to the influence of Origenism and gnosticism in Upper Egypt, in which the Nag Hammadi texts play a part, the charges that most concern us are 3) the image-of-God question; 4) the “garments of skins” and the monastic schema, originally a hairgarment (recall the “hairgarment” that Pachomius wore as described in the earliest stratum of Vita Pachomii tradition6); 5) the nature of corporeality and resurrection; 6) and 7) the spiritual cosmology; and 8) universalism. In chapters 11, 12, and 14 I take up these matters in relation to Christian orthodoxy and gnosticism, and in especially one chapter, no. 8, I propose a possible historical rationale for the situation of the Nag Hammadi codices within Pachomian monasticism. Chapter 8 includes evidence for the following subjects: 1. the prevalence of a common spirit among Upper and Lower Egyptian orthodox monks 2. Origenists in Upper Egyptian orthodox monasticism 3. the diversified context of Upper Egyptian monasticism a. Egyptian background b. Upper Egyptian diversity c. diversity in the area of Pachomian foundations, especially at Chenoboskion (= Nag Hammadi) d. ἀναχῶρησις as ideological neutralizer 4. diversity within Pachomianism a. Pachomian dispositions b. gnostic tendencies c. the Nag Hammadi library as part of the (early) Pachomian dispositional basis d. the exemplary character of Origenism to 400 CE 5. superficial similarities between gnostic and Origenist resurrection belief 6. heresiological association of Origenism, gnosticism, and other heresies (including Hieracites) and the role of church and secular authority, including: a. Athanasius’ Paschal Letter of 367 CE b. Epiphanius’ Ancoratus and Panarion c. Coptic translation of Epiphanius’ Ancoratus 5 See Antoine Guillaumont, Les ‘Kephalaia gnostica’ d’Évagre le Pontique et l’histoire de l’Origénisme chez les Grecs et chez les Syriens (PatSor 5; Paris: Seuil, 1962), 116–17. 6 1 S 4, 27 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:427, 441).

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d. growing polarization of elitists and the simple (the larger context of the controversy later summarized as the Origenist anthropomorphite controversy) 7. the anti-Origenism of Shenoute of Atripe as contrast and reaction to Origenism and other heresies in Upper Egyptian orthodoxy.

Critique In the remainder of this paper I shall address two aspects of recent research that would seem to require correction or modification. Relation between Pachomian monasticism and the NHC cartonnage First, the relation needs to be further evaluated between Pachomian monasticism and the cartonnage or scrap paper used to strengthen the bindings of eight of the Nag Hammadi codex covers. The researches of the late John Barns (1975),7 arguing strongly for the Pachomian provenience of the Nag Hammadi library on the basis of the cartonnage, and those of John Shelton (1981),8 expressing considerable doubt about Barns’ conclusions,9 would both seem to require modification, though care and precision may characterize much of their work. Barns’ basic insight regarding the Pachomian connection seems appropriate, but his conjectures about the so-called orthodox nature of the Pachomian situation in the fourth century are not informed by research going back into the nineteenth century on fourth-century heresiology and on some aspects of Egyptian monasticism, particularly its elitist features. For example, Barns says, “One would expect writings from an Egyptian monastery to contain only what its authorities considered orthodox.”10 Then he goes on to cite with acceptance the account of Pachomius’ alleged antipathy toward the writings of Origen, expresses puzzlement over the inconsistency between such anti-Origenism if in the context of acceptance, 7

John W. B. Barns, “Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Covers of the Nag Hammadi Codices: A Preliminary Report,” in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts: In Honour of Pahor Labib (ed. Martin Krause; NHS 6; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 9–17. 8 John C. Shelton, “Introduction,” in Nag Hammadi Codices: Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Cartonnage of the Covers (ed. John W. B. Barns, Gerald M. Browne, and John C. Shelton; NHS 16; 1981), 1–11. 9 With the apparent recent concurrence of Robert A. Kraft and Janet Timbie in their review of The Nag Hammadi Library in English, edited by James M. Robinson and Marvin W. Meyer, RelSRev 8.1 (1982): 32–52. See 49 n. 1: “Subsequent study of these materials by J. C. Shelton, however, suggests that more caution is necessary regarding a specifically Pachomian connection.” 10 Barns, “Preliminary Report,” 15.

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or at least toleration, of gnostic writings,11 and, to resolve the alleged inconsistency, is led to favor a view like Säve-Söderbergh’s that the library must, then, have been used for heresiological purposes by “critical theologians” in Pachomian monasticism.12 On the contrary, orthodox uniformity in this period would seem to be a figment of ecclesiastical imagination. I shall not review here the history of research on this point, which dates back to the skepticism of some nineteenth-century scholars and which I have assessed in Dogma and Mysticism (1975).13 Suffice it to say that some degree of convergence about the anti-Origenist references in Pachomian tradition before 400 has been reached between historians of the heresiological traditions and those of early monasticism, both outside of and under specifically Christian auspices. The Pachomius vs. Origen story leaves unexplained the initial presence of Origen’s writings under Pachomius’ supervision, the popularity of Origenists in Egypt until 400,14 and even the memory, in some fifthcentury circles, of Pachomius himself as suitable for being included among the Origenist monks.15 Shelton’s examination of the cartonnage is more sensitive to the possibility of Pachomian revisionism. “Our sources on classical Pachomianism,” he says, “may be misinformed or deliberately idealized.” But, like Barns, he assumes a similar kind of particularism, although of order and not doctrine, and uses it as the foil for his method in discussing the individual texts of the cartonnage. “In the discussion of individual texts,” he goes on, “I shall take possession of money and other private property, in11

I do not mind calling the Nag Hammadi library “gnostic,” despite the reservations of Kraft and Timbie (“Review,” 38) and of other scholars, since, although the origins of the material are diverse, the meaning of “gnostic” in our culture, regardless of some pejorative overtones traceable largely to the early Christian orthodoxy-heresy disputes, is nevertheless a useful working designation appropriate both to heresiological usage of the term and to its use in the general culture, into which the heresiological usage has, as it were, “spilled over.” Of course, scholars who work with these materials a great deal may begin to see the designation evaporate the more they get into the texts, but we may be stuck with it since, from the perspective of the heresiological tradition, the library is, on the whole, gnostic. The basic notion of “gnostic,” from this same latter perspective, often seems less a matter of the content of what is known, i.e., in terms of dualism, demiurge, etc., than a matter of the function of that knowledge, i.e., that it provides its possessors with special privilege not accessible to all. The basic conflict earlier, between Clement and Origen of Alexandria, say, and the Valentinians is directly related to this point. 12 Barns, “Preliminary Report,” 16–17. See Torgny Säve-Söderbergh, “Gnostic and Canonical Gospel Traditions (with special reference to the Gospel of Thomas),” in The Origins of Gnosticism: Colloquium of Messina 13–18 April 1966 (ed. Ugo Bianchi; SHR 12; Leiden: Brill, 1967), 552–59. 13 Esp. 16, 86–92, 179–82. 14 See Dechow, Dogma and Mysticism, 129–83. 15 Sozomen, Hist. eccl. 3.14.4. See Dechow, Dogma and Mysticism, 89.

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terest in secular concerns, and apparently free contact with the daily world, in particular with women, as speaking against a Pachomian background.”16 Further, Shelton, following E. A. Judge,17 interprets monastic/secular 1inkages as “apparently” referring to “the class which Jerome called remnuoth (“vagabonds”),18 in contrast with “the possession-less Pachomian within his cloister walls.”19 Shelton’s method and its application to basic texts does not, on the whole, conform to the literary evidence of the monastic tradition. The sources do not show such complete separation of the monastic movement from the world but a limited involvement and a struggle with it. Thus the earliest stage of the movement, after Pachomius built his first “small monastery”20 (c. 323 CE), is remembered in the First Sahidic Life of Pachomius as a time when “people from the surrounding villages,” “a small group of men,” “came to him” and also “built dwellings” near him in order to “live the anchoritic life.”21 The original rule included the specification that “each should be self-supporting and manage his own affairs,” but with Pachomius active as administrator, they would share their material needs either for food or to provide hospitality to the strangers who came to them, for they all ate together.”22 This limited Koinonia (fellowship or community) is later editorialized as a free and voluntary association, “adapted to their weakness,” because Pachomius “could see that they were not yet ready to bind themselves together in a perfect Koinonia like that of the believers which Acts describes.”23 In this type of relationship the First Sahidic Life also says that during harvest time they all went out together to hire themselves out as reapers.”24 The First Greek Life remembers this same period as a time of transition for many, with monastic discipline increasing until the monk’s habit is put on. “After appropriately testing them and their parents,” the First Greek Life reads, “he clothed them in the monk’s habit. He intro-

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Shelton, “Introduction,” 6 n. 11. Edwin A. Judge, “The Earliest Use of Monachos for ‘Monk’ (P. Coll. Youtie 77) and the Origins of Monasticism,” JAC 20 (1977): 72–89. 18 Jerome, Ep. 22.34. 19 Shelton, “Introduction,” 6 n. 12. 20 1 S 7 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:428). 21 S1 10 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:430). The anchoritic life, i.e., the discipline of ἀναχώρησις, was originally understood as the motivating factor, but it could be pursued together with others. See also S1 24 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:438). 22 1 S 11 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:430–31). 23 1 S 11 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:431). 24 1 S 14 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:432). 17

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duced them to the life gradually. First, they had to renounce all the world, their parents, and themselves.”25 From these notices about the earliest type of Pachomian organization, we do not get a picture of constant and enforced isolation, but of a continuing ἀναχώρησις in a limited communal setting. We would expect that many of the locals attracted to the Pachomian environment, as well as others from further away, would continue to maintain ties to family and friends. Their “renunciation” might eventually involve physical displacement, but not the severance of all communication – a situation that seems to have been fairly normal, as we see from later rules about the conditions under which monks might visit sick relatives.26 We are not led to assume that monks were not found in work relationships and deeds of charity with local people. As the monastic movement continued to grow, the logistical problems of feeding and housing thousands of people and providing work to be included in their ἄσκησις (“ascetic discipline”) also seem to have pressed the coenobitic movement into controlled interrelation with the society around it. Nor is this supposition speculative guesswork outrunning the sources. By the last decade of the fourth century, a chronologically primary focus of the Origenist Palladius’ description when he writes his Lausiac History in 419, including a treatment of the Pachomian milieu and related to a trip of seven pro-Origenists to the Thebaid in 394–395 to aid in Origen’s vindication,27 the Pachomian organization is pictured as a highly complex operation involving considerable community relationships. We pass briefly over Palladius’ notice that the Origenist Macarius of Alexandria, on a visit to Tabennisi in the Thebaid while Pachomius was still alive (before 346) and at a time when the original Pachomian monastery at Tabennisi is reported to have already grown to 1400 men,28 put on “the secular habit of a laborer,”29 presumably finding such clothing ready to hand at his home base of Nitria and Cellia. Referring to the last decade of the fourth century, then, Palladius speaks about the many trades that were practiced by the Pachomians. “At Panopolis,” he says, “I saw fifteen tailors, seven smiths, four carpenters, twelve 25

G1 24 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:312). Pr. 54, 55, 57 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 2:155–56). 27 See Epiphanius’ words against the Origenists, including Palladius, in his Letter to John of Jerusalem (394 CE): “Beware of Palladius of Galatia – a man once dear to me, but who now sorely needs God’s mercy, for he preaches and teaches the heresy of Origen – lest perhaps he lead some of the people entrusted to your care into the perversity of his error” (Epiphanius/Jerome, Ep. 51 [CUFr 2:172.2–6]). 28 Hist. Laus. 18.13; see 32.8, where the figure 1300 is given, perhaps referring to the situation c. 390–400. 29 Hist. Laus. 18.12 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 2:123). 26

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camel drivers and fifteen fullers. They work at every craft.”30 When he objected to their practice of raising swine, he was told, “It is a custom we have received in the tradition. . . . The swine are to be killed and the meat sold, but their feet must be given to the sick and the old, because the country is small and heavily populated.”31 Again, apparently referring to the Pachomian system as a whole, Palladius continues, “One works the land as a farmer, another the garden, another works at the forge, another at the bakery, another in the carpenter’s shop, another in the fuller’s, another weaving the big baskets, another in the tannery, another in the shoe-shop, another at calligraphy [recall the skilled calligraphy used in the production of the Nag Hammadi codices], another weaving the soft baskets.”32 Lest we presume that all this activity was solely for the benefit of the monasteries themselves, recall Palladius’ statement about pork being sold and pigsfeet being given away to needy people in the countryside. Moreover, Palladius’ friend, Aphthonius, who by 419 became the second in charge of the great monastery at Phbow (Pabau), is said to have had the responsibility of selling the Pachomian products at Alexandria on his trips there for provisions. Noteworthy also is the way Palladius describes Aphthonius’ trustworthiness for such tasks, since he was “the least apt to go astray”33 – a hint that on such trips some monks were not above abusing the money entrusted to them, or were apt to frequent the fleshpots of Alexandria. Outside of Palladius’ witness, the specifically Pachomian traditions tell of a monk whom, in time of famine, Pachomius sent “round the cities and villages”34 of Egypt looking for wheat. He took so enthusiastically to wheeling and dealing that Pachomius had to replace him.35 Another brother got so consumed with the capacity for private enterprise in buying and selling shoes, getting three times the shoemaker’s cost, that Pachomius had to replace him too on account of his “worldly mind.”36 Such “brothers sent 30

Hist. Laus. 32.9. Hist. Laus. 32.10. 32 Hist. Laus. 32.12. 33 Hist. Laus. 32.8. Armand Veilleux adds the note here: “Pachomius seems to have had problems at times in finding a brother suitable for such a delicate job; see Paral. 21– 23” (Pachomian Koinonia, 2:134). William Clebsch in a recent survey, though wrongly dating a visit of Palladius to the Thebaid in 406 CE, sees in such notices evidence of Pachomius’ having founded an “efficient” and “prosperous economic cooperative” reflecting monastic economic concerns (Christianity in European History [New York: Oxford University Press, 1979], 69). 34 Paral. 21 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 2:45). 35 Paral. 21–22 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 2:45–47). 36 Paral. 23 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 2:47). 31

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out on business” for the “ministry of all the errands of the monastery”37 could only be the most trustworthy and above reproach. Thus on the basis of the monastic literary sources Shelton’s method of analysis, as well as the results of his analysis, must be seriously questioned with respect to his assumptions about the Pachomians’ relations with the world around them. Especially does the analysis seem to go awry when, in examining item 72, “Letter from Proteria (?) to Sansnos and Psas or Psatos,” in which a woman named Proteria asks the monks Sansnos and Psatos to find some chaff for her asses and let her know the price, Shelton goes so far as to say: Here one can deny a Pachomian background with considerable assurance; a normal member of a Pachomian organization would not have been in a position to fulfill this request and it is almost unthinkable that he would have received correspondence from a woman – or indeed a man – on such a subject, as the point of Pachomian coenobitic life was to avoid just such secular concerns. The monks here may have belonged to another order, or the text may date to a period before Pachomianism had taken on its classical form, but it seems most probable that they are further examples of Jerome’s unorganized remnuoth.38

Unsupported assumptions about monastic/secular relations also hinder Shelton’s analysis of two other letters, both of which appear to show significant Pachomian affinities. In discussing a Codex VII scrap, C5, “The Letter of Aphrodisios to David,” Shelton assumes, since the letter “is almost wholly concerned with business affairs” and gives detailed written instructions about such matters,39 that these factors speak against a Pachomian provenience. But the evidence already cited here about Pachomian secular involvements, including the business affairs needed for sustenance of the monasteries and the problem of finding capable monks who would be judicious, fair, and not overzealous in such dealings, suggests otherwise. Nor is the assumption likely that, if “such matters” were “handled in the interests of the monastery. . . . one would have expected the instructions to have been given verbally.”40 On the contrary, the Pachomian administrators seem to have taken pains to write out carefully the minutiae of the material side of their lives. This seems to have been the practice of the individual monasteries regarding secular relations. “Only those entrusted with a ministry used money,” the First Greek Life tells us; “and when they returned to the monastery they kept nothing with themselves for a single day 37 Pr. 64 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 2:157); Paral. 23 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 2:47). 38 Shelton, “Introduction,” 7. 39 Shelton, “Introduction,” 10. Shelton appropriately alerts us, however, to the need for caution in our assessments. 40 Shelton, “Introduction,” 10.

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but gave everything to the steward until they might go out again. And all that government is written in detail in the book of the stewards.”41 Careful written detailing also seems to have been common procedure regarding monastic products, although we do not know how far back toward monastic origins Jerome’s notice applies that each of the various craftspeople made a weekly “account of their works,” probably written for the most part, “to the father” of each monastery.42 The entire operation of each monastery, in turn, appears to have been the subject of the semi-annual reports made by the respective monasteries to the central administration. “Twice a year,” the First Greek Life tells us, the leaders of the monasteries “would come to the Great Monastery [at Phbow]. At Passover those in charge would gather around our father Pachomius and they would celebrate the Passover together with the words of God and with love. And again in the month of Mesore [August] it was their custom to come again to render account of their works to the Great Steward, writing it out in detail.”43 Thus the Codex VII scrap, C5, “The Letter of Aphrodisios to David,” as well as the other account material in the cartonnage volume,44 should be reevaluated in the light of the logistics required to feed, house, and occupy large numbers of people in Upper Egypt. In discussing another letter found with Codex VII, whose addressee Shelton admits “could very well be the great Pachomius himself,”45 Shelton is reluctant to admit the possibility of the Pachomian monasteries owning land that they leased out. But such ownership does not seem unusual if one asks the source of the money and goods required by Pachomius, not only for sustaining the people under his care, but also for accomplishing the large building projects he undertook. In this context questions such as these might be addressed: What would one do to establish a monastery in the fourth century in that part of Egypt? How would one gain possession of land? (One would, presumably, not just claim it in the name of the Lord.) What happens to a potential monk who leaves the secular world, also family, perhaps spouse (see Luke 18:29), but still has debts; or on the other hand has goods or land to donate to the Pachomian organization?

41

G1 59 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:338–39). Jer. Pref. 6 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 2:143). 43 G1 83 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:354); see SBo 71 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:93); italics added. 44 John W. B. Barns, Gerald M. Browne, and John C. Shelton, eds., Nag Hammadi Codices: Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Cartonnage of the Covers (NHS 16; Leiden: Brill, 1981). 45 Shelton, “Introduction,” 10. 42

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Also, behind the detailed Regulations of Horsiesios about farming, land usage, and irrigation practice,46 we see the possibility of Pachomian use of non-Pachomian land, as well as rental to others. “The farmers will be very careful, in the fear of God,” the regulations say, “about all that concerns farming.” It is hard to tell, however, if the instruction that follows, for each to “take extra pain . . . beyond his neighbor,” analogous to the five-twoone distribution of talents in the New Testament parable (Matt 25:15),47 may refer to competition not only with a fellow monk, but also with an adjoining landowner. In addition to the monastic/secular relation and its significance for the cartonnage material, Shelton makes questionable assumptions about the role of priests in early Pachomianism that do not conform to the monastic literary sources, thereby taking the comparable mention of priests in the cartonnage as a negative, rather than a positive, indication of Pachomianism/NHC linkage. In analyzing the possible relation of Sansnos to Pachomianism, Shelton tends to dissociate him from Pachomianism because he is identified in letters 77 and 78 as a priest, and “according to the Vitae [of Pachomius],” Shelton points out in a footnote, “there were no presbyters [i.e., priests] in early Pachomian organizations.”48 “But at a later time,” he goes on, “ecclesiastics were permitted, provided they claimed no special privileges for themselves,” basing his assertions on the First Greek Life of Pachomius 27. But the passage to which reference is made, together with its parallel in the Bohairic Life, does not actually say that there were no priests in early Pachomianism, but that when a priest became a monk, he ceased to exercise his priestly office, particularly in officiating at the celebration of the Eucharist. Thus the statement, “Among them there was no one invested with the clerical office,” means only that a priest who becomes a monk stops functioning as a priest. The First Greek Life goes on to speak about Pachomius’ warnings against the abuse of “rank and honor” and “the temptation to love of power” among those conferred with “clerical dignity,” while advising consideration of regular parish clergy as celebrants in the monasteries. “But if a monk from another place is ordained a cleric,” Pachomius is quoted as saying, “we must not – heaven forbid! – vilify him as someone who loves power, but rather consider him as someone who has been ordained unwillingly.”49 For the Alexandrian patriarch to mine the monaster46

Hors. Reg. 55–58, 62 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 2:217–19). Hors. Reg. 56 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 2:218). 48 Shelton, “Introduction,” 8 n. 18. 49 G1 27 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:314). 47

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ies for candidates for vacant parishes was common, and some monks were known to resist such solicitation quite strongly, as the later action of Ammonius the Tall of Nitria attests when, about 381–384 CE, he cut off his left ear rather than be compelled to leave the monastic life for a bishopric.50 Yet the action of Ammonius was less against the priesthood as such, for the Nitrians had their own priests, than against regular parish service forced against his will. In the Pachomian situation, though, the uproar at the Synod of Latopolis in 345, where Pachomius, the year before his death, was called to account for his reputed clairvoyance, had as its presiders bishops Philo and Mbuei, who had been monks with Pachomius before being appointed bishops, probably by Athanasius. Some frustration over their not having earlier risen more effectively to his defence seems evident in Pachomius’ question to them before the assembled synod, “Were you not once monks with me in the monastery before becoming bishops? Do you not know that by the grace of God I, just like you, love him and care for the brothers?”51 Here the growing success and the independence of the Pachomian movement seem to be involved too, but we do not suppose that Pachomius could have come away from the synod as unscathed as he did, given the uproar in which it ended, if in addition to the help of “the brothers who were with him,”52 he did not have a sizable contingent of clergy on his side as well. That the incident at Latopolis is one of many monastic vs. institutional incidents is suggested by the earlier reaction of the local bishop when Pachomius started to construct his ninth and last monastery at Phnoum. “The bishop of that diocese got a large crowd together,” the Bohairic Life informs us; “they set out and rushed at [Pachomius] to drive him out of the place.” But the monastic writer continues, “The Lord scattered them and they fled before his face. After that he built the monastery, a very large one, and finished it well.”53 We learn more precisely about Pachomius’ attitude toward the clergy when the First Greek Life, following the passage quoted by Shelton, goes on to tell about Pachomius’ procedure with monastically inclined priests. “When someone from the clergy came to him and wanted to become a monk, he submitted himself to the law of God normally, according to his rank, but he would willingly be as all of them in regard to the community of the brothers.”54 In such a case, however, while following common rules 50

See Dechow, Dogma and Mysticism, 158, incl. n. 3. G1 112 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:375). 52 G1 112 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:377). 53 SBo 58 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:78) 54 G1 27 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:315). 51

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in ordinary circumstances, the priest seems still to have retained his rank, unless the expression, “according to his rank,” is editorializing, compatible with the later Pachomian practice of priest or monk visitors to the monasteries being received with “greater honor.”55 It is of interest to see how the Bohairic tradition of Pachomius’ Life has editorialized here. In the Bohairic we are told that Pachomius would go to the Eucharist in town on Saturday evening, but have visiting clergy come to the monastery for the celebration on Sunday morning. Then the Bohairic, in the same context as the First Greek Life, provides a reason, “Because no one among them had clerical rank in the holy church,” and goes on to affirm, “Indeed, our father Pachomius did not want any clerics in his monasteries, for fear of jealousy and vainglory.”56 That we are dealing with elaboration of the tradition in this instance seems clear from the way the text continues in the same context, parallel to the “according to the rank” statement of the First Greek Life, “If someone from the clergy came to him and wanted to become a monk, and if he [Pachomius] saw that he was righteous, he would accept him and make him a monk. He would respect his rank but he would make him walk willingly in the rules laid down for the brothers, like anyone else.”57 I would suggest that the notion of Pachomius not wanting clerics is possibly a sign of later institutionalization, perhaps from a time when control of the Pachomian organization has passed into the hands of legalistic nonclergy who have risen through the ranks. Pachomius, of course, would in any case not want the kind of clergy who opposed him in the region of Phnoum or at the Synod of Latopolis. On the basis of notices from the monastic literary tradition, then, the relationship of the Nag Hammadi library cartonnage to Pachomianism would seem to require reevaluation, in my view in the direction of the association of the two. Significance of the Festal Letter of Athanasius (367 CE) Apart from the matter of the cartonnage, some remarks may be made about the prominence given to the Festal Letter of Athanasius in 367 CE as providing an occasion for the concealment of the Nag Hammadi codices. This letter, conforming to the custom of an annual Easter communication from the Alexandrian patriarch to all churches and monasteries under his jurisdiction, is significant in providing a list of scriptural books, including

55

Pr. 51 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 2:153). SBo 25 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:47–48); italics added. 57 SBo 25 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:48); italics added. 56

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the first such complete list for the New Testament as we know it, and in warning against apocryphal writings. We know about the reception of the letter in at least one of the Pachomian communities, since the Bohairic Life of Pachomius tells about its reception in Upper Egypt, presumably at Phbow (Pabau), and about the actions of Theodore, head of the Pachomian organization at that time, in having it translated into Coptic and supposedly in “placing it in the monastery as a law for them.”58 The translation into Coptic and the placement somewhere in the monastery, probably the library, seem reasonable enough, since the Alexandrian patriarch’s letters would usually be so kept, but the extent that the letter was a “law,” and for whom it might have been a “law,” require further consideration. But first let us recall that the association of this letter with the Nag Hammadi codices’ concealment has had many scholarly voices raised in its favor. Jean Doresse, who for some time provided the standard work on the Nag Hammadi find,59 seems to have been groping, amid his vacillations, toward a date around 400.60 But the conjecture of Säve-Söderbergh61 and others, including Alexander Böhlig,62 Frederik Wisse,63 and, most recently, Elaine Pagels, in her popular book, The Gnostic Gospels,64 and in her talk this January at Arizona State University,65 for a date about 367–370 has seemed to be gaining momentum.

58

SBo 189 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:232). Jean Doresse, The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics: An Introduction to the Gnostic Coptic Manuscripts Discovered at Chenoboskion (New York: Viking, 1960; repr. 1970). 60 See Doresse, Secret Books, 135, 138–39; James M. Robinson, Introduction to the Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices (OPIAC 4; Claremont, Cal.: Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, 1972), 4 n. 13; Dechow, Dogma and Mysticism, 187. 61 Säve-Söderbergh, “Gnostic and Canonical Gospel Traditions,” 552–53; see Dechow, Dogma and Mysticism, 188. 62 Alexander Böhlig, “Report on the Coptological Work (Carried out in the context of the Tübingen research project): The Hellenic and Hellenistic Contribution to Syncretism in the Near East,” in Nag Hammadi and Gnosis: Papers read at the First International Congress of Coptology (Cairo, December 1976) (ed. Robert McL. Wilson; NHS 14; Leiden: Brill, 1978), 135. 63 Frederik Wisse, “Gnosticism and Early Monasticism in Egypt,” in Gnosis: Festschrift für Hans Jonas (ed. Barbara Aland; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978), 436–37. 64 Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979), xviii and n. 19 (on p. 184). 65 “They were buried, apparently, around 370 A.D., after the archbishop of Alexandria sent out an order banning such books as ‘heresy’ and demanding their destruction” (Pagels, “The Gnostic Jesus and Early Christian Politics” [The University Lecture in Religion, Arizona State University, January 28, 1982], 3). 59

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This date, however, leaves too much unexplained in late fourth-century history: the vehemence of heresiological effort, especially Epiphanius’ writings, against all heresies from the 370s to the end of the century; the quasi-political imprimatur given to a “public,” literally oriented understanding of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed after 381, coupled with the escalating of imperial legislation against heretics about 380–400; and the intensification and blossoming of elitist monasticism in Egypt, in which I would include Origenism, as well as some types of gnosticism overlapping and intermingling with what we have become accustomed to call the Christian mainstream. A purge of apocrypha throughout Egypt, or even in Pachomianism, about 367–370 seems to me to be one of those scholarly myths that someone starts, others pick it up, some with notable names, and finally it becomes widely quoted and is taken as the “informed consensus” or the “assured results” of modern scholarship. Unfortunately, there is no historical evidence for it. The principles of canonical “patterning” go back especially to the second-century orthodoxy-heresy debates and tend to coincide with the views of those who had the most widespread clout in influencing Christian opinion. Most of the apocrypha never had such official “catholic” status anyway, but seem nevertheless to reflect broad popular use and, in certain quarters, some books enjoyed ipso facto canonical repute. But such writings were of great diversity and coincided with practically every conceivable variety of Christian or semi-Christian self-consciousness. When Athanasius, in his Festal Letter of 367, lists the canonical books in contrast to the apocrypha, he is not functioning as an innovator, but is building on a selective tradition outlined in the second century in the debates over Gospel and Apostle; reinforced in the third century by Origen with some reservations; almost fully articulated by about 300–303 CE, as we know from Eusebius’ discussion of recognized vs. disputed writings in the first part of his Church History;66 and given strong impetus by the legalization of Christianity and the practicalities of book manufacture (i.e., what shall we include in this codex?) associated with Emperor Constantine’s financial sponsorship of church construction and of the manufacture of scriptural codices about 331.67

66 3.25.1–7. For some crystallization of a sea of research in this area, see Wilhelm Schneemelcher, “The History of the New Testament Canon,” in New Testament Apocrypha 1 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963), 28–60; Kurt Aland, The Problem of the New Testament Canon (London: Mowbray, 1962). 67 See Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (2nd ed.; New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 7–8.

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But Christian intellectual traditions in Egypt, including those extending into the early forms of monastic “philosophy,” were not generally known for suppression of literature, at least among those involved in serious existential, if you will, and scholarly pursuits. Thus when we examine Athanasius’ Festal Letter more carefully, we find that his primary concern in the letter is that the simple (ἀκέραιοι, a word often used in contrast to the subtle or learned68), i.e., the pure or innocent in faith, like those who have the childlike faith recommended by Jesus (Matt 18:1–6), should not be led astray. Athanasius says, “I fear lest, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians (2 Cor 11:3), some of the simple (ἀκεραίων) be led astray from simplicity (ἁπλότητος; see 2 Cor 11:3) and purity (ἁγνότητος) by the subtlety (πανουργίας; also, ‘cleverness, astuteness,’ or in bad sense [but not necessarily here], ‘cunning, craftiness’) of certain men (τίνων ἀνϑρώπων).”69 Who are these “certain men” to whom Athanasius is referring? I suggest that they are among that privileged class of intellectual specialists in Pachomian monasticism known as “the perfect.” I shall not lay out the necessary details here, as I do in the second edition of my Dogma and Mysticism, to analyze Pachomius’ relations with the “ancient brothers” in his monasteries, including those at the Chenoboskion monastery especially. Perhaps a hint of the relation is still discernible in the account of Theodore’s reaction to Athanasius’ letter. While echoing Athanasius’ concern for the simple by bemoaning the fact that some of “the less knowledgeable and guileless among the people have been led astray,” that is, some simple monks, Theodore is said to stress the presence of the Lord “on the earth,”70 as if to discourage some variations of the anchoritic “flight from the body,”71 and seems to speak conditionally, regarding Athanasius’ letter, “of the benefit (that would come) to those who would listen to it and observe it,”72 as if there were some who might not listen and observe so readily. Pachomius and Theodore, it appears, did not dictate to these people, and sometimes there seems to have been agreement, sometimes not. To under68

See Origen, Princ. 4.3.3; Athanasius, Ar. 1.8; Cyril of Alexandria, Jo. 10.2 (PGL s.v. ἀκέραιοι 3). 69 Louis Th. Lefort, S. Athanase lettres festales et pastorales en copte (CSCO 151, CSCO.C 20; Leuven: L. Durbecq, 1955), 34 n. 23 (citation of the original Greek fragment). 70 SBo 189 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:231). 71 Evagrius Ponticus, Cap. pract. 52 (CS 4:30). 72 SBo 189 (trans. Janet Timbie, “Dualism and the Concept of Orthodoxy in the Thought of the Monks of Upper Egypt” [PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1979], 241). Veilleux translates in the indicative: “It will profit those who hear of it and observe it” (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:230).

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stand the situation better, we may take up Palladius’ description of the Pachomian organization in his Lausiac History. Interestingly enough, we should remember at this point that Palladius’ description is an Origenist source and presents a picture of greater freedom and openness in the monastic movement; also that the Origenist-Anthropomorphite controversy – the usual and somewhat pejorative way the late fourth-century dispute leading to Origen’s condemnation in 400 CE is described, summarized, and relegated to the dustbin of history – is actually a major part, though not the whole, of what might better be termed a conflict between elitism and sometimes simplicity, sometimes intransigence, sometimes chiliastic anthropomorphism in Egyptian monasticism in this period. Referring to the situation in Pachomian monasticism about 390–400, and quoting the so-called Rule of the Angel – which, despite the source problems connected with it, may still reflect some authentic features of the earliest coenobitic stage of the Pachomian movement – Palladius quotes the “angel”: I arranged these [a minimal number of liturgical prayers] so that even the little ones might achieve the fulfillment of the rule without grief. As for the perfect, they have no need of legislation, for they have dedicated all their life to the contemplation of God in their cells. I have laid down rules for all those whose mind has not attained knowledge (ἐπίγνωσις).73

Recall also that in the Pachomian monasteries the “perfect” were the “spiritual ones (πνευματικοὶ),” whom in his lifetime Pachomius “would lead . . . to perfection.” They knew Pachomius’ “secret spiritual language.”74 With them he “privately” shared his visions and apparitions.75 From their group were the ones who copied the books made in the monasteries.76 Thus it does not appear that Athanasius’ Festal Letter would be a signal for destruction of apocryphal books, even locally in Upper Egypt. That the letter in any case could not have triggered destruction of books throughout Egypt is suggested by the many apocrypha still found in the monastic libraries after 367–370.77 The condemnation of Origen in 400 was another 73

Hist. Laus. 32.7, italics added. Contrast Veilleux’s questionable note to Paral. 12: “This tension between active life (πρακτική) and contemplation (ϑεωρία) is a preoccupation alien to pachomian spirituality” (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 2:68). 74 G1 99 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:366–67). 75 G1 99 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:365); see 102 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:368). 76 G1 99 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:365–67). 77 See, e.g., the variety in Hugh G. Evelyn White, The Monasteries of the Wadi’n Natrun, 1: New Coptic Texts from the Monastery of Saint Macarius (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1926; repr. Arno Press, 1973): apocryphal gospels and acts, hagiographa, homiletic/ascetic literature, Biblical books (“which seemed to deserve no higher place” [Evelyn White, 1:viii]), and liturgical literature.

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matter, for this seems to have prompted the destruction of elitist literature, separable from many of the crudely anthropomorphic apocrypha. Athanasius’ letter seems rather to have been a pastoral warning to safeguard the simple by paying primary heed to the canonical writings, and by exercising more caution with respect to writings that, though highly regarded by many of the Pachomian “perfect,” had become stigmatized by association with groups and people some considered heretical. In conclusion, then, the historical evidence available does not seem to point toward Athanasius’ Festal Letter of 367 as the most plausible occasion for the concealment of the Nag Hammadi codices, although that letter is still important as an indication of the anti-heretical influences apparently escalating on the way to 400 CE. Nor, apart from this, is there good reason to believe that the Nag Hammadi codices and Pachomian monasticism should be dissociated from one another on the ground of too minimal a relationship between the Pachomian movement and the world around it, including the people in its environs as well as the clergy of the regular ecclesiastical structure in Egypt. The larger context in which the background and survival of the codices, as well as the origins of Pachomian monasticism, have a place is in the conflicting currents of early Christian thought and life whose divergencies are in turn displayed, now in tension with, now in adaptation to, the larger Hellenistic environment.

Appendix: “Nag Hammadi Milieu” Background Method The “Method” suggested above, following my “Proposal for Orthodox Ownership of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Texts” in Dogma and Mysticism 1975 (183–91) was an attempt in 1982 to describe a scenario in which the Nag Hammadi codices (NHC) were – and could be understood as – an integral part of orthodoxy. The anachronistic use of “orthodoxy” is not meant, in which later standards are imposed on an earlier time. Rather, “orthodoxy” is “right belief” uncondemned by the mainstream of Christianities in a given period. Just as Origen and Origenism were not condemned until 400 CE in Egypt and 543 and 553 in the Roman Christian Empire as a whole, so also the types of adherence to the Christian religion exemplified by the NHC, as well as the many varieties of Christianity in the early centuries of our era, may be identifiable with the mainstream if that is the way the various adherents understand themselves.

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That such coexistence or congeniality is possible in the late-fourth or early-fifth century is suggested by the universalism of the Origenists78 and, in a different context, the example of the “self-consciously orthodox” Priscillian of Spain. The latter’s beliefs were connected to Egyptian Christianity and were supported by the canonical NT Letter of Jude’s approving quotation (vv. 14–15) of the apocryphal Book of Enoch.79 Shortly after being ordained bishop of Avila in 386 CE, Priscillian was accused of heresy by his fellow bishops and beheaded by sentence of the imperial court, despite the efforts of Martin of Tours (316–397) to save him. “Certainly a book cannot be condemned,” he believed, “whose witness fulfills the faith of canonical speech.”80 One might also recall that Roman Emperor Theodosius I (347–395; ruled East 379–392, whole empire 392–395), who strongly enforced imperial legislation against heretics throughout his rule, was a conservative Christian from Spain.81 The scholarly research situation in 1975 and 1982, already contested, can be capsulized by an Associated Press release from Cairo that appeared in the Trenton (NJ) Evening Times 28 November 1974, entitled “Gnostics Now Aid Scholars”: Christian monks who looked out from their desert caves 18 centuries ago saw a black and bitter world: centuries of foreign occupation had bled Egypt dry, tax levies were huge, Roman soldiers were garrisoned nearby, and the monks’ patriarch in far off Alexandria treated them with contempt. Inside the caves, the monks imbibed a new escapist religion, called Gnosticism, that was partly Greek, partly Christian and partly Judaic, and that promised them a better world. The theology repudiated the Old Testament God as a fraud and a charlatan and blamed him for the world’s awful state. It spun out a new system of deities with a kind of super-God at the head, made the serpent in the Garden of Eden a good guy, described Noah as a lackey of the evil God and promised otherworldly redemption for the true believer. 78 See above. See also Dogma and Mysticism (1988), 19, 421–23 (on Epiphanius’ charge 8 against Origen). As indicated at the beginning of the paper, Dogma and Mysticism page references in this Appendix are to the 1988 version unless the 1975 version is specified. 79 In contrast to Athanasius’ assertion, “nor is there in any place [in the canon of the Fathers] a mention of apocryphal [writings] (ἀποκρίϕων). But they are an invention of heretics . . . to lead astray the simple (ἀκεραίους)” (Festal Letter 39.7). 80 Andrew S. Jacobs, “Priscillian: On Faith and Apocrypha,” in Christianity in Late Antiquity, 300–450 C.E.: A Reader (ed. Bart D. Ehrman and Andrew S. Jacobs; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 427. 81 For the ecclesio-political context of Theodosius I’s legislation and the role of the heresiologist Epiphanius of Cyprus (315–403) against Origen and “all heresies,” see my update of the anti-Origenist heresy charges analyzed in Dogma and Mysticism 1988 (not an update of chapter 8 including NHC), “From Methodius to Epiphanius in AntiOrigenist Polemic,” in Adamantius 19 (2013): 10–29.

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The Gnostics were spiritualists who had no use and no hope for the world they confronted. “They were the hippies of their day,” according to James Robinson, a California theologian and leading Gnostic expert. Robinson is putting together more than 1,100 pages of Gnostic writing, an entire library which the monks, possibly afraid the texts would be burned as heretical, buried in a cemetery centuries ago. The texts, probably written first in Greek and then copied in Coptic here, are a rich lode for modern theologians, possibly even more important than the discovery and study of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1950s and 1960s, according to Robinson. “The study of the New Testament will never be the same,” enthused one of Robinson’s assistants, Bentley Layton of Harvard. The Gnostics were rooted out of orthodox Christianity by the end of the 4th century A.D., and only a small sect, called the Mandeans, in Iraq and occasional groups of intellectual Gnostics survive. But in the first through fourth centuries, Gnosticism was Christendom’s major competitor, according to Robinson. It drew long criticism from the epistle-writer Paul, and may have formed the intellectual climate that added unorthodox, spiritualistic elements to the Gospel of John and other New Testament books – elements that have long puzzled scholars.

Context Much proliferation and modification of research on the NHC has occurred since this 1974 notice, as well as since the late 1970s and early 1980s. Perhaps there was excessive enthusiasm from 1974 to 1982, understandably, and certainly such a view of the NHC as in the Associated Press notice is rightly seen as reductionist today if the NHC are considered as a whole. But some NHC components include all the features mentioned. My approach, however, was from the heresiological tradition culminating in Epiphanius of Cyprus and his massive Panarion, “a corpus roughly twice as long as the entire Nag Hammadi library,”82 and to him the differences, or even subtle distinctions, between heresies were not necessarily normative. So a likely cultural context for searching NHC provenance is the tran82 Dogma and Mysticism, 13. Calling the NHC a “library” became less usable as scholars speculated on what the NHC actually are. Also, the word “gnosticism” as a modern descriptive category lost its effectiveness because of a lack of precision, and scholars try to be more careful now in its use. “Gnosis” and “gnostic,” however, have widespread use in ancient and late antique texts on both “orthodox” and “heretical” sides. Influential have been Michael A. Williams, Rethinking ‘Gnosticism’: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), and Karen L. King, What Is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003). Williams has a useful distillation of various theories of provenance (241–47; not including the “Origenist theory”), and King incisively rethinks Gnosticism’s origins (esp. 169– 90). David Brakke’s approach in The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010) is balanced more with the quest for gnosis in what became mainstream Christianity and monasticism. For TheGreatCourses.com, he has developed a 24-lecture course, Gnosticism: From Nag Hammadi to the Gospel of Judas (Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2015).

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sition from Roman Empire to Roman Christian Empire in the late-fourth to mid-fifth century and the suppression of literature, in which the antiheretical, anti-Origenist, and anti-gnostic efforts of Epiphanius play a prominent role.83 As Fergus Millar writes, “[A]nxiety about ‘heretics,’ as about pagans and Jews, pervades the Christian literature of the period, and every one seems in principle to have supported attempts to produce a single, homogeneous Church.”84 Enforcement of the imperial legislation is trickling down from the government, and from the ὁμοούσιον archbishoprics as they extend their influence over churches and monasteries. The suppression, concealment, or even rotting of controverted documents must have been immense after the Nicene standardization, with Origen’s at the head of the list, whether we take Epiphanius’ estimate of his 6,000 books85 or Jerome’s of 2,000,86 of which we know only 800 titles.87 Apocrypha were a typical target, as in Athanasius’ Festal Letter of 367 in Egypt, and continued to be till midfifth century, as we shall see. But from the late 360s and Epiphanius’ efforts in the 370s, pressure against apocrypha and allegedly heretical groups and their books intensified until the eruption against the Origenists in Egypt in 400. There are three stages, focused roughly on the dates 1975, 1982, and 1988 pertaining to the Dogma and Mysticism chapter 8 material on the search for Origenism in Upper (southern) Egypt, the Thebaid. All the chap83

For a more realistic view of the ecclesio-political context from Theodosius I’s Cunctos populos decree (380) to the Council of Chalcedon (451), a wealth of information is available, including: William K. Boyd, The Ecclesiastical Edicts of the Theodosian Code (Studies in History, Economics and Public Law 24; New York: Columbia University Press, 1905; repr. BiblioBazaar LLC, 2012); Ramsay MacMullen, Voting About God in Early Church Councils (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006); Fergus Millar, A Greek Roman Empire: Power and Belief under Theodosius II (408–450) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), esp. the sections on “Theodosius and Heresy, 408– 430” (149–57) and “The Nestorian Controversy and the Two Councils of Ephesus, 431– 450” (157–67); Charles Freeman, A.D. 381: Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State (New York: Overlook, 2008); Caroline Humfress, Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Philip Jenkins, Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years (New York: HarperCollins, 2010); Richard Flower, “‘The Insanity of Heretics Must be Restrained’: Heresiology in the Theodosian Code,” in Theodosius II: Rethinking the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity (ed. Christopher Kelly; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 172–94. 84 Millar, Belief under Theodosius II, 150. 85 Epiphanius, Panarion 64.63.8. 86 Jerome, Against Rufinus 2.22. 87 Itemized in Jerome’s Letter to Paula (Ep. 33). See Johannes Quasten, Patrology. Volume II: The Ante-Nicene Literature after Irenaeus (Utrecht-Antwerp: Spectrum, 1964), 43.

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ter 8 content is in pursuit of the accuracy of Epiphanius’ allegation in 374– 377 that “Origenist resurrection belief was held by many prominent orthodox monks in the Thebaid.”88 The table of contents for Dogma and Mysticism 1975 and 1988 overview the development in that time frame, and the 1982 article here is actually an overflow of what became too lengthy to include in the 1988 version of the book. The outline on pages 16–17 above, not fully developed and midway between 1975 and 1988, is the briefer of two that I had in hand when first presenting the material in 1982 at Stanford. Item 4) b), gnostic tendencies, has fascinated me ever since “gnostic proclivities” came to my attention in the Pachomian/Nag Hammadi milieu.89 Item 3) d), ἀναχῶρησις as ideological neutralizer, still seems promising as an overarching principle to investigate the nuances of The Sayings of the Fathers, which “are non-discriminatory in including sayings of Origenists (e.g., Dioscorus the Tall), anti-Origenists (e.g., Epiphanius himself), and others alike.”90 Other Origenists (Pambo, Basil the Great, Macarius the Great, Macarius of Alexandria, Evagrius, Cassian) could be mentioned as well.91 But I finally decided that, in chapter 8 of the 88 Dogma and Mysticism (1975), 172. See Epiphanius, Anc. 82.3; Haer. 64.4.1; Dogma and Mysticism (1975), 133–36; (1988) 142–46; et passim chapter 8. 89 Charles W. Hedrick, “Gnostic Proclivities in the Greek Life of Pachomius and the ‘Sitz im Leben’ of the Nag Hammadi Library,” NovT 22.1 (1980): 78–94 (cited in Dogma and Mysticism, 226). With advances in research we may now seek to find the opposite too, as Hugo Lundhaug points out in agreement with Michael Williams: “By suspending the ‘Gnosticism’ category, we may for instance be more inclined to discover ‘orthodox’ traits even within the Nag Hammadi texts” (“Shenoute of Atripe and Nag Hammadi Codex II,” in Zugänge zur Gnosis: Akten zur Tagung der Patristischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft vom 02.-05.01.2011 in Berlin - Spandau [ed. Christoph Markschies and Johannes van Oort; Leuven: Peeters, 2013], 208). 90 Dogma and Mysticism, 229. 91 For a convenient English edition of the Apophthegmata Patrum, see The Desert Christian: Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection (ed. Benedicta Ward; New York: Macmillan, 1975). As Ward says in the “Foreword,” “In the fourth century, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Arabia were the forging ground for monasticism in its Christian expression; every form of monastic life was tried, every kind of experiment, every kind of extreme. Monasticism is of course older than Christianity, but this was the flowering of it in its Christian expression and in many ways it has never been surpassed. . . . The great centre was Egypt. By A.D. 400 Egypt was a land of hermits and monks” (xv). For research on Origenism as the “third great” influence (in addition to Antony and Pachomius) on Egyptian monasticism, see Dogma and Mysticism, 146–52 (on Amoun and Pambo); for more recent research, definitively characterizing Pambo’s Origenism, see Tim Vivian, ed., “Coptic Palladiana I: The Life of Pambo (Lausiac History 9–10),” CCR 20.3 (1999): 66–95, plus subsequent issues of CCR on Macarius of Egypt and Macarius of Alexandria. For new looks at Antony, see Dogma and Mysticism, 96–99; and Lance Jenott and Elaine Pagels, “Antony’s Letters and Nag Hammadi Codex I: Sources of Religious Conflict in Fourth-Century Egypt,” JECS 18 (2010): 557–89. It should also be remembered that Armand Veilleux, whom I do not find exceeded as an authority on

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Dogma and Mysticism 1988 version, I could not go into the question of ϑεωρία (contemplation) and ἐπίγνωσις (knowledge) in Pachomianism as I had intended in 1982, which Veilleux considered “alien” to Pachomian spirituality.92 Only the best documented material could be included that pertains to Epiphanius’ campaign against Origen and the Origenists in the Thebaid. I decided that the relationship of the Nag Hammadi codices to Pachomianism and its environment has become controversial. To begin laying out bits and pieces of evidence for it here would draw us too far afield. What will be sketched are some heretical varieties in the Thebaid to which Epiphanius testifies in the Ancoratus and Panarion and which exemplify the milieu in which Origenist and gnostic tendencies have their place. Also, a demonstration of superficial similarities between Origenist and gnostic (Nag Hammadi) resurrection beliefs will shed light on why the heresiologist associated Origenism and gnosticism and thought they both denied the resurrection of “this flesh.”93

A key part of what followed in 1988 (ch. 8.4.2) was an analysis of the influence of Panarion 64 on the anti-Origen story in the First Greek Life of Pachomius.94 The following outlines, and the one on pages 16–17 above, thus shed light on the development of the so-called Origenist theory of NHC concealment from 1975 to 1982 to 1988 within the wider imperial context. Contents 1975 Chapter 8: Fourth-century Origenism and Upper (Southern) Egyptian Monasticism: Panarion 64.4.1–2 (pages 172–198) a. Origenists in Upper Egyptian Orthodox Monasticism (172–179) b. The Prevalence of a Common Spirit among Upper and Lower Egyptian Orthodox Monks (179–183) c. Religious Variety in Upper Egypt at Nag Hammadi, Possibly in Pachomian Monasticism, and the Toleration of Origenism within Orthodoxy until 400 (183–195)

Pachomian monasticism, considered the seven letters of Antony as “manifesting decisive signs of a form of Origenism before its time” (“Monasticism and Gnosis in Egypt,” in The Roots of Egyptian Christianity [ed. Birger A. Pearson and James E. Goehring; 1983; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986], 294). 92 See above. The information on this comes from Palladius (c. 362–420), whose reliability has been suspect to many scholars of Pachomian tradition. Demetrius Katos puts him in a better light in his Palladius of Helenopolis: The Origenist Advocate (Oxford Early Christian Studies; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), as I do in my review of Katos’ book (RBL 13 March 2015 [http://www.bookreviews.org]). 93 Dogma and Mysticism, 207. 94 Dogma and Mysticism, 220–29.

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1. A Proposal for Orthodox Ownership of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Texts (183–191) 2. Superficial Similarities between Gnostic and Origenist Resurrection Belief (191–195) d. The Anti-Origenism of Shenoute of Atripe as Contrast and Reaction to Origenism in Upper Egyptian Orthodoxy (195–198) Contents 1988 Chapter 8: Origenism in Upper Egyptian Monasticism (183–240) 8.1 The Common Spirit with Nitria (184–190) 8.2 Origenists in Upper Egypt (190–206) 8.2.1 Non-Pachomian Origenists (190–196) 8.2.2 Pachomian Origenists (196–206) 8.3 Origenism and Gnosticism (206–218) 8.3.1 Upper Egyptian Diversity (207–211) 8.3.2 Origenist and Gnostic Eschatology (211–218) 8.4 Epiphanius and Theban Anti-Origenism (218–230) 8.4.1 The Coptic Ancoratus (218–220) 8.4.2 Panarion 64 and Pachomianism (220–229) 8.4.3 The Sayings of the Fathers (229–230) 8.5 The Anti-Origenism of Shenoute (230–240) 8.5.1 ‘This-Flesh’ Eschatology (231–232) 8.5.2 Against Apocryphal Texts [ = I Am Amazed] (233–237) 8.5.3 Dioscurus’ Letters against Helias (237–240) Nag Hammadi Milieu 1982 and Following Besides method and context for the Nag Hammadi milieu question in light of the Origenist controversies, and in addition to the material outlined for the developed Dogma and Mysticism 1988 chapter 8, I focused on two aspects for the 1982 paper that, in view of Epiphanius and the heresiological tradition, appeared to require correction or modification: 1. the relation between Pachomian monasticism and the NHC cartonnage, i.e., the social and economic setting; and 2. the significance of the Festal Letter of Athanasius in 367 CE, the annual Easter letter to the churches and monasteries of Egypt and the Thebaid. 1. Cartonnage and local economy Some of my research was done at the IAC, with the benefit of the NHC cartonnage volume that James Robinson gave me. He had read my disser-

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tation a few years before, and included the 1982 paper in the conversation about NHC provenance.95 I did not include in that paper or in Dogma and Mysticism 1988 chapter 8 my comparison of the names in the cartonnage with those in the Pachomian sources. Although the similarities have subsequently been discounted by some scholars (because still too many differences in the names), I was amazed that the similarities are in the majority. Yet as James Goehring writes, “A significant number of proper names are shared in the two sets of sources. But this in and of itself proves nothing.”96 I am not so sure about the “nothing.” Goehring also discusses the pros and cons of a possible cartonnage-Pachomian relationship on the basis of the names and other factors, including consideration of my 1982 paper, but comes to no definite conclusion.97 However, the pros and cons could stand reevaluation, for the evidence behind them is primary and extensive, and its critical inclusion is valuable for any theory of Nag Hammadi provenance to be credible. One factor not mentioned in regard to the names is that the cartonnage may make a contribution even if it is a source not explicitly or largely Pachomian. The cartonnage may then be seen as partly a contrasting measure of the extent of Pachomian redaction of its own tradition. At least the evidence in the “Nag Hammadi Milieu” paper about “the economic life of the Pachomian community,” Goehring considered “well taken” to “account for many of the documents preserved in the cartonnage,” but “the connection of certain texts . . . to the Pachomians” he found “difficult to understand.”98 95 Beginning with “The Provenience of the Nag Hammadi Codices,” AAR/SBL Annual Meeting 1981. 96 See, e.g., James E. Goehring, “New Frontiers in Pachomian Studies,” in The Roots of Egyptian Christianity (ed. Birger Pearson and James E. Goehring; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 249. 97 Goehring, “New Frontiers,” 247–51. His subsequent research is comprehensive, but he finds none of it conclusive on the cartonnage, e.g., “Monastic Diversity and Ideological Boundaries in Fourth-Century Christian Egypt,” including “Anti-Origenism, Pachomian Monasticism, and the Nag Hammadi Codices,” JECS 5.1 (1997): 61–84, 73–84; repr. 196–220, 208–20 in his Ascetics, Society, and the Desert (Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity, 1999); and “The Provenance of the Nag Hammadi Codices Once More,” Studia Patristica XXXV: Papers Presented at the Thirteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 1999: Ascetica, Gnostica, Liturgica, Orientalia (ed. Maurice F. Wiles and Edward Y. Yarnold; Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 234–53. 98 Goehring, “New Frontiers,” 249. See further on Pachomian economic life, Goehring’s “The World Engaged: The Social and Economic World of Early Egyptian Monasticism,” in Gnosticism and the Early Christian World: In Honor of James M. Robinson (ed. Goehring, Charles W. Hedrick, and Hans Dieter Betz; Sonoma, Cal.: Polebridge, 1990), 139–41. On the more extensive matter of the cartonnage, the material evidence of the NHC, and the questions of “gnosticism” and monasticism, see Williams, Rethinking Gnosticism, 261, who summarizes in 1996: “Considering the evidence available at this time – the cartonnage, the scribal notes and colophons, the selection and ar-

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Hugo Lundhaug summarizes the prevailing scholarly hesitancy to associate the NHC and Pachomian monasticism: “At present, then, the study of the cartonnage fragments must be regarded as inconclusive with regard (204) to the context of the production and use of the codices. On their own they can neither prove, nor disprove, a Pachomian, let alone a monastic, provenance.” But he footnotes his considered opinion: “In my view, however, the cartonnage fragments do in fact seem to make a monastic provenance highly likely.”99 Perhaps common sense will eventually prevail and, as in good police work, some credence will be given to proximity. The most plausible motive for concealing the NHC does not seem to be the NHC fulfilling a “function as grave deposits” in the late-fourth century a la “Egypt’s rich history of funerary texts,”100 thereby effectively taking these texts out of the Roman to Roman Christian transition from the latefourth to the mid-fifth century and finally arguing for a rationale less supported than many of the options opposed. Persistent frustration about a plausible milieu may in part account for such speculation, leaving some rangement of the tractates – everything, it seems to me, points to fourth-century Christian monks. The only issue is whether we also want to add a label such as ‘gnostic,’ or ‘heterodox,’ or ‘syncretistic,’ or ‘preorthodox,’ or ‘protoorthodox.’” For a new look at Pachomius and application of Williams’ work to Pachomian monasticism, see, respectively, Dogma and Mysticism, 196–206, and, with relation to the NHC, Philip Rousseau, “The Successors of Pachomius and the Nag Hammadi Codices: Exegetical Themes and Literary Structures,” in The World of Egyptian Christianity: Language, Literature, and Social Context: Essays in Honor of David W. Johnson (ed. James E. Goehring and Janet A. Timbie; Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 140–57, esp. 141 (“I base a possible connection with Nag Hammadi on Michael Williams’s work”). See also Rousseau’s “Orthodoxy and the Coenobite,” in Studia Patristica XXX: Papers Presented at the Twelfth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 1995: Biblica et Apocrypha, Ascetica, Liturgica (ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone; Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 241–58. 99 Lundhaug, “Shenoute and NHC II,” 203–4. 100 According to Nicola Denzey Lewis and Justine Ariel Blount, “Rethinking the Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices,” JBL 133.2 (2014): 415; and further: “(416) Our intuition is that the Nag Hammadi codices belonged to private (i.e., non-monastic) individuals who commissioned them for their own purposes. . . . The ‘private individual’ model requires that we break with our tendency to interpret the landscape of late antique Egypt as purely populated by monks . . . . (418) [T]he theological inconsistencies that vex modern scholars were likely to have been of no concern to a fourth-century elite who planned out in advance a ‘real, Egyptian’ burial. It is worth asking, in conclusion, what difference it makes if the Nag Hammadi find-story was, indeed, a scholarly fiction. . . . To be suspicious of the find-story and the assumed Pachomian provenance is to allow these late antique codices to belong to a uniquely Egyptian archaeological context, placing them in a funerary tradition [as grave goods] that began in the dynastic era and endured, arguably, well into the Muslim era. . . . (419) Contextualizing the Nag Hammadi codices in the grave of a private citizen removes them from the background drama of fourth-century ecclesiastical politics.”

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scholars feeling “very doubtful that we will ever know enough about the readers, compilers, and copyists of the Nag Hammadi codices to reconstruct the personal contexts that they brought to these works.”101 But need we be so pessimistic? As I asked in 1975, “[W]here better than in a nearby but remote spot could orthodox monks expect to insure the security of valued material which was subject to wanton destruction?”102 2. Athanasius’ Festal Letter 367 CE, apocrypha, and Origenism The linkage of this letter with NHC provenance has been understandably supported by many scholars. But the main reason I questioned the linkage in 1982 as an “informed consensus” or the “assured results” of modern scholarship is that there is no historical evidence for “a purge of apocrypha throughout Egypt, or even in Pachomianism, about 367–370” (italics added). What we find, rather, is that apocrypha are a repeated complaint from the Alexandrian archbishop’s office over the next, say, 84–87 years to about the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which would be the primary time frame for rounding up the “usual suspects” and seeking the most plausible motive for concealment of apocrypha (to establish “a single homogeneous Church,” in Fergus Millar’s words).103 Opposition to apocrypha and heretics is echoed loudly in the Coptic version of Athanasius’ letter,104 perhaps even expanded from the Greek with the heretics named (not including Origen or Origenists105). The opposition to apocrypha is later linked with the eruption against Origen’s books by Archbishop Theophilus of Alexandria in 400–401. In 398 the weak Roman Emperors Arcadius (377/378–408; ruled East 395–408; older son of Theodosius I) and Honorius (384–423; ruled West 393–423; younger son of Theodosius I) forbade the reading of Montanist and Eunomian

101 Michael Kaler, “Finding a Safe Spot: An Attempt to Understand the Arrangement of Nag Hammadi Codex VI,” JECS 22 (2014): 197. 102 Dogma and Mysticism (1975), 187. A useful summary of scholarly skepticism and James Goehring’s “neutral” position, beyond which scholarship seems to have a hard time moving, is provided by William Harmless (1953–2014) as he answers his own question in “Appendix 5.5: Did the Nag Hammadi Library Belong to the Pachomians?” (not certain) in his Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 160–63. 103 Note 84 above; see also the literature in n. 83 and in my “Methodius to Epiphanius,” 17 n. 58, 21 n. 84. 104 See David Brakke, “A New Fragment of Athanasius’s Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter: Heresy, Apocrypha, and the Canon,” HTR 103.1 (2010): 47–66. 105 On Athanasius’ support of Origen, see Ilaria Ramelli, “Origen’s AntiSubordinationism and Its Heritage in the Nicene and Cappadocian Line,” VC 65 (2011): 21–49, cited in my “Methodius to Epiphanius,” 10.

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books and ordered their destruction.106 Early in 400 Archbishop Theophilus called the synods in Alexandria and Nitria that condemned the reading and possession of Origen’s books, after which Theophilus ousted the Origenists from Nitria. Not long after, probably spring of 400, Arcadius and Honorius also issued a decree condemning Origen’s books and their readers.107 Theophilus linked Origen and apocrypha as he continued to hammer away at the theologian in the Festal Letter of 401. “And so having rejected Origen’s evils,” Theophilus wrote, “and disregarded the traps of those Scriptures which are called apocrypha, that is, secret – for ‘I have spoken in secret,’ says the Lord (cf. John 18:20) – again and again, my dearest brethren, let us celebrate the feasts of the Lord’s passion.” On this passage Norman Russell comments, “Theophilus uses ‘apocrypha’ in its primary sense of esoteric writings that require special initiation, thus implying a connection between Origenism and Gnosticism.”108 The condemnatory association of Origen’s writings and apocrypha continued in Egypt and the Thebaid at least until the mid-fifth century, and presumably to the condemnation at empire level under Emperor Justinian in 543 and 553. Shenoute of Atripe (361/362–465), abbot of the White Monastery in Upper Egypt, rails against Origen and apocryphal writings in his I Am Amazed (= Against Apocryphal Texts; dated 440 CE or at least in the episcopate of Dioscorus of Alexandria, 444–454). It quotes Theophi-

106 Cod. Thds. 16.5.34; see Dogma and Mysticism, 406 n. 97; also, for context, Dogma and Mysticism, 52 (earlier anti-heretical legislation), and the references in Dogma and Mysticism Index 6 to Arians and Arianism (7 entries), Eunomius, and Eunomians. 107 Dogma and Mysticism, 406–7. Evelyn White thought the imperial decree preceded Theophilus’ actions (The Monasteries of the Wadi’n Natrun, 2: The History of the Monasteries of Nitria and of Scetis [ed. Walter Hauser; New York, 1932; repr. Arno Press, 1973], 140). But the archbishop nowhere cites it as authority, and I thought in 1975 (Dogma and Mysticism, 382) and in 1988 (Dogma and Mysticism, 407) that the imperial decree might have followed Theophilus’ episcopal actions. In any case, Theophilus also enlisted support from Pope Anastasius I of Rome, who likewise passed condemnation on Origen’s writings and urged others to do the same (Anast. I/Jer. Ep. 95.2–3; see Dogma and Mysticism, 407). The collaboration of Rome and Alexandria is significant, for Theodosius I’s Cunctos populos decree of 380 stipulated that the one and only true faith in the Roman Christian Empire is that which is in agreement with those two sees. Theophilus connected with Epiphanius too (Dogma and Mysticism, 408), who five years after finishing his massive Panarion condemning Origen and one year after the Council of Constantinople in 381, had been personally in touch with the see of Rome at the synod there in 382 (Dogma and Mysticism, 89). 108 Sixteenth Festal Letter (= Jerome, Ep. 96.20.1), in Russell’s Theophilus of Alexandria (London: Routledge, 2007), 116.

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lus’ Festal Letter of 401, which comprised about 30% (46 pages) of Shenoute’s 150 manuscript pages.109 Forty-plus years ago, on the basis of what was known then, I posited the early years of the fifth century, right after Origen’s condemnation in Egypt in 400, as the most plausible time frame, say 400–404, for NHC concealment, after the Nitrian synod in 400 attended by monastic fathers “from almost all Egypt.”110 These leaders “would presumably return to their respective areas with authorization for tactics similar to Theophilus’. All material thought to be heretical, gnostic as well as Origenist, would be subject to the same havoc wreaked by Theophilus on the library of Ammonius the Tall at Nitria.”111 I considered the influence of Shenoute too from 385, when he became superior of the White Monastery, to the early 400s, when he or his representative may have attended the Nitrian synod in 400 that condemned Origen and the Origenists. Shenoute believed in a “this-flesh” eschatology and considered Origen a “damned heretic” like his followers at Scetis.112 About thirty years ago I was not as certain about the 400–404 time frame for the concealing of the NHC, although that is still possible, and extended the time frame from 400 as terminus a quo to the mid-fifth century because of Shenoute’s posture, already identified as influential around the turn of the 400s, and of archbishop Dioscorus of Alexandria’s efforts against the Origenist priest and monk Helias (Elijah), who was banned from the Thebaid during Dioscorus’ episcopate (444–454).113 I did not retain the Nitrian synod of 400 as immediate trigger for the NHC concealment, but understood that concealment as consequential to Theophilus’ actions against the Nitrian monks in 400 and the suppression of literature.114 109 Janet A. Timbie, “Reading and Rereading Shenoute’s I Am Amazed,” in The World of Egyptian Christianity: Language, Literature, and Social Context. Essays in Honor of David W. Johnson (ed. James E. Goehring and Janet A. Timbie; Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 63. 110 Theophilus of Alexandria/Jerome, Ep. 92.1.4 (CUFr 4:150.3). 111 Dogma and Mysticism (1975), 185–90, esp. 186. 112 Dogma and Mysticism, (1975), 197, reflected in Dogma and Mysticism (1988), 230, 232. 113 Dogma and Mysticism (1988), 230–40 (on Shenoute and Helias). See Hugo Lundhaug’s cogent discussion of the Helias incident in his “Origenism in Fifth-Century Upper Egypt: Shenoute of Atripe and the Nag Hammadi Codices,” Studia Patristica LXIV: Papers Presented at the Sixteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2011: Vol. 12: Ascetica; Liturgica; Orientalia; Critica et Philologica (ed. Markus Vinzent; Leuven: Peeters, 2013): 217–28. 114 See Dogma and Mysticism, 406; and my “Pseudo-Jerome’s Anti-Origenist Anathemas,” Origeniana Decima: Origen as Writer (Papers of the 10th International Origen Congress, Kraków, Poland, 2009; ed. Sylwia Kaczmarek and Henryk Pietras; Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 962.

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Now further work on Shenoute’s I Am Amazed comes into the picture. Since research on its Council of Ephesus (431) references was not well known (Dogma and Mysticism 1988 includes research only to 1986, and I was working mainly with a 1981 typescript of Tito Orlandi’s 1982 “Catechesis” article), I dated it 401–404,115 which would have helped explain why Shenoute included in it the whole Festal Letter of Theophilus in 401. At least we can say that, whether or not there was development in I Am Amazed and its fragments, Shenoute likely had Theophilus’ letter as a significant component of his mindset from 401 on (then also of his archives). It is not plausible that Shenoute only learned of Epiphanius in the 430s and 440s either. The reflection in I Am Amazed of Epiphanius’ Panarion 64.2.1 (“extreme envy” as cause of Origen’s downfall) is unmistakable: And still others say that Origen was thrown out of the church because he disclosed things more hidden than the scriptures, or things that the scriptures did not write, and holier than what the saints say; and that he was thrown out not because he was heretical but because of envy.116

How far Shenoute had gotten into chapter 64 is not clear, of course, with its philosophical complexity. But in this connection the influence of Epiphanius’ writings on Theban conservative monasticism and the time frame of Pachomian redaction can be noted. According to Johannes Leipoldt, the Greek of Epiphanius’ Ancoratus of 374 (extant 104–108 only, toward the end) is sometimes “poorly translated” and “often simplified” for “peasant-monks” who “otherwise would never have understood the long, voluble sentences of Epiphanius.”117 The section translated into Coptic fits Shenoute’s milieu, or the Pachomian environment after a shift to a more strict orthodoxy.118 And Epiphanius’ Panarion 64 has strong analogies suggesting a literary relationship to the anti-Origen story in the First Greek Life of Pachomius: The earliest possible date for the Pachomian composition [of the anti-Origen story] would be 377, when the Panarion was completed. A more likely terminus a quo is from 394 to 404, when the controversy over Origen became especially heated, and still more specifically 400–404 when open Origenism was no longer acceptable in Pachomianism. Either the 394–404 or 400–404 dates are compatible with the date of the last redactor of the First Greek Life. Horsiesius’ death has occurred (after 387), since the redactor puts his second tenure as Koinonia superior in the past (“he governed . . . for a long

115

Dogma and Mysticism, 233. Tito Orlandi, “A Catechesis Against Apocryphal Texts by Shenute and the Gnostic Texts of Nag Hammadi,” HTR 75 (1982): 89. 117 Johannes Leipoldt, “Epiphanios’ von Salamis Ancoratus in saïdischer Übersetzung,” in Sitzungsberichte der sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 54 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1902): 171, 161. 118 Dogma and Mysticism, 218–20. 116

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time”). . . . The clues for direct dependency on Panarion 64 . . . indicate the latter’s influence on the anti-Origenist “orthodox-izing” of Pachomianism.119

There is much to commend the impression that after 400 there is a “deliberate suppression of evidence” about Origen and Origenism in the lore of Egyptian and Theban monasticism. The case has been made that “the redactors of our collections found it advisable not to get involved in the matter of Origenism, but silently pretended that there has never been any schism between the monks, . . . no reference to the [Origenist] controversy, or to their love or hatred for Origen.”120 The situation is a reminder of Theodoret’s comment about the Constantinople situation at the end of Epiphanius’ life (403) and the condemnation of John Chrysostom, patriarch there 398–404 CE: “At this part of [my] history, I do not know what I should feel. For while willing to describe the wrong dared against [Chrysostom], I am ashamed before the other virtue[s] of the wrongdoers. So even their names I shall attempt to conceal.”121 The period 400–451 now becomes an anti-Origenist time frame, and may even be extended to the sixth-century condemnations of Origen, for he remains at the head of Epiphanius’ heretics list and was arguably the biggest “best-seller” in the period. So I first proposed 400–404 as the trigger for NHC concealment, then extended it to the broader 400–451 in light of the events under Archbishop Dioscorus. Delving more deeply into the Dioscorus situation, Hugo Lundhaug has presented a fairly forceful case about Origenist influence in the Thebaid about 431–451: Dioscorus’ letter gives us a uniquely detailed account of serious doctrinal troubles in Panopolis and the surrounding region around the middle of the Fifth Century. For the present purposes it is especially noteworthy, however, that (1) the heresy in question is that of Origenism; (2) that the Origenist heresy is associated especially with the use of

119

G1 149 (Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 1:406); Dogma and Mysticism, 220–29. Samuel Rubenson, “Origen in the Egyptian Monastic Tradition of the Fourth Century,” in Origeniana Septima: Origenes in den Auseinandersetzungen des 4. Jahrhunderts (ed. Wolfgang A. Bienert and Uwe Kühneweg; BETL 137; Leuven: Peeters, 1999), 331. I am in substantial agreement with Rubenson’s approach, but should correct his comment about my “attempt [in Dogma and Mysticism, 196–206] to prove that the Pachomians were Origenists” (330 n. 58). Rather, I was proposing candidates for Epiphanius’ allegation that in the 370s there were “very prominent” Origenists in the Thebaid (Anc. 82.3; see Haer. 64.4.1), Pachomianism specifically. “Pachomius died in 346,” I wrote, “and he could not be among Epiphanius’ ‘very prominent’ Origenists anyway, but in order to understand better the nature of Pachomianism and the climate in which later Origenists could flourish within it until 400, we may also consider Pachomius’ spirit, in his own uniqueness, as less incompatible with Origenism than has usually been assumed even when the myth of his anti-Origenism has been discounted” (Dogma and Mysticism, 197). 121 Theodoret, Hist. eccl. 5.34.2 (GCS 44:334.7–11). See Dogma and Mysticism, 9. 120

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heretical books; (3) and that it is the monasteries that are singled out as the main troublespots.122

Thus the concealment during the episcopacy of Dioscorus is plausible and multiple libraries123 may be involved: Although its scale will have to remain unknown, it is likely that Dioscorus’ Letter to Shenoute, with its memorandum to the local bishops, led to a purge of heretical books from the monastic libraries in the region, and may even have been the direct reason for their owner’s decision to hide away the Nag Hammadi Codices in a sealed and buried jar.124

The reality may be that Theophilus’ and Dioscorus’ actions are but two of many such occurrences in the monastic culture of Egypt and the Thebaid as imperial and church legislation gradually takes effect toward the imposition of one type of Christianity and the suppression or destruction of literature that was in the way. The change in the Roman Christian Empire occurred rather fast after 379 when Theodosius I became emperor. The church that had been under threat at the beginning of the fourth century became after that date the group by which people of other religious convictions might feel threatened. The contrast in Egyptian church and monastic life is not necessarily between urban and rural, or northern Nitrian and southern Theban monasticism, but between “free-style” Christianity125 and that which is controlled by the ecclesio-political institution. The Theodosian Code categorically forbade all heresies, even attempting to control what people think about religion. Holding heretical teachings in one’s own

122 Lundhaug, “Origenism in Fifth-Century Upper Egypt,” 221. See also, at the Colloquium Origenianum Undecimum at the University of Aarhus 26–30 August 2013, a workshop session including Lundhaug’s “Origenist Monks and the Nag Hammadi Codices”; René Falkenberg’s “Comforting Rheginos: Origenism in Treatise on the Resurrection (NHC I,4)”; and Lance Jenott’s “Evagrius Ponticus and the Books from Nag Hammadi: Sources of the Anthropomorphic Controversy in Fifth-Century Egypt.” 123 On “multiple” libraries, assumed to be in multiple monasteries, see also Lundhaug, “Shenoute’s Heresiological Polemics and its Context(s),” in Invention, Rewriting, Usurpation: Discursive Fights over Religious Traditions in Antiquity (ed. Jörg Ulrich, Anders-Christian Jacobsen, and David Brakke; Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity 11; Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2012), 255 (“it is highly likely that literature like that which is contained in the Nag Hammadi codices . . . were in circulation in the monastic communities in the vicinity of, and perhaps within, Shenoute’s White Monastery community”); also 261 (“there seems . . . little reason to doubt that illicit literature were in circulation in and around the White Monastery community”). 124 Lundhaug, “Origenism in Fifth-Century Upper Egypt,” 228 (italics added). 125 “Extreme Christianity” has also been used to describe this type of faith. See Luke T. Johnson, “Extreme Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd Centuries,” lecture 9 (of 36) in his The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (Chantilly, Va.: The Teaching Company, 2012).

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mind is acceptable but teaching them to others is forbidden.126 And the “performance of orthodoxy”127 becomes an expectation of the orthodox side. In this perspective the NHC are not only mostly religious documents but are subversive of the state. The Nag Hammadi milieu question becomes a lightning rod for considering the relationship between ascetic varieties in the Thebaid as they relate to the new way of Roman Christian life. The Origenist theory is a suppression of literature theory, a suppression of ideas. Origen’s condemnation in 400 is a major factor in this process in late antiquity, whether or not enough concrete evidence is found to sustain a specific date for NHC concealment. Recognition of the 400 date seems in any case to be growing as scholars learn more about the complexities of late-antique cultural transition in Egypt and the Roman Empire. Regarding the NHC, in 2007 Marvin Meyer and Elaine Pagels can still be considering NHC concealment as a consequence of Athanasius’ Festal Letter of 367,128 but in 2012 she was not so sure: We do not know exactly what happened in response to Athanasius’ letter. What we do know is that, whether in response to this letter or to later denunciations of writings associated with Origen, some time after Theodore ordered the bishop’s letter to be copied onto the monastery wall at Nag Hammadi, someone – perhaps monks resisting the bishop’s order – took more than fifty sacred writings, including gospels and secret “revelations,” packed and carefully sealed them into a six-foot jar, and buried them for safekeeping near the cliff where they were discovered nearly fifteen hundred years later, in 1945, and came to be known as the Gnostic gospels.129

James Goehring in 1986 thought the “later date [400] for the removal of the codices from the [Chenoboskion] monastery acceptable.”130 Now we would extend the monastic possibilities to the consequences of Dioscorus’ Letter to Shenoute in the late 440s. Also in 1986, Armand Veilleux, although he did not agree with my suggestion that the Pachomian “perfect” and/or “ancient brothers” could be the ones to whom the NHC would ap126

Cod. Thds. 16.5.5 (8 August 379). Virginia Burrus, “‘In the Theatre of This Life’: The Performance of Orthodoxy in Late Antiquity,” in The Limits of Ancient Christianity: Essays on Late Antique Thought and Culture in Honor of R.A. Markus (ed. William E. Klingshirn and Mark Vessey; Recentiores: Later Latin Texts and Contexts; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 80–96. 128 Marvin Meyer and Elaine H. Pagels, “Introduction,” in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition (ed. Marvin Meyer; New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 6– 7. 129 Elaine Pagels, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation (New York: Viking, 2012), 166–67. 130 Goehring, “New Frontiers,” 248 n. 61, on the basis of Dogma and Mysticism (1975), 172–95. 127

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peal,131 was one of the few at that time who did agree with my dissociation of Athanasius’ Festal Letter of 367 with the NHC concealment. “I would agree,” he wrote, “that the connection of that letter and the burying of the Nag Hammadi library is one of those scientific hypotheses that are put forward without any real proof, and then are repeated by every one as if they had been demonstrated.”132 He made a further astute comment suggesting in effect that the church and monasticism are not going to fall apart if the NHC and monasticism, Pachomian or otherwise, are found to be connected. He showed openness in concluding his “Monasticism and Gnosis” article in an exemplary Christian and Cistercian monastic spirit: If someday it could be proved that the Nag Hammadi library was assembled by Pachomian monks, I would like to think that we shall find that they assembled it not out of ignorance or because they did not care for orthodoxy but because, beyond all that separated them from the gnostic Weltanschauung, they perceived in those writings the same spiritual thirst and the same search for the primordial Unity that animated their whole life.133

Bibliography Aland, Kurt. The Problem of the New Testament Canon. London: Mowbray, 1962. Associated Press. “Gnostics Now Aid Scholars.” Trenton (NJ) Evening Times, 28 November 1974. Barns, John W. B. “Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Covers of the Nag Hammadi Codices: A Preliminary Report.” Pages 9–17 in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts: In Honour of Pahor Labib. Edited by Martin Krause. Nag Hammadi Studies 6. Leiden: Brill, 1975. Barns, John W. B., Gerald M. Browne, and John C. Shelton, eds. Nag Hammadi Codices: Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Cartonnage of the Covers. Nag Hammadi Studies 16. Leiden: Brill, 1981. Böhlig, Alexander. “Report on the Coptological Work (Carried out in the context of the Tübingen research project): The Hellenic and Hellenistic Contribution to Syncretism in the Near East.” Pages 131–38 in Nag Hammadi and Gnosis: Papers read at the First International Congress of Coptology (Cairo, December 1976). Edited by Robert McL. Wilson. Nag Hammadi Studies 14. Leiden: Brill, 1978. Boyd, William K. The Ecclesiastical Edicts of the Theodosian Code. Studies in History, Economics and Public Law 24. New York: Columbia University Press, 1905. Repr. BiblioBazaar LLC, 2012. Brakke, David. The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010. –. “A New Fragment of Athanasius’s Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter: Heresy, Apocrypha, and the Canon.” Harvard Theological Review 103 (2010): 47–66. –. Gnosticism: From Nag Hammadi to the Gospel of Judas. Chantilly, Va.: The Teaching Company, 2015. 131 See above; Veilleux contra, “Monasticism and Gnosis in Egypt,” 274 with n. 18; see also 291 with n. 87. 132 Veilleux, “Monasticism and Gnosis in Egypt,” 290, 291 with n. 86. 133 Veilleux, “Monasticism and Gnosis in Egypt,” 306.

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Burrus, Virginia. “‘In the Theatre of This Life’: The Performance of Orthodoxy in Late Antiquity.” Pages 80–96 in The Limits of Ancient Christianity: Essays on Late Antique Thought and Culture in Honor of R. A. Markus. Edited William E. Klingshirn and Mark Vessey. Recentiores: Later Latin Texts and Contexts. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999. Clebsch, William. Christianity in European History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Dechow, Jon F. Dogma and Mysticism in Early Christianity: Epiphanius of Cyprus and the Legacy of Origen. PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1975. Rev. ed. North American Patristic Society Monograph Series 13. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1988. –. “Pseudo-Jerome’s Anti-Origenist Anathemas.” Pages 955–65 in Origeniana Decima: Origen as Writer: Papers of the 10th International Origen Congress, Kraków, Poland, 2009. Edited by Sylwia Kaczmarek and Henryk Pietras. Leuven: Peeters, 2011. –. “From Methodius to Epiphanius in Anti-Origenist Polemic.” Pages 10–29 in Adamantius 19 (2013): 10–29. –. Review of Demetrios S. Katos, Palladius of Helenopolis: The Origenist Advocate. Review of Biblical Literature [http://www.bookreviews.org] (2015). Doresse, Jean. The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics: An Introduction to the Gnostic Coptic Manuscripts Discovered at Chenoboskion. New York: Viking, 1960. Repr. 1970. Evelyn White, Hugh G. The Monasteries of the Wadi’n Natrun, 1: New Coptic Texts from the Monastery of Saint Macarius. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1926. Repr. Arno Press, 1973. –. The Monasteries of the Wadi’n Natrun, 2: The History of the Monasteries of Nitria and of Scetis. Edited by Walter Hauser. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1932. Repr. Arno Press, 1973. Falkenberg, René. “Comforting Rheginos: Origenism in Treatise on the Resurrection (NHC I,4).” Colloquium Origenianum Undecimum at the University of Aarhus 26–30 August 2013. Flower, Richard. “‘The Insanity of Heretics Must be Restrained’: Heresiology in the Theodosian Code.” Pages 172–94 in Theodosius II: Rethinking the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity. Edited by Christopher Kelly. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Forell, George W. “The Ethics of Early Christian Monasticism: Symbol and Reality.” Pages 57–71 in The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics. Edited by Thomas W. Ogletree. Dallas, Tex.: The Society of Christian Ethics, 1981. Freeman, Charles. A.D. 381: Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State. New York: Overlook, 2008. Goehring, James E. “New Frontiers in Pachomian Studies.” Pages 236–57 in The Roots of Egyptian Christianity. Edited by Birger Pearson and James E. Goehring. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986. –. “The World Engaged: The Social and Economic World of Early Egyptian Monasticism.” Pages 134–44 in Gnosticism and the Early Christian World: In Honor of James M. Robinson. Edited by James E. Goehring, Charles W. Hedrick, and Hans Dieter Betz. Sonoma, Cal.: Polebridge, 1990. –. “Monastic Diversity and Ideological Boundaries in Fourth-Century Christian Egypt,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 5 (1997): 61–84. Repr. 196–220 in idem, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert. Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity, 1999. –. “The Provenance of the Nag Hammadi Codices Once More.” Pages 234–53 in Studia Patristica XXXV: Papers Presented at the Thirteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 1999: Ascetica, Gnostica, Liturgica, Orientalia. Edited by Maurice F. Wiles and Edward Y. Yarnold. Leuven: Peeters, 2001.

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Guillaumont, Antoine. Les ‘Kephalaia gnostica’ d’Évagre le Pontique et l’histoire de l’Origénisme chez les Grecs et chez les Syriens. Patristica Sorbonensia 5. Paris: Seuil, 1962. Harmless, William. Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Hedrick, Charles W. “Gnostic Proclivities in the Greek Life of Pachomius and the ‘Sitz im Leben’ of the Nag Hammadi Library.” Novum Testamentum 22 (1980): 78–94. Humfress, Caroline. Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Jacobs, Andrew S., trans. “Priscillian: On Faith and Apocrypha.” Pages 427–33 in Christianity in Late Antiquity, 300–450 C.E.: A Reader. Edited by Bart D. Ehrman and Andrew S. Jacobs. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Jenkins, Philip. Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. Jenott, Lance. “Evagrius Ponticus and the Books from Nag Hammadi: Sources of the Anthropomorphic Controversy in Fifth-Century Egypt.” Colloquium Origenianum Undecimum at the University of Aarhus 26–30 August 2013. Jenott, Lance, and Elaine Pagels. “Antony’s Letters and Nag Hammadi Codex I: Sources of Religious Conflict in Fourth-Century Egypt.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 18 (2010): 557–89. Johnson, Luke T. “Extreme Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd Centuries.” Lecture 9 (of 36) in The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation. Chantilly, Va.: The Teaching Co, 2012. Judge, Edwin A. “The Earliest Use of Monachos for ‘Monk’ (P. Coll. Youtie 77) and the Origins of Monasticism.” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 20 (1977): 72–89. Kaler, Michael. “Finding a Safe Spot: An Attempt to Understand the Arrangement of Nag Hammadi Codex VI.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 22 (2014): 197–217. Katos, Demetrius. Palladius of Helenopolis: The Origenist Advocate. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. King, Karen L. What Is Gnosticism? Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003. Kraft, Robert A., and Janet Timbie. Review of The Nag Hammadi Library in English, Edited by James M. Robinson and Marvin W. Meyer. Religious Studies Review 8.1 (1982): 32– 52. Lefort, Louis Th. S. Athanase lettres festales et pastorales en copte. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 151, Scriptores Coptici 20. Leuven: L. Durbecq, 1955. Leipoldt, Johannes. “Epiphanios’ von Salamis Ancoratus in saïdischer Übersetzung.” Pages 136–71 in Sitzungsberichte der sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 54. Leipzig: Teubner, 1902. Denzey Lewis, Nicola, and Justine Ariel Blount. “Rethinking the Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices.” Journal of Biblical Literature 133 (2014): 399–419. Lundhaug, Hugo. “Shenoute’s Heresiological Polemics and its Context(s).” Pages 239–61 in Invention, Rewriting, Usurpation: Discursive Fights over Religious Traditions in Antiquity. Edited by Jörg Ulrich, Anders-Christian Jacobsen, and David Brakke. Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity 11. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2012. –. “Origenism in Fifth-Century Upper Egypt: Shenoute of Atripe and the Nag Hammadi Codices.” Pages 217–28 in Studia Patristica LXIV: Papers Presented at the Sixteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2011: Vol. 12: Ascetica; Litrugica; Orientalia; Critica et Philologica. Edited by Markus Vinzent. Leuven: Peeters, 2013.

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–. “Shenoute of Atripe and Nag Hammadi Codex II.” Pages 201–26 in Zugänge zur Gnosis: Akten zur Tagung der Patristischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft vom 02.–05.01.2011 in Berlin – Spandau. Edited by Christoph Markschies and Johannes van Oort. Leuven: Peeters, 2013. –. “Origenist Monks and the Nag Hammadi Codices.” Colloquium Origenianum Undecimum at the University of Aarhus 26–30 August 2013. MacMullen, Ramsay. Voting About God in Early Church Councils. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Metzger, Bruce M. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. 2nd Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Meyer, Marvin, and Elaine H. Pagels. “Introduction.” Pages 1–13 in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition. Edited by Marvin Meyer. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Millar, Fergus. A Greek Roman Empire: Power and Belief under Theodosius II (408–450). Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Orlandi, Tito. “A Catechesis Against Apocryphal Texts by Shenute and the Gnostic Texts of Nag Hammadi.” Harvard Theological Review 75 (1982): 85–95. Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Random House, 1979. –. “The Gnostic Jesus and Early Christian Politics.” The University Lecture in Religion. Arizona State University, 28 January 1982. –. Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation. New York: Viking, 2012. Quasten, Johannes. Patrology. Volume II: The Ante-Nicene Literature after Irenaeus. Utrecht-Antwerp: Spectrum, 1964. Ramelli, Ilaria. “Origen’s Anti-Subordinationism and Its Heritage in the Nicene and Cappadocian Line.” Vigiliae Christianae 65 (2011): 21–49. Robinson, James M. Introduction to the Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices. Institute for Antiquity and Christianity Occasional Papers 4. Claremont, Cal.: Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, 1972. –. “The Provenience of the Nag Hammadi Codices.” AAR/SBL Annual Meeting 1981. Rousseau, Philip. “Orthodoxy and the Coenobite.” Pages 441–58 in Studia Patristica XXX: Papers Presented at the Twelfth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 1995: Biblica et Apocrypha, Ascetica, Liturgica. Edited by Elizabeth A. Livingstone. Leuven: Peeters, 1997. –. “The Successors of Pachomius and the Nag Hammadi Codices: Exegetical Themes and Literary Structures.” Pages 140–57 in The World of Egyptian Christianity: Language, Literature, and Social Context: Essays in Honor of David W. Johnson. Edited by James E. Goehring and Janet A. Timbie. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2007. Rubenson, Samuel. “Origen in the Egyptian Monastic Tradition of the Fourth Century.” Pages 319–37 in Origeniana Septima: Origenes in den Auseinandersetzungen des 4. Jahrhunderts. Edited by Wolfgang A. Bienert and Uwe Kühneweg. Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 137. Leuven: Peeters, 1999. Russell, Norman. Theophilus of Alexandria. London: Routledge, 2007. Säve-Söderbergh, Torgny. “Gnostic and Canonical Gospel Traditions (with special reference to the Gospel of Thomas).” Pages 552–59 in The Origins of Gnosticism: Colloquium of Messina 13–18 April 1966. Edited by Ugo Bianchi. Studies in the History of Religions (supplements to Numen) 12. Leiden: Brill, 1967. Schneemelcher, Wilhelm. “The History of the New Testament Canon.” Pages 28–60 in New Testament Apocrypha 1. Edited by Edgar Hennecke, Wilhelm Schneemelcher, and Robert McL. Wilson. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963.

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Shelton, John C. “Introduction.” Pages 1–11 in Nag Hammadi Codices: Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Cartonnage of the Covers. Edited by John W. B. Barns, Gerald M. Browne, and John C. Shelton. Nag Hammadi Studies 16. Leiden: Brill, 1981. Timbie, Janet. “Dualism and the Concept of Orthodoxy in the Thought of the Monks of Upper Egypt.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1979. –. “Reading and rereading Shenoute’s I Am Amazed.” Pages 61–71 in The World of Egyptian Christianity: Language, Literature, and Social Context. Essays in Honor of David W. Johnson. Edited by James E. Goehring and Janet A. Timbie. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2007. Veilleux, Armand. Pachomian Koinonia: The Lives, Rules, and Other Writings of Saint Pachomius and His Disciples. 3 Vols. Cistercian Studies 45–47. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1980–1982. –. “Monasticism and Gnosis in Egypt.” Pages 271–306 in The Roots of Egyptian Christianity. Edited by Birger A. Pearson and James E. Goehring. Studies in Antiquity and Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986. Vivian, Tim, ed. “Coptic Palladiana I: The Life of Pambo (Lausiac History 9–10).” Coptic Church Review 20 (1999): 66–95. Ward, Benedicta, ed. The Desert Christian: Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. New York: Macmillan, 1975. Williams, Michael A. Rethinking ‘Gnosticism’: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Wisse, Frederik. “Gnosticism and Early Monasticism in Egypt.” Pages 431–40 in Gnosis: Festschrift für Hans Jonas. Edited by Barbara Aland. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978.

 

The Material Encoding of Early Christian Division: Nag Hammadi Codex VII and the Ascetic Milieu in Upper Egypt JAMES E. GOEHRING Michael Williams’ seminal reflections on the Nag Hammadi Codices as purposefully designed collections of texts published in the mid-1990s offered an alternative approach to the study of the individual texts that had dominated previous scholarship.1 His analysis moved the discussion from the authorial meaning of the original text in its original setting, usually dated to the second century, to the received meaning of the codices’ fourth century owner(s) implied by the combination and ordering of the texts within them. For Williams, “the arrangements within codices are simply best understood if we assume that these books were designed by sympathetic users . . . [whose] very repackaging and ordering of the material resolved, as it were, theological diversity among the writings.”2 He suggests that we should move from seeing the Nag Hammadi Codices as “a jumbled hodgepodge of traditions,” to considering “the degree to which the intertextual relationships effected by codex production could have established hermeneutical perspectives in terms of which works that to us seem theologically conflicting could be read as components of the same message, conveying the same fundamental views and values.”3 In his own analysis, Williams identified four distinct rationales at work in the codices’ production: History of Revelation Arrangements; Imitating the Order of Collections of Christian Scripture; Liturgical Order; and Ascent and Eschatology, and assigned the individual codices accordingly.4 His insights, relegated to                                                             

1 Michael A. Williams, “Interpreting the Nag Hammadi Library as ‘Collection(s)’ in the History of ‘Gnosticism(s),” in Les texts de Nag Hammadi et le problem de leur classification: Actes du colloque tenu à Québec du 15 au 19 septembre 1993 (ed. Louis Painchaud and Anne Pasquier; BCNH.É 3; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1995), 3–50; Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 235–62. 2 Williams, Rethinking, 260–61. 3 Williams, Rethinking, 260–61. 4 Williams, Rethinking, 249–60.

 

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the final chapter of Rethinking “Gnosticism,” have stimulated a new wave of scholarship in this regard. While the results are, as Williams himself observed, “admittedly speculative,”5 they compel us even in their diversity to reflect more critically on the complex nature of religious texts and theological boundaries in late antiquity. Three papers in particular bear on the following analysis of Nag Hammadi Codex VII. The first, a fascinating article published in 2007 by Louis Painchard and Michael Kaler, expanded Williams’ approach to consider the Nag Hammadi sub-collection of Codices I, XI, and VII as a whole.6 They contend that the sub-collection was produced as a three volume set “intended to progressively introduce the reader to a heterodox and esoteric doctrine of religious conflict and polemic, in which the reader is invited to identify him- or herself with an embattled minority group within the larger Christian community.”7 Codex I, which contains primarily Valentinian texts, served as the initial introductory volume. It offered a “progressive introduction to Valentinian doctrine for non-initiates.”8 Codex XI functioned as the transitional volume, initially summarizing the teachings presented in Codex I and then moving on “to demonstrate [their] practical application in a way which would simultaneously prepare the reader for the material presented in Codex VII.”9 Codex VII, which contains primarily Sethian texts, concluded the set, offering the reader the end result of enlightenment. It became “a new bible for him or her . . ., to be read as an exposition of the history of a spiritual group or race continually opposed by hostile forces.”10 The opening tractate in the final codex, the Paraphrase of Shem, recounts the origin of the spiritual group and its hostile opposition. The following two texts, the Second Treatise on the Great Seth and the Apocalypse of Peter, move the account of the spiritual group’s struggle forward into the Christian era. Both are “strongly docetist and include violent polemics against adversaries who are identified with rival Christian movements.”11 The Teaching of Silvanus, which follows, while “at first sight . . . far removed from this ferocious polemic” would have been read, given its placement in the codex, in terms of it. The final tractate, the Three Steles of Seth, “concludes the codex in a triple benediction                                                              5

Williams, Rethinking, 247. Louis Painchaud and Michael Kaler, “From the Prayer of the Apostle Paul to the Three Steles of Seth: Codices I, XI, and VII from Nag Hammadi Viewed as a Collection,” VC 61 (2007): 445–69. Williams had, in his analysis (“Interpreting the Nag Hammadi Library,” 24–26; Rethinking, 250–52), treated Codices IV and VIII as a two-volume set. 7 Painchaud and Kaler, “From the Prayer of the Apostle Paul,” 445. 8 Painchaud and Kaler, “From the Prayer of the Apostle Paul,” 456. 9 Painchaud and Kaler, “From the Prayer of the Apostle Paul,” 461. 10 Painchaud and Kaler, “From the Prayer of the Apostle Paul,” 464. 11 Painchaud and Kaler, “From the Prayer of the Apostle Paul,” 457. 6

 

 

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[that] confirms the final, inevitable triumph of this spiritual race whose origins were revealed in the Paraphrase of Shem.”12 In Painchaud and Kaler’s analysis, Codex VII serves as the capstone volume in a three volume set designed to introduce the non-initiate to the beliefs and history of the embattled minority group behind its production. The second article that I wish to mention appeared in 2010 and pushed the envelope further in terms of the hermeneutical perspective that a fourth century reader might bring to the Nag Hammadi Codices. In “Antony’s Letters and Nag Hammadi Codex I,” Lance Jenott and Elaine Pagels took up Stephen Emmel’s challenge to investigate how a Coptic reader of the fourth century might have “experienced,” i.e., read and understood together, the arranged texts of a single codex.13 Their analysis moved the discussion beyond the issue of codex design that characterized Williams’ inaugural efforts on the subject and the more Nag Hammadi-bound meaning that informed Painchaud and Kaler’s analysis of the sub-collection of Codices I, XI, and VII. Rejecting the latter’s hesitation from speculating “as to the nature and identity of the group or the individuals responsible for this collection,”14 they countered that “given all we know about religious diversity and conflict near Chenoboskeion, in the Thebaid, and fourth-century Egypt generally, one would hope for at least a cautious attempt to contextualize such an ‘embattled minority group’ in a less isolated geographical, social, and religious environment,”15 and then proceeded to take up their own challenge. Limiting their analysis to Codex I, they uncover themes shared between its five texts – Prayer of the Apostle Paul, Apocryphon of James, Gospel of Truth, Treatise on the Resurrection, and Tripartite Tractate – and the collection of seven texts identified as the Letters of Antony. These include knowing yourself, understanding the spirit as a guide to adoption, believing in Jesus’ passion, crucifixion, and the spiritual resurrection, and accepting the idea of restoration to the Father. This shared world of ideas, they argue, suggests that “a fourth-century reader of this codex (i.e., Nag Hammadi Codex I), far from encountering teachings typically regarded as ‘gnostic’ (dualism, docetism, a ‘worldhating spirit’), would have found a number of themes strikingly compatible with Antony’s letters.”16 The detection of such common themes between these two previously unconnected                                                              12

Painchaud and Kaler, “From the Prayer of the Apostle Paul,” 465. Lance Jenott and Elaine Pagels, “Antony’s Letters and Nag Hammadi Codex I: Sources of Religious Conflict in Fourth-Century Egypt,” JECS 18.4 (2010): 553; citing Stephen Emmel, “Religious Tradition, Textual Transmission, and the Nag Hammadi Codices,” in The Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty years (ed. John D. Turner and Anne McGuire; NHMS 44; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 34–43. 14 Jenott and Pagels, “Antony’s Letters and Nag Hammadi Codex I,” 469. 15 Jenott and Pagels, “Antony’s Letters and Nag Hammadi Codex I,” 562. 16 Jenott and Pagels, “Antony’s Letters and Nag Hammadi Codex I,” 570. 13

 

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collections works to blur further the more traditional boundaries that inform Painchaud and Kaler’s article. It opens the door wider on the question of who produced and owned the Nag Hammadi Codices and how they read and used them. It allows Jenott and Pagels to contextualize Codex I in the broader social and religious environment. Drawing on Samuel Rubenson’s work on Antony, they argue that Codex I “fosters in its readers precisely [the] kind of spiritual identity and sense of belonging to a privileged group” that shaped the way “monastic leaders like Antony encouraged their disciples, and engendered among them a sense of spiritual elitism.”17 While continuing to avoid specific location markers, they envisioned Codex I and Antony’s Letters as fellow participants on the same side of the conflict that emerged in the fourth century between a more academic Christianity at home in certain monastic circles and the increasing authority of the clergy who sought to control it.18 Finally, let me briefly mention a recent (2014) analysis of Nag Hammadi Codex VI by Michael Kaler.19 The eight tractates in the codex (Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles, Thunder: Perfect Mind, Authoritative Teaching, the Concept of Our Great Power, an excerpt of Plato’s Republic, On the Ogdoad and the Ennead, the Prayer of Thanksgiving, and Asclepius) seem on first glance to lack coherence. Kaler suggests otherwise. He begins by differentiating the two halves of the codex, identifying the first four tractates as more Christian in content, and the latter four, which include an excerpt from Plato and Hermetic texts, as devoid of Christian features.20 He further argues on the basis of a scribal note that the original design of the codex ended with the Prayer of Thanksgiving. The eighth tractate, Asclepius, added at the end to fill blank pages, was thus not part of the original plan.21 Turning to the first half of the codex, the reader encounters in each text a spiritual progression that involves withdrawal from the world to a hidden place of repose. In Kaler’s words, “this ‘safe spot’ or hidden                                                              17

Jenott and Pagels, “Antony’s Letters and Nag Hammadi Codex I,” 588; drawing especially from Samuel Rubenson, “Argument and Authority in Early Monastics Correspondence,” in Foundations of Power and Conflicts of Authority in Late-Antique Monasticism (ed. Alberto Camplani and Giovanni Filoramo; OLA 157; Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 75–87. 18 Jenott and Pagels, “Antony’s Letters and Nag Hammadi Codex I,” 583; cf. David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 213. 19 Michael Kaler, “Finding a Safe Spot: An Attempt to Understand the Arrangement of Nag Hammadi Codex VI,” JECS 22 (2014): 197–217. 20 Kaler, “Finding a Safe Spot,” 199–200. 21 Kaler, “Finding a Safe Spot,” 212–14. Kaler’s argument makes good sense, though one is always left wondering in such cases about the scribe’s failure to plan the codex size appropriately from the start. How would it be read as it comes down to us with the Asclepius tractate at the end?

 

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place is, one might say, unroofed: more or less direct access to divinity is achievable here, and this is where one can gain esoteric knowledge about the nature and structure of the universe. Furthermore, one is not alone in this safe spot, but rather is part of a community of believers who have made similar withdrawals and reaped similar rewards.”22 The second half of the codex moves in a more philosophical direction, which Kaler associates with having “made it to the ‘safe spot’ and . . . now working within it.” The excerpt from Plato encourages one “to find a calm place in which one can work towards self-perfection with discipline and dedication,”23 and the Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth “describes how the gradual pursuit of self-improvement, done in company with one’s spiritual brethren and taking place in a secluded, ahistorical environment dedicated to teaching and worship, leads ultimately to raising one’s mind above mundane reality and gaining access to the divine mysteries.”24 In my reading of Kaler, the first half of the codex repeatedly lays out the desired path and goal, which the second half encourages the reader to strive for through a dedicated discipline practiced within her or his spiritual community.25 While these three papers offer distinct interpretations of their selected codices, they share in common the sense of a community behind the texts composed of teachers and their disciples (non-initiates, students). This suggests that the codices, rather than simply volumes of esoteric teachings, served as textbooks in a type of spiritual paideia.26 Kaler’s analysis of Codex VI fits this context very well. While the teachings set out in the first half underscore the salvific goal towards which the student must strive and the path leading to it, the philosophical texts in the second half support the practiced discipline that both leads to one’s salvation and maintains it. I would suggest that while it may not be apparent in every codex, the element of ascetic discipline or praxis lay at the heart of the codicological process under discussion. While accounts of the cosmos and salvation history offer the why and wherefore of salvation, praxis supplies the path to                                                              22

Kaler, “Finding a Safe Spot,” 204. Kaler, “Finding a Safe Spot,” 209–10. 24 Kaler, “Finding a Safe Spot,” 212. 25 I would add nuance to Kaler’s notion that the second half assumes that the readers “have made it to the ‘safe spot’ and are now working within it.” I agree in the sense that salvation for this community is akin to enlightenment which once achieved is maintained through the discipline outlined in the second half and practiced within the author’s ascetically oriented community. 26 One can note here the work of Samuel Rubenson’s team project on “Early Monasticism and Classical Paideia” at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies of Lund University (http://mopai.lu.se/). See also Lillian I. Larsen, “Re-drawing the Interpretive Map: Monastic Education as Civic Formation in the Apophthegmata Patrum,” Coptica 12 (2013): 1–34. 23

 

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its acquisition and the process whereby once acquired one maintains it. Ascetic communities of whatever sort (philosophical, academic, monastic, urban, or desert) engaged their students in practiced disciplines that led towards the ultimate goal. Jenott and Pagels’ insightful reading of Codex I through the lens of Antony’s Letters suggests its placement in some form of monastic paideia. While their reading draws the codex out of its original “gnostic” setting and closer to mainstream Christian tradition, it resets the dividing line in the fourth-fifth century in terms of a more academic form of Christianity found in certain ascetic circles and the increasingly authoritative clerical structure that sought to control it. It is here that I think Painchaud and Kaler’s analysis of the sub-collection of Codices I, XI, and VII in terms of an “embattled minority group” comes into play. For while one can with Jenott and Pagels envision a way to read the various texts in a less “gnostic” fashion, the fact remains that certain forces brought the diverse texts together in the fourth century and others worked subsequently to remove them from the increasingly dominant mainstream tradition. Those who produced the various codices, sub-collections, and ultimately the Nag Hammadi collection as a whole surely felt this increasing pressure over time, and one can well imagine that that experience on occasion influenced the design of a codex. In what follows, I want to explore these ideas through an analysis of Nag Hammadi Codex VII. It is my contention that while it may function as part of the larger set envisioned by Painchaud and Kaler, it could as well be read on its own, serving as a guide to a minority group whose understanding of spiritual salvation had been left behind by an increasingly “body-focused” clerical tradition. While the codex does supply “a vast tableau of salvation history,”27 I would suggest that the design of the codex is ultimately more personal and instructive. It establishes the group’s spiritual origin, identifies the source and nature of the opposition to it, and offers in response a disciplined path that supports individual and communal salvation. The codex was designed to offer encouragement in the face of increasing ostracism and persecution.28 As various gospel writers encoded their own communities’ experiences of persecution and division into their accounts of Jesus and his followers, so those who designed Codex VII encoded their experience of isolation and alienation in the arrangement and material production of the codex. The remainder of this essay will divide between an analysis of Codex VII and the question of its owners’ geographical, social and religious location in fourth century Upper Egypt.                                                              27

Painchaud and Kaler, “From the Prayer of the Apostle Paul,” 466. We cannot know the nature of the opposition’s actions against the group. That the group itself felt increasingly isolated and persecuted for their beliefs seems clear. 28

 

 

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An Intertextual Reading of Nag Hammadi Codex VII Codex VII includes five tractates, a scribal note, and a colophon. These include, in order, the Paraphrase of Shem, the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Teachings of Silvanus, a scribal note, the Three Steles of Seth, and a colophon. The tractates present a rather disparate group in terms of their original ideologies. The Paraphrase of Shem alone reflects Valentinian and Sethian influences, and contains unique elements that seem to anticipate Manichaeism.29 It presents itself as an apocalyptic revelation given to Shem by Derdekeas who came from the incorruptible, infinite Light, one of the three original primeval powers or roots (Light, Spirit, and Darkness).30 Shem’s thought (ⲙⲉⲉⲩⲉ) ascends from his body31 to the summit of creation where no earthly likeness exists. There Derdekeas reveals to him an account of primal origins, the ongoing and complex struggle between Light and Darkness, the persecution of the elect, the efforts of the Savior, and the final consummation when Nature and Darkness will be destroyed. The text weaves into its revelation a docetic understanding of its savior figure and a rejection of impure water baptism.32 Its anthropology identifies the true self as thought housed temporarily in a nature-body. Shem, in his ascent, leaves behind the “body of darkness as though in sleep,” and later returns awakening “as from deep sleep.”33 He subsequently defines his death as “the day when I was to come forth from the body, when my thought had completed its time in the body, I arose as if from a deep sleep,” and blesses “those who have known, as they have fallen asleep, in what power their thought has rested.”34

                                                             29

Michel Roberge, “The Paraphrase of Shem,” in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition (ed. Marvin Meyer; New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 446. 30 Editions and translation of the Paraph. Shem include those of Frederik Wisse, “NHC VII,1: The Paraphrase of Shem,” in Nag Hammadi Codex VII (ed. Birger Pearson; NHMS 30; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 16–127; Michel Roberge, La Paraphrase de Shem (NH VII,1) (BCNH.T 25; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2000); Roberge, “The Paraphrase of Shem”; Roberge, The Paraphrase of Shem (NH VII,1): Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (NHMS 72; Leiden: Brill, 2010). 31 Paraph. Shem 1.7–16. 32 The passages may allude to Christian traditions, though they do not do so explicitly (Wisse, “NHC VII,1: The Paraphrase of Shem, 21); Roberge (The Paraphrase of Shem (VII,1), 65–70) argues for the equation and interprets the figure of Rebouel, who is beheaded in the text (40.4–31), as symbolizing the Great Church. 33 Paraph. Shem 1.15–16 and 41.21–22 (trans. Roberge, “The Paraphrase of Shem,” 448 and 467). 34 Paraph. Shem 47.8–19 (trans. Roberge, “The Paraphrase of Shem,” 470).

 

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The following two tractates, the Second Treatise of the Great Seth35 and the Apocalypse of Peter,36 contain pointed attacks against rival Christian group(s) that place greater soteriological emphasis on the body and its resurrection. The former presents itself as a speech of the ascended Christ, the main purpose of which is “the affirmation and explanation of the docetic passion of Christ, opposing its view to that of lesser Christians who hold to ‘the doctrine of a dead man’ (60,22).”37 Contrary to the latter’s emphasis on the reality of Christ’s bodily suffering and death, salvation lies for this author in recognizing the cloud of flesh that overshadows one and the real Christ within. Those who take on Christ’s form and the likeness of his word “will emerge in the light forever, in mutual friendship and the spirit. They have come to know fully and completely that the One Who Is is one, and all are one.”38 The Apocalypse of Peter continues the docetic theme, offering Christ’s revelation to Peter about the true nature of his crucifixion and its errant interpretation by the others, who hold to the worship of a dead man. It singles out bishops and deacons as “messengers of error,” and sets over against them “the brotherhood that really exists.”39 The latter consists of the remnant that Christ has “called to knowledge,” to the awareness of their immortal nature and the fact that “all that does not really exist [materiality] will dissolve into nothingness.”40 The next text in the codex, the Teachings of Silvanus,41 has been described as “the only non-Gnostic tractate in Nag Hammadi Codex VII.”42 It is in fact a wisdom text, offering its readers insight into the true nature of the self, direction for its realization, and guidance on how to live in the                                                             

35 Gregory Riley, “NHC VII,2: Second Treatise of the Great Seth,” in Nag Hammadi Codex VII (ed. Birger Pearson; NHMS 30; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 129–99; Marvin Meyer, “The Second Discourse of Great Seth,” in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition (ed. Marvin Meyer; New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 473–90. 36 Michel Desjardins, “NHC VII,3: Apocalypse of Peter,” in Nag Hammadi Codex VII (ed. Birger Pearson; NHMS 30; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 201–47; Marvin Meyer, “The Revelation of Peter,” in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition (ed. Marvin Meyer; New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 491–503. 37 Riley, “NHC VII,2: Second Treatise of the Great Seth,” 135; cf. Apoc. Pet. 55.18– 56.2; 58.13–59.9. 38 Treat. Seth 65.18–20; 70.1–3; 68.5–13 (trans. Meyer, “The Second Discourse of Great Seth,” 484–86). 39 Apoc. Pet. 76.23–79.31 (trans. Marvin Meyer, “The Revelation of Peter,” 494–95). 40 Apoc. Pet. 71.20–21; 76.18–20 (trans. Meyer, “The Revelation of Peter,” 492 and 494). 41 Malcolm Peel, “NHC VII,4: The Teachings of Silvanus,” in Nag Hammadi Codex VII (ed. Birger Pearson; NHMS 30; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 249–369; Birger A. Pearson, “The Teachings of Silvanus,” in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition (ed. Marvin Meyer; New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 499–521. 42 Pearson, “The Teachings of Silvanus,” 499.

 

 

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world accordingly. In its tripartite anthropology the immaterial mind, created in the image of God, is set over against the body of flesh and a soul that shares both spirit and flesh. The text encourages its reader to “know yourself,” to move away “from the forgetfulness that fills you with darkness,” and to “return to your divine nature.”43 It sets life in the body, a “boorish condition,” over against those born again who are “illuminated in mind,” which is not of the body.44 Those summoned by wisdom, leave behind their animal nature, which includes evil thoughts, desires, malicious speech, fornication, and the like. The text begins in fact with the admonition to “struggle against every kind of foolishness consisting of the passions of erotic love, base wickedness, love of praise, fondness for strife, tiresome jealousy, wrath, anger, and avaricious desire.”45 One is called to “fight the great fight,” to “knock on your inner self,” to “soar aloft like an eagle,” and “not let your mind stare downward.”46 The complexity involved in understanding the text’s social location is apparent in that it shares affinity with Valentianian thought, contains a fairly explicit antiSethian polemic,47 and incorporates a passage with teachings attributed to the monk Antony.48 The scribe who copied it added a note at the end of the text that reads “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior, Indescribable Wonder!”49 The final text in Codex VII, the Three Steles of Seth,50 preserves for the elect unshakable race three hymns sung by Seth during his ascent up through the triadic nature of the divine Father and again on his return trip back down. They address in ascending order the Self-Generated One, Barbelo, the first shadow of the Father, and the Preexistent One.51 In their original Sethian context, the hymns were likely read alongside the more                                                              43

Teach. Silv. 88.25–26; 90.29–30 (trans. Pearson, “The Teachings of Silvanus,” 506–7). 44 Teach. Silv. 94.22–29; 99.15–28 (trans. Pearson, “The Teachings of Silvanus,” 508 and 511). 45 Teach. Silv. 84.19–26 (trans. Pearson, “The Teachings of Silvanus,” 504). 46 Teach. Silv. 114.1–2; 106.30–32; 114.17–19; 103.1–2 (trans. Pearson, “The Teachings of Silvanus,” 519, 514, 519, and 513). 47 Pearson, “The Teachings of Silvanus,” 488. 48 Wolf-Peter Funk, “Ein doppelt überliefertes Stück spätägyptischer Weisheit,” Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 103 (1976): 8–21. 49 Teach. Silv. 118.8–9 (trans. Pearson, “The Teachings of Silvanus,” 521). 50 James E. Goehring and James M. Robinson, “NHC VII,5: The Three Steles of Seth,” in Nag Hammadi Codex VII (ed. Birger Pearson; NHMS 30; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 371– 421; John D. Turner, “The Three Steles of Seth,” in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition (ed. Marvin Meyer; New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 523–36; Paul Claude, Les Trois Stèles de Seth: Hymne gnostique à la triade (BCNH..T 8; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1983). 51 These may also be understood as the three levels of the Barbelo Aeon, in so far as she, being in the middle, unites the three aspects of the divine.

 

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descriptive accounts of the ascents of Allogenes and Zostrianos preserved in the texts that bear their names, and as such served as a prototype for a ritual practice of ascent to the realm of the infinite. It is worth noting for our purposes that Allogenes was preserved by those responsible for the sub-collection that includes Codex VII, copied into Codex XI in fact by the same scribe who copied all of Codex VII. The codex as a whole concludes with a colophon following the subscript title of the Three Steles of Seth. It reads, “This book belongs to the fatherhood. It is the son who wrote it. Bless me, O father. I bless you, O father, in peace. Amen.”52 The following analysis of Codex VII aims to move beyond the original ideologies of the individual tractates in an effort to understand how its fourth century creator read and understood them together. I am interested here in what I consider the original intertextual impetus behind the selection and arrangement of tractates in the codex. I readily acknowledge that once produced, the codex and/or its individual tractates could be read and interpreted in various ways by those who used it. Following Williams’ thesis, however, I believe that such later readings are secondary to the original conceptual plan for the codex. As will become apparent in the following pages, I believe that the ascetic individuals and/or groups that produced such texts were driven by their practice (regimen) as much as by their beliefs. While collections of Christian scripture undoubtedly influenced codex arrangement, I would argue that those texts that Williams describes in terms of Christian wisdom and parenesis might equally be seen as guidebooks in ascetic discipline.53 They offered instruction on how to live in light of the beliefs underscored in the other texts and as such were perhaps even more central in the daily life of the ascetic who used it. Ascetics, whether alone or in community, embraced a spiritual ideology through daily disciplines aimed at the control of the flesh, and the desires and thoughts it engendered. Wisdom and parenesis were essential to the persistent struggle. What follows is, in Williams words, “admittedly speculative.” I offer it as yet another way to read the texts.54 The scribe who constructed Codex VII, as well as later readers who consulted it in a quest for salvation, must have found meaning in intertextual connections that transcended the specific theological differences that                                                             

52 Steles Seth 127.28–32 (trans. Goehring and Robinson, “NHC VII,5: The Three Steles of Seth,” 421). 53 One suspects that the various arrangement categories suggested by Williams need not be mutually exclusive. 54 Kaler’s (“Finding a Safe Spot,” 197) description in the title of his recent effort on Codex VI as “an attempt to understand the arrangement” likewise acknowledges the issue.

 

 

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divide the individual tractates.55 The differences must have been allowed to fade in the face of what had become for those who produced and used the book more important shared themes.56 When one reads the codex as a whole, in fact, one is struck by how the opening of the first tractate foreshadows the contents of the last. The Paraphrase of Shem begins with Shem’s ascent out of the body to the realm of the infinite. “My thought which was in my body,” he reports, “snatched me away from my race. It took me up to the top of creation, which is close to the light that shone upon the whole area there. I saw no earthly likeness, but there was the light. And my thought separated from the body of darkness as though from sleep.”57 The final text, the Three Steles of Seth, concludes the volume with Sethian hymns proscriptive of a ritual ascent to and from the infinite.58 While not a Sethian text, the Paraphrase of Shem parallels the function of Allogenes and Zostrianos in this regard, offering a descriptive account of what was revealed in the ascent, while the Three Steles of Seth supplies the hymns that would have been sung during the ascent. Functioning as bookends at the beginning and end of the codex, these two tractates underscore its central themes; namely, the spiritual nature of reality and the available paths through which true believers participate in it. The themes are woven in turn through the first three tractates as part of a broader review of the origins of light and darkness, the reality of revelation, the historical struggle over its meaning, and the ensuing persecution of the elect. The final two texts leave behind the history of the struggle and move on to one’s response to it. They point the way forward to victory and spiritual enlightenment. The Paraphrase of Shem equips the reader with an overarching history from primal origins through the eschatological destruction of Darkness and Nature (materiality). In between, the reader learns about the perpetual                                                              55

The ideological diversity of the tractates contained in Codex VII, expanded further when one considers the sub-collection of Codices I, VII, and XI, underscores the irony in the basic argument in Williams’ Rethinking. The volume begins with examples illustrating the diverse teachings and schools of thought that scholars had traditionally lumped together under the category of “Gnosticism,” only to end by exploring the question of how fourth-century scribes brought together texts of diverse teachings and schools into a meaningful whole. See Williams, Rethinking, chs. 1 and 11. 56 The joining together of such disparate texts took place over time; Codex VII, the various sub-collections, and the Nag Hammadi Codices as a whole reflect various stages in the practice’s progression. 57 Paraph. Shem 1.7–16 (trans. Wisse, “NHC VII,1: The Paraphrase of Shem,” 25). 58 I differ from Painchaud and Kaler, who see the text as eschatological. While that element may represent an aspect of the text, the fact that it closes with instructions to sing the hymns again as one descends suggests a practice while still in the body. In terms of a spirit based “realized eschatology,” the two elements might effectively exist together.

 

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struggle between Light and Darkness, the efforts of the Savior to bring enlightenment, and the devious response of the opposition. The latter includes the work of demons, associated explicitly with sexuality (“unclean rubbing”).59 Shem’s account of his death at the end of the tractate again underscores the spiritual nature of what is real. In death, he “arose as if from a deep sleep” imposed on the mind or spirit by the body that enshrouds it. While Shem’s death serves as his final awakening, it in fact mirrors his ecstatic ascent with which the work began, the ascent that enabled Shem’s initial awakening through receipt of the revelation that the text records. In describing this ascent, he similarly reports that “my thought left my body of darkness as though in sleep.”60 The very frame of the text underscores that the experience finalized in death is available to the elect in ephemeral form while yet in the body. The spiritual history delivered from the past through the Paraphrase of Shem with its allusions to, read perhaps as predictions of, the dominant and increasingly intolerant teachings of the broader church on bodily resurrection find explicit confirmation in the following two texts.61 They serve to connect the information of the opening text to the reader’s own experience. The conflict between darkness and light that pervades the revelation to Shem is embodied here in the community’s experience of Christian division and persecution.62 The rejection of the concept of baptism as dying with Christ with which the Second Treatise of the Great Seth begins forges a link in the reader’s mind with the Paraphrase of Shem and its rejection of impure baptism.63 The community’s baptism uses “ineffable water” that imparts union with Christ, the ineffable Thought of the Father. While the reference need not preclude the ritual of baptism, it seeks to remove from it any notion of a dying and rising of the flesh.64 The latter is born from an errant interpretation of Christ’s crucifixion, alluded to perhaps in the account of the demon Soldas in the Paraphrase of Shem and now made explicit in the Second Treatise of the Great Seth and the Apocalypse of Peter.65 Those who preach the doctrine of a dead man66 lead many astray.67 In                                                              59

Examples of such language abound in the text. Paraph. Shem 1.14–16 (trans. Roberge, “The Paraphrase of Shem,” 448). 61 The Paraphrase of Shem functioned like an “Old Testament” in the codex. See Williams, “Interpreting the Nag Hammadi Library as ‘Collection(s),’” 17. 62 On division, see Treat. Seth 60.13–62.1 and Apoc. Pet. 76.23–79.31; on persecution, see Treat. Seth 59.19–60.12 and Apoc. Pet. 79.11–16. 63 Treat. Seth 49.20–50.1 and Paraph. Shem 36.25–38.28; Riley, “NHC VII,2: Second Treatise of the Great Seth,” 148. 64 Treat. Seth 60.7–12 and 49.26–27; note that the notion of “thought” connects back with the Paraph. Shem. 65 Paraph. Shem 39.24b–40.3; Treat. Seth 58.13–59.19; and Apoc. Pet. 81.3–82.3. 66 Treat. Seth 60.21–22 and Apoc. Pet. 74.13–14. 60

 

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this context, the Apocalypse of Peter singles out bishops and deacons as dry canals, a particularly scathing assessment in late antique Egypt with its intricate canal system that extended the arable land into the desert. Their success has shrunk the number of the elect, leaving but a remnant that has been called to knowledge, a fact predicted in the Paraphrase of Shem.68 As in the Paraphrase of Shem, the material body is “the cloud of flesh that overshadows you” or the garment of your blindness.69 The elect, with whom the reader identifies, are those who understand their immortal nature, their inner spiritual self that is real and one with the Father through the living word.70 The fact that the scribe chose to set these two polemical tractates side my side in Codex VII suggests, as Painchaud and Kaler argued, his sense of persecution. The placement materially encodes his and his community’s experience of ostracism into accounts of the past and thereby lends support to their current experience in similar fashion to how the authors of Mark, Matthew, and John encoded their present experience of persecution and suffering into their accounts of Jesus and his followers. Yet the central teaching of the text remains its separation of the spirit, which is saved, from the material body, which is not. It is this that separates the scribe and his immediate circle from other elements within his broader community and/or the wider church. It is the raison d’etre for their persecution, and as such the more integral and basic element of the first three tractates. It is the teaching that unites the scribe’s circle in the face of its persecution and serves as the basis for the practical instructions in life and the ascent performance that follows. The Teachings of Silvanus, which Painchaud and Kaler connect with the polemic of the earlier texts, functions more generally as a guidebook on how those behind the codex should conduct their lives while still in the body in preparation for their eventual ascent from it in death.71 It instructs one to turn inward, to “know yourself, that is, from what substance you are, or from what race, or from what species.”72 “Return to your divine nature,” it implores, “Bring in your guide and your teacher. The mind is the                                                              67

Treat. Seth 61.15–23 and Apoc. Pet. 80.2–6. Apoc. Pet. 73.23–28; 71.20–21; Paraph. Shem 44.1–6. 69 Treat. Seth 70.2–3 (trans. Meyer, “The Second Discourse of Great Seth,” 486); Apoc. Pet. 72.13–20. 70 Apoc. Peter 83.19–26; Treat. Seth 67.16–27. 71 While the intertextual linkages to the earlier polemic noted by Painchaud and Kaler are easily imaginable in a circle experiencing persecution, I believe that the primary function of the fourth text remains instructive in terms of how to live and remain true to one’s ideology in face of this opposition. 72 Teach. Silv. 92.10–14 (trans. Pearson, “The Teachings of Silvanus,” 507). 68

 

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guide and reason is the teacher.”73 “Acquire for yourself strength of mind and soul, and strengthen your struggle against every kind of foolishness consisting of the passions of erotic love, base wickedness, love of praise, fondness for strife, tiresome jealousy, wrath, anger and avaricious desire.”74 Thoughts, like evil beasts, must be confronted head on, lest you become like an animal. “Do not show your back [to] your enemies and flee, but rather pursue them as a [strong one]. Be not an animal, with men pursuing you; but rather, be a man, with you pursuing the evil wild beasts, lest somehow they become victorious over you and trample you as a dead man, and you perish in their wickedness.”75 “Animality will guide you into the earthly race, but the intellectual nature will guide you to intelligible forms.”76 The text warns about the scheming nature of the adversary, who can disguise evil thoughts as good ones.77 One is to keep company with God alone, to realize that the mind, while in a body, is not in a place, as God is in no place.78 Access to God is through Christ, the wisdom of God. “Knock on yourself, that the Word may open to you.”79 One is to “fight the great fight so long as the contest lasts, . . . [and] if you fight the fight and gain the victory . . . you will bring joy to everyone that is holy.”80 When one leaves the old self behind, one soars like an eagle.81 While the influences on it are many,82 I would argue that in its present setting in Codex VII it functions as a guidebook designed to conform the reader’s outer life to his or her inner divine nature. The codex’s initial tractate, which traces the cosmic history of the battle between Light and Darkness, closes by blessing those “who guard themselves against the deposit of death, against the burdensome water of Darkness.”83 The Teachings of Silvanus opens with a call to arms, to “guard your encampment with weapons and spears.”84 It supplies the advice and tools needed to guard oneself effectively and be worthy of the blessing. Its harsh rejection of erotic love and animality would similarly connect in the reader’s mind with the frequent negative employment of explicit sexual terminology in the Para                                                            

73 Teach. Silv. 90.29–20; 85.24–26 (trans. Pearson, “The Teachings of Silvanus,” 507 and 505). 74 Teach. Silv. 84.17–26 (trans. Pearson, “The Teachings of Silvanus,” 504). 75 Teach. Silv. 85.30–86.8 (trans. Pearson, “The Teachings of Silvanus,” 505). 76 Teach. Silv. 94.12–15 (trans. Pearson, “The Teachings of Silvanus,” 508). 77 Teach. Silv. 94.33–95.33; cf., Evagrius of Pontus. 78 Teach. Silv. 98.8–20; 99.15–100.13. 79 Teach. Silv. 117.7–9 (trans. Pearson, “The Teachings of Silvanus,” 521). 80 Teach. Silv. 114.1–12 (trans. Pearson, “The Teachings of Silvanus,” 519). 81 Teach. Silv. 114.17–19 (trans. Pearson, “The Teachings of Silvanus,” 519). 82 Peel, “NHC VII,4: The Teachings of Silvanus,” 250–54. 83 Paraph. Shem 48.8–11 (trans. Roberge, “The Paraphrase of Shem,” 470). 84 Teach. Silv. 84.26–28 (trans. Pearson, “The Teachings of Sylvanus,” 504).

 

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phrase of Shem.85 It is, as such, hardly surprising that a portion of its ascetic instructions found a place among the teachings attributed to the famous monk Antony.86 Its advice to confront one’s thoughts head on like evil beasts similarly brings to mind the teachings of the lower Egyptian ascetic Evagrius of Pontus. The guidance the text offers, filled with warnings against the passions and the trickery of the evil one, readily fits into a system of ascetic or monastic paideia.87 Having led its readers through a history of the cosmic struggle (Paraph. Shem), focused it down to the present experience of Christian division and persecution (Treat. Seth and Apoc. Pet.), and then instructed the reader on how to conform the self to the divine within (Teach. Silv.), the codex ends with a series of ecstatic hymns celebrating the success in the elect’s ultimate aim; namely, ascent to the divine (Steles Seth). The final tractate, the Three Steles of Seth, encourages the reader, as the Teachings of Silvanus advised near its close, to leave the old self behind and soar like an eagle. The path opened up by Seth and the hymns he sang to the divine triad serve as a model for the elects’ own quest, as the occasional first person plural refrains suggest. While it is possible that the scribe behind Codex VII understood the final tractate as a traditional eschatological text pointing towards the embattled community’s final victory (so Painchaud and Kaler), the reference to a parallel descent back down from the divine at the end of the tractate argues otherwise. The ritual experience suggested by the text offers in life a fleeting taste of the final victory, an experience of realized eschatology that confirms for the community the reality of their faith and their expected end.88 Finally, the language of the colophon, with its reference to the fatherhood (ϯⲙ︤ⲛ̅ⲧ︥ⲉⲓⲱⲧ), reminds the reader of the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, the only other tractate that bears Seth’s name. There one reads of the “majesty of the Fatherhood of the Spirit,” and the “noble people of the Fatherhood,” who “belong to the thought of the Fatherhood,” as well as descriptions of the Father that include “fatherhood, motherhood, sisterhood” and “fatherhood, motherhood, brotherhood.”89 This might suggest that the                                                              85

See above, n. 58. See above, n. 47. 87 As a form of gnomic literature, which includes the various versions of the Apophthegmata Patrum, it functioned within a teaching environment. Cf. Larsen, “Redrawing the Interpretive Map,” 1–34. 88 While I accept that the occasional elite member of the elect may have had a visionary experience of ascent, I would argue that the practice indicated by Steles Seth functioned in general as a means to participate ritually in the saving action (revelation) of a savior figure. 89 Treat. Seth 54.14–16; 61.28–36; 66.29–30; and 67.2–4 (trans. Meyer, “The Second Discourse of Great Seth,” 479, 482, and 485). 86

 

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reference in the colophon, rather than pointing to some form of organizational hierarchy within the group behind the codex, simply affirms for the group the divine nature of its contents.90 It should be clear that my reading of Codex VII follows Painchaud and Kaler’s analysis of it as the product of a minority group reacting in part to the increasing pressure being directed against it. I accept as well that it might have functioned as the final volume in a three-volume set. I disagree, however, with their interpretation of the final two texts. While I find the thesis of an embattled minority group convincing, I would argue that the role it played in the design of the codex must be secondary to the volume’s primary function of spiritual instruction.91 Those who produced Codex VII and its companion volumes in the sub-group would have used them as guidebooks in their quest for salvation (enlightenment) beyond any initial proselytizing purpose they might have enjoyed.92 In this regard, I think Williams’ location of the Codex VII’s focus in issues of Christology and community is more to the point.93 While ostracism and/or persecution impacted the experience of the group, it was its alternative Christology and rejection of bodily resurrection that defined it over against an increasingly dominant opposition. Codex VII was designed to support the scribe and his circle’s belief in the spiritual nature of reality by explaining the origin and history of their current predicament, encouraging an ascetic regimen that structured their interaction with the world, and offering in conclusion a proleptic sense of fulfillment (realized eschatology) in the present.

                                                             90

Cf. Alexandr Khosroyev, Die Bibliothek von Nag Hammadi: Einige Probleme des Christentums in Ägypten während der ersten Jahrhunderte (Altenberge: Oros, 1995), 94– 95. One cannot preclude a connection with the monastic use of the title fatherhood; on the other hand, if those who produced the codex represented a subgroup within an ascetic community that felt increasingly isolated by their more spirit-oriented beliefs, such seems less likely unless it pointed to the hierarchy within their subgroup. 91 As noted above, one might compare the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and John as parallel examples of persecuted groups whose experience impacted the way in which they set forth their primary objective; namely, the imparting of their understanding of salvation. 92 I am skeptical that books were written with proselytizing in mind. As with the New Testament gospels, I suspect that they were composed by those and primarily for those who had already been converted. They served to support the believing community. 93 Williams, “Interpreting the Nag Hammadi Library as ‘Collection(s),’” 19–20.

 

 

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The Geographical, Social and Religious Location of Codex VII Turning to the question of Codex VII and its sub-collection’s location in the geographical, social, and religious context of late fourth-fifth century Upper Egypt, one must begin by acknowledging the ideological and linguistic melting pot suggested by the diversity of texts selected for inclusion. While it is true that individual volumes may have been organized and read in a particular way, the overlapping scribal hands that connect Codices I, VII, and XI argue that the faith of those behind them found common cause in all of the texts. The diversity evidenced among the scribes is itself intriguing. Scribe A, who copied most of Codex I, and scribe B, who copied one text in Codex I and half of Codex XI, share the dialect L6 and copied texts that have been described as primarily Valentinian. Scribe C, on the other hand, who copied half of Codex XI and all of Codex VII, worked in Sahidic and copied primarily Sethian texts.94 The pattern suggests the geographical draw of the community as well as its embrace of rather varied spirit-focused ideologies. The diversity evident in the sub-collection under discussion becomes even more complex when one considers its eventual consolidation into the larger collection of thirteen Nag Hammadi Codices. The process behind this consolidation had, of course, a long history. If in Christianity’s earliest stages “there was,” as David Brakke suggests, “no single and uniform proto-orthodoxy, but multiple modes of piety, authority, and theology that later orthodoxy represents as its forerunners,”95 there was as well no single and uniform heresy, but multiple modes of piety, authority, and theology that later orthodoxy represents as its opponents. As one turns to the later stages of this representation, it is not hard to imagine a settling process, something akin to an ideological pachinko machine, albeit less random, through which the multiple modes of piety, authority, and theology settled together in the process of forming orthodoxy. At the same time, as orthodox definitions firmed and opposition to alternative ideas mounted, the multiple modes of piety rejected by the orthodox movement began to settle together. The enemy of one’s enemy after all becomes one’s friend. In the process, common ground must have been found, whether willingly or not, that bridged earlier theological divides. While the identification of this common ground with the codices’ ascetic stance and emphasis on the inner self/mind/spirit as all that is real is not new, I would argue that it is precisely the latter element that allowed for the coming together of originally distinct “heretical” modes of piety and thus texts. The divide over                                                              94

Painchaud and Kaler, “From the Prayer of the Apostle Paul,” 449. David Brakke, The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 10. 95

 

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the understanding of resurrection goes back at least to those among Paul’s Corinthian followers who rejected his belief in the resurrection of the dead. It has been argued that the two opposing views of the resurrection reflected in First Corinthians continued to develop through the years along independent trajectories that lead respectively towards Valentinus and the Apostles Creed.96 While the notion of two trajectories surely oversimplifies what actually occurred, one suspects that it rather effectively represents the reality as seen from those at the end of the winnowing process. In this regard, if one were to track the trajectories further as the momentum of the orthodox movement grew and its ecclesiastical, social, and secular power increased, one can imagine that those who continued to embrace the alternative trajectory found themselves increasingly isolated, reduced in number, and forced together. The differences that had divided them in the past began to fade in certain circles as they discovered common ground over against the orthodox who ostracized them. The ascetic circle represented in the sub-collection of Codices I, VII, and XI represents the latter stages of such a process, as does the later larger collection of codices into which it was eventually folded. While this process unfolded over time broadly across the society as a whole, one imagines that it did so at different rates within different individual subgroups. Certain ascetic groups, for example, with their alternative structures of authority, might have experienced the process somewhat later than those more closely tied to the clerical structure of the church. Codex VII, in particular, organized as it is around texts critical of the increasingly restrictive emphasis on bodily resurrection, materially encodes the later stages of this process. The experience of a shared identity in the face of “orthodox” ostracism is likewise encoded codicologically in the sub-collection, whose diverse texts were brought and read together in support of a common faith. The themes detected by Jenott and Pagels that Codex I shares in common with the Letters of Antony, namely knowing yourself, presenting the Spirit as a guide to adoption, and believing in a spiritual resurrection that involves restoration to the Father cohere well with Codex VII’s emphasis on the sole reality of spirit and its salvation which it sets in opposition to the positions of its opponents. The same can be argued for Codex XI, which, according to Painchaud and Kaler, “was intended to smoothly conduct the reader from Codex I to Codex VII.”97 One might add that the liturgical elements in Codex XI, namely the supplements on anointing, baptism, and the Eucharist,98 find “liturgical” comple                                                            

96 James M. Robinson, “Jesus from Easter to Valentinus (or the Apostles Creed),” JBL 101 (1982): 5–37. 97 Painchaud and Kaler, “From the Prayer of the Apostle Paul,” 461. 98 Painchaud and Kaler, “From the Prayer of the Apostle Paul,” 460.

 

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tion in the ritual of ascent that concludes Codex VII. It is interesting in this regard that the hymns sung by Seth in this text are easily imagined in the context of the revelations given to Allogenes recorded in Codex XI (Allogenes), and recall in turn the singing of hymns to the Father by the All in the Tripartite Tractate in Codex I.99 In this context, the logical progression of the sub-group’s codices suggested by Painchaud and Kaler makes sense, though as noted above I differ from them with respect to the organizing principle behind Codex VII. While the initial three tractates underscore the identity of its authors/owners as a minority group who feel oppressed within a larger increasingly restrictive “orthodox” community, the following two texts move on to inspire faith and action in the same spiritual ideology that runs through the entire sub-collection. The polemical tractates, rather than defining the codex, serve to explain the group’s current predicament and thereby encourage them in the beliefs and practices that led to their persecution in the first place. Painted as part of the struggle between Light and Darkness, the reader can better understand and accept his or her fate and carry on with the spiritual practices that lead to salvation. The question of the group’s geographical, social, and religious environment remains, as always, a difficult one. Jenott and Pagels’ linkage of Codex I to the more “academic Christianity of the desert” represented in the Letters of Antony makes a good case for a monastic connection apart from any attempt to assign a specific locational marker.100 It suggests a more general link to the spirit-oriented Origenist ideology that became a bone of contention in the late fourth and fifth centuries within the monastic movement and lay in part behind Athanasius’ attempt to discredit and silence ascetic teachers who drew their authority from apocryphal texts.101 Their conclusions build upon and support other work in the field. Michael Williams, for example, who initiated interest in the organization of the individual Nag Hammadi Codices, drew a similar conclusion with respect to the codices’ origins. “Considering the evidence available at this time—the cartonnage, the scribal notes and colophons, the selection and arrangement of the tractates—everything, it seems to me, points to fourth-century Egyptian Christian monks.”102 Building on Williams’ work, Philip Rousseau found similar exegetical methods and literary structures in the catecheses of the Pachomian leaders Theodore and Horsiesius, and the Nag Hammadi                                                              99

Tri. Trac. 63,27; cf. 69,1. Jenott and Pagels, “Antony’s Letters and Nag Hammadi Codex I,” 583; David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism, 213. 101 Jenott and Pagels, “Antony’s Letters and Nag Hammadi Codex I,” 564 and 588– 89; on the Origenist controversy, see Elizabeth A. Clark, The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 102 Williams, Rethinking, 261. 100

 

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Codices. He proposed that “the surviving codices were not products or possessions of the Pachomian communities, but of other ascetic communities living close by.”103 And I have suggested elsewhere a possible Melitian origin for the codices, noting parallels between the monastic cartonnage and the archives from the Melitian monastery of Hathor.104 Others, of course, have argued for an urban provenance and/or private ownership of the Nag Hammadi Codices.105 The case is well argued and offers an alternative scenario for the codices’ production. While I can accept its possibility, I remain unconvinced by the negative elements of the case; namely, those that serve to reject the possibility of a monastic provenance. As I have often argued, the divide between city (ascetic) and desert (monastic) is primarily literary. I have no doubt that there were ascetic minded individuals and groups in the cities and towns of Egypt that might in some manner seem less monastic, but I would argue that such individuals and groups might also have fled the city for a more withdrawn rural or desert abode. Others, like the Pachomians whom we call monks but who called themselves apotaktikoi, built their cells and monasteries in cities, towns, and villages.106 Given all that we do not know about this period, I remain uncomfortable with labels that assign the ascetic players of late antiquity into particular camps and locations. I suspect that their world was more complex than we imagine. I would add in this context that, as Jenott and Pagels have shown, the orthodoxy or heresy of the text or codex in question emerges in the mind of the reader, who can, of course, choose what to read and when and how to read it. Furthermore, I would argue that how one reads a text can vary depending on where and when one reads it, and whom one reads it with. In                                                             

103 Philip Rousseau, “The Successors of Pachomius and the Nag Hammadi Library: Exegetical Themes and Literary Structures,” in The World of Early Christianity: Language, Literature, and Social Context (ed. James E. Goehring and Janet A. Timbie; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 157. 104 James E. Goehring, “The Provenance of the Nag Hammadi Codices once more,” Studia Patristica 35 (2001): 243–49. 105 Khosroyev, Die Bibliothek von Nag Hammadi; Wolf-Peter Funk, “The Linguistic Aspect of Classifying the Nag Hammadi Codices,” in Painchaud and Pasquier, Les texts de Nag Hammadi, 107–47, esp. 143–46; Martin Krause, “Die Texte von Nag Hammadi,” in Gnosis: Festschrift für Hans Jonas (ed. Barbara Aland; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978), 240–43; Stephen Emmel, “The Coptic Gnostic Texts as Witnesses to the Production and Transmission of Gnostic (and Other) Traditions,” in Das Thomasevangelium: Entstehung – Rezeption – Theologie (ed. Jörg Frey et al.; BZNW 157; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 33–49. 106 Note, for example, the warning about heretical anchorites in Alexandria in the Life of Pachomius = SBo 89 (cf. Letter of Ammon 2); SBo refers to the Sahidic-Bohairic compilation produced by Armand Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, vol. 1, The Life of Saint Pachomius and His Disciples (CS 45; Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1980).

 

 

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his exploration of “the intermittency of Christian religious identity,” Éric Rebillard argues that “Christianness was only one of a plurality of identities to be activated in a given situation. . . . Christians could be involved in groupness that was not based on Christianness.”107 While Rebillard’s analysis focused on the crossover between Christianity and paganism, I suspect his categories work in some fashion as well in various Christian circles with respect to the labels of orthodoxy and heresy. While figures like Athanasius and Shenoute drew sharp ideological boundaries in an effort to define Christian groupness, I would suggest that other Christians remained less rigid, activating their “orthodoxy” and its boundaries differently depending on the given situation. The fact that orthodox and Melitian priests continued to operate together in the Arsinoite Monastery of Labla in the sixth century illustrates the porous nature of the boundaries. One can only imagine Athanasius’ chagrin were he still alive, though one wonders, if he were, if he would even have known. Were the orthodox priest to leave his monastery and attend a worship service in the city where boundaries were more pronounced, one suspects that he would activate a more stringent boundary himself only to drop it once again when he returned to Labla. The relationship between orthodoxy and heresy was undoubtedly more complex in the real world of late antiquity than the usual binary analyses suggest.108 As for the monastic environment of Upper Egypt in the era in which the codices in the sub-collection and eventually the Nag Hammadi corpus as a whole were produced, let me suggest that the Pachomian sources can serve as a resource for envisioning broader patterns applicable beyond the movement itself. We are after all trapped in our reconstruction of history by those individuals and communities that produced sources, by the sources that survived, and by the transmission lines through which they reached us. The extent of the broader monastic movement, evident in the Pachomian sources through preexisting monasteries that joined the federation and others that remained separate, illustrates the point. The non-Pachomian communities either did not produce literary products or if they did, they disappeared for some reason. We know such communities only because of their accidental mention in the literary sources or through other non-literary means. Our knowledge of the Melitian monastery of Hathor, for example,                                                              107

Éric Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity: North Africa, 200–450 CE (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 92–93. 108 I would argue that when the scribe and his circle fashioned Codex VII their felt sense of ostracism from and persecution by the larger community had become more acute. While I would agree that the Nag Hammadi texts were initially read in new ways within communities that possessed them, the fact that they were eventually removed indicates that the ideological orientation of the circle that possessed them was, at a later point, rejected. The drawing of the boundaries happened as a process over time.

 

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part of a Melitian federation of monasteries, depends solely on the numerous documentary sources that have turned up over the years. Given such evidence, I would suggest that we read certain elements in the surviving sources as indicative of social and monastic realities that existed beyond their embodiment in the particular movement in which they occur. The existence of numerous other monastic communities in the area, the conflicts experienced with certain segments of the church, the consolidation of originally independent communities into affiliated groups, and the draw of members from across Egypt offer a few examples of what one might explore. Pachomian sources, for example, mention various independent monasteries apart from those in the federation.109 Palamon, with whom Pachomius began his ascetic career, served as father to a group of brothers; Theodore arrived at Tabennesi from a monastery near Sne; and the account of a brother who desired a certain rank mentions a small monastery two miles south of Tabennesi.110 None of these communities joined the Pachomian federation as far as we can tell. Given that such references arise only when in service of the primary aim of the source, one imagines that such evidence only scratches the surface of the numerous monks and monasteries one would have found in fourth-fifth century Upper Egypt. More monasteries allow for more possibilities with respect to many things, including ideological orientation and rigidity. The fact that the Pachomian federation experienced difficulties with ecclesiastical figures, regardless of their cause, likewise suggests a period in which issues of authority and control were still at stake. While the bishop of Smin welcomed the Pachomians into his city, his counterpart in Sne attempted to drive them away.111 One thinks here as well of the odd summons of Pachomius to the church of Latopolis to appear before monks and bishops, and answer questions about his clairvoyance.112 If we take this evidence as symptomatic of the broader situation rather than as evidence of the Pachomian experience alone, it suggests that ascetics were viewed differently by different figures and groups within the church, including other ascetics. The lines of allegiance and opposition were undoubtedly complex.                                                             

109 What follows offers but select examples from the Pachomian sources. I have not conducted a systematic review of all of the evidence. One might add here as well the sources form Shenoute’s federation, which are only now being edited. They promise to add significantly to our knowledge of this period, though for now I leave them aside. 110 Life of Pachomius = SBo 14, 29–30, and 42. 111 SBo 54 and 58. 112 First Greek Life of Pachomius = G1 112.

 

 

 

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The surviving sources likewise suggest a period of consolidation as individual ascetic communities joined together in common cause. Whether such developments arose as a result of economic issues, leadership problems, or simply in emulation of developing episcopal patterns, it now seems clear that the Pachomian federation, even if the first, was far from unique in this development.113 Shenoute fashioned a smaller federation across the Nile from the Pachomian cluster of monasteries near Panopolis rather than affiliate directly with the Pachomians, and the Melitian monastery at Hathor integrated independent communities at about the same time as Pachomius. The fact of consolidation again underscores the number and diversity of monasteries that existed before it.114 Finally I would suggest that the reach and draw of the Pachomian movement evident in the sources, rather than being unique, may well represent the recognition and strength of Upper Egyptian monasticism more generally. Already prior to the founding of his second monastery at Pbow, Pachomius’ monastery at Tabennesi attracted Theodore from Latopolis, some 150 kilometers away up the Nile River.115 Later, another Theodore, a lector in the church in Alexandria, after hearing monks praise the Pachomian federation, left the church, travelled up river, and joined the movement. He eventually led a house of foreigners that included Alexandrians (Ausonius the Great, a second Ausonius, and Neon) and Romans (Firmus, Romulus, and Domnius the Armenian).116 A certain Ammon, who later wrote an account of his time with the Pachomians, was similarly steered by church officials in Alexandria to the Pachomian federation some years after Pachomius’ death.117 While the Pachomian sources link these developments to their founder’s fame and connections with Athanasian orthodoxy, there is no reason to doubt that other communities drew from across Egypt as well. Surely the Melitians had their own channels of communication which would not appear in the surviving sources.                                                             

113 James E. Goehring, “Melitian Monastic Organization: A Challenge to Pachomian Originality,” in Ascetics, Society and the Desert: Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism (ed. James E. Goehring; Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1999), 187–95. 114 The later Pachomian difficulties in maintaining the federation underscore this as well. On the subsequent problems, see James E. Goehring, “New Frontiers in Pachomian Studies,” in Ascetics, Society and the Desert, 162–86. 115 SBo 29–30. 116 SBo 89–91; cf. Arietta Papaconstantinou, “Egyptians and ‘Hellenists’: Linguistic Diversity in the Early Pachomian Monasteries,” in Le myrte et la rose: Mélanges offerts à Françoise Dunand par ses élèves, collègues et amis (ed. Gaëlle Tallet and Christiane Zivie-Coche; Cahiers Égypte Nilotique et Méditerranéenne 9; Montpellier: Université Paul Valéry, 2014), 13–19. 117 Letter of Ammon 2.

 

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During Pachomius’ tenure as head of the federation, which ended with his death in 346, the nine monasteries and two affiliated women’s houses within the system ranged up and down the Nile between Panopolis in the north and Latopolis, some 275 kilometers south by boat. Theodore (d. ca. 368) added additional communities in the vicinity of Hermopolis Magna (Ashmunein), some 160 kilometers north of Panopolis. Monks within the federation travelled frequently between their monasteries on their own ships, and most came together at Pbow for the Easter celebration and again at the end of the year.118 Pachomian monks also sailed to and from Alexandria, and stopped on one occasion at least to visit Antony at his Outer Mountain of Pispir (Tiloc).119 What all of this suggests is a federation that by the end of the fourth century ranged up and down the full extent of the Nile valley. While individual monasteries likely drew most members from their immediate geographical proximity, some degree of exchange and mixture took place. Surviving examples of this process include the membership of the house of foreigners at Pbow and the later rotation of the abbots among the monasteries implemented by Theodore.120 One suspects that the fame of such monastic communities worked to integrate Egyptians from up and down the Nile valley. Furthermore, the administration of such a far flung federation would require some appreciation of the valley’s linguistic diversity. Such is evident in the house of foreigners, but it must have occurred as well in terms of the various dialects spoken within the monastery. It would seem that the Pachomian federation, as well as other such communities, functioned as late antique melting pots within Egypt.121 While the size of the Pachomian federation may have set it apart in terms of degree, I would argue that the draw of Upper Egyptian monasticism was in fact more general, as was the resulting cultural and linguistic mix. What strikes me in all of this in the present context is how the ideological and linguistic melting pot suggested by the diversity of texts in Codex VII and its sub-collection might be imagined against the backdrop of a similar Upper Egyptian monastic diversity and linguistic mix. The diversity evidenced among the sub-collection’s scribes, two of whom wrote in the L6 dialect and one in Sahidic, suggests the linguistic diversity of the community that produced it. I would suggest that the powerful draw of Upper Egyptian monasteries and the resulting cultural mix that they created offers as good an explanation as any for the linguistic mix found within the codices. One suspects after all that monasteries, composed as they were of individuals who left their traditional homes behind, would have fostered                                                              118

SBo 71 = G1 83. The two occasions were Easter and the harvest. SBo 124–26; G1 120. 120 For the latter, SBo 204–09 = G1 145–49. 121 One might compare the role of colleges and universities today. 119

 

 

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mixing and integration to a degree less likely among those who continued their traditional lives even as they embraced their Christian faith. Furthermore one can imagine the various sub-collections within the Nag Hammadi Codices originating in various monastic communities, either prior to or after their merger into a federation. Such might account as well for the different styles of codex production.122 So too might one envision texts and codices moving up and down the Nile on a monastery’s ships. In this context, one can further imagine that those who embraced a more spirit-based theology within such communities eventually found common cause as the boundaries of their acceptance and practice shrank as a result of increasing ecclesiastical and intra-community opposition.123 As the opposition continued to harden, such elements would increasingly locate their identities within their immediate circle of compatriots. They might continue to meet within the monastery or eventually withdraw from it to form a separate community of their own.124 And eventually, one can imagine that the opposition became so pervasive as to warrant the hiding of their sacred texts lest they be destroyed. Bibliography Brakke, David. Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.

                                                             122

I can as well imagine different types of codex production occurring in the same monastery. In truth, we have little evidence for the nature of monastic scriptoria in the earlier periods. If the monastery drew broadly from across Egypt, might not different practices arrive separately at the same community and continued to be practiced there? At what point did the process become so regimented within the monastery as to fashion all codices in the same way? 123 Shenoute offers a clear example of rigorous ideological control within the monastic movement. See, for example, his anti-Origenist discourse I am Amazed. Hans-Joachim Cristea, Shenoute von Atripe: Contra Origenistas (STAC 60; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011); Clark, The Origenist Controversy, 151–58. 124 Any number of scenarios can be imagined here. Whether they were forced out by the dominant group or left of their own volition as a result of an increasing sense of rejection and ostracism, we cannot know. It is worth noting that when Chalcedonian elements from Upper Egypt took control of the central Pachomian monastery of Pbow in the sixth century, various elements from within the community fled, including the monastery’s archimandrite Abraham of Farshut and a certain Apollo, who in time became archimandrite of the Monastery of Isaac. Others fled as well to the desert and other monasteries. Abraham eventually founded his own monastery in his native Farshut. See James E. Goehring, Politics, Monasticism, and Miracles in Sixth Century Upper Egypt: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Coptic Texts on Abraham of Farshut (STAC 69; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 38–39 and 55.

 

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–. The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010. Clark, Elizabeth A. The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Claude, Paul. Les Trois Stèles de Seth: Hymne gnostique à la triade. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi section “Textes” 8; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1983. Cristea, Hans-Joachim. Shenoute von Atripe: Contra Origenistas. Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 60. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011. Desjardins, Michel. “NHC VII,3: Apocalypse of Peter.” Pages 201–47 in Nag Hammadi Codex VII. Edited by Birger Pearson. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 33. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Emmel, Stephen. “Religious Tradition, Textual Transmission, and the Nag Hammadi Codices.” Pages 34–43 in The Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty years. Edited by John D. Turner and Anne McGuire. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 44. Leiden: Brill, 1997. –. “The Coptic Gnostic Texts as Witnesses to the Production and Transmission of Gnostic (and Other) Traditions.” Pages 33–49 in Das Thomasevangelium: Entstehung – Rezeption – Theologie. Edited by Jörg Frey, Enno Edzard Popkes, and Jens Schröter. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 157. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008. Funk, Wolf-Peter. “Ein doppelt überliefertes Stück spätägyptischer Weisheit.” Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 103 (1976): 8–21. –. “The Linguistic Aspect of Classifying the Nag Hammadi Codices.” Pages 107–47 in Painchaud and Pasquier, Les texts de Nag Hammadi. Goehring, James E. “Melitian Monastic Organization: A Challenge to Pachomian Originality.” Pages 187–95 in Ascetics, Society and the Desert: Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism. Edited by James E. Goehring. Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1999. –. “The Provenance of the Nag Hammadi Codices once more.” Studia Patristica 35 (2001): 243–49. –. Politics, Monasticism, and Miracles in Sixth Century Upper Egypt: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Coptic Texts on Abraham of Farshut. Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 69. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012. Goehring, James E. and James M. Robinson. “NHC VII,5: The Three Steles of Seth.” Pages 371–421 in Nag Hammadi Codex VII. Edited by Birger Pearson. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 33. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Jenott, Lance and Elaine Pagels. “Antony’s Letters and Nag Hammadi Codex I: Sources of Religious Conflict in Fourth-Century Egypt,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 18.4 (2010): 557–89. Kaler, Michael. “Finding a Safe Spot: An Attempt to Understand the Arrangement of Nag Hammadi Codex VI.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 22 (2014): 197–217. Khosroyev, Alexandr. Die Bibliothek von Nag Hammadi: Einige Probleme des Christentums in Ägypten während der ersten Jahrhunderte. Altenberge: Oros, 1995. Krause, Martin. “Die Texte von Nag Hammadi.” Pages 216–43 in Gnosis: Festschrift für Hans Jonas. Edited by Barbara Aland. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978. Larsen, Lillian I. “Re-drawing the Interpretive Map: Monastic Education as Civic Formation in the Apophthegmata Patrum.” Coptica 12 (2013): 1–34.

 

 

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Meyer, Marvin. “The Second Discourse of Great Seth.” Pages 473–90 in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition. Edited by Marvin Meyer. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. –. “The Revelation of Peter.” Pages 491–503 in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition. Edited by Marvin Meyer. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Painchaud, Louis and Michael Kaler. “From the Prayer of the Apostle Paul to the Three Steles of Seth: Codices I, XI, and VII from Nag Hammadi Viewed as a Collection.” Vigiliae Christianae 61 (2007): 445–69. Painchaud, Louis and Anne Pasquier. Les texts de Nag Hammadi et le problem de leur classification: Actes du colloque tenu à Québec du 15 au 19 septembre 1993. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi section “Études” 3. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1995. Papaconstantinou, Arietta. “Egyptians and ‘Hellenists’: Linguistic Diversity in the Early Pachomian Monasteries.” Pages 15–21 in Le myrte et la rose: Mélanges offerts à Françoise Dunand par ses élèves, collègues et amis. Edited by Gaëlle Tallet and Christiane Zivie-Coche. Cahiers Égypte Nilotique et Méditerranéenne 9. Montpellier: Université Paul Valéry, 2014. Pearson, Birger A. “The Teachings of Silvanus.” Pages 499–521 in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition. Edited by Marvin Meyer. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Peel, Malcolm. “NHC VII,4: The Teachings of Silvanus.” Pages 249–369 in Nag Hammadi Codex VII. Edited by Birger Pearson. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 33. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Riley, Gregory. “NHC VII,2: Second Treatise of the Great Seth.” Pages 129–99 in Nag Hammadi Codex VII. Edited by Birger Pearson. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 33. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Rebillard, Éric. Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity: North Africa, 200–450 CE. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Roberge, Michel. La Paraphrase de Shem (NH VII,1). Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi section “Textes” 25. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2000. –. “The Paraphrase of Shem.” Pages 437–72 in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition. Edited by Marvin Meyer. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. –. The Paraphrase of Shem (NH VII,1): Introduction, Translation, and Commentary. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 72. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Rousseau, Philip. “The Successors of Pachomius and the Nag Hammadi Library: Exegetical Themes and Literary Structures.” Pages 140–57 in The World of Early Christianity: Language, Literature, and Social Context. Edited by James E. Goehring and Janet A. Timbie. Catholic University of America Studies in Early Christianity. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007. Rubenson, Samuel. “Argument and Authority in Early Monastics Correspondence.” Pages 75–87 in Foundations of Power and Conflicts of Authority in Late-Antique Monasticism. Edited by Alberto Camplani and Giovanni Filoramo. Orientalia lovaniensia analecta 157. Leuven: Peeters, 2007. Turner, John D. “The Three Steles of Seth.” Pages 523–36 in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition. Edited by Marvin Meyer. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Veilleux, Armand. Pachomian Koinonia, vol. 1, The Life of Saint Pachomius and His Disciples. Cistercian Studies 45. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1980.

 

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Williams, Michael A. “Interpreting the Nag Hammadi Library as ‘Collection(s)’ in the History of ‘Gnosticism(s).” Pages 3–50 in Painchaud and Pasquier, Les texts de Nag Hammadi. –. Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Wisse, Frederik. “NHC VII,1: The Paraphrase of Shem,” Pages 16–127 in Nag Hammadi Codex VII. Edited by Birger Pearson. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 33. Leiden: Brill, 1996.

 

Reading Jesus in the Desert: The Gospel of Thomas Meets the Apophthegmata Patrum MELISSA HARL SELLEW

The Gospel of Thomas demands that its readers focus on the words of Jesus as the means of salvation. The opening of the text informs us that we are about to read secret teachings of the living Jesus recorded by Judas Thomas, the Twin. “Whoever finds the meaning of these words will not taste death!”1 Salvation will come not through sacraments that memorialize or reenact the death of Christ on the cross, nor his resurrection from the dead on Easter morning. This sayings gospel makes no mention of either those events or those rituals. Instead, redemption is to be found through a process of self-scrutiny, ethical exploration, and self-discovery. Like the ‘Synoptic’ Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Gospel of Thomas presents the teachings of Jesus through vehicles of folk wisdom – parable and proverb, pithy remarks and paradoxical expressions. These various pronouncements have been usefully compared to the ancient rhetorical category of the chreia, defined in Greco-Roman handbooks as “a terse statement, an illustrative action, or a combination of word and act, which is attributed to a particular person and which has a clear and edifying application to everyday life.”2 Eighty or so of the statements made by 1

Gos. Thom. 1 (NHC II 32). I have used the Coptic text edited by Bentley Layton in Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7: Together with XIII,2*, Brit. Lib. Or. 4926(1), and P.Oxy. 1, 654, 655 (ed. Bentley Layton; 2 vols.; NHS 20; Leiden: Brill 1988), 1:52–93. Translations are my own (informed of course by published versions) unless otherwise indicated. 2 Kathleen McVey, “The Chreia in the Desert: Rhetoric and the Bible in the Apophthegmata Patrum,” in The Early Church in Its Context: Essays in Honor of Everett Ferguson (ed. Abraham J. Malherbe et al.; NovTSup 90; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 246, with reference to the Apophthegmata Patrum: “The literature of early monasticism contains many examples of provocatively instructive sayings and dramatic actions attributed to the great desert ascetics” (p. 248). Study of ancient chreiai in comparison with the Jesussayings tradition began in earnest with the form critics, especially Rudolf Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition (8th ed.; FRLANT 29; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), 8–113; Martin Dibelius, Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums (2nd ed.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1933) = From Tradition to Gospel (New York: Scribner’s,

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Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas are identical or closely similar to apothegms, proverbs, or parables attributed to him in the Synoptic Gospels. 3 Often these words are closely paralleled in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, derived from the Sayings Gospel Q, and often involving exhortations on community ethics.4 Some typical examples would include Gos. Thom. 26, where Jesus says: “You see the sliver in your friend’s eye, but you don’t see the beam of timber in your own eye. When you take the timber out of your own eye, then you will see well enough to remove the sliver from your friend’s eye” (cf. Matt 7:3–5; Luke 6:41–42). Or Gos. Thom. 36: “Don’t fret from morning to evening and from evening to morning about what you’re going to wear” (cf. Matt 6:25; Luke 12:22). Gos. Thom. 47: “A slave cannot serve two masters” (cf. Matt 6:24; Luke 16:3). In Gos. Thom. 68 Jesus blesses those who are hated and persecuted (cf. Matt 5:11– 12; Luke 6:22–23).

1971), 152–64; and Vincent Taylor, The Formation of the Gospel Tradition (London: Macmillan, 1933), 63–87, using the term ‘pronouncement story,’ sharpened in recent decades especially by Burton L. Mack and Vernon K. Robbins, Patterns of Persuasion in the Gospels (Sonoma: Polebridge Press, 1989) with reference to the work of Ronald F. Hock and Edward N. O’Neill, The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric, vol. 1: The Progymnasmata (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986). As this sort of work applies to Gos. Thom., see especially Jon Ma. Asgeirsson, “Arguments and Audience(s) in the Gospel of Thomas,” SBLSP 36 (1997): 47–85 and SBLSP 37 (1998): 325–42. 3 The parallels are charted and given extensive commentary by Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (Valley Forge: Trinity Press, 1990), 84–113, who counts 79 close parallels and argues for Gos. Thom.’s (original) independence from the canonical texts; similarly Stephen J. Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus (Sonoma: Polebridge Press, 1993), 9–93. Simon Gathercole concludes his recent, careful analysis of potential influences with the statement that “attempts to exclude the influence of the Synoptics from the Gospel of Thomas are unsuccessful” (The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas: Original Language and Influences [SNTSMS 151; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012], 129–224, here 223). Other nuanced discussions include those of Thomas Zöckler, Jesu Lehren im Thomasevangelium (NHMS 47; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 31–98; Risto Uro, Thomas: Seeking the Historical Context of the Gospel of Thomas (London: T&T Clark, 2003), 106–33; and Mark Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels: The Case for Thomas’s Familiarity with the Synoptics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012). Good samples of the range of current topics of special interest in Gos. Thom. research can be found in Jon Ma Asgeirsson et al., eds., Thomasine Traditions in Antiquity (NHMS 59; Leiden: Brill, 2006) or Jörg Frey et al., eds., Das Thomasevangelium: Entstehung – Rezeption – Theologie (BZNW 157; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008). 4 Close connection with Matthew is also found in the Apophthegmata: “Among the indisputable uses of Bible passages in the AP, a great proportion come from the Psalms and from the Gospel of Matthew. In fact … as much as two fifths of the quotations, paraphrases and allusions are taken from just two books in the Bible.” Per Rönnegård, Threads and Images: The Use of Scripture in the Apophthegmata Patrum (ConBNT 44; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 132.

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The Gospel of Thomas calls its readers on a path of discovery of the authentic self. This journey involves stripping away one’s exterior elements, symbolized as ‘this flesh,’ working to reach an inner core called variously this spirit, the one, or even, most simply, you or oneself. Thus begins an arduous, long process of becoming a single or solitary one (ⲟⲩⲁ ⲟⲩⲱⲧ or ⲙⲟⲛⲁⲭⲟⲥ).5 Interior inspection, scrutiny of the self, and attention to what is effective in making spiritual advance, and what is not, are discussed in Thomas using the vocabulary of ascetic performance: fasting, prayer, almsgiving, renunciation of the world.6 As we will see, a life of interiority is also pursued by ascetic practitioners as they are portrayed on nearly every page of the collected wisdom of the desert Christians. Consider as a comparison in particular Gos. Thom. 45, which will be of special interest for my discussion here: “Grapes are not harvested from thorns, nor are figs gathered from thistles, for they yield no fruit. A good person brings forth something good from his treasure; a bad person brings forth evil from the wickedness stored up in his heart, and says evil things. From the overflow of his heart he produces evil” (cf. Matt 7:15–20, 12:33– 35; Luke 6:43–45). Each of these ethical pronouncements in Thomas is also quoted as an authoritative proverb by the solitaries featured in the Apophthegmata Patrum, collected anecdotes of desert ascetics from late antique Egypt, themselves told largely in the genres of folk wisdom. For example, Abba Moses speaks to this effect: “The man who flees and lives in solitude is like a bunch of grapes ripened by the sun; but he who remains amongst men is like an unripe grape.” 7 The Gospel of Thomas requires close attention to the saving words of Jesus, to make sure our grapes turn ripe; in turn, the proverbs and chreiai of the Apophthegmata show us again and again how people seek a word from the Fathers of the Desert (and a few Mothers) that they might use for spiritual and ethical improvement.

5 ⲟⲩⲁ ⲟⲩⲱⲧ, Gos. Thom. 4 and 23; cf. the synonymous ⲙⲟⲛⲁⲭⲟⲥ, used at Gos. Thom. 16 and 49 without the technical meaning of “monk” or “monastic.” 6 Melissa [Philip] Harl Sellew, “Pious Practice and Social Formation in the Gospel of Thomas,” Forum 10 (1994): 47–56; Antti Marjanen, “Thomas and Jewish Religious Practices,” in Thomas at the Crossroads: Essays on the Gospel of Thomas (ed. Risto Uro; SNTW; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 163–82. 7 Ap. Patr. Moses 7 = Ap. Patr. Sys 2.20 (trans. Benedicta Ward, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection [Cistercian Studies 59; Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1975]). The Greek Gerontikon or Alphabetikon was edited by JeanBaptiste Cotelier in 1647 on the basis of a single MS (Paris grec 1599, 12th cent.); this was reprinted in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca vol. 65 and was translated into English by Ward, Sayings of the Desert Fathers. For publication details on this and similar collections see the Bibliography: Editions and Translations below.

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Both Thomas and the Apophthegmata make frequent use of and allusion to macarisms attributed to Jesus.8 Douglas Burton-Christie writes that “For Abba Poemen, the whole purpose of the monk’s life in the desert could only be understood in reference to the Beatitudes. He asked, ‘Is it not in order to endure affliction [κόπου, Matt 5:10 ff.] that we have come to this place?’ Similarly, Abba Paphnutius exhorted a brother who asked him for a word to seek the way of lowliness portrayed in the Beatitudes: ‘Go and choose trials rather than rest, dishonor rather than glory, and seek to give rather than to receive.’”9 Given these and other similarities, therefore, I suggest that when we search for a plausible context of meaning of the Gospel of Thomas as understood in late antique Egypt, we might find much enlightening material for comparison, and for contrast, in the traditions of the desert pioneers found in the Apophthegmata Patrum. Two main collections survive in Greek, one arranged according to letters of the alphabet under the names of 130 individuals (the Gerontikon or Alphabetikon), and the ‘systematic’ collection organized somewhat roughly under twenty-one separate headings, such as discernment, sorrow, humility, or porneia. Additional ‘anonymous’ chreiai are attached to various medieval manuscripts of the alphabetical series, and versions in nearly a dozen languages of Christian antiquity abound.10 8 Lucien Regnault drew attention to the frequent citation and allusion of the Matthean sermon in his article “The Beatitudes in the Apophthegmata Patrum,” ECR 6 (1974): 22– 43; see also Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 241. 9 Burton-Christie, Word in the Desert, 241, citing Ap. Patr. Poemen 44 and Ap. Patr. Matoes 10. 10 Fundamental work unraveling these complex traditions and their interrelations was done by Theodor Hopfner, Über die koptisch-sa‘idischen Apophthegmata Patrum Aegyptiorum und verwandte griechische, lateinische, koptisch-bohairischie und syrische Sammlungen (Vienna: Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, Denkschriften 61.2, 1918); Wilhelm Bousset, Apophthegmata: Studien zur Geschichte des ältesten Mönchtums (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1923); Jean-Claude Guy, Les Apophthegmes des Pères: collection systématique (3 vols.; SC 387, 474, 498; Paris: Budé, 1993, 2003, 2005); and Lucien Regnault, Les chemins de Dieu au desert: collection systématique des Apothegmes des Pères (Solesmes: Éditions de Solesmes, 1992). Useful introductions to the complexities of the collections, their transmission histories, and versions can be found in Guy, Les Apophtegmes des Pères, 1:14–81; Graham Gould, The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community (OECS; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 1–25; Burton-Christie, Word in the Desert, 76–103; Antoine Guillaumont, “L’enseignement spirituel des moines d’Égypte: la formation d’une tradition,” in Études sur le spiritualité de l’Orient chrétien (Bégrolles-en-Mauges: Abbaye de Bellfontaine, 1996), 81–92; William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 183–86, 248–51; Rönnegård, Threads and Images, 5–12; John Wortley, Book of the Elders: Sayings of the Desert Fathers, the Systematic Collection (CS 240; Col-

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In all of these collections, which have considerable overlaps in content, questions of mutual responsibilities for fellow ascetics as weighed against responsibility for one’s own spiritual advancement are raised repeatedly.11 Shaped in the form of chreiai, anecdotes attached to the personality and character of individual ascetics, the collections took their various forms in written editions a century or more after their narrative timeframe. 12 The Apophthegmata should not be understood or interpreted in isolation from that later ecclesial environment, but as an integral part of the broader hagiographical enterprise of late antique and early Byzantine Christian literature. There is ample evidence of individual chreiai being extracted secondarily from biographical narratives and inserted into sayings collections, as opposed to the traditional view that the biographers drew their material from the oral sayings tradition, to such an extent that tracing any ‘original’ location or formative moment is largely beside the point.13 Scholars agree that the versions best known to us stem from late fifthor early sixth-century Palestine and offer an idealized portrait of the desert anchorites from a distance that was both temporal and spatial.14 As Peter legeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2011), xiii–xxi; and John Chryssavgis, “The Desert Fathers and Mothers,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Patristics (ed. Ken Parry; Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 326–37. 11 On this theme see Gould, Desert Fathers on Monastic Community, esp. 88–106 (‘The Monk and His Neighbour’) and 139–66 (‘Solitude and Interaction’). 12 “Attempts at locating and dating the Greek collections have suggested compilers working in Gaza at the end of the fifth century” (Rönnegård, Threads and Images, 6, referring to Lucien Regnault, “Les apophthegmes des Pères en Palestine aux Ve–VIe siècles,” Irénikon 54 [1981]: 320–30). 13 Chiara Faraggiana di Sarzana makes this point well in her paper for the 1995 Oxford Patristics Conference, “Apophthegmata Patrum: Some Crucial Points of their Textual Transmission and the Problem of a Critical Edition,” Studia Patristica XXIX: Papers Presented at the Twelfth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford, 1995 (ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone; StPatr 29; Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 455–67. Though their contributions are many and significant, the works of Guy, Gould, Burton-Christie, and Harmless (though in this last case with more caution) seemingly take the sayings collections all too easily at face value in reconstructing the history and character of Scetis and monastic life more broadly in late antique Lower Egypt. Salutary critical histories of this sort of research are offered by Samuel Rubenson in The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint (SAC; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 145–52, and more recently, and with even greater caution, in his essay “The Formation and Reformations of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers,” Studia Patristica LV: Papers Presented at the Sixteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2011, vol. 3: Egyptian Monasticism and Classical Paideia (ed. Samuel Rubenson; StPatr 55; Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 5–22. 14 Cf. the overarching comment of James Goehring, “The Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt,” JECS 1 (1993): 285: “The impact of this view of the desert on Egyptian monastic literature cannot be [over]estimated. It not only forms the fabric of the story, but offers, I would suggest, the very basis for tell-

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Brown writes so memorably, “the settlements of the fourth-century Egyptian ascetics combined geographical proximity to the settled land with a sense of measureless imaginative distance. . . . Despite their physical closeness to the settled land, the monks of Egypt towered in the imagination of contemporaries because they stood against an ocean of sand that was thought to stretch from Nitria to the furthest edges of the known world. They were a new humanity.”15 The reality conveyed by Brown’s evocative phrase, “measureless imaginative distance,” is quite important to keep in mind. A research group associated with the University of Lund, led by Samuel Rubenson, and featuring contributions by Lillian Larsen and Per Rönnegård, has shown persuasively in recent years how the sayings traditions of the desert solitaries served educative functions of social and community formation in those later contexts16 and should not be mined uncritically for historical information about the careers and character of monastic heroes of fourth-century Lower Egypt. 17 Instead, as Larsen has argued, “The illustrious exemplars of the Apophthegmata Patrum are held up for emulation in behavior that applies oil to the wheels of life in community.” The chreiai provide readers “with ideals that help them become apt members of a community – good citizens in the case of non-monastic collections, good members of a monastery in AP.”18 ing the story in the first place. By connecting the common metaphorical use of the desert/city dichotomy with earlier monastic views of withdrawal, the image necessary for literary production was forged.” 15 Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (Lectures on the History of Religions 13; New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 215–16. 16 Rubenson, “Formation and Re-formation”; Lillian Larsen, “The Apophthegmata Patrum and the Classical Rhetorical Tradition,” Studia Patristica XXXIX: Papers Presented at the Fourteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2003 (ed. Frances Young et al.; StPatr 39; Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 409–16, and “On Learning a New Alphabet: Sayings of the Desert Fathers and the Monostichs of Menander,” Studia Patristica LV: Papers Presented at the Sixteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2011, vol. 3: Egyptian Monasticism and Classical Paideia (ed. Samuel Rubenson; StPatr 55; Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 59–77. I am persuaded by Larsen’s rhetorical and pedagogical interpretation of the apophthegmatic traditions, though in a more specifically monastic setting I might find a more general term than her category ‘civic’ to characterize the social-formative forces at work. 17 Harmless does as well as one could in attempting to reconstruct the emergence of the Apophthegmata traditions in a putative historical context surrounding the personage of Abba Poemen: “Remembering Poemen Remembering: The Desert Fathers and the Spirituality of Memory,” CH 69 (2000): 483–518, where he develops the notion of “the spirituality of memory” as vitally different from “modern questions of historicity” (517). 18 Rönnegård, Threads and Images, 11, quoting from Larsen’s 2006 Columbia University dissertation, “Pedagogical Parallels: Re-reading the Apophthegmata Patrum,” 183.

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Thus the Apophthegmata in effect work to project their readers back into a time of monastic experimentation in fourth-century Lower Egypt, an era contemporaneous with the period when the Gospel of Thomas was being translated into Coptic and transcribed in the book that was eventually buried upriver along the Nile. But the Apophthegmata of course do not so much record that ‘reality’ as instead picture that time of experimentation and controversy across that ‘imaginative distance’ as something of a golden age. James Goehring describes this retrospective project with customary eloquence: The myth of the desert emerged in the writings of the Christian authors who told the stories of the desert saints. They fashioned, whether consciously or unconsciously, a spiritual landscape that transcended the everyday realities of desert life. The saints who populated the landscape came to embody the Christian theme of alienation from the world by reversing the classical conceptions of city and desert. They appear in the desert as the biblical saints, perfecting the demands of the Gospel, and in their perfection, prefiguring the world to come. In all these ways and more, the myth of the desert served to naturalize the religious and social constructions of the church. Through the myth, readers transcended their own temporal limitations to communicate with the saints of the past and participate proleptically in the world to come.19

In an analogous fashion, the Gospel of Thomas seeks to project its readers back into a time and place of uncertain stability – an unspecified location where ‘the living Jesus’ speaks, and a shifting group of largely nameless disciples approaches to listen and question him. Just as nearly all the statements in Thomas are introduced without explicit connection to their neighboring logia but merely with a simple phrase like “Jesus said …” (ⲡⲉϫⲉ ⲓ︤ⲥ︥ ϫⲉ), in the Apophthegmata “short stories stand independently from each other, without any attempt to connect them, except for such phrases as ‘The Elder also said . . .” (εἶπε ὁ γέρων πάλιν).20 Both collections of sayings, but especially Thomas, prefer to present the words of their heroes with a minimum of narrative dressing, a compositional strategy that

19 Goehring, “The Dark Side of Landscape: Ideology and Power in the Christian Myth of the Desert,” in The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography (ed. Dale Martin and Patricia Cox Miller; Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005), 136–49 (here pp. 137 and 147, with reference at n. 9 to Georgia Frank, Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity [Transformation of the Classical Heritage; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000], 32–33, 168– 70). Furthermore, the stories of eremite heroes as collected and edited in later contexts work to erase signs of Origenism and other challenging aspects of the ‘real’ fourth- and fifth-century monastic diversity: Goehring, “Monastic Diversity and Ideological Boundaries in Fourth-Century Christian Egypt,” JECS 5 (1997): 61–83. 20 Rönnegård, Threads and Images, 5. The chreiai in the Systematikon typically begin with phrases like εἶπεν ὁ μακάριος (1.3), ἔλεγεν ἄλλος (1.4), εἶπεν πάλιν (1.5), εἶπεν ἀββᾶ Μακάριος (1.6) or the like: Guy, Les Apophthegmes des Pères, 1:102–4.

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compels or enables the reader to ‘hear’ the words in his or her own context, unbounded by historical constraints of ‘original’ time and place. This format and self-directed impulse of the Gospel of Thomas help to frustrate the historian who wants to know when, where, why, and by whom that text was first written. Preoccupation with those formative moments has made biblical scholars wonder whether the text is ‘gnostic,’ or ‘encratite,’ how it engages the Jewish tradition, whether its contents somehow go back to the historical figure of Jesus himself. Can the material exclusive to Thomas be used to add to the dossier of Jesus’ parables and other teachings? The tasks of puzzling out various matters of historicity, comparative reliability, methods of transmission, composition, editing, and other literary-historical questions pose similar challenges for both Thomas and the Apophthegmata Patrum. The question of ‘origins’ when applied to traditional wisdom literature raises one of the more intriguing aspects of reading Thomas alongside the sayings of the desert solitaries, namely, that of how we ourselves undertake our study of these texts. There are several close parallels with how scholars have weighed the comparisons and contrasts, trends that help highlight shifting points of contention in the last decades of scholarship about each text or set of texts in such terms as: its generic character and intent; its origins, including issues of ‘authenticity’; oral versus written composition and transmission; possible dependence on already written texts; and various theological or ideological controversies.21 Both Thomas and the Apophthegmata feature autonomous chreiai that purport to transmit the words and sometimes the deeds of a revered figure; in both cases scholars have interpreted the shape and arrangement of the anecdotes as showing signs of an oral past precipitated into a written text, for example, by the characteristic use of catchword association.22 21 For surveys of scholarship on the Apophthegmata see n. 10 above. Surveys of earlier scholarship on Gos. Thom. include those of Ernst Haenchen, “Literatur zum Thomasevangelium,” TRu 27 (1961–1962): 147–78, 306–38; Francis T. Fallon and Ron Cameron, “The Gospel of Thomas: Forschungsbericht and Analysis,” ANRW 25.6 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), 4195–4251; Stephen J. Patterson, “The Gospel of Thomas and the Synoptic Tradition: A Forschungsbericht and Critique.” Foundations and Facets Forum 8 (1992): 45– 97; and Gregory J. Riley, “The Gospel of Thomas in Recent Scholarship,” CurBS 2 (1994): 227–52. Gathercole offers a lively summary of recent discussions of Gos. Thom.’s origins and literary antecedents in his 2012 book Composition of Thomas, 1–16. 22 Patterson has a useful chart and brief discussion of the function of Gos. Thom.’s catchwords in Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 99–102, where he suggests that perhaps “the order within clusters of Thomas logia was already determined at an oral stage in the tradition. … catchword association is the principle upon which the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas were originally collected. … The order of Thomas’s sayings is largely a function of its genre, not its theology” (102).

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Just as in the various late antique and Byzantine editions of the Apophthegmata, where individual chreiai seemingly move into and then around within the collections, also the text of Thomas is somewhat unstable in this regard (as can be the case to varying degrees for all the gospels before the third century, at least).23 Wisdom literature is notoriously flexible in terms of both content and precise sequencing. So it is not surprising that the wording and sequence of logia in the late second/early thirdcentury Greek papyri of Thomas preserved at Oxyrhynchus vary mildly from that of the only surviving ‘complete’ version, the Coptic translation preserved in Nag Hammadi Codex II.24 The Gospel of Thomas could integrate otherwise unknown Jesus material from uncertain sources, perhaps the oral tradition, such as the parable of the woman with the jar of meal in Gos. Thom. 97, which is often viewed as an ‘authentic’ word of Jesus despite not having been preserved in the canonical gospels.25 Some have seen the attachment of an allusion to Psalm 118 (117) at Gos. Thom. 66, a comment on the cornerstone that the builders rejected, just after the parable of the vineyard in Gos. Thom. 65, as showing dependence on the canonical gospels’ use of the same biblical verse as Jesus’ interpretive word on the meaning of the parable (Mark 12:10, cf. Matt 21:42, Luke 20:17). This could mean that at least the Coptic text of Thomas (there are no surviving Greek versions at this point) has been secondarily interpolated with the statement on the rejected cornerstone. Patterson suggests that “the present position of Thom 66 in Thomas may not be original, but represents a relatively late scribal alteration based on knowledge of the canonical texts,” a tendency he sees at work elsewhere in the text (i.e. where juxtaposed sayings in Thomas are also juxtaposed in the Synoptics, as at Gos. Thom. 32–33, 39, 45, 92–94, and 104). 26 But as Plisch 23

See the data in Koester, “Apocryphal and Canonical Gospels,” HTR 73 (1980): 105–30, and more generally the various contributions in William L. Petersen, ed., Gospel Traditions in the Second Century: Origins, Recensions, Text, and Transmission (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990). 24 For an overall picture see Harold W. Attridge, “Greek Fragments,” in Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7 (ed. Bentley Layton; 2 vols.; NHS 20; Leiden: Brill, 1988), 1:96–128; on differences in wording see 99–101. 25 Klaus-Hunno Hunzinger suggested this possibility in “Unbekannte Gleichnisse Jesu aus dem Thomas-Evangelium,” in Judentum-Urchristentum-Kirche: Festchrift für Joachim Jeremias (ed. Walther Eltester; BZNW 26; Berlin: Töpelmann, 1960), 209–20, as did the Jesus Seminar in Robert W. Funk and Roy Hoover, eds., The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 523–24. UweKarsten Plisch, The Gospel of Thomas: Original Text with Commentary (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Hendrickson, 2009), 214–15, offers a good analysis of the parable within its context in Gos. Thom. without being distracted by questions of independence or authenticity. 26 Patterson, Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 48–51, here 51; Gathercole, Compositon of Thomas, 131 and 188–94, sees evidence of influence from Lucan redaction.

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rightly points out, in contrast to Mark 12, where “the quote marked as a citation from Scripture occurs immediately following the parable of the vineyard and is intertwined with the narrative,” in Gos. Thom. 66 the word “is separated from the actual narrative by the concluding ‘wake-up call’ in Gos. Thom. 65,8 (ⲡⲉⲧⲉⲩⲙ̄ⲙⲁⲁϫⲉ ⲙ̄ⲙⲟϥ ⲙⲁⲣⲉϥⲥⲱⲧⲙ̄) and another ‘Jesus says’ as the opening of Logion 66.”27 The generic similarities of the Gospel of Thomas and the Apophthegmata have created some fascinating parallel tracks in the history of scholarship on both texts, where in the case of Thomas, scholars have sought to isolate the ‘authentic’ words of Jesus, speculate about how more ‘primitive’ oral forms of speech grew into more complex literary compositions, and ask how the statements included in Thomas would or would not connect with ‘gnostic’ or ‘sapiential’ or ‘encratite’ thinking. In the case of the Apophthegmata, scholars have similarly sought the earliest, putatively oral forms of simple statements of the desert fathers and understood them as ‘originally authentic’ sayings that underwent a complex development into more literary formats.28 Just as many working on the Gospel of Thomas have sought to locate its origin in a specific historical context of either first-century Palestine or second-century Syria, those specializing in the Apophthegmata have attempted to learn about fourth-century Egyptian monastic life from scrutinizing the chreiai attributed to ascetic pioneers. Just as in Thomas scholarship work is done to unravel literary connections and dependencies on or between various early gospels, both in and outside the eventual biblical canon, specialists in the Apophthegmata attempt to explain the relationships of the many collections in several ancient languages: which ‘came first,’ and which are instead condensations or expansions of an earlier collection? Despite these intriguing parallels in historical approaches, then, but conscious of their severe limits, I am shifting my attention away from questions surrounding the putative origins of the Gospel of Thomas, its literary dependence on canonical texts, and possible utility as a source for the teachings of the historical Jesus. Consideration of how the gospel would

27

Plisch, Gospel of Thomas, 162–63. Both Bousset, Apophthegmata, and Jean-Claude Guy, “Note sur l’évolution du genre apohthégmatique,” Revue d’ascétique et de mystique 32 (1956): 63–68, operated with this principle in mind; see the objections of Graham Gould, “A Note on the Apophthegmata Patrum,” JTS 37 (1986): 133–38, and the incisive observations of Larsen, “The Apophthegmata Patrum and the Classical Rhetorical Tradition,” 409–11, likening the quest for this desert authenticity to the problematic search for authentic origins in New Testament scholarship. 28

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likely have been received and understood in its historical setting as a text available in late antique Egypt instead promises to bear good fruit.29 The literary design of the Gospel of Thomas, for its part, is well suited to function as a spiritual guidebook. Here we lack the framing of the teachings of Jesus within a biographical narrative familiar from the New Testament gospels, which tell his story punctuated with geographical and chronological signposts. There, things happen in specific places according to a certain sequence; individuals emerge onto the stage at particular moments and engage the hero in various vivid encounters: Jesus is called upon to exorcise demons, cleanse the lepers, explain the basis of his authority. He summons followers to join him in a cadre of seekers of entry into the Kingdom of God. He instructs these disciples in the meanings and motivations of that journey. He ends up betrayed, put on trial, executed, and vindicated. All this is of course well known to us. The point I wish to emphasize here is not the fictive apparatus of those narrative gospels per se but rather its effects on the reader – this thing happened back there and then, not here and now. That entire biographical scenario is lacking in the Gospel of Thomas. Though many statements attributed to Jesus in other gospels recur here, they lack the grounding in the master narrative offered by the plotted story line running from Galilee to Jerusalem. Just as in the hundreds of conversations between a ‘brother’ and an ‘old man’ in the Apophthegmata Patrum, the disciples in Thomas can appear suddenly on the stage out of nowhere, are typically left unnamed, and seem to be motivated to approach Jesus by their own questions rather than coming in response to a summons from their master. The disciples appear only to raise a question at Gos. Thom. 6, after Jesus has already been talking to an unspecified audience for nearly a page, if I may use a material frame of reference. One of the main effects of Thomas’s use of a non-narrative format is to allow or even

29 Calls for shifting our attention away from increasingly problematic questions of Gos. Thom.’s ‘origins’ and ‘literary dependence’ on the NT toward reading the text in and for itself came as long ago as Melissa [Philip] Harl Sellew, “The Gospel of Thomas: Prospects for Future Research” in The Nag Hammadi Library after Fifty Years: Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration (ed. John D. Turner and Anne McGuire; NHMS 44; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 327–46, and “Thomas Christianity: Scholars in Search of a Community,” in The Apocryphal Acts of Thomas (ed. Jan N. Bremmer; Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 11–35; see also Richard Valantasis, The Gospel of Thomas (New York: Routledge, 1997) xii–xiii. Nonetheless, these topics persist as a major concern among some scholars. See most recently the dialogue amongst Gathercole and Goodacre (both of whose books were published in 2012, see n. 3 above), along with three critiques of their work by Nicola Denzey Lewis, John S. Kloppenborg, and Patterson in a special issue of JSNT 36 (2014).

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to force readers to provide the background as well as the foreground for their interpretation. This is what I mean by saying that the design of the Gospel of Thomas lends itself to use as a guide to spiritual practice or advancement. One could have said, just as well, that the statements of Jesus are arranged as a set of philosopher’s riddles or enigmas, as though mimicking the disordered fragments of Heraclitus: meaning is found in the process of unlocking the words, in the acknowledgement of paradox and misdirection. Statements are abstracted and isolated from almost everything except each other. We notice a similar strategy of juxtaposition in wisdom literature at large, including the Teachings of Silvanus, as well as in the arrangements of the Apophthegmata Patrum. Though the anecdotes of desert ascetics contain some incidental biographical fragments and local color, they may also be read, and in fact were likely meant to be read, not to provide historical information, but instead for spiritual and ethical guidance. More helpful for understanding Thomas, as is also the case for the sayings of the desert fathers, than trying to solve those older literary-historical puzzles, is the question of what sort of readers these texts imply. Richard Valantasis stated the case well: the ideology of Thomas is performative and transformative, and “revolves about effecting a change in thought and understanding in the readers and hearers (both ancient and modern). The sayings challenge, puzzle, sometimes even provide conflicting information about a given subject, and in so confronting the readers and hearers force them to create in their own minds the place where all the elements fit together.” 30 Just as the Gospel of Thomas looks backwards in its fictional subtext to a timeless past when ‘the living Jesus’ mentioned in the opening sentence spoke to mostly anonymous disciples who seek his advice, and attempts to make that presence immediate and vital for its audience, so too the collected statements of the desert ascetics treat their encounters with would-be monks and other visitors as relevant to any time or place. The problematics of solitude, the relationship of master and disciple, the practices of piety, and at the heart of it all, the shaping of the self, are put front and center in both the Gospel of Thomas and the collected sayings of the anchorites. The Gospel of Thomas, as we can imagine it being read in Egypt in the notional time of these monastic pioneers, offers its readers a largely unmediated glimpse of the spiritual advice Jesus might offer, or at times decline to offer, to his prospective followers. The Apophthegmata suggest a similar pattern of advice given, or at times withheld, from those seeking enlightenment. The story of when Apa Macarius approached St. Antony on his far mountain is characteristic of these uncertain encounters: “One day Abba 30

Valantasis, Gospel of Thomas, 7.

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Macarius the Great came to Abba Antony’s dwelling on the mountain. When he knocked on the door, Antony came out to him and said to him, Who are you? He replied, I am Macarius. Then Antony went inside and shut the door, and left him outside. Later, once he saw his patience, he opened the door and received Macarius with joy, saying to him, I have wanted to see you for a long time, having heard about you. He rendered him all the duties of hospitality.”31 The similar formats of the Thomas and the Apophthegmata validate readings unattached to particular historical circumstances. Texts that fail to offer a plotted narrative setting for their material open themselves up to readers who find themselves in many situations, or in no one setting in particular. From the start of scholarly discussion of the Coptic books found near Nag Hammadi, however, including of course the Gospel of Thomas in Codex II, attention has been paid to the possibility of connections of the codices with the cenobitic monks of the Pachomian federation. It was the proximity of the monasteries to the find, together with the often ascetical and mystical contents of the texts, and even more decisively, the scraps of letters and documents used to produce the book-bindings, that made such a connection tangible.32 And yet much of the spirit of the Gospel of Thomas is not readily applicable to monastic communities like those led by Pachomius or Shenoute. If anything the perspective of Thomas might fit better with the ascetic who takes up life as a single one just on the outskirts of his village, close to his former life, and yet separated from it, as we see enacted in such texts as Ap. Patr. Macarius 1 in the Alphabetikon or in the Life of Antony. The Gospel of Thomas stresses the values of solitude and autonomy over community and subordination, and it does so most decisively. Leaders and leadership are disparaged, while singleness and the solitary state are championed.33 Though Jesus’ interlocutors are explicitly called ‘students’ or ‘disciples’ (ⲙⲁⲑⲏⲧⲏⲥ), any traditional discipline of obedience of a student to a master is challenged: Jesus even protests “I am not your master!” when Thomas addresses him as ⲡⲥⲁϩ (master, or teacher) at Gos. Thom. 13: ⲁⲛⲟⲕ ⲡⲉⲕⲥⲁϩ ⲁⲛ. The focus on singleness clearly privileges a specifically male performative asceticism, despite the text’s putative ideal of sex31

Ap. Patr. Macarius 4 = Ap. Patr. Sys 7.14. For a recent and compelling reading of the Nag Hammadi texts within the world of late antique cenobitic monasticism, see Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott, The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices (STAC 97; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015). 33 Marjanen calls this theme in Gos. Thom. one of ‘masterless’ Christian identity; see e.g. his essay “Is The Gospel of Thomas Gnostic?” in Thomas at the Crossroads: Essays on the Gospel of Thomas (ed. Risto Uro; SNTW; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 107–39 (here 120). Uro himself addresses the Thomasine polarity of authority and autonomy in his fine book Thomas: Seeking the Historical Context, 80–105. 32

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less true humanity, as in Gos. Thom. 22: ⲉⲧⲉⲧⲛⲁⲉⲓⲣⲉ ⲫⲟⲟⲩⲧ ⲙ︤ⲛ︥ ⲧⲥϩⲓⲙⲉ ⲙ̄ⲡⲓⲟⲩⲁ ⲟⲩⲱⲧ, “when you make the male and the female into the single one” then you will enter the Kingdom. Three rather edgy encounters with potential female disciples underline this point. Just before Jesus’ comments on making male and female into the single one, Mary had asked him to compare “your disciples” with someone or something in Gos. Thom. 21 (ⲉⲛⲉⲕⲙⲁⲑⲏⲧⲥ ⲉⲓⲛⲉ ⲛ̄ⲛⲓⲙ). Salome asserts her identity as Jesus’ host and disciple in Gos. Thom. 61 (ⲁⲛⲟⲕ ⲧⲉⲕⲙⲁⲑⲏⲧⲏⲥ), but Jesus’s response, whether that would have been positive, negative, or ambiguous, is lost in the damage near the bottom of the page (NHC II p. 43). And of course Mary’s very presence in the group of those “worthy of life” is challenged by Simon Peter at the end of the text, Gos. Thom. 114 (ⲙⲁⲣⲉ ⲙⲁⲣⲓϩⲁⲙ ⲉⲓ ⲉⲃⲟⲗ ⲛ̄ϩⲏⲧⲛ̄ ϫⲉ ⲛ̄ⲥϩⲓⲟⲙⲉ ⲛ̄ⲡϣⲁ ⲁⲛ ⲙ̄ⲡⲱⲛϩ), and Jesus’ retort, that he himself will “lead and make Mary male,” that is, into a “living spirit resembling you males” (ⲟⲩⲡⲛ︤ⲁ︥ ⲉϥⲉⲓⲛⲉ ⲙ̄ⲙⲱⲧⲛ̄ ⲛ̄ϩⲟⲩⲧ), merely underscores the equation of “single one” with “living spirit” and thus also with “male.” The point of becoming a single one or a solitary one is perhaps not merely to achieve an uncomplicated simplicity of heart, mind, and soul, though this is surely part of the project, but also to negotiate a posture of masculine solitude and self-reliance over against the world, presumably over against one’s larger human community, including the call of family life, figured as sexual temptation related to the problematic presence of women.34 Or in the language of the Desert Fathers, not so much self-reliance as reliance on God alone, a search for inner peace or hesychia, the subject of Book 2 of the Systematikon and also of the Latin Verba Seniorum attributed to Pelagius and John.35 The goal of solitude, single-mindedness, and serenity is threatened in part, we might note, by performance of ascetical regimes that do not conform with one’s inner disposition: the very sort of performances typically 34 “Among the monks of Egypt, the problems of sexual temptation were most often seen in terms of the massive antithesis of ‘desert’ and ‘world.’ Sexual temptation was frequently treated in a somewhat off-hand manner, presented as if it were no more than a drive toward women, toward matrimony, and hence toward fatal conscription, through marriage, into the structures of the settled land.” Brown, Body and Society, 217, citing Ap. Patr. Paphnutius 4. Only three female monastics are quoted in the Apophthegmata Patrum. 35 Though the subject of much scholarly discussion since Hopfner and Bousset as to its connections with the Greek collections and their possible precursors, this Latin text has not been reedited since Heribert Rosweyde’s edition of the Vitae patrum V–VI: Verba seniorum (Antwerp, 1615) and reprinted in Migne PL 73:855–1022. For an English translation see Benedicta Ward, The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks (London: Penguin, 2003), and for further details see Rubenson, Letters of Antony, 145– 52, 237; Harmless, Desert Christians, 184; and Rubenson, “Formation and Reformations,” 8–14.

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demanded in the defining disciplines of communal monastic life. The Coptic text employs the Greek word ⲙⲟⲛⲁⲭⲟⲥ at Gos. Thom. 49, “Blessed are the solitaries (ϩⲉⲛⲙⲁⲕⲁⲣⲓⲟⲥ ⲛⲉ ⲙ̄ⲙⲟⲛⲁⲭⲟⲥ), and at Gos. Thom. 16, precisely where the single one stands alone after division has come at Jesus’ word to his community or his house: father is ranged against son, and son against father (ⲡⲉⲓⲱⲧ ⲉϫⲛ̄ ⲡϣⲏⲣⲉ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲡϣⲏⲣⲉ ⲉϫⲙ̄ ⲡⲉⲓⲱⲧ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲥⲉⲛⲁⲱϩⲉ ⲉⲣⲁⲧⲟⲩ ⲉⲩⲟ ⲙ̄ⲙⲟⲛⲁⲭⲟⲥ). Perhaps we might re-state: Abba against disciple, or brother versus Abba? One of the most pervasive themes of the Apophthegmata Patrum is the need to subsume the desire of one’s self, the will, within the disciplined demands of one’s guide, called the old man (γερών, ϩⲗ︤ⲗ︥ⲟ) or the father (πατήρ, ἀββᾶ, ⲁⲡⲁ), referring not necessarily to advanced age so much as to attainment and experience. This sort of dependence is denigrated throughout the Gospel of Thomas, beginning with logion three, where one’s hapless leaders are shown to be ignorant and clueless about the true place of the Kingdom of Heaven. The very next thing that Jesus says in Thomas is that “The person old in days (literally ⲡⲣⲱⲙⲉ ⲛϩⲗ︤ⲗ︥ⲟ ϩⲛ̄ⲛⲉϥϩⲟⲟⲩ) will not hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live” (Gos. Thom. 4). The monk, the old man, ⲡϩⲗ︤ⲗ︥ⲟ, must rely on the newcomer for this vital information. Only rarely in the Apophthegmata, and then pointedly within anecdotes that characterize the virtue of humility, do we see this inversion of the honorable term old man or monk, as for example when Antony marvels at the spiritual power of a very young monk who magically commandeered some donkeys to help carry tired old men along the road.36 This is not at all the same thing. Several anecdotes preserved in the Apophthegmata picture a beginner in the ascetical life who hubristically sets himself up as an autonomous agent, only to be humbled by his failures. These stories end with the young brother’s repentance and submission to a more experienced monk. The bestknown case is probably that of John the Little, who bragged to an older brother that he was ready to ‘live like the angels’ in the desert, free of concern for human needs. After a week of hunger and thirst, he crawls back to the cell, but the older monk makes him wait outside until he admits his lack of humility.37 The Gospel of Thomas, far from honoring those old in attainment, frequently symbolizes the goal of simplicity and knowledge with the image of the child, especially the newborn child, as in Gos. Thom. 22: “Jesus said to his disciples, These nursing babies are like those who enter the Kingdom of Heaven,” which is followed by his call to undergo a transformation likened to rebirth or even new creation: making the two into one, the inside like the outside, the male and female no longer male and 36 37

Ap. Patr. Antony 14. Ap. Patr. John Kolobos 2 = Ap. Patr. Sys 10.36.

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female, all to become a single one, called as stated here and elsewhere ⲟⲩⲁ ⲟⲩⲱⲧ. The Apophthegmata, to be sure, also validate renewal and reshaping of the self: for example, Abba Alonius is quoted in the Alphabetikon as follows: “He also said, If I had not destroyed myself completely, I should not have been able to rebuild and shape myself again.”38 Monastic readers of Thomas, as we might conjure them up from among the characters appearing in the Apophthegmata, would find much of interest for the process of spiritual transformation, whether as confirmation or as challenge, in the words recorded there. Seeking, we read in Gos. Thom. 2, will lead to finding, but the process will not end there. Finding leads to disturbance, wonder, and ultimately to rule: meaning, I take it, rule over oneself. Monastic readers would resonate with the insistence in the Gospel of Thomas on the conflict between the spirit and the fleshly body of the ascetic. In Gos. Thom. 29 Jesus says, “If the flesh came into being because of spirit, it is a marvel. But if spirit came into being because of the body, it is a marvel of marvels. Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this great poverty.” In the Alphabeticon, Abba Macarius says, “If slander has become for you the same as praise, poverty as riches, deprivation as abundance, then you will not die.”39 The opposition of spirit or soul with flesh or body is a constant in the Apophthegmata, as for example in this statement attributed to Apa Daniel: “The body prospers by the extent to which the soul is weakened, and the soul prospers by the extent to which the body is weakened.”40 More pointedly, Antony says, “Hate the world and all that is in it. Hate all peace that comes from the flesh. Renounce this life, so that you may be alive to God. . . . Despise the flesh, so that you may preserve your souls.” 41 The themes of struggle against porneia and impure thoughts so prominent throughout the Apophthegmata 42 are missing from the surface conversations in Thomas. Still, one of the most striking aspects of the Gospel is its thoroughly negative view of the material world in which we live, which suggests a rejection of sexuality and reproduction along with married life. Both Thomas and the desert fathers perceive the world around them as a place of death, and use the image of death as a powerful symbol of estrangement and spiritual loss. Readers are called to turn away from the evils of the world, called a corpse in Gos. Thom. 56 and 80, to find God within oneself, and to reject the world, in hopes of returning home to true

38

Ap. Patr. Alonius 2. Ap. Patr. Macarius 20. 40 Ap. Patr. Daniel 4 = Ap. Patr. Sys 10.22. 41 Ap. Patr. Antony 33 = Ap. Patr. Sys 3.1. 42 For example, Book 5 of the Systematikon contains 54 statements on porneia. 39

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divinity above (Gos. Thom. 51).43 A small collection of advice from John the Little concludes with these words: “Shut yourself in a tomb as though you were already dead, so that at all times you will think death is near.”44 One famous anecdote tells how Macarius the Great instructs a brother who comes to him seeking the path to salvation to “go to the cemetery and abuse the dead,” and then, after receiving no response from the tombs, to return the next day and praise the dead. Macarius suggests that to be saved the brother must “become a dead man … take no account of either the scorn or praises of men.”45 It is not difficult to imagine an ancient ascetic pondering the statements of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas, though he would require some time and effort before gaining much confidence as to their exact import. This hesitation and diffidence on the part of the disciple is thematized both in Thomas and in the Apophthegmata, where we often find the monk in training, frequently called the brother, puzzled by an obscure word from his Abba, then going away to consider its implications, perhaps to return later for some clarification or confirmation. Often, as we have seen in the case of Antony’s door-slamming response to Macarius, a monk neglects to give any particular word or reply at all, at least initially. Various chreiai suggest that a monk would respond or keep silence depending on the state of mind or soul of the brother seeking conversation.46 We read that when Antony himself was visited by a group of monks, he tested them by asking them to expound upon a verse of Scripture. Starting with the youngest, they each in turn “began to speak according to his own ability,” but the eldest, Abba Joseph, declined to say what the verse meant. Said Abba Anthony, “Abba Joseph indeed found the way when he said, ‘I do not know.’”47 We notice the same pattern in Thomas. Jesus asks his disciples at Gos. Thom. 13 to compare him with someone. Peter and Matthew fail by comparing Jesus to a righteous angel or a wise philosopher, whereupon Thomas succeeds by claiming that his mouth is incapable of making the right 43

I discuss these themes in Sellew, “Death, the Body, and the World in the Gospel of Thomas,” in Studia Patristica XXXI: Papers Presented at the Twelfth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 1995: Preaching, Second Century, Tertullian to Arnobius, Egypt before Nicaea (ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone; StPatr 31; Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 530–34, and “Jesus and the Voice from Beyond the Grave: Gospel of Thomas 42 in the Context of Funeral Epigraphy,” in Thomasine Traditions in Antiquity: The Social and Cultural World of the Gospel of Thomas (ed. Jon Ma. Asgeirsson et al.; NHMS 59; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 39–73. 44 Ap. Patr. John Kolobos 34. 45 Ap. Patr. Macarius 23 trans. Ward 132. 46 Ap. Patr. Macarius 31; cf. Ap. Patr. John Kolobos 32. 47 Ap. Patr. Anthony 17 = Ap. Patr. Sys 15.4 trans. Wortley.

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comparison. Silence is sometimes golden. The need to conduct one’s ascetical work in the proper frame of mind and to the proper ends is underlined by the interrupted series of questions and replies that begin at Gos. Thom. 6. “His disciples asked him, Do you want us to fast? How shall we pray? Shall we give alms? What diet should we observe?” Jesus speaks only indirectly at first: “Do not lie, and do not do what you hate, because all things are disclosed under heaven.” Only at Gos. Thom. 14 does he offer further clarification: “If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give alms, you will harm your spirits.” Fasting and sin are also connected at Gos. Thom. 104. This connection is reminiscent of the advice given in the Alphabetikon in the name of Apa Isidore the Priest: “If you fast regularly, do not be inflated with pride, but if you think highly of yourself because of it, you are better off eating meat.” The famously enigmatic remark of Jesus in Gos. Thom. 27 also seems to advise that ascetic performance be pursued only in the proper frame of mind: “If you do not fast with regard to the world, you will not find the kingdom; if you do not keep the sabbath as sabbath, you will not see the father.” A similar perspective is found in a statement attributed to Antony: “Some have afflicted their bodies by asceticism, but they lack discernment, and so they are far from God.”48 Excessive fasting is a frequent topic in the Apophthegmata, though admittedly not as much as the frequent urgings not to eat. Still, ascetics as centrally important as Abba Poemen sometimes advise eating a little bit every day instead of trying to go several days without any food.49 A monk called Longinus, presumably the anti-Chalcedonian abbot, told his teacher Lucius that he wanted to fast. The old man replied, “Isaiah said, If you bend your neck like a rope or a bulrush, that is not the fast I will accept; rather, control your evil thoughts.” 50 When Macarius is asked how one should pray, he says, “There is no need at all to make long discourses,” and as for pious practice more generally he counsels simply, “Do a good deed! Say a good word.”51 Lack of self-understanding is called poverty, a term sometimes given positive value by the hermits, and also by Jesus in Gos. Thom. 54 (“blessed are the poor”), but in Gos. Thom. 3, by contrast, poverty seems to symbolize one’s distance from God. In Gos. Thom. 67,

48 Ap. Patr. Antony 8. Patricia Cox Miller offers an insightful study of ancient Christian ascetics’ performative use of their bodies in her article “Desert Asceticism and ‘The Body from Nowhere,’” JECS 2 (1994): 137–53. 49 Ap. Patr. Poemen 31. 50 Ap. Patr. Longinus 1. 51 Ap. Patr. Macarius 19, 39.

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Jesus says, “The one who knows all (ⲡⲧⲏⲣϥ), but is lacking in himself, lacks everything.” The monastic sources consistently validate physical labor in the process of spiritual discernment. This is emphasized from the very first paragraph of the Alphabetikon, which imagines Antony the Great as beset by sinful thoughts and accidia, something like ascetic estrangement or depression. “He said to God, Lord, I want to be saved but these thoughts do not leave me alone; what shall I do in my affliction? How can I be saved? A short while afterwards, when he got up to go out, Antony saw a man like himself sitting at his work, getting up from his work to pray, then sitting down and plaiting a rope, then getting up again to pray.”52 Salvation is found through the interweaving of work and prayer. Here our imagined eremite reader of Thomas would also find some nourishment. In Gos. Thom. 58 Jesus says directly, “Blessed is the man who has worked (ⲡⲣⲱⲙⲉ ⲉⲛⲧⲁϩⲓⲥⲉ): that one has found life.” Throughout the gospels, including Thomas, Jesus makes remarks about the quality of fruit as evidence for the character of the tree or bush. As was mentioned above, at Gos. Thom. 45 Jesus says, “Grapes are not harvested from thorns, nor are figs gathered from thistles.” Agathon applies a tree metaphor to the question of ascetic performance: “Someone asked Abba Agathon, Which is better, bodily asceticism or interior vigilance? The old man replied, Man is like a tree, bodily asceticism is the foliage, interior vigilance the fruit. According to that which is written, ‘Every tree that does not produce good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire,’ it is clear that all our care should be directed towards the fruit, guard of the spirit; but it needs the protection and the embellishment of the foliage, which is bodily asceticism.”53 John the Little is quoted as follows in a statement published by J.-C. Guy from a collection supplemental to the Alphabetikon: “Abba Poemen said that Abba John said that the saints are like a group of trees, each bearing different fruit, but watered from the same source. The practices of one saint differ from those of another, but it is the same Spirit that works in all of them.”54 A famous anecdote of a tree and its water associated with this same John centers on the so-called Tree of Obedience, the dry stick of wood that the inexperienced disciple is called upon to water every day until it becomes a tree and bears fruit. In the Alphabetikon, John the Little faithfully waters the dry stick for three years, at the cost of much effort every night to fetch the water from afar, and finally it does become a tree

52

Ap. Patr. Antony 1. Ap. Patr. Agathon 8. 54 Ap. Patr. John Kolobos 41 trans. Ward. 53

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bearing useful fruit.55 William Harmless draws attention to parallel stories in Sulpicius Severus, without John’s name attached, and in Cassian’s Institutes book 4, a more lengthy narrative that ends rather differently: Here the old monk demands that John water the dry wood twice a day (the river is closer in this version). A year later, “once convinced of John’s humble and sincere obedience,” the old man plucks the dry stick out of the ground, since in this case it had not transformed itself into a fruitful tree, and throws it away into the trash heap.56 The mention by Jesus of “five trees in Paradise” in Gos. Thom. 19 has long puzzled scholars. In his recent commentary, Uwe-Karsten Plisch connects the motif to “the broad range of Jewish-Christian Genesis speculations in Late Antiquity. The biblical background can be seen in the function of the tree of knowledge and the tree of life in the temptation story of Genesis 3.”57 Plisch mentions “impressive theological interpretations of the trees” found in the Gospel of Philip, in the unnamed treatise On the Origin of the World, the Manichaean Book of Psalms, and the collected works found in the Askew and Bruce codices, such as the Pistis Sophia and the Two Books of Jeu. But in the context of the late ancient wisdom of the desert, Gos. Thom. 19 sounds less like scriptural speculation and more like symbolic ethical instruction. In any case there is little evidence that Thomas made direct use of Jewish Scriptures – all or nearly all of its allusions seem to have been mediated by other Christian authors.58 “Jesus said, If you become disciples of mine and listen to my words, these stones will serve you. For you have five trees in Paradise that do not bend in summer nor winter, and their leaves do not fall. Whoever comes to know them will not taste death.” The bending of trees in winter storms is a frequent theme of desert wisdom. Amma Theodora, one of three female ascetics whose sayings were collected in the Apophthegmata, is another one of those who practiced tree sym55

Ap. Patr. John Kolobos 1. Harmless, Desert Christians, 222–23. 57 Plisch, Gospel of Thomas, 19. 58 There is a searching though brief discussion of this distinctive feature in Gos. Thom. in Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels, 187–91. Gathercole notes how the use of Psalm 118 (117) in Gos. Thom. 66 “reflects a greater distance from the Psalter than do the Synoptic quotations, both in its initial statement . . . and in its attribution of the statement straightforwardly to Jesus” (Composition of Thomas, 191). My former student Ian (Nelson) Mills built on those observations in his fine senior thesis at the University of Minnesota, entitled “Thomas and the Jewish Scriptures: Mediated Scripture in the Gospel of Thomas,” the results of which he presented at the Upper Midwest Regional Meeting of the SBL, St. Paul MN, April 5, 2014. Such markers of distance from the ‘Old Testament’ as we see in Gos. Thom. must represent a deliberate move on the part of the gospel’s formative author or authors; to my mind they reflect the text’s decidedly nonJewish character. 56

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bolism. Theodora is shown as particularly skilled at interpreting biblical statements for an ethos of ascetical practice. In the Alphabetikon we read, “Amma Theodora said, Let us strive to enter by the narrow gate. Just as the trees, if they have not withstood the winter storms, cannot bear fruit, so it is with us; this present age is a storm and it is only through many trials and temptations that we can obtain an inheritance in the kingdom of heaven.”59 The Gospel of Thomas is a difficult text to place or to interpret. Comparative readings with the wisdom of the desert help us imagine how Coptic Thomas might have fit within the context of late antique Egyptian Christianity. Many aspects of the Gospel fit the general category of a spiritual guide, but let me sharpen that terminology to say that Thomas can best be read in the desert as a guide to ethics and a proper attitude toward the work of reshaping the self. Much of what Jesus says in this Gospel the ascetic pioneers who are brought to life by reading the Apophthegmata might find of great value, especially the words about avoidance of hypocrisy in the practice of piety, the goals of simplicity and self-knowledge, and the search for the presence of God within the inner spaces of one’s own heart. As mentioned, both Thomas and the desert ascetics perceive the world around them as a place of death, and use the image of death as a powerful symbol of estrangement and spiritual loss. Other aspects of Thomas could be more troublesome, especially, I would imagine, its attack on the privileged place of the master-disciple relationship. Still, despite this insistence on spiritual autonomy, some awareness of community concerns has been discerned from the symbolism of parables found in Thomas, and especially in its ethical teachings about adopting a loving attitude toward one’s wayward brother, such as we find in Gos. Thom. 25 and 26: “Love your brother like your own soul.”60 Humility and forbearance of judgment of one’s brother are constant themes in the Apophthegmata. Perhaps we should see these as sibling texts that help to interpret one another. It seems that readers of Thomas in fourth- and fifth-century Egypt would have found at least some nutritious grapes or figs growing amongst its more prickly thorn trees and thistles.

59

Ap. Patr. Theodora 2. See e.g. Karen King, “Kingdom in the Gospel of Thomas,” Foundations and Facets Forum 3 (1987): 48–97; Patterson, Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 121–57. But cf. the cautions offered in Sellew, “Thomas Christianity,” and Uro, Thomas: Historical Context, 77–79. 60

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Bibliography: Editions and Translations Attridge, Harold W. “The Greek Fragments [of the Gospel of Thomas].” Pages 96–128 in Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, vol. 1. Edited by Bentley Layton. Nag Hammadi Studies 20. Leiden: Brill, 1988. Chaîne, Marius. Le manuscrit de la version copte en dialect sahidique des “Apophthegmata Patrum.” Bibliotheque d’Études coptes 6. Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1960. Cotelier, Jean-Baptiste. Apophthegmata patrum collectio alphabetica, in Monumenta Ecclesiae Graecae, vol. 1 (Paris 1647), reprinted in Patrologia graeca 65:71–440. [AP = Greek Alphabetic Collection.] Guy, Jean-Claude. Les Apophthegmes des Pères: collection systématique. 3 vols. Sources chrétiennes 387, 474, 498. Paris: Budé, 1993, 2003, 2005. [AP Sys = Greek Systematic Collection.] Layton, Bentley, ed., and Thomas O. Lambdin, trans. “The Gospel According to Thomas.” Pages 52–93 in Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7: Together with XIII,2*, Brit. Lib. Or. 4926(1), and P.Oxy. 1, 654, 655, vol. 1. Edited by Bentley Layton. Nag Hammadi Studies 20. Leiden: Brill, 1988. Nau, François. “Histoires des solitaires égyptiens,” Revue d l’Orient Chrétien 12–14 (1907– 1909) and 17–18 (1912–1913). [AP N = Greek Anonymous Collection.] Regnault, Lucien. Les chemins de Dieu au desert: collection systématique des Apothegmes des Pères. Solesmes: Éditions de Solesmes, 1992. [AP Sys = Greek Systematic.] Rosweyde, Heribert. Vitae patrum V–VI: Verba seniorum (Antwerp, 1615) reprinted in Patrologia latina 73:855–1022. [Latin thematic (= PJ, Pelagius and John).] Ward, Benedicta. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Cistercian Studies 59. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1975. [AP = Greek Alphabetic.] –. The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks. London: Penguin Books, 2003. [Latin Thematic (= PJ, Pelagius and John).] Wortley, John. The Book of the Elders: Sayings of the Desert Fathers, the Systematic Collection. Cistercian Studies 240. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2012. [AP Sys = Greek Systematic.] –. The Anonymous Sayings of the Desert Fathers: A Select Edition and Complete English Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. [AP N = Greek Anonymous.]

Bibliography: Studies Asgeirsson, Jon Ma. “Arguments and Audience(s) in the Gospel of Thomas.” Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers 36 (1997): 47–85 and 37 (1998): 325–42. Asgeirsson, Jon Ma., April D. DeConick, and Risto Uro, eds. Thomasine Traditions in Antiquity: The Social and Cultural World of the Gospel of Thomas. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 59. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Bousset, Wilhelm. Apophthegmata: Studien zur Geschichte des ältesten Mönchtums. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1923. Brown, Peter. The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. Lectures on the History of Religions 13. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Bultmann, Rudolf. Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition. Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 29. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1921, 8th ed. 1970.

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Burton-Christie, Douglas. The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestinian Monasticism under the Christian Empire. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966. Chryssavgis, John. “The Desert Fathers and Mothers.” Pages 326–37 in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Patristics. Edited by Ken Parry. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2015. Denzy Lewis, Nicola. “A New Gnosticism: Why Simon Gathercole and Mark Goodacre on the Gospel of Thomas Change the Field.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 36 (2014): 240–50. Dibelius, Martin. Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1919, 2nd ed. 1933. Translated as From Tradition to Gospel. New York: Scribner’s, 1971. Driver, Steven. John Cassian and the Reading of Egyptian Monastic Culture. New York: Routledge, 2002. Evelyn-White, Hugh G. The Monasteries of the Wadi‘n Natrun, vol. 2: The History of the Monasteries of Nitria and of Scetis. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1932. Fallon, Francis T., and Ron Cameron. “The Gospel of Thomas: Forschungsbericht and Analysis.” Pages 4195–4251 in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 25.6. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988. Faraggiana di Sarzana, Chiara. “Apophthegmata Patrum: Some Crucial Points of Their Textual Transmission and the Problem of a Critical Edition.” Pages 455–67 in Studia Patristica XXIX: Papers Presented at the Twelfth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford, 1995. Edited by Elizabeth A. Livingstone. Studia Patristica 29. Leuven: Peeters, 1997. Frank, Georgia. The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity. Transformation of the Classical Heritage. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Frey, Jörg, Enno Edzard Popkes, and Jens Schröter, eds. Das Thomasevangelium: Entstehung – Rezeption – Theologie. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 157. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008. Funk, Robert W., and Roy Hoover, eds. The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. New York: Macmillan, 1993. Gathercole, Simon. The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas: Original Language and Influences. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 151. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. –. “Thomas Revisited: A Rejoinder to Denzy Lewis, Kloppenborg and Patterson.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 36 (2014): 262–81. Goehring, James E. “The Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 1 (1993): 281–96. –. “Monastic Diversity and Ideological Boundaries in Fourth-Century Christian Egypt.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 5 (1997): 61–84. –. Ascetics, Society, and the Desert: Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999. –. “The Dark Side of Landscape: Ideology and Power in the Christian Myth of the Desert.” Pages 136–49 in The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography. Edited by Dale B. Martin and Patricia Cox Miller. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005. Goodacre, Mark. Thomas and the Gospels: The Case for Thomas’s Familiarity with the Synoptics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012. –. “Did Thomas Know the Synoptic Gospels? A Response to Denzy Lewis, Kloppenborg and Patterson.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 36 (2014): 282–93.

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Gould, Graham. “A Note on the Apophthegmata Patrum.” Journal of Theological Studies 37 (1986): 133–38. –. The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Guillaumont, Antoine. “L’enseignement spirituel des moines d’Égypte: la formation d’une tradition.” Pages 81–92 in Études sur le spiritualité de l’Orient chrétien. Bégrolles-enMauges: Abbaye de Bellefontaine, 1996. Guy, Jean-Claude. “Remarques sur le texte des Apophthegmata partum.” Recherches de science religieuse 43 (1955) 252–58. –. “Note sur l’évolution du genre apophthégmatique.” Revue d’ascétique et de mystique 32 (1956): 63–68. –. Recherches sur la tradition grecque des Apophthegmata Patrum. Subsidia Hagiographica 36. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1962; 2nd ed. 1984. –. “Educational Innovation in the Desert Fathers.” Eastern Churches Review 6 (1974): 44–51. Haenchen, Ernst. “Literatur zum Thomasevangelium.” Theologische Rundschau 27 (1961– 62): 147–78, 306–38. Harmless, William. “Remembering Poemen Remembering: The Desert Fathers and the Spirituality of Memory.” Church History 69 (2000): 483–518. –. Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Hock, Ronald F., and Edward N. O’Neill. The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric, vol. 1: The Progymnasmata. Atlanta: Schlars Press, 1986. Hopfner, Theodor. Über die koptisch-sa‘idischen Apophthegmata Patrum Aegyptiorum und verwandte griechishe, lateinische, koptisch-bohairischie und syrische Sammlungen. Vienna: Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, Denkschriften 61.2, 1918. Hunzinger, Klaus-Hunno. “Unbekannte Gleichnisse Jesu aus dem Thomas-Evangelium.” Pages 209–20 in Judentum – Urchristentum – Kirche: Festchrift für Joachim Jeremias. Edited by Walther Eltester. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 26. Berlin: Töpelmann, 1960. Jeremias, Joachim. Die Gleichnisse Jesu. 8th ed. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970. Translated as The Parables of Jesus, 2nd rev. ed. New York: Scribner’s, 1972. King, Karen. “Kingdom in the Gospel of Thomas.” Foundations and Facets Forum 3 (1987): 48–97. Kloppenborg, John S. “A New Synoptic Problem: Mark Goodacre and Simon Gathercole on Thomas.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 36.3 (2014): 199–239. Koester, Helmut. “Apocryphal and Canonical Gospels.” Harvard Theological Review 73 (1980): 105–30. –. Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development. Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1990. –. “The Gospel According to Thomas: Introduction.” Pages 38–49 in Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, vol. 1. Edited by Bentley Layton. Nag Hammadi Studies 20. Leiden: Brill, 1988. Kotsifou, Chrysi. “Books and Book Production in the Monastic Communities of Byzantine Egypt.” Pages 48–66 in The Early Christian Book. Edited by William E. Klingshirn and Linda Safran. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 2007. Larsen, Lillian. “Pedagogical Parallels: Re-reading the Apophthegmata Patrum.” Ph.D. diss. Columbia University, 2006. –. “The Apophthegmata Patrum and the Classical Rhetorical Tradition.” Pages 409–16 in Studia Patristica XXXIX: Papers Presented at the Fourteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2003. Edited by Frances Young, Mark Edwards, and Paul Parvis. Studia Patristica 39. Leuven: Peeters, 2006.

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–. “On Learning a New Alphabet: Sayings of the Desert Fathers and the Monostichs of Menander.” Pages 59–77 in Studia Patristica LV: Papers Presented at the Sixteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2011, vol. 3: Egyptian Monasticism and Classical Paideia. Edited by Samuel Rubenson. Studia Patristica 55. Leuven: Peeters, 2013. Lundhaug, Hugo, and Lance Jenott. The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices. Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 97. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015. Mack, Burton L., and Vernon K. Robbins. Patterns of Persuasion in the Gospels. Sonoma: Polebridge Press, 1989. Marjanen, Antti. “Is the Gospel of Thomas Gnostic?” Pages 107–39 in Thomas at the Crossroads: Essays on the Gospel of Thomas. Edited by Risto Uro. Studies of the New Testament and Its World. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998. –. “Thomas and Jewish Religious Practices.” Pages 163–82 in Thomas at the Crossroads: Essays on the Gospel of Thomas. Edited by Risto Uro. Studies of the New Testament and Its World. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998. McVey, Kathleen. “The Chreia in the Desert: Rhetoric and the Bible in the Apophthegmata Patrum.” Pages 245–55 in The Early Church in Its Context: Essays in Honor of Everett Ferguson. Edited by Abraham J. Malherbe, Frederick W. Norris and James W. Thompson. Supplements to Novum Testamentum 90. Leiden: Brill, 1998. Miller, Patricia Cox. “Desert Asceticism and ‘The Body from Nowhere’.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 2 (1994): 137–53. Mills, Ian [Nelson]. “Thomas and the Jewish Scriptures: Mediated Scripture in the Gospel of Thomas.” Paper presented at the Upper Midwest Regional Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, April 5, 2014. Pagels, Elaine. Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. New York: Random House, 2003. Patterson, Stephen J. “The Gospel of Thomas and the Synoptic Tradition: A Forschungsbericht and Critique.” Foundations and Facets Forum 8 (1992): 45–97. –. The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus. Sonoma: Polebridge Press, 1993. –. The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Origins: Essays on the Fifth Gospel. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 84. Leiden: Brill, 2013. –. “Twice More—Thomas and the Synoptics: A Reply to Simon Gathercole, The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas, and Mark Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 36 (2014): 251–61. Petersen, William L., ed. Gospel Traditions in the Second Century: Origins, Recensions, Text, and Transmission. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990. Plisch, Uwe-Karsten. The Gospel of Thomas: Original Text with Commentary. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Hendrickson, 2009. Rapp, Claudia. “The Origins of Hagiography and the Literature of Early Monasticism: Purpose and Genre between Tradition and Innovation.” Pages 119–130 in Unclassical Traditions, vol. 1: Alternatives to the Classical Past in Late Antiquity. Edited by Christopher Kelly, Richard Flower and Michael S. Williams. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, Supplement 34, 2010. Regnault, Lucien. “The Beatitudes in the Apophthegmata Patrum.” Eastern Churches Review 6 (1974): 22–43. –. “Les apophthegmes des pères en Palestine aux Ve–VIe siècles.” Irénikon 54 (1981): 320– 30. –. “Aux origins des collections d’apophthegmes.” Studia Patristica 18 (1989): 61–74. Riley, Gregory J. “The Gospel of Thomas in Recent Scholarship.” Currents in Research: Biblical Studies 2 (1994): 227–52.

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Rönnegard, Per. Threads and Images: The Uses of Scripture in the Apophthegmata Patrum. Coniectanea Biblica, New Testament Series 44. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010. Rubenson, Samuel. The Letters of St. Anthony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint. Studies in Antiquity and Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. –. “The Formation and Re-formations of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers.” Pages 5–22 in Studia Patristica LV: Papers Presented at the Sixteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2011, vol. 3: Egyptian Monasticism and Classical Paideia. Edited by Samuel Rubenson. Studia Patristica 55. Leuven: Peeters, 2013. Schröter, Jens. Errinerung an Worte Jesu: Studien zur Rezeption der Logienüberlieferung in Markus, Q und Thomas. Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament 76. Neukirchen-Vlyun: Neukirchener Verlag, 1997. Sellew, Melissa [Philip] Harl. “Pious Practice and Social Formation in the Gospel of Thomas.” Foundations & Facets Forum 10 (1994): 47–56. –. “Death, the Body, and the World in the Gospel of Thomas.” Pages 530–34 in Studia Patristica XXXI: Papers Presented at the Twelfth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 1995: Preaching, Second Century, Tertullian to Arnobius, Egypt before Nicaea. Edited by Elizabeth A. Livingstone. Studia Patristica 31. Leuven: Peeters, 1997. –. “The Gospel of Thomas: Prospects for Future Research.” Pages 327–46 in The Nag Hammadi Library after Fifty Years: Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration. Edited by John D. Turner and Anne McGuire. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 44. Leiden: Brill, 1997. –. “Thomas Christianity: Scholars in Search of a Community.” Pages 11–35 in The Apocryphal Acts of Thomas. Edited by Jan N. Bremmer. Leuven: Peeters, 2001. –. “Jesus and the Voice from Beyond the Grave: Gospel of Thomas 42 in the Context of Funeral Epigraphy.” Pages 39–73 in Thomasine Traditions in Antiquity: The Social and Cultural World of the Gospel of Thomas. Edited by Jon Ma. Asgeirsson, April D. DeConick, and Risto Uro. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 59. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Stewart, Columba. Cassian the Monk. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Taylor, Vincent. The Formation of the Gospel Tradition. London: Macmillan, 1933. Uro, Risto. “‘Secondary Orality’ in the Gospel of Thomas? Logion 14 as a Test Case.” Foundations & Facets Forum 9 (1993): 305–29. Updated and revised as “Thomas and Oral Gospel Tradition.” Pages 8–32 in Thomas at the Crossroads: Essays on the Gospel of Thomas. Edited by Risto Uro. Studies in the New Testament and Its World. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998. –. ed. Thomas at the Crossroads: Essays on the Gospel of Thomas. Studies in the New Testament and Its World. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998. –. Thomas: Seeking the Historical Context of the Gospel of Thomas. London: T&T Clark, 2003. Valantasis, Richard. The Gospel of Thomas. New York: Routledge, 1997. Zöckler, Thomas. Jesu Lehren im Thomasevangelium. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 47. Leiden: Brill, 1999.

Hegemony and Homecoming in the Ascetic Imagination: Sextus, Silvanus, and Monastic Instruction in Egypt BLOSSOM STEFANIW A monk is sitting in his cell in Egypt in the fourth century. His ascetic work, the daily struggle against appetites and emotions, is driven by two great necessities. He must master himself by attaining control over the passions, such that he remains unmoved in the face of all the mad and childish cravings that come to us with embodiment. And he must get home; he must navigate the embodied state of estrangement and exile in this world and reach a state of rest in unity with God. The monk works for hegemony over the self and for homecoming with God because of who he believes himself to be and what sort of world he believes himself to inhabit. He has these beliefs because of the community to which he belongs, what is taught to him, and because of what he reads.1 1 Monastic textuality is starting to receive more scholarly attention and to be acknowledged as a substantial and normal element of monastic life. On exegesis as an ascetic practice see my own Mind, Text and Commentary: Noetic Exegesis in Origen of Alexandria, Evagrius Ponticus and Didymus the Blind (ECCA 6; Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010). On material evidence for reading and writing practices throughout monasteries and the prevalence of literary education among ascetics in Egypt, see Roger S. Bagnall, Everyday Writing in the Graeco-Roman East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010); Bagnall, Early Christian Books in Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); Kim Haines-Eitzen, The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Haines-Eitzen, Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power, and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Haines-Eitzen, “Imagining the Alexandrian Library and a ‘Bookish’ Christianity,” in Reading New Testament Papyri in Context (ed. Claire Clivaz and Jean Zumstein; BETL 242; Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 207–18; Haines-Eitzen, “Textual Communities in Late Antique Christianity” in A Companion to Late Antiquity (ed. Philip Rousseau; London: Basil Blackwell, 2009), 146– 57; Lillian Larsen, “The Apophthegmata Patrum and the Classical Rhetorical Tradition,” in Studia Patristica: Papers Presented at the Fourteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2003 (ed. Frances M. Young, Mark Edwards, and P. Parvis; StPatr 39; Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 409–15; Chrysi Kotsifou, “Books and Book Production in the Monastic Communities of Byzantine Egypt,” in The Early Christian Book (ed. William E. Klingshirn and Linda Safran; CUA Studies in Early Christianity; Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 48–66; Hugo Lundhaug,

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What he reads shapes his imagination and moves him to put his inner world in order and strive towards God. In letters from founders and elders, biblical lessons, works of guidance and orientation to the ascetic life, the monk’s imagination is shaped by an epic sojourning narrative requiring hegemony over the self as the condition for return to the father. This narrative is delivered in fatherly texts providing instruction and stringent exhortations to vigilance and the exercise of an exceptional masculinity, exceptional because it masters all passions, not just those deemed excessive and ungentlemanly, and masculine because it requires full control of and complete dominance over the turbulent forces of the body and the inner world, like the charioteer or the soldier on horseback.2 Monks in the fourth century, in particular those whose imaginations were colored by the narrative of sojourn and salvage which concerns us here, had recourse to a regime of training aimed at equipping them for adversity. Whether engaged through the direct oral instruction of their abbas or in written form, ascetic work began with the body and progressed very unsystematically up through the lower physical impulses through the emotions to the mind. At the foundation of this regime was basic physical asceticism: fasting, abstinence, vigils, and corresponding struggles against instinctual drives for sex, food, and sleep. Then came emotional and social asceticism: separation from kin, humility, obedience, and struggles against the desire for status and prosperity. The more advanced levels of ascetic work focused on the mind: memorization, recitation, and study of scripture, study of spiritual teachings, and prayer. The aim of this work was to subdue disruptive physical impulses and desires and to cultivate the mind to engage in pure prayer, so that the mind ultimately became so rarefied that it could comprehend pure being. The two most famous monastic teachers of the fourth century, Antony the Great and Evagrius Ponticus, give explicit summaries of this curriculum. Evagrius produced a highly elaborated series of texts designed to guide the monk in the course of his training, and also wrote extensively on how an individual could assess her progress.3 If these two influential

“Memory and Early Monastic Literary Practices: A Cognitive Perspective,” Journal of Cognitive Historiography 1 (2014): 98–120. 2 Masculinity is taken here to mean the social construction of what it means to be a valid man, rather than a denotation of naturally observed characteristic of men. Masculinity refers to practices, discourses, social relations and above all the meanings connected with them which produce men as real men in a given society. Cf. Stephen M. Whitehead, Men and Masculinities: Key Themes and New Directions (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002). 3 While it is customary to assume that monks, especially eremitic monks, were male, we know from the salutations of the letters of Antony that women were part of the com-

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teachers trained monks in the framework of this curriculum, it is fair to suppose that monks in the fourth century, whether they stated it explicitly or not, worked on the assumption, however derivative, generalized, or unsystematic, that they were proceeding through this curriculum and that ascetic work started with the body, went on to the emotions and desires, and then to the intellect. Most of the Nag Hammadi texts can be read as speaking to the more advanced stages of ascetic development, which involve sophisticated mental acts and altered modes of cognition. Since the Nag Hammadi collection was not originally treated within the context of fourthand fifth-century ascetic life in late antique Egypt, its function in a larger program of ascetic development has not yet been examined. Instead, the persistent concern with esoteric and speculative theological questions has been taken as definitive for the collection as a whole: Nag Hammadi is a collection of speculative esoteric writings. From this point of view, it has been difficult to explain why such basic instructional texts like the Sentences of Sextus and the Teachings of Silvanus are included among the Nag Hammadi codices.4 Why would people who want to know about the nature of the pleroma also want to study texts which encourage them not to lie? Why would a community collecting teachings about the mechanics of the initial descent into matter before the beginning of time also collect basic ascetic teachings along the lines of “stop mucking about”? Dismissing these more remedial texts as random outliers is unsatisfactory. If Nag Hammadi is not given its own category but rather seen in the context to which it, at least geographically and munities he addressed, and Evagrius explicitly addressed female ascetics in works like Ad virginem. 4 The editor of the Coptic Gnostic Library edition states that “Sextus and its preoccupation with the moral life is not at all unique in the collection. . . . Admittedly, these tractates are non-gnostic, or only marginally so, but the same ethical stance is expressed or implied in not a few of the fully gnostic tractates. The evidence would indicate that the codices were the property of individuals who greatly emphasized sexual asceticism.” Frederik Wisse, “The Sentences of Sextus: Introduction,” in Nag Hammadi Codices XI, XII, XIII (ed. Charles W. Hedrick; NHS 27; Leiden: Brill, 1990), 300–1. The impression that the notion of sexual abstinence makes on Western scholars has here, as so often elsewhere, distracted from the intellectual focus of asceticism. Issues with categorizing texts as manifesting a greater or lesser degree of Gnosticism have been adequately addressed in Hugo Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth: Cognitive Poetics and Transformational Soteriology in the Gospel of Philip and the Exegesis on the Soul (NHMS 73; Leiden: Brill, 2010), esp. 16–19 and 134–49; Michael A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); David Brakke, The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 2011); Karen L. King, What Is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003). Antti Marjanen, ed., Was there a Gnostic Religion (Helsinki: The Finnish Exegetical Society, 2005).

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chronologically, belongs, then the presence of such instructional texts becomes coherent. The inclusion of texts which address the foundational practices of physical asceticism, and commitment to a life of exceptional masculinity, makes sense for any collection of ascetic texts in fourthcentury Egypt, where the people concerned are prone to imagining their place in the world in terms of the sojourn and salvage narrative passed by Origen through to Antony and on to Evagrius.

The Fatherly Text Authority in the late antique Egyptian desert is the authority of the father. In ascetic communities this authority appears in the person of the founder, the current head of the monastic household, or in the patria potestas of the abba who is owed complete obedience.5 It also appeared in the textual world of monks, which was colored by patriarchs and abbas, from the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to the writings of ethical teachers. Antony’s letters are cast as a patrimony left to his dear children and are imbued with kinship metaphors. This rhetoric attaches Antony’s followers to himself and orients their ascetic striving toward a future state of adoption and homecoming.6 Just as the biblical author of Proverbs speaks in the voice of a father instructing his son, so also do authors of texts of ethical instruction 5 On practical instruction in humility and obedience, see Apophthegmata Patrum, John Colobos 1: “It was said of Abba John the Dwarf that he withdrew and lived in the desert at Scetis with an old man of Thebes. His abba, taking a piece of dry wood, planted it and said to him, ‘Water it every day with a bottle of water, until it bears fruit.’ Now the water was so far away that he had to leave in the evening and return the following morning. At the end of three years the wood came to life and bore fruit. Then the old man took some of the fruit and carried it to the church saying to the brethren, ‘Take and eat the fruit of obedience’” (PG 65:204, trans. Benedicta Ward, The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers [Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1975] cited according to William Harmless, Desert Christians. An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004], 222). 6 For the return to the father as the aim of ascetic striving in the Letters of Antony, see among many examples Ep. 2.10, where it is said that God “raised up Moses, the Lawgiver, who gave us the written law and founded for us the house of truth, the spiritual Church, which creates unity, since it is God’s will that we turn back to the first formation.” Cf. Ep. 2.29–30: the servants of God “received the Spirit of adoption, and cried out saying, ‘We have not received the Spirit of bondage again to fear; but we have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.’ Now, therefore, O God, we know what Thou hast given us: that we are the children and heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.” All translations of Antony’s letters are from Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint (SAC; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997).

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cast themselves in a paternal role.7 This fatherly frame defines the teachings contained: they are not only about how to live rightly, but also about how to sustain a right relationship of commitment to an established paternal legacy. Basic ethical teachings are about how to be a man. Where ethical instruction is written for an exceptional way of life outside of the normal fora of masculinity (town and household) but still framed in terms of mastery of the self and attachment to the patrimony of the father, ethical instruction is about achieving a state of exceptional masculinity.8 In late antiquity, ethical instruction was a textual practice. Even instruction given in person was shaped by complex palimpsestic systems of citation, allusion and intertextuality, taking on validity through reference to a written tradition. Texts aimed at the ethical cultivation of people taking up a committed life proliferated in numerous genres, including letters, kephalaia, collections of proverbs, wisdom literature, and handbooks for selfassessment.9 In many cases, these texts did not have a single author or

7

See for example the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs in R. H. Charles, ed., The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (2 vols.; Oxford, 1913), 2:282–367. On protreptic and paraenetic literature in general, see Troels Engberg-Pedersen and James Starr, eds. Early Christian Paraenesis in Context (BZNW 125; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012). 8 This may in part explain the preoccupation of the Nag Hammadi texts with sexual metaphors and their focus on kin relations and reproduction as discussed in Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth. 9 On monastic letters see Bernadette McNary-Zak, Letters and Asceticism in FourthCentury Egypt (Lanham, Md.: University of America Press, 2000) and Andrew Cain, The Letters of Jerome: Asceticism, Biblical Exegesis, and the Construction of Christian Authority in Late Antiquity (OECS; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). For their neoplatonic equivalents see Porphyry’s letters to Anebo and Marcella (ed. A. R. Sodano, Epistula ad Anebonem [Naples: L’Arte Tipografica, 1958]; Kathleen O’Brien Wicker, Porphyry the Philosopher: To Marcella [Atlanta: Scholar Press, 1987]), and Iamblichus’ letters to his disciples (trans. John M. Dillon and Wolfgang Polleichtner, Iamblichus of Chalcis: The Letters [WGRW 19; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009]). On kephalaia, see Evagrius Ponticus’ Kephalaia Gnostica, ed. Antoine Guillaumont, Les six centuries des “Kephalaia gnostica”: Édition critique de la version syriaque commune et édition d’une nouvelle version syriaque, intégrale, avec une double traduction française (PO 28; Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1958); Søren Giversen, The Manichaen Coptic Papyri in the Chester Beatty Library. Vol. 1: Kephalaia (COr 15; Geneva: Cramer, 1986). On selfassessment, see Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, ed. and trans. Arthur S. L. Farquharson, The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antonius (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1944, repr. 1968); Epictetus, in Arrian, The Discourses (trans. W. A. Oldfather; LCL; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925–1928); and Evagrius Ponticus, Antirrhetikos, trans. David Brakke, Talking Back: A Monastic Handbook for Combating Demons (Cistercian Studies 229, Collegeville, Minn.: Cistercian Publications, 2009). For the pagan tradition, see Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), and Pierre Hadot,

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were attributed to an apocryphal figure (like Sextus). They are frequently difficult to date or locate. As a result, certain scholarly prejudices have tended to marginalize wisdom literature because it resists the methods aimed at evaluating the worthiness of ancient texts for scholarly attention. In more recent years, however, approaches via new philology, and changing attitudes toward traditional notions of canonicity, have made more space for wisdom literature in our picture of ascetic religious life.10 Currently, the main scholarly task is not to categorize the text as apocryphal, authentic, or rightly ascribed to a certain time or place, but to observe how the texts concerned were used: what sort of religious problems did they solve? Who valued them and to what purpose? Who collected them and studied them? Regardless of their exact genre or date, all of the texts which concern us here are texts which explain what sort of world the monk lives in, what her work there should be, and what manner of adversity she should expect to encounter on the way. The Sentences of Sextus is preserved in numerous languages, including Greek, Coptic, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, and Georgian.11 Its composition can be dated very roughly to the second century, but the text has undergone numerous transformations. The version preserved in the Nag Hammadi codices is fragmentary, with roughly ten pages missing at the beginning and in the middle, so that only sentences 157–180 and 307–397 are preserved.12 There is no evidence that the editor or compiler made a deliberate selection of these sentences in preference to those that are missing; it is equally probable that she only had access to these. True to its title, the text consists of a loosely strung series of sentences, many in hortatory or imperative mode, primarily in the form of descriptive statements.13 The SenExercices spirituels et philosophie antique (Collections des études Augustiniennes: Série antiquité 136; 3rd ed. Paris: Institut d’ètudes Augustiniennes, 1993). 10 New Philology developed out of Bernard Cerquiglini’s polemical essay Éloge de la variante from 1989. Its basic principles include giving full regard to the text as a material object, taking variation and the involvement of several people in text production as the norm, and giving full attention to the contingent economical, religious, social and gendered conditions in which a text is used and its meaning for a particular group in a particular time is produced. 11 This set of languages is, I think not coincidentally, very similar to the distribution pattern we can observe in the letters of Antony and the works of Evagrius Ponticus. The letters of Antony are preserved in Coptic (two fragments), Greek (one fragment), Syriac (one letter), Georgian, Arabic and Latin. Other writings of Evagrius exist in Greek, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopic, Arabic, Georgian and Latin. 12 Here I follow the account from the introduction to Daniele Pevarello, The Sentences of Sextus and the Origins of Christian Asceticism (STAC 78; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). 13 A typical descriptive statement: “[After] God, no one is as free as the wise man. [Everything] God possesses the wise man has also. The wise man shares in the [kingdom]

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tences of Sextus is a deposit of moral instruction, a record of what seemed valuable and reliable guidance for living a righteous life. Precisely because it is supposed to curate knowledge of the good life, Sextus necessarily was adjusted to reflect beliefs about the good life current in the community in which it was circulating: some manuscripts identify the philosopher as the paradigm of virtue, some the monk, some the wise man.14 Thus the Sentences of Sextus is less to be seen as a static text and more as very living literature which, because of its social function as moral pedagogy, is a good index of the ideals of the community currently reading it, but not a good index of the original thought of someone called Sextus.15 The Sentences of Sextus is well-attested outside of the Nag Hammadi collection. Scholarly consensus identifies this text as a fluid re-working by Christians, from the second century onwards, of pre-existing pagan gnomic literature intended for moral formation. It includes allusions to Plato, the Cynics, and the Stoics and represents the ethical gleanings of the current philosophical koine. It is discussed by Origen in the Contra Celsum. In the period of the production of the Nag Hammadi collection, it had been translated into Latin by Rufinus and entered into the vast category of religious literature which Jerome abominated. Jerome’s main objection (Comm.Jer. 4.41) was that Pelagius saw in it confirmation of the view that human beings were perfectable, noting also that it was read by people promoting ἀπάθεια (a core measure of ascetic achievement according to Evagrius).16 This polemic suggests several things: that the Sentences were popular in of God” (Sent. Sext. 27.7–10 [310–12]). A moral imperative entailed by a superficially descriptive statement: “[Love] the truth, and the lie [use] like poison” (Sent. Sext. 15.2–3 [158–59]). Here also a declarative statement with hortatory import: “The faithful do not speak many words, but their works are numerous” (Sent. Sext. 33.24–25 [383–84]). All translations of the Coptic Sent. Sextus are by Frederik Wisse, “The Sentences of Sextus,” in Nag Hammadi Codices XI, XII, XIII (ed. Charles W. Hedrick; NHS 27; Leiden: Brill, 1990), 302–21. Note that by couching his moral teaching in descriptive statements, the author of Sent. Sextus anchors the ethically excellent life in the right order of things. 14 Pevarello (Sentences, 28) describes Sent. Sext. as becoming progressively more monastic through its manuscript history, especially when it arrives in the Armenian, replacing “philosopher” with “monk” as in sentences 227 and 294, or with “brother” in 219. On the other hand, if NHC XII is a manuscript produced and used by monastic practitioners (as argued in Lundhaug and Jenott, The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices [STAC 97; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015]), the very earliest manuscript (by far) would also be monastic. 15 The authorship of the Sent. Sextus is unknown and its authenticity was debated in late antiquity. Jerome rejected the idea that it could have originated from the Roman bishop Sixtus, as he was convinced that its teachings were not Christian at all but rather Pythagorean. Origen quotes from it in an effort to lend Stoic credibility to Christian abstinence, and Rufinus treats it as “a manual of asceticism.” See discussion in Pevarello, Sentences, 11–18. 16 Pevarello, Sentences, 20.

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the fourth century, that they were read by those with particular ethical ambitions, especially ascetics, and that they were already associated with Evagrius and ascetics pursuing the path of ethical and ascetic development discussed in the following pages. The Teachings of Silvanus is preserved in full in Codex VII. It is a nonnarrative text, consisting mostly of hortatory and imperative calls for right comportment, along with descriptive statements about how the world is, what sort of adversaries one must expect to deal with, and the characteristics of the right and wrong ways of life. These instructions are repeatedly addressed to “my son.” Unlike the Sentences of Sextus, however, the Teachings of Silvanus is colored by ruling metaphors of soldiering and battle, and discusses commitment to the person of Christ as part of the good life. Clear dating is not possible.17 While the Teachings of Silvanus is not attested elsewhere, it fits squarely into the religious world of late antique Egypt, with its genre as wisdom literature and its incorporation of Stoic, Cynic, and Platonist ideas.18 As such, it is a guidebook for men with spiritual ambitions. With its either/or rhetorical structure, it especially supports those whose religious commitments are to be solidified around a sense of separateness from ordinary society. Adding this to what we know of the usage typical for other texts of the same genre, we can hypothesize that the Nag Hammadi readers also used these texts for purposes of elementary ascetic formation. The fact that the texts were treated as ascetic in the fourth century confirms this.19 More specifically, we can suggest that they were studied to invite and intensify an early-phase buy-in to an exceptionally committed ascetic way of life. They are texts which a beginner monk (as well as the spiritually ambitious 17 Malcolm Peel specifies the possible time of composition of Teach. Silv. between 254 and 325 CE. For more detailed information concerning the dating, see Malcolm L. Peel, “Introduction to The Teachings of Silvanus,” in Nag Hammadi Codex VII (ed. Birger A. Pearson; NHMS 30; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 272–74. 18 For discussion of shared themes and intertexts, see Jan Zandee, “Die Lehren des Silvanus. Stoischer Rationalismus und Christentum im Zeitalter der frühkatholischen Kirche,” in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts in Honour of Alexander Böhlig (ed. Martin Krause; NHS 3; Leiden: Brill, 1972), 144–55; Zandee, “Les Enseignements de Silvanos et Philon d’Alexandrie,” in Mélanges d’histoire des religions offerts à Henri-Charles Puech (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1974), 337–45; Zandee, “Die Lehren des Silvanus als Teil der Schriften von Nag Hammadi und der Gnostizismus,” in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Text in Honour of Pahor Labib (ed. Martin Krause; NHS 6; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 239–52; Zandee, The Teachings of Silvanus and Clement of Alexandria: A New Document of Alexandrian Theology (Leiden: Brill, 1977). 19 One passage from Teach. Silv. (97.3–98.22) was later studied in Christian monastic circles as a teaching of Antony, and a Latin translation from an Arabic manuscript has found its way into PG 40 as an appendix to the Rule of St. Antony. See Peel, “Introduction to The Teachings of Silvanus,” 263–67.

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lay readers we know of from other contexts) could engage with in order to orient himself to a new identity in a new social world. The best reference points for monastic instruction in Egypt in the fourth century are the works of Evagrius and Antony. Antony (whose life is traditionally dated from 251 to 356), while re-cast by the bishop Athanasius as an unsophisticated man whose learning came straight from God and the Bible, composed letters which demonstrate his education and his commitment to an intellectually focused form of asceticism.20 The letters are roughly dated to the late 330s, with one instance of cursory mention of and warning against Arius, but no major involvement in the Arian controversy.21 There are seven known letters, preserved in Coptic, Syriac, Georgian, Latin, Greek and Arabic.22 In these letters, Antony offers guidance in the ascetic life for groups of people who he addresses as his children.23 The frequent hortatory statements encouraging sustained commitment to an ex20

Athanasius, Vita Antonii 1 (NPNF2 4:195): “In infancy he was brought up with his parents, knowing nought else but them and his home. But when he was grown and arrived at boyhood, and was advancing in years, he could not endure to learn letters, not caring to associate with other boys; but all his desire was, as it is written of Jacob, to live a plain man at home.” On the level of education evident in the letters, see Rubenson, Letters of St. Antony, and Arthur Urbano, “Read it Also to the Gentiles: The Displacement and Recasting of the Philosopher in the Vita Antonii,” CH 77 (2008): 877–914 on the contemporary competition over the figure of the philosopher. Here it is of special note how seriously our image of what is normal for monks to do can skew our reading of the sources: Bardenhewer, Heussi, and Doerries all considered the letters inauthentic because their intellectual bent did not match the image of innocence from learning promoted in the Vit. Ant. Bardenhewer, based on the image of Antony in the Vit. Ant., produced this inaccurate and alarming condemnation of the letters: “Diese Briefe, welche mit wenig Variationen immer wieder denselben, ziemlich eng umschriebenen Gedankenkreis durchlaufen, sind fast zu lang, zu theoretisch, zu saft- und kraftlos, als daß man sie einem Mann wie Antonius zueignen könnte.” Otto Bardenhewer, Das vierte Jahrhundert mit Ausschluss der Schriftsteller syrischer Zunge (vol. 3 of Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur; Freiburg: Herder, 1923), 81. 21 Rubenson, Letters of St. Antony, 35–42 on dating and authenticity. 22 According to Rubenson, Letters of St. Antony, 15–14, there are fragments of two folios in Coptic; Syriac has only Letter 1; Georgian has two manuscripts with all seven letters (at the monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai, stemming from the tenth century); the Latin translation stems from a lost Greek manuscript, while in Arabic there are a great many manuscripts preserving all the letters. The Arabic versions, also from the tenth century, appear to be translations from Coptic and are preserved at the monastery of St. Antony. The only passage preserved in Greek was passed down in the Apophthegmata Patrum as Antonius 22. 23 On the use of kinship and narrative in the Letters of Antony, see my own “The Oblique Ethics of the Letters of Antony” in L’identité à travers l’éthique: Nouvelles perspectives sur la formation des identités collectives dans le monde gréco-romain (ed. Katell Berthelot, Ron Naiweld, and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra; BEHE.R 168; Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 169–85.

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ceptional way of life even in the face of adversity suggests both the Pauline epistles and the Teachings of Silvanus as significant intertexts.24 The letters are very much in the tradition of paternal wisdom literature, explicitly intended to motivate people in their spiritual ambitions, and consistently read as such in the fourth century. For the purposes of this essay, it is particularly helpful that the letters contain both a re-telling of the narrative of exile, sojourn, and return which drives ascetic work, as well as instruction on how to attain the inner hegemony which constitutes the lion’s share of that work. Evagrius was as an ascetic grandchild of Antony who taught in Nitria in his mature years from 383–399. Evagrius integrated his own previous education (which included a strong background in Stoicism, along with the grammatical and rhetorical training customary for the sons of prosperous landowners, as Antony and Evagrius both were) with the Origenist/Antonine tradition he learned from Makarios and the Four Tall Brothers. Evagrius developed the program of monastic education he inherited from his teachers and elaborated on it in written form. He produced not only a three-part series corresponding to the three main phases of ascetic development, but also supplementary writings like the Antirrhetikos, which equips the monk to deal with his most tenacious adversaries, namely demons in the form of evil thoughts.25 The beginning phase, πρακτική, is explained in the Praktikos, which focuses on the basics of physical asceticism: fasting, sexual abstinence, restricted sleep, and remaining in one’s cell.26 The second phase, φυσική, is discussed in the Gnostikos, which de24

Rubenson, Letters of St. Antony, 48–49. Evil thoughts include wanting to go home, getting bored, wondering what everybody else is doing, and feeling sleepy while studying: “Against the thought of listlessness that deprives us of reading and instruction in spiritual words, leading us astray as it says, ‘Look, such-and-such holy old man knew only twelve Psalms, and he pleased God’: ‘And let these words, all that I have commanded you today, be in your heart and in your soul. And you shall teach them to your sons, and you shall speak of them sitting in your house, walking on the road, lying down, and rising up’ (Deut 6:6–7)”; and: “Against the thought of listlessness that rejects manual labor and leans the body in sleep against the wall: ‘How long will you lie down, sluggard? When will you wake from sleep? You sleep a little, and you lie down a little, and you nap for a while, and you fold your arms over your breast for a little. Then poverty comes upon you like an evil traveler, and need like a swift courier’ (Prov 6:9–11)” (Evagrius Ponticus, Antirrhetikos, Sixth Book [trans. Brakke, Talking Back, 134, 139]). 26 See for example Praktikos 16: “When our soul yearns for a variety of foods, then let it reduce its ration of bread and water that it may be grateful even for a small morsel. For satiety desires foods of all sorts, while hunger thinks of satiety of bread as beatitude.” Praktikos 17: “The restrained use of water contributes greatly to chastity. You should be so persuaded by the three hundred Israelites in Gideon’s company who subdued Midian (Judg. 7: 5–7).” Praktikos 28: “You must not abandon the cell in the time of 25

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scribes the challenges to be confronted when one is pursuing special forms of knowledge and the leadership responsibilities which accrue to a more advanced monk.27 The final phase is θεολογική and entails knowledge of the Holy Trinity, or pure being, or the One.28 Guidance regarding this most advanced phase is provided in the Chapters on Prayer. The Kephalaia Gnostika record some of the most refined knowledge which only a very developed mind would be able to achieve. Putting the Teachings of Silvanus and the Sentences of Sextus in this comparative context should remind us of their function in cultivating an extraordinary way of life. It should also remind us that while they are focused on the beginning levels of that life, with the bulk of instruction dedicated to bringing order to the body and the emotions, their ultimate aim is the development of exceptionally rarefied mental capacities which will allow for union with God, where God is conceived of as pure intellect, and as home. The Sentences of Sextus is very focused on comportment, while the Teachings of Silvanus adds on a larger ideology of battle and commitment and includes more focus on purifying and controlling the mind. The letters of Antony show little interest in issues of comportment and do not include any commands to shelter widows and orphans or avoid associating with the dissipate. The letters focus on delivering instruction on ascetic praxis and on the origins and fate of the soul to people already living a committed life. Evagrius, in the works under discussion here, is also primarily concerned with committed ascetics; his introductory handbook temptations, fashioning excuses seemingly reasonable. Rather, you must remain seated inside, exercise perseverance, and valiantly welcome all attackers, especially the demon of acedia, who is the most oppressive of all but leaves the soul proven to the highest degree. Fleeing and circumventing such struggles teaches the mind to be unskilled, cowardly, and evasive.” On reduced sleep, see the advice attributed to Makarios in Praktikos 94: “Take courage, my child! For all of twenty years I have not taken my fill either of bread or water or sleep. I ate my bread by weight, drank water by measure, and I have snatched some little portion of sleep by leaning against the wall.” Trans. Robert E. Sinkewicz, Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus (OECS; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 92–114. 27 On the skills of discretion and pedagogy that this role entails, see Robin D. Young, “Evagrius the Iconographer: Monastic Pedagogy in the Gnostikos,” JECS 9 (2001): 53– 71. 28 This state is defined, for example, in Keph. Gnost. 3.15: “If the perfection of the nous is immaterial knowledge, as it is said, and if immaterial knowledge is solely the Trinity, it is evident that in perfection there will not remain anything of matter. And if that is so, the nous, forevermore naked will come to vision of the Trinity”; Keph. Gnost. 3.6: “The naked nous is that which, by means of the contemplation which concerns it, is united to knowledge of the Trinity.” Translation by Luke Dysinger (O.S.B.): http://www.ldysinger.com/Evagrius/02_Gno-Keph/04_keph_3.htm from the Syriac text edited by Antoine Guillaumont, Les Six Centuries des “Kephalaia Gnostica” d’Évagre le Pontique (Patrologia Orientalis 28, Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1958).

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Praktikos is closest to the Sentences of Sextus and the Teachings of Silvanus. This resemblance, taken along with the fact that the Praktikos is known to have been the basis for a larger ascetic program of selftransformation, suggests that the Sentences of Sextus and the Teachings of Silvanus could be, and were, read to the same end.

Inner Hegemony and the Mastery of the Self Within the context of Neoplatonism, which unsystematically synthesised Platonic, Aristotelian and Stoic psychology, ascetics like those who taught or were taught by Evagrius understood the human self to be composed of different parts, with varied degrees of sophistication and value, which required correspondingly varied virtues and were liable to devolve into particular vices.29 The epithymos, thymos and logistikon were, through asceticism, to be disciplined and put in order under the ruling principle of the soul, or ἡγεμονικόν. The precise relations of the ἡγεμονικόν to the very highest part of the person, the nous, has often remained unclear, and indeed Evagrius sometimes uses the terms interchangeably even within the same passage.30 The best way to understand the difference is that the latter term refers to an organ of the mind, while the former refers to its role in governing the rest of the person. The ascetic is trained to imagine his inner world as containing its own master, and the course of his development as a matter of submitting all the other parts of himself to the hegemony of that ruling principle. The desire for hegemony of the intellect over the body and the emotions has several significant implications for understanding the imagined world of the desert ascetic. Because the mastery of the self is achieved via the intellect, study, cultivation of a capacity for exceptional mental states, and the attainment of right knowledge are vital to salvation. Order in the self is attained by means of knowledge; the specific content of that knowledge will be our primary concern in the following section on homecoming. What is too often forgotten is what this central role of the intellect really means for our notion of what is normal for monks. Studying scripture is by no means a rare elective exercise for the literate few. Beyond ordinary reading and reflection upon the Bible, ascetics were to read additional teachings according to their current level of progress31. We should thus 29

For a summary of this correlation of virtues and vices with different parts of the person, see Harmless, Desert Christians, 345–47. 30 For example in On Thoughts 2 and 41. See discussion in Kevin Corrigan, Evagrius and Gregory: Mind, Soul and Body in the 4th Century (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 66–71. 31 Concerning literacy and availability of books, see the Pachomian Rule 139, 140,

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consider it normal for monks to be reading the full range of writings relevant to their religious work: ethical instruction, treatises on specific questions about the nature of the soul or the godhead, non-canonical scriptures, letters from respected leaders, and, for those most advanced, works of speculative theology on even the most arcane questions of human origin and destiny. A monk reads these things not because she necessarily assents to all of the doctrines of all of the authors, but because grappling with more and more esoteric literature is part of her ascetic work. As she advances, she reaches a range of content, such as the structure of the initial stages of derivation from original divine unity or the real reason for the fall into material, where every writing is necessarily exploratory, such that she as a reader feels free to glean what she can from it.32 A reader who is able to engage this type of material is approaching the same level of noetic sophistication as the author and is thus under no obligation to accept everything the author delivers, just as two gymnasts or dancers might train together collaboratively in order to benefit from exposure to each person’s individual specialities, but with neither person required to take direction from the other. Monks in this tradition of exceptional masculinity are athletes, so we should expect them to learn like athletes, that is, in the collaborative and exploratory manner of anyone who is committed to the development of extraordinary capacities. Another driving conviction in this ascetic world is that the human condition, left undisciplined by ascetic efforts, is one of lack and disorder: hegemony of the intellect is needed because the unmastered self is all wrong. This construal of the embodied human state appears frequently in the literature in metaphors of sickness, chaos, invasion by enemies, being lost, or 149. In Evagrius Ponticus’ Sentences to a Virgin, literacy also plays a role (reading the Scriptures): “Let the rising sun see the book in your hands, and after the second hour your work” (Sent. Virg 4, trans. Sinkewicz, Greek Ascetic Corpus, 131). For the question of the appropriate level of readings see Young, “Evagrius.” Recent work revising the received image of monks as anti-intellectual or uneducated has been done especially by Lillian Larsen, “Early Monasticism and the Rhetorical Tradition: Saying and Stories as Schooltexts,” in Education and Religion in Late Antiquity (ed. Peter Gemeinhardt, Lieve Van Hoof, and Peter Van Nuffelen; London: Routledge, 2016), 13–33; Larsen, “Redrawing the Map: Monastic Education as Civil Formation in the Apophthegmata Patrum,” Coptica 22 (2014), 1–30; Larsen, “The Apophthegmata Patrum: Rustic Rumination or Rhetorical Recitation?” Meddelanden från Collegium Patristicum Lundense 22 (2008), 21–31; Larsen, “The Apophthegmata Patrum and the Classical Rhetorical Tradition.” See also Samuel Rubenson and Lillian Larsen, eds., Monastic Education in Late Antiquity: The Transformation of Classical Paideia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). 32 Due recognition of this mode of exploratory endeavor at advanced skill levels solves the problem of clashes in doctrine between certain Nag Hammadi texts and the monastic communities proposed as their readers.

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being corrupted toward an animal or female nature, images which are especially prevalent in the Teachings of Silvanus.33 The solution to this problem is to subdue all desires to the authority of the mind. Thus, once again, the intellect achieving mastery over the emotions and appetites is synonymous with the work of salvation. Of the texts under discussion here, the Sentences of Sextus represents the most remedial level in the program of self-discipline. The moral instruction given is compatible with lay life; while it assumes a certain ethical ambition, it does not assume social separation from the obligations of ordinary citizenship. Thus it would be appropriate reading for the very ambitious lay person or the very novice monk. With instructions on discretion in speech and exhortations to do good works, it is less like training for a triathlon and more like a daily thirty minutes of yoga: saddhus do that, but so do regular people trying to keep healthy.34 Even in this remedial position, the Sentences reflect the same program of attaining mastery of the intellect over the emotions and the body which we will observe further in texts by Antony and Evagrius aimed at fully committed ascetic triathletes. The Sentences frame their moral teaching primarily in clear imperative statements: do this, don’t do that: “[Speak] when it is not proper [to be silent], but [speak concerning] the things you know (only) then [when] it is fitting” (161–62); or “After God, honor a [wise] man, [since he] is the servant [of God]” (319). The function of these teachings as an introduction to a larger program of self-mastery becomes apparent in descriptive statements which reveal the aim of cultivating the intellect or ἡγεμονικόν and removing impulses which disrupt its proper function. The moral improvement required by the imperative statements is connected to the work of the 33 For example, Teach. Silv. 93.3–21: “Live in accord with the mind. Do not think about things belonging to the flesh. Acquire strength, for the mind is strong. If you fall from this other, you have become male-female. And if you cast out of yourself the substance of the mind, which is thought, you have cut off the male part and turned yourself to the female part alone. You have become psychic since you have received the substance of the formed. If you cast out the other little part of this so that you do not again acquire a human part – but you have accepted for yourself the animal thought and likeness – you have become fleshly since you have taken on animal nature” All English quotations from Teach. Silv. are from Malcolm L. Peel. “The Teachings of Silvanus,” in Nag Hammadi Codex VII (ed. Birger A. Pearson; NHMS 30; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 278–369. 34 Some basic exhortations of this kind are also included in the Teachings of Silvanus: “Do not put maliciousness in your judgement, for every malicious man harms his heart. For only a foolish man goes to his destruction, but a wise man knows his way. And a foolish man does not guard against speaking (a) mystery. A wise man, (however,) does not blurt out every word, but he will be discriminating toward those who hear.” (Teach. Silv. 97.3–15); and “Fear God in all your acts, and glorify him through good work. You know that every man who is not pleasing to God is the son of perdition. He will go down to the abyss of the Underworld.” (Teach. Silv. 114.19–26).

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mind in descriptive statements, which specify that moral improvement is attained through learning: “[The] sins of those who are [ignorant are] the shame of those who have [taught them]” (174–175). People should gain a realistic perspective on the inadequate state of their minds so that they seek such instruction: “You cannot receive understanding unless you know first that you do not possess ” (333). Learning, quite in line with the redemptive role of commitment to the intellect, is taken as synonymous with faithfulness: “It is a faithful person fond of learning who is the worker of the truth” (384). Proper focus of the mind is required: “Where your thought is, there is your goodness” (316–317). This reorientation to the mind is facilitated by physical restraint: “[To make] the body of your [soul] a burden is [pride], but to be able to [restrain] it gently when [it is necessary is] blessedness” (320). Finally, right knowledge is correlated with moral goodness: “Know who God is, and know who is the one who thinks in you; a good man is the good work of God” (394–95). In short, the Sentences of Sextus are about discipline, encouraging the same work to restrict the desire for status, wealth, and pleasure which late Roman men will later do in the desert, replacing those attachments with a desire for knowledge of God. In his letters, Antony gives his readers a map of how the ascetic life works, weaving together the themes of hegemony and homecoming. He derives the need for hegemony from locating various kinds of disorder and inadequacy in the various parts of the body. Then he describes the ascetically transformed person: the tongue speaks with discipline and only after reflection, the hands are used for prayer and acts of mercy, the belly is restrained when eating and drinking, sexual appetites (“the parts below the navel”) are neutralized, and the feet “walk according to the will of the Spirit” (Letter 1.53–71). The hegemony of the mind is achieved, Antony tells us in Letter 1: “through the labors of the body, such as prolonged fasts, vigils, much study of the Word of God and many prayers, as well as the renunciation of the world and human things, humility and contrition” (Letter 1.77). It should be noted that this definition of ascetic work includes the same three levels that Evagrius later develops into a carefully differentiated system. Antony discusses physical asceticism focused on disciplining the appetites, namely fasting and keeping vigils, as well as confrontation with ordinary social and emotional desires through separation from the world and learning humility and contrition. The third, intellectually focused level, is expressed as “much study of the Word of God and many prayers,” which involves not only reading the Bible, probably to be understood as intense engagement with scripture through noetic exege-

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sis, but also exercising the mind in prayer to develop its capacity for what Evagrius will later call perfect or imageless prayer.35 The disordered state of the human person is corrected by the dominance of the mind, so that each part of the body and soul is brought into submission. In Letter 5, Antony portrays the recovered state of the mind in terms of purity given by God as a reward for absolute commitment: Unless each one of you hates all earthly possessions, and renounces them and all their workings with all his heart and stretches out the hands of his heart to heaven and to the Father of all, he cannot be saved. But if he does this God will have mercy because of his labour, and grant him the invisible fire which burns up all impurity from him and purifies his mind (ἡγεμονικὸν τῆς ψυχῆς). (Ep. 5.33–34)

The ascetic task of foreswearing material possessions is a condition for receiving “the invisible fire” necessary to achieve purification of the intellect.36 Here hegemony over the inner world is cast in terms of refinement, but it comes as a result of plain labour. Antony did not invent the program of mastery of the self as the proper expression of the ethical imperative. Indeed, some manner of self-mastery had been lauded by the ethically ambitious since Plato and his story of good and bad horses which must be controlled by the mind.37 Since wisdom literature, like classical philosophy, is produced primarily for the guidance of elite young men, works like the Teachings of Silvanus tend to conflate masculinity and the good life. Indeed, for elite young men, hegemony, whether over the self, one’s horse, one’s squadron, or one’s household, is the primary means of authenticating masculinity. By working for extraordinary degrees of self-mastery, then, desert ascetics take ascetic achievement as synonymous with extraordinary masculinity. The Teachings of Silvanus, whose connection to the letters of Antony and the writings of Evagrius is already known, include many exhortations to place oneself under the control of the ἡγεμονικόν in order to avoid inner

35

Blossom Stefaniw, “Evagrius Ponticus on Image and Material,” CSQ 42 (2007): 125–35; Columba Stewart, “Imageless Prayer and the Theological Vision of Evagrius Ponticus,” JECS 9 (2001): 173–204; Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, “The Limit of the Mind (ΝΟΥΣ): Pure Prayer According to Evagrius Ponticus and Isaac of Nineveh,” ZAC 15 (2012): 291–321. 36 On Antony’s terminology around the dominance of the mind, see Rubenson, Letters of St. Antony, 69: “When he [Antony] turns to Biblical language, he uses the concept of ‘the heart,’ which for him is synonymous with the Platonic nous and the Stoic concept for the authoritative part of the soul, τὸ ἡγεμονικόν or ‘spiritus principatus,’ which also occurs in the letters. However, the lack of most of the Coptic, and all of the Greek text of the letters, prevent an exact definition of Antony’s terminology.” 37 Plato, Phaedr. 246e–248b.

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chaos.38 In fact, an intensified level of commitment to an exceptional life is the opening frame for the entire text: “Put an end to every childish time of life, acquire for yourself strength of mind and soul.”39 This statement denotes the fundamental moral imperative, of which all the rest of the text is an explanation. The focus of the opening of the text on attaining strength and abandoning immaturity signals the key role of the teachings about to follow in two ways. The structure of the Teachings of Silvanus is like the desired structure of the inner world of the ascetic, with one ruling principle to which everything else is subsumed; while the person of the ascetic is to be ruled by the ἡγεμονικόν, the text is ruled by teachings about how to develop and deploy the full capacities of the ἡγεμονικόν. Second, the Teachings of Silvanus also reflect this text’s participation in the larger ascetic curriculum inasmuch as ethical development is cast in terms of growing into fully perfected masculinity, progressing from control of physical impulses to purity of the mind allowing for union with God. The text starts with basic exhortations to flee from an ignorant and dissipate state of mind (often described as womanishness): Put an end to every childish time of life, acquire for yourself strength of mind and soul, and intensify the struggle against every folly of the passions of love and base wickedness and love of praise, and fondness of contention, and tiresome jealousy and wrath, and anger and the desire of avarice. (Teach. Silv. 84.16–26).

Here militaristic rhetoric is used to position the reader in relation to the moral life. His enemies are identified and a call for strength in the mind and soul is issued. A lack of capacity to withstand these adversaries is associated with youthful immaturity, which is opposed to the strength the reader is called upon to attain. The either/or structure typical of wisdom literature is carried forward as the author sets out what the reader should do once he has controlled the passions. The right way of life is described in terms of commitment to an original father and mother (suggesting a state of return which we will see again in the discussion of the homecoming narrative below). At the very moment the author instructs the reader to return to his first father, the author himself takes on a fatherly role, addressing the reader as his son or child. But return, my son, to your first Father, God, and Wisdom your mother, from whom you came into being from the very first in order that you might fight against all of your enemies, the powers of the adversary. Listen, my son, to my advice. Do not be arrogant, opposing every good opinion, but take the side of the divinity of reason. Keep the holy commandments of Jesus Christ, and you will reign over every place on earth and will be honored by the angels and the archangels. Then you will acquire places in [heaven] 38

On similarities between the Letters of Antony and Teach. Silv., see Rubenson, Letters of St. Antony, 49. 39 Teach. Silv. 84.16–18. The Coptic has ⲛⲟⲩⲥ for mind and ⲯⲩⲭⲏ for soul.

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[above]. Do not bring grief with trouble to the divine [which is] within you. But when you will care for it, will request of it that you remain pure, and will become selfcontrolled in your soul and body, then you will become a throne of wisdom and a member of God’s household. (Teach. Silv. 91.14–92.8)

The reward of attaining self-control is illustrated not only as re-attachment to the father but as dominance and honor: if he honors the commandments, he will be king and receive honor even from angels and archangels. This causal relationship between self-control and dominance (being a throne of wisdom and a member of God’s household) is reiterated in the final sentence of the above passage. As the text advances, Silvanus addresses questions of human origins, anthropology, cosmology, and the person and work of Christ: Accept Christ who is able to set you free, and who has taken on the devices of that one so that through these he might destroy him by deceit. For this is the king whom you have who is forever invincible, against whom no one will be able to fight nor say a word. This is your king and your father, for there is no one like him. (Teach. Silv. 96.19–31)

Note that Christ is portrayed as the best example of attainment of hegemony. He contended with the adversary and won, and remains an undefeated king. Here again we see that moral and spiritual righteousness, even the righteousness of Christ himself, is cast in terms of maximized masculinity. Continuing the trajectory of increasingly advanced topics, Silvanus then goes on to explain God and the difference between Christ and God. Again, Christ possesses the very role as heir and son which is the aim of the dedicated life Silvanus is promoting. Everything is in God, but God is not in anything. Now what is it to know God? God is all that is in the truth. But it is as impossible to look at Christ as the sun. God sees everyone; no one looks at him. But Christ without being jealous receives and gives. He is the Light of the Father, as he gives light without being jealous. In this manner he gives light to every place. And Christ is All, he who has inherited all from the Existent One. For All is Christ, apart from incorruptibility. For if you consider sin, it is not a reality. For Christ is the idea of incorruptibility, and he is the Light which is shining undefiled. For the sun (shines) on every impure place, and yet is not defiled. So it is with Christ: even if [he is in the] deficiency, yet [he] is without deficiency. And even if [he has been begotten], he is (still) unbegotten. So it is with Christ: if, on the one hand, he is comprehensible, on the other, he is incomprehensible with respect to his actual being. Christ is all. He who does not possess all is unable to know Christ. (Teach. Silv. 101.9–102.7).

Note especially that Silvanus has introduced the topic of the entirety (pleroma) and of the exact relation of Christ to God, the same questions which are the central focus of many of the other Nag Hammadi texts. In keeping with the program of attaining the dominance of the intellect, the Teachings of Silvanus consistently focus on learning, knowledge, wisdom, teaching, and the mind. Along with the idea of the ἡγεμονικόν as master or defender of the soul at the opening of the text comes the descrip-

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tion of the mind as teacher: “Bring in your guide and your teacher. The mind is the guide” (85.23–26). The pursuit of learning and knowledge is synonymous with the commitment to an excellent life which the reader is called on to make: the author exhorts the reader to “accept the education and the teaching. Do not flee from the education and the teaching, but when you a) with joy. And if you are educated in any matter, do what is good.” Knowledge and ignorance are set up over against each other in the either/or rhetoric typical of wisdom literature: Wisdom summons you in her goodness, saying, “Come to me, all of you, O foolish ones, that you may receive a gift, the understanding which is good and excellent. I am giving you a high priestly garment which is woven from every (kind of) wisdom.” What else is evil death except ignorance? What else is evil darkness except familiarity with forgetfulness! Cast your anxiety upon God alone. Do not become desirous of gold and silver which are profitless, but clothe yourself with wisdom like a robe, put knowledge on yourself like a crown, and be seated upon a throne of perception. For these are yours, and you will receive them again on high another time. (Teach. Silv. 89.5–26)

This passage not only shows the key role of knowledge and the reform of the intellect as goals of the ascetic life, but also alludes to the narrative of alienation and reunion which we will discuss presently. The mind is in a state of forgetfulness and must return to its rightful inheritance, namely wisdom and knowledge. Development of right knowledge leads not only to order in the soul, but to mastery over others: For it would be fitting for you to know the way which I teach. If it is good to rule over the few, as you see it, [how] much better is it that you rule over everyone since you are exalted above every congregation and every people prominent in every respect, with divine reason, having become master over every power which kills the soul. (Teach. Silv. 87.31–88.6)

Here we see ascetic ideology drawing on the image of the philosopherking, the man who, because he is the best possible man, is the right ruler over the people. It is once again consistent with the ascetic curriculum that being “with divine reason” (presumably united to it or at least purified so as to be compatible with it) is synonymous with being “master over every power which kills the soul.” The Teachings of Silvanus cast the attainment of mastery of the inner world as synonymous with attainment of full masculinity. One frequent expression of ascetic development as masculinization is the use of militaristic rhetoric. The second sentence of the treatise immediately deploys this metaphor to specify the tasks of asceticism in terms of vigilance and warcraft: intensify the struggle against every folly of the passions of love and base wickedness and love of praise, and fondness of contention, and tiresome jealousy and wrath, and anger and the desire of avarice. Guard your camp with weapons and spears. Arm yourself with

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all the soldiers which are words, with the commanders which are counsels, (and) with your mind as a guiding principle. (Teach. Silv. 84.19–85.1)

The reader is instructed to war against nine poorly differentiated vices (Evagrius will clean this up and not exhort people against vague things like evil wickedness, nor include both anger and irascibility).40 Most significantly for the role of this text in the ascetic program of development, the means of warring against these vices are all intellectual: words, counsels, and the ἡγεμονικόν. Much in line with this militaristic rhetoric, the consequences of inadequate fortifications are expressed in terms of invasion and occupation, with the mind or soul in the place of the city: But he who will not guard these things will become like a city which is desolate since it has been captured. All kinds of wild beasts have trampled upon it. For thoughts which are not good are evil wild beasts. Your city will be filled with robbers, and you will not obtain peace, but only all kinds of savage wild beasts. The wicked One, who is a tyrant, is lord over them. While directing this, he (i.e., the Wicked One) is beneath the great mire. The whole city which is your soul will perish. (Teach. Silv. 85.7–21)

Failure in the basic duty of the male citizen to aid in the defense of the city when under attack, and to keep his home and his household safe, is used to describe the desolation which ensues if a man does not defend his soul from the passions. Likewise, the citizen’s fear of domination by a tyrant is tapped to elicit the idea of proper governance as the guarantor of peace and freedom for good men, and, analogously, for the soul. Like a good soldier, the ascetic reader is told to: Protect yourself lest you be delivered into the hands of your enemies. Entrust yourself to this pair of friends, reason and mind, and no one will be victorious over you. May God dwell in your camp, may his Spirit protect your gates, and may the mind of divinity protect the walls. Let holy reason become a torch in your mind, burning the wood which is the entirety of sin. (Teach. Silv. 86.11–23)

The ascetic soul is a good man when ruled rightly by the ἡγεμονικόν. Ascetic work is driven by avoiding subjugation to forces of chaos and disorder, and submitting instead to the rulership of the mind. The bad ascetic is also a bad man; animalistic, immature, slavish and female.

40

The eight evil thoughts systematized by Evagrius could be correlated with this list from Teach. Silv. as follows: fornication (πορνεία) = passion of love/lust; love of money (φιλαργυρία) = avarice; anger (ὀργή) = anger/wrath/irascibility; vainglory (κενοδοξία) = vainglory. Sins found in the Evagrian version of the evil thoughts but not here are pride (ὑπερηφανία), gluttony (γαστριμαργία), sadness (λύπη) and listlessness (ἀκηδία). Sins included by Teach. Silv. but not addressed as separate evil thoughts in Evagrius are evil wickedness and laborious envy. For discussion of the eight evil thoughts in Evagrius, see Harmless, Desert Christians, 322–27.

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Evagrius provides the most systematic explanation of how and why one should cultivate the ἡγεμονικόν and return it to its rightful role as master of the inner world and of the body. A person who has completed the course laid out in the Praktikos will attain apatheia and become a gnostikos. In other words, he will be unmoved by the passions and able to engage with higher levels of knowledge. Because of the importance of inner hegemony in maintaining the integrity of the mind in the face of movements of the passions or demonic attacks, Evagrius frequently gives teaching on how to protect the ἡγεμονικόν and what sort of disruptions to look out for. In de oratione 21, for example, Evagrius interprets an injunction from Matthew in terms of the need to avoid disturbance of the mind by the passion of anger: “‘Leave your gift before the altar,’ scripture says, ‘and go; first be reconciled with your brother, then come’ (Matt. 5: 24) and pray without disturbance. For resentment darkens the ruling faculty of the one who prays and leaves his prayers in obscurity.” Another of the passions which Silvanus commands his readers to take up arms against and gain control over also appears in Evagrius (To Eulogios, 30) as a liability: “They (the demons) know in fact that out of excessive concern about one’s brother they can shape feelings of sadness and so trouble the ruling faculty.” The ways in which the passions can disrupt the ἡγεμονικόν is addressed in detail in peri logismon (especially 2 and 4). Like the writer of the Teachings of Silvanus, Evagrius considers the inner world of the person to be vulnerable to attack, disruption, and domination by the passions. Gaining inner hegemony is the proper means of remaining undisturbed in the face of the onslaught and sustaining control over the passions so that the mind can function correctly. An increased capacity for more refined forms of knowledge is what qualifies the gnostikos to take on more authority. The responsibilities of the gnostikos include teaching other monks and diagnosing their struggles with the evil thoughts. The gnostikos is in charge of instructing others from the scriptures and supervising study. He is also expected to discern the level of each monk and only expose him to texts and teachings which he is ready to engage with.41 One can expect such a senior monk supervising the circulation of the texts in the Nag Hammadi collection, allowing easier access to beginner’s texts like the Sentences of Sextus and the Teachings of Silvanus, and withholding the more speculative works for only the most advanced. Reading the Gnostikos of Evagrius is thus to read a description of the more advanced ascetic who has already put his inner household in order and achieved mastery of himself. In essence, the Gnostikos is a portrait of the ascetic who operates under the dominance of the ἡγεμονικόν. 41

On the teaching role of the gnostikos, see Young, “Evagrius.”

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Homecoming, Reunion and Remembering In the Egyptian desert of the fourth century, the ascetic life was embedded within a narrative of exile, sojourn and homecoming. There are two main versions of this narrative, frequently conflated in ascetic literature: one is a reception of the stories of Abraham and Moses on the way to the promised land. According to this narrative, human beings are sojourners displaced from their home, seeking a means of return to the shelter of the father’s house. Existing alongside this epic paternal narrative is a more abstract version which explains human displacement in terms of the loss of original unity of all minds, a fall into material, a state of estrangement from one’s true self, and eventual restoration and rest in pure intellect. Both versions of this narrative motivate ascetic striving, because they construe this present life in the body as a painful state of affairs, requiring efforts toward relief. Evidence of engagement with this narrative in texts preserved in the Nag Hammadi codices is of particular significance to the question of whether Christian monks read those texts, because if evidence of the same narrative can be found in both monastic writings and the Nag Hammadi codices, then it is probable that the people reading these texts understood themselves to be in a similar ethical predicament and shared an interest in understanding how they got there and what they could do to get out. Just as the notion of ascetic work as the achievement of inner hegemony relates to ancient ideals of power and masculinity, so the homecoming narrative connects to a larger heritage which imagined the origins and destiny of human beings in terms of a reading of the embodied state as fraught and displaced relative to a more real, original and fulfilled state, outside of the material and contingent realm. This narrative goes at least as far back as Plato’s Phaedrus myth and the myth of the cave, and flourishes in religious and philosophical life through late antiquity, especially in the eastern empire.42 The three-point movement of fall into material, alienation, recognition of one’s true destiny, and ultimate return to the rightful original state structures the Hymn of the Pearl preserved in the Acts of Thomas, which recounts the tale of a young prince who went forth from his father’s house. Finding himself in a foreign land, the young prince forgot his real royal identity, only being restored to his rightful place after remembering his true nature as the king’s son.43 Origen, who is a primary influence on both 42 I am thinking here especially of ascent theologies such as that of Dionysius the Areopagite or John Climacus, but the notion of an intelligible reality which is more real than the physical world is also found in Origen, Evagrius, Didymus, the Cappadocians, and of course their contemporary Neoplatonist colleagues. 43 Acts Thom. 108–113, trans. A. F. J. Klijn, The Acts of Thomas: Introduction, Text, and Commentary (2nd rev. ed.; NovTSup 108; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 182–87.

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Antony and Evagrius, not to mention the writers of the Nag Hammadi texts, posits an original union in which all beings participated in the pure being of the Trinity. The material world and bodies were created to accommodate the souls which, due to slothfulness and distraction, fall away from that union. Just as we will see in Antony, the severity of the fall into material is determined by the degree of each person’s slovenliness in failing to pay attention and participate in the original union. Likewise, people return more or less easily to God depending on their level of discipline and intellectual dedication while in the body.44 Hence the ascetic imperative: the more effort made within the confines of embodiment, the more successful the return to noetic union will be. We can see this narrative in play elsewhere in the desert of fourth century Egypt, for example in the work of Didymus the Blind.45 Somewhat earlier, the Neoplatonist philosopher, Porphyry had written an exegesis of the Cave of the Nymphs, in which the narrative of the displacement and sojourn of the soul is linked with the story of Odysseus. Elsewhere in the Nag Hammadi collection, this narrative is apparent as well: the untitled text commonly referred to as On the Origin of the World traces the whole course of the soul from the first creation through the fall and back to resolution in unity. Eugnostos the Blessed is very concerned with the process of creation and the different classes of aeons during the descent into material. Likewise the Apocryphon of John includes a full account of creation, originating with the perfect mind but devolving into a mixture of light with darkness, the souls eventually being received by bodies, who “endure everything and bear up under everything, that they may finish the good fight and inherit eternal life.”46 This narrative is shared by texts on ascetic instruction which, while they are less interested in working out the precise process of descent or ascent, focus on the work to be done while in this world. Texts like those under examination here, because of their focus on developing commitment to ascetic practice and socialization in ascetic ideology, mobilize this epic narrative as an argument for the urgency of the ascetic task and as a means of articulating the aim of the ascetic life. 44

Origen, Princ. 1.6. Didymus the Blind discusses what we know as Psalm 23 (enumerated as Psalms 21 and 22 in the Tura papyri) in terms of the gradual maturation of the soul until it attains the capacity to return to God. See Michael Gronewald, ed., Didymos der Blinde, Psalmenkommentar. Vol. 2: Kommentar zu Psalm 22–26,10 (PTA 4; Bonn: Habelt, 1968), 2–37. Likewise in his discussion of Job cursing the day of his birth (Job 3:1), Didymus assumes the pre-existence of souls, such that cursing the day of one’s birth is appropriate for the wise man, who bewails the fall from pure intellect into material. 46 Ap. John II 26.3–7, trans. Michael Waldstein and Frederik Wisse in The Nag Hammadi Library in English (ed. James M. Robinson; rev. ed.; San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1988), 119. 45

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In the Sentences of Sextus, because of its practical focus and its orientation to ordinary lay people, this narrative is largely latent but still recognizable. Rhetorical connections between the desired state of the soul and ownership of one’s rightful patrimony are made repeatedly: “Everything God possesses the wise man has also. The wise man shares in the kingdom of God.” (310–312). This way of describing the proper state of the soul is compatible with the idea of return to a state of sonship and adoption which we will see in the other texts under discussion here. In the Sentences of Sextus, we see the final state of achieved wisdom described as being or dwelling with God, as is typical of this narrative: “Wisdom leads the soul to the place of God.” (167 f.) Here, quite in line with the narrative of ascetic achievement as homecoming, the final state of the soul is expressed as coming into possession of one’s rightful heritage. These few statements become more significant when they are seen in context with Evagrius’ notion of the return of the mind to the place of God, and of noetic union as synonymous with the kingdom of God, as we will see below. However, since the Sentences of Sextus is directed at beginners, the final state of return is not a central theme. In the Teachings of Silvanus, the narrative of exile, sojourn and return appears in terms which reflect a significant intertextual relationship with the Hymn of the Pearl. The fall from original union is discussed via kinship metaphors. The epic sojourning narrative is revealed as a presupposition in the Teachings of Silvanus when the beginning and the end of time are identified with each other: For death did not exist (at first), nor will it exist at the end. But since you cast from yourself God, the holy Father, the true Life, the Spring of Life, therefore, you have obtained death as a father and have acquired ignorance as mother. They have robbed you of the true knowledge. (Teach. Silv. 91.3–13)

The loss of knowledge resulting from alienation from God described in this passage is the grounds for the exhortation that follows immediately after the passage just quoted: “But return, my son, to your first Father, God, and Wisdom your mother, from whom you came into being from the very first in order . . .”47 The notion that the person has come under the authority of a fraudulent set of parents and must return to his rightful parents is a clear and compelling expression of the human state of estrangement posited by this narrative. The state of the soul while embodied is described as “destruction and dangers,” out of which the person can be led homewards by the ἡγεμονικόν (85). The need to struggle against physical chaos and the weakness of the body feeds the soldierly and militaristic language discussed above. Like47

Teach. Silv. 91.14–18.

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wise, the construal of ascetic work as learning is supported by imagining the fraught state of the soul in this world as ignorance, skewed perception, or mental lethargy. This connection can be observed in the terms of exhortation to ascetic commitment in the Teachings of Silvanus: “My son, listen to my teaching which is good and useful, and end the sleep which weighs heavily upon you. Depart from the forgetfulness which fills you with darkness.”48 Conversion to a committed ascetic life is construed as waking up and gaining knowledge; reading intertextually with the Hymn of the Pearl, we can specify that the person is supposed to wake up from a state of forgetting his true nature, and the knowledge to be gained is of his rightful identity as the son of the king who belongs in the king’s house in a different land.49 Thus among the many imperative statements in the Teachings of Silvanus comes the command to “return to your divine nature”;50 or “But before everything (else), know your birth. Know yourself, that is, from what substance you are, or from what race, or from what species.”51 Having realized where his true home is, the person is supposed to orient himself and his mental and physical efforts in that direction, because “You will take on the likeness of the part toward which you will turn yourself.”52 The resolution of the sojourn of the soul is characterized as sitting on a throne or being crowned, as appropriate for the lost prince returning to his rightful place in his father’s house: “clothe yourself with wisdom like a robe, put knowledge on yourself like a crown, and be seated upon a throne of perception. For these are yours, and you will receive them again on high another time.”53 Here it is noteworthy that the royal robe, crown and throne are designated as “yours” and as being not simply given but restored to the soul. Especially the inclusion of the idea of the resolved state as taking up a special garment confirms a close relationship to the Hymn of the Pearl. The final state of the soul is portrayed in ways familiar from other religious texts of late antiquity, as a state of restful stability achieved through assimilation with or likeness to God.54 Both motifs often appear with an explicit link to the attainment of inner hegemony, so that we see clear evi-

48

Teach. Silv. 88.22–27. Acts Thom. 108–113. 50 Teach. Silv. 90.29–31. 51 Teach. Silv. 92.10–14. 52 Teach. Silv. 94.3–5. 53 Teach. Silv. 89.19–26. 54 For a study of stability (asaleutos) as the end-state of valid religious striving, see Michael A. Williams, The Immovable Race: A Gnostic Designation and the Theme of Stability in Late Antiquity (NHS 29; Leiden: Brill, 1985). 49

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dence of the function of inner hegemony within ascetic ideology as the precondition to homecoming.55 The letters of Antony reveal a highly elaborated narrative of exile, sojourn and return. In Letter One, for example, Antony describes those souls who are most responsive to God as drawing on an inherent goodness which remains in them since the first formation (that is, the original state of union of all minds with God) and thereby answering God’s call “readily as did Abraham our father” (Ep. 1.3). While other souls only respond to threat of punishment or actual affliction, this first type of soul is the kind that converts to the ascetic life, which is cast as a response to the call of God to Abraham: God appeared to him, saying “Go from your country and your kindred and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” And he went without hesitating at all, but being ready for his calling. This is the mode for the beginning of this way of life. It still persists in those who follow this pattern. Wherever and whenever souls endure and bow to it, they easily attain the virtues, since their hearts are ready to be guided by the Spirit of God. (Ep. 1.4–8)

Since we know that Antony is writing to ascetics, the way of life and the pattern he refers to can fairly be taken to indicate a life of ascetic commitment. This is also supported by the reference to attaining the virtues and having a divine guide, both characteristics of the occupation of ascetics. Indeed, later on in the same letter Antony returns to the first (best) category of souls and explains exactly how to carry out the work of repentance which they have agreed to. This passage is the course of ascetic work which was referred to briefly above, further strengthening the point that those souls who take on the sojourn towards the promised land are ascetics: First the body through many fasts and vigils, through the exertion and the exercises of the body, cutting off all the fruits of the flesh. In this the spirit of repentance is his guide, testing him through them, so that the enemy does not bring him back again. Then the guiding Spirit begins to open the eyes of the soul, to show it the way of repentance, that it, too, may be purified. The mind also starts to discriminate between them and begins to learn from the Spirit how to purify the body and the soul through repentance. The mind is taught by the Spirit and guides us in the actions of the body and soul, purifying both of them, separating the fruits of the flesh from what is natural to the body, in which they were mingled, and through which the transgression came to be, and leads each member of the body back to its original condition, free from everything alien that belongs to the spirit of the enemy. (Ep. 1.23–32)

55

For example, Teach. Silv. 108–109. Resolution as rest also appears in Teach. Silv. 85.3–7: “Guard all your gates with torches which are the words, and you will acquire through all these things for a quiet life.”

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The work of attaining inner hegemony is the work to be done during the sojourn. As this passage indicates, the purpose to that work is to lead “each member back to its original condition.” In Antony, that final condition is expressed as adoption, sonship, and return to the father’s house. In Letter Two, Antony describes the work of salvation as it progresses through the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles. The work of each is dedicated to paving the way for the return of human beings to a fulfilled state. Moses, for example “gave us the written law and founded for us the house of truth, the spiritual Church, which creates unity, since it is God’s will that we turn back to the first formation” (Ep. 2.10). When Antony comes to the work of Christ, the penultimate stage in this homeward journey, he explains that full sonship is only achieved after that, at the return of Christ and the end of time: Every rational being, for whom the Saviour came, ought to examine his way of life and know himself and discern between evil and good, so that he may be freed through his coming. For those who are freed by his dispensation are called the servants of God. But this is not yet perfection, rather it is the time of righteousness, and it leads to adoption. Jesus, our Saviour, knew that they were about to receive the Spirit of adoption, and that they knew him, since they were taught by the Holy Spirit, and thus he said, “Henceforth I call you not servants, but brothers and friends, for all things that the Father has taught you.” (Ep. 2.25–27)

Elsewhere, Antony consistently reveals his embedding of ascetic work in a notion of return, and of homecoming. People are supposed to “discover themselves as they were created” (Ep. 3.11), and throughout the letters, Antony quotes New Testament rhetoric of sonship, brotherhood, and calling upon the Father. In contrast to Antony, who casts the end state of the ascetic life in biblical terms of homecoming after a time of exile and sojourn, Evagrius expresses the end state in primarily cognitive terms, revealing his preference for a version of that metanarrative more strongly colored by Origen and the Neoplatonists of his own day. Evagrius does not use kinship terms, sojourning metaphors, or the emotional pull of regaining lost attachments. Evagrius’ ascetic program is driven by the homecoming of the mind, its return to a pure state of noetic unity with God. In Evagrius, the most advanced state that can (and should) be achieved as a result of attaining inner hegemony is expressed in terms of correction, resolution, and fulfillment. The mind, through the fall into material, has been alienated from God. The mind is thus fully healed when the effects of material are corrected and it can again achieve unity with God. Evagrius is very clear about what it means to correct the effects of materiality: the body should be passionless and unmoved by appetites or emotions, as we have seen, but the mind must also cast off its dependence on the material. A mind that can move from gnostikê to theologikê has transcended the

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need for images, concepts, and language and is capable of pure prayer, that is, perfect noetic apprehension of the Trinity. Thus for Evagrius, the resolution of the fraught embodied state is achieved by exposure to and engagement with the being of God. Although Evagrius prefers the mentalist version of the fall and return narrative, he also uses spatial metaphors and allusions to the Biblical exile stories. In Praktikos 3, for example, Evagrius equates knowledge of the Trinity with the kingdom of God, that is, the fulfillment of the religious life as expressed in the gospels. Likewise, Evagrius exhorts his readers to depart more and more radically from the material by expressing pure union with God through perfect knowledge as the ascent to the place of God or Mount Sinai (Peri logismon, 39). This is the same image of the mind which has attained katastasis which was linked to the story of Moses in both Philo and the Cappadocians, thus connecting the more cognitively focused version of the fall and return narrative with biblical epic, and allowing for the construal of embodiment as a state of slavery to be endured before the exodus of conversion to the ascetic life. Evagrius also speaks of pure prayer as going up to Zion: From holy David we have clearly learned what the “place of God” is: “His place is established in peace and his dwelling in Zion” (Ps 75:3). The “place of God” therefore is the rational soul, and his dwelling is the illuminated mind, which has renounced the pleasures of the world and has learned to contemplate from afar the principles of the soul. (Skemmata, 25)56

Like his more emotional colleagues, Evagrius sees the final state of the soul as one of return, fulfillment, healing, and perfect union.

Conclusions The desire for a life of exceptional masculinity is alive and potent all through the desert of fourth century Egypt. In this religious world, salvation is masculinity, and masculinity is imagined as the achievement of inner hegemony which allows a return to a full state of sonship in the father’s house, or to perfect union of the mind with God. The ascetic work needed to attain this state thrives on a compelling epic narrative of sojourn and return. Teaching on the physical and mental exercises required is expressed within a rhetoric of control, dominance, and order. This ascetic ideology engages human hearts in a mode quite different from that touched by doctrine. A very plausible interest in studying texts 56 Trans. and commentary in William Harmless and Raymond Fitzgerald, “The Sapphire Light of the Mind: The Skemmata of Evagrius Ponticus,” TS 62 (2001): 498–529.

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which are built around the same ideals and the same notions of what constitutes the ethical imperative, where human beings came from and where they should be going, can substantiate the position that the Nag Hammadi collection was read by Christian monks. Considering it impossible for orthodox monks to collect and study texts categorized from outside as unacceptable on doctrinal grounds results from an impoverished understanding of why people read things. Assenting to a doctrine and being moved by a narrative are two very different cognitive acts which happen in very different linguistic and social modes. Narratives make meaning of the body and the world with a compelling emotional colour which statements of doctrine do not have. Shared narratives are thus a more telling index of Egyptian ascetics’ convictions and identities than are their association with any given doctrine. Both the Sentences of Sextus and the Teachings of Silvanus contribute to achieving the state of inner hegemony required to attain homecoming and a return to union with the father. As such, they are by no means anomalous in the ascetic world of the fourth-century Egyptian desert. Both texts can also be identified as initial training texts aimed at cultivating a commitment to a life of exceptional masculinity, and as such are by no means anomalous within the Nag Hammadi collection. Rather, they should be seen as exactly the beginner-to-intermediate level texts one would expect in a collection which also includes writings on the intermediate and advanced levels of the monastic curriculum. Like the rest of the Nag Hammadi collection, the Sentences of Sextus and the Teachings of Silvanus are part of a larger corpus of instruction, speculation, and experimentation dedicated to cultivating the mind, understanding one’s place in the world, and finding the way home. Bibliography Arrian, The Discourses, trans. W. A. Oldfather. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1925–1928. Bagnall, Roger S. Early Christian Books in Egypt. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. –. Everyday Writing in the Graeco-Roman East. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Bardenhewer, Otto. Das vierte Jahrhundert mit Ausschluss der Schriftsteller syrischer Zunge. Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur 3. Freiburg: Herder, 1923. Bitton-Ashkelony, Brouria. “The Limit of the Mind (ΝΟΥΣ): Pure Prayer According to Evagrius Ponticus and Isaac of Nineveh.” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 15 (2012): 291–321. Brakke, David. Talking Back: A Monastic Handbook for Combating Demons. Cistercian Studies 229. Collegeville, Minn.: Cistercian Publications, 2009.

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–. The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 2011. Cain, Andrew. The Letters of Jerome: Asceticism, Biblical Exegesis, and the Construction of Christian Authority in Late Antiquity. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Charles, R. H. ed. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. 2 volumes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913. Corrigan, Kevin. Evagrius and Gregory: Mind, Soul and Body in the 4th Century. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Dillon, John M., and Wolfgang Polleichtner. Iamblichus of Chalcis: The Letters. Writings from the Greco-Roman World 19. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009. Engberg-Pedersen, Troels, and James Starr, eds. Early Christian Paraenesis in Context. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 125. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012. Farquharson, Arthur S. L. The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antonius. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1944, reprinted 1968. Giversen, Søren. The Manichaean Coptic Papyri in the Chester Beatty Library. Volume 1: Kephalaia. Cahiers d’orientalisme 15. Geneva: Cramer, 1986. Gronewald, Michael, ed. Didymos der Blinde, Psalmenkommentar. Volume 2: Kommentar zu Psalm 22–26,10. Papyrologische Texte und Abhandlungen 4. Bonn: Habelt, 1968. Guillaumont, Antoine. Les six centuries des “Kephalaia gnostica”: Édition critique de la version syriaque commune et édition d’une nouvelle version syriaque, intégrale, avec une double traduction française. Patrologia Orientalis 28. Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1958. Hadot, Pierre. Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique. Collections des études Augustiniennes: Série antiquité 136. 3rd edition. Paris: Institut d’ètudes Augustiniennes, 1993. Haines-Eitzen, Kim. Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power, and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. –. “Textual Communities in Late Antique Christianity.” Pages 146–57 in A Companion to Late Antiquity. Edited by Philip Rousseau. London: Basil Blackwell, 2009. –. “Imagining the Alexandrian Library and a ‘Bookish’ Christianity.” Pages 207–18 in Reading New Testament Papyri in Context. Edited by Claire Clivaz and Jean Zumstein. Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 242. Leuven: Peeters, 2011. –. The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Harmless, William, and Raymond Fitzgerald, “The Sapphire Light of the Mind: The Skemmata of Evagrius Ponticus.” Theological Studies 62 (2001): 498–529. Harmless, William. Desert Christians. An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. King, Karen L. What Is Gnosticism?. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003. Klijn, Albertus Frederik Johannes. The Acts of Thomas: Introduction, Text, and Commentary. 2nd revised edition. Supplements to Novum Testamentum 108. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Kotsifou, Chrysi. “Books and Book Production in the Monastic Communities of Byzantine Egypt.” Pages 48–66 in The Early Christian Book. Edited by William E. Klingshirn and Linda Safran. CUA Studies in Early Christianity. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2012. Larsen, Lillian. “The Apophthegmata Patrum and the Classical Rhetorical Tradition.” Pages 409–15 in Studia Patristica: Papers Presented at the Fourteenth International

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Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2003. Edited by Frances M. Young, Mark Edwards, and P. Parvis. Studia Patristica 39. Leuven: Peeters, 2006. –. “The Apophthegmata Patrum: Rustic Rumination or Rhetorical Recitation?” Meddelanden från Collegium Patristicum Lundense 22 (2008): 21–31. –. “Re-drawing the Map: Monastic Education as Civil Formation in the Apophthegmata Patrum.” Coptica 22 (2014): 1–30. –. “Early Monasticism and the Rhetorical Tradition: Saying and Stories as Schooltexts.” Pages 13–33 in Education and Religion in Late Antiquity. Edited by Peter Gemeinhardt, Lieve Van Hoof, and Peter Van Nuffelen. London: Routledge, 2016. Lundhaug, Hugo. Images of Rebirth: Cognitive Poetics and Transformational Soteriology in the Gospel of Philip and the Exegesis on the Soul. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 73. Leiden: Brill, 2010. –. “Memory and Early Monastic Literary Practices: A Cognitive Perspective.” Journal of Cognitive Historiography 1 (2014): 98–120. Lundhaug, Hugo, and Lance Jenott. The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices. Studies and Texts in Antiquity and Christianity 97. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015. Marjanen, Antti, ed. Was there a Gnostic Religion. Helsinki: The Finnish Exegetical Society, 2005. McNary-Zak, Bernadette. Letters and Asceticism in Fourth-Century Egypt. Lanham, Md.: University of America Press, 2000. Muehlberger, Ellen, ed. Practice. Cambridge Editions of Early Christian Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming. Nussbaum, Martha. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Peel, Malcolm L. “Introduction to The Teachings of Silvanus.” Pages 249–76 in Nag Hammadi Codex VII. Edited by Birger A. Pearson. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 30. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Pevarello, Daniele. The Sentences of Sextus and the Origins of Christian Asceticism. Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 78. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013. Robinson, James M., ed. The Nag Hammadi Library in English. Revised edition. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1988. Rubenson, Samuel. The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint. Studies in Antiquity and Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997. Rubenson, Samuel, and Lillian Larsen, eds., Monastic Education in Late Antiquity: The Transformation of Classical Paideia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming. Sinkewicz, Robert E. Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Sodano, A. R. Epistula ad Anebonem. Naples: L’Arte Tipograpfica, 1958. Stefaniw, Blossom. “Evagrius Ponticus on Image and Material.” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 42 (2007): 125–35. –. Mind, Text and Commentary: Noetic Exegesis in Origen of Alexandria, Evagrius Ponticus and Didymus the Blind. Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity 6. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010. –. “The Oblique Ethics of the Letters of Antony.” Pages 169–85 in L’identité à travers l’éthique: Nouvelles perspectives sur la formation des identités collectives dans le monde gréco-romain. Edited by Katell Berthelot, Ron Naiweld, and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra. Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Sciences Religieuses 168. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015.

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Stewart, Columba. “Imageless Prayer and the Theological Vision of Evagrius Ponticus.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 9 (2001): 173–204. Urbano, Arthur. “Read it Also to the Gentiles: The Displacement and Recasting of the Philosopher in the Vita Antonii.” Church History 77 (2008): 877–914. Ward, Benedicta. The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1975. Whitehead, Stephen M. Men and Masculinities: Key Themes and New Directions. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002. Wicker, Kathleen O’Brien. Porphyry the Philosopher: To Marcella. Texts and Translations 28, Graeco-Roman Religion Series 10. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987. Williams, Michael A. The Immovable Race: A Gnostic Designation and the Theme of Stability in Late Antiquity. Nag Hammadi Studies 29. Leiden: Brill, 1985. –. Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Wisse, Frederik. “The Sentences of Sextus: Introduction.” Pages 295–301 in Nag Hammadi Codices XI, XII, XIII. Edited by Charles W. Hedrick. Nag Hammadi Studies 27. Leiden: Brill, 1990. –. “The Sentences of Sextus.” Pages 302–21 in Nag Hammadi Codices XI, XII, XIII. Edited by Charles W. Hedrick. Nag Hammadi Studies 27. Leiden: Brill, 1990. Young, Robin D. “Evagrius the Iconographer: Monastic Pedagogy in the Gnostikos.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 9 (2001): 53–71. Zandee, Jan. “Die Lehren des Silvanus: Stoischer Rationalismus und Christentum im Zeitalter der frühkatholischen Kirche.” Pages 144–55 in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts in Honour of Alexander Böhlig. Edited by Martin Krause. Nag Hammadi Studies 3. Leiden: Brill, 1972. –. “Les Enseignements de Silvanos et Philon d’Alexandrie.” Pages 337–45 in Mélanges d’histoire des religions offerts à Henri-Charles Puech. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1974. –. “Die Lehren des Silvanus als Teil der Schriften von Nag Hammadi und der Gnostizismus.” Pages 239–52 in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Text in Honour of Pahor Labib. Edited by Martin Krause. Nag Hammadi Studies 6. Leiden: Brill, 1975. –. The Teachings of Silvanus and Clement of Alexandria: A New Document of Alexandrian Theology. Leiden: Brill, 1977.

Part II Egyptian Christianity and its Literature

Magical, Coptic, Christian: The Great Angel Eleleth and the ‘Four Luminaries’ in Egyptian Literature of the First Millennium CE DYLAN M. BURNS Scholars often speak of different Gnostic literary traditions – Valentinian, Ophite, Sethian, etc. – as if they were breeds of a particular animal, “Gnosticism.” We like to debate which texts do and do not belong to this and that category, and what ought to define these categories. Even so, we generally have a good idea of what constitutes each tradition; the hard part is what we do with phenomena which exhibit just one or two characteristics of a tradition. Do such cases reflect an early stage of literary development within the tradition, or “tertiary” developments that come later? Do we bend the shape of the category we have built in order to make room for these cases, or do we simply set them aside and denote them as “fringe”? Plenty of examples come to mind: the Gospel of Judas, for instance, seems to exhibit a shared source and at times some shared mythologoumena with the Sethian text called the Egyptian Gospel, but scholars remain at odds over whether it is evidence of a primitive stage of Sethianism, a later, degenerated stage of it, or simply evidence of diversity within a literary tradition.1 The present contribution examines one of the criteria used in such debates: a set of mythologoumena known as the “Four Luminaries,” spirits by name of Harmozel, Oriael, Daveithe (or Daveithai), and Eleleth. These 1

For the first view, see Tuomas Rasimus, Paradise Reconsidered in Gnostic Mythmaking: Rethinking Sethianism in Light of the Ophite Evidence (NHMS 68; Leiden: Brill, 2009), 40 n. 109, and Marvin Meyer, “When the Sethians Were Young,” in The Codex Judas Papers: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Tchacos Codex held at Rice University, Houston, Texas, March 13–16, 2008 (ed. April D. DeConick; NHMS 71; Leiden: Brill, 2009), 57–73; for the second view, Gesine Schenke Robinson, “The Gospel of Judas: Its Protagonist, Its Composition, and Its Community,” in DeConick ed., The Codex Judas Papers, 88–89; John D. Turner, “The Sethian Myth in the Gospel of Judas: Soteriology or Demonology,” in The Codex Judas Papers, esp. 97; for the third view, Lance Jenott, The Gospel of Judas: Coptic Text, Translation, and Historical Interpretation of the ‘Betrayer’s Gospel’ (STAC 64; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 72–73, 131– 32.

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beings are best known as celestial helpers popping up in various treatises discovered at Nag Hammadi classified by Hans-Martin Schenke as “Sethian.”2 I would like to offer a survey of what we know about these beings, and highlight examples where one of our “luminaries,” Eleleth, does not quite seem to fit the mold we have made for him based upon what we see in most of the “Sethian” texts, namely, where he appears to be responsible for producing unpleasant beings who create and rule the flawed cosmos, and when he appears as a revelatory angel, set apart from the rest of his Sethian gang. It becomes easier to understand how Eleleth can play these other, independent roles in Gnostic texts when we turn to non-Gnostic Egyptian magical and homiletic literature of the first millennium CE, where Eleleth and Daveithe appear on occasion as angels of great power and benevolence. As we will see, some of this evidence reaches back to the second or third centuries CE, and so is contemporaneous with our evidence from Nag Hammadi. From this perspective, the mere mention of Eleleth in a text does not a “Sethian” text make. Conversely, the renown of the angelic beings Eleleth and Daveithe in the world of first-millennium Egyptian Christianity may explain the appeal of the Gnostic literature in which they prominently feature to the individuals responsible for the Nag Hammadi Codices.

Four Luminaries Inhabiting the Autogenes Aeon: A Barbeloite Mythologoumenon In the Sethian texts, the Four Luminaries are usually associated with the Autogenes (or “self-begotten”) aeon, as for instance in the Apocryphon of John (NHC II,1 and par.), where, together with their twelve own subaeons, they attend and praise the appearance of the aeon of the Christ.3 Thereafter, the “Perfect Human Being” – the model of divine humanity – appears, and, following his praise of the divine, various celestial counterparts of 2 Hans-Martin Schenke, “Das sethianische System nach Nag-Hammadi-Handschriften,” in Studia Coptica (ed. Peter Nagel; BBA 45; Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1974), 165– 73; Schenke (trans. Bentley Layton), “The Phenomenon and Significance of Gnostic Sethianism,” in The Rediscovery of Gnosticism: Proceedings of the International Conference on Gnosticism (ed. Bentley Layton; 2 vols.; SHR 41; Leiden: Brill, 1981), 2:588– 616. The classic monograph on Sethianism is John D. Turner, Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition (BCNH.É 6; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2001). 3 Ap. John II 7.29–8.28. For convenience here I refer only to the long recension of the text. All translations given in this essay are my own except as noted; those from the Nag Hammadi texts are made with reference to both CGL and BCNH editions, noting differences ad loc.

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primordial humans appear, together with the pre-existent souls of the saved. They inhabit the “Luminaries”: Then, out of the [foreknowledge] of the perfect intellect, through the manifestation of the will of the Invisible Spirit, and (through the manifestation of) the will of the Autogenes, perfect human being (came forth) – the first Manifestation, and the truth.4 It is he who the Virgin Spirit called “Geradamas.” And He (i.e., the Spirit) placed him over the first aeon, with the great one, the Autogenes, Christ, under the first Luminary, Harmozēl . . . And he (i.e., Geradamas) established his son, Seth, upon the second aeon, in the presence of the second Luminary, Ōrōiēl. And in the third aeon, the Seed of Seth was established, over the third Luminary, Daveithai; the souls of the saints were established there. And in the fourth aeon were established the souls of those who were without knowledge of the pleroma, and did not repent at once, but, rather, persisted for a time (in their disbelief), and repented only later. They came into being under the fourth Luminary, Ēlēlēth. These are begotten ones, who glorify the Invisible Spirit . . . (Ap. John II 8.28– 9.24)5

Similarly, the Egyptian Gospel (NHC III,2; IV,2) depicts the production of the Four Luminaries in the Autogenes with their consorts, together comprising an “ogdoad of the divine Autogenes.”6 The Luminaries then acquire “ministers” and their own “consorts” (a second ogdoad contained within the Autogenes), and the whole bunch erupts in praise to the “[great, invisible and incorruptible, uncallable, virgin Spirit], and the male [virgin], and the great aeon of [Doxomedōn].”7 As in the Apocryphon of John, the second Luminary, Oroiael, serves as home to the celestial Seth, while the third Luminary, Davithe, serves as home to Seth’s celestial seed.8 In Zostrianos (NHC VIII,1) too, the Four Luminaries are associated with the Autogenes aeon. They appear occasionally throughout the text, particularly as beings who interact with different classes of post-mortem souls in heaven, those amongst the saved who escape reincarnation and thus enter the lowest sub-aeon of the Barbelo, the Autogenes:9 Therefore, there are four luminaries: [first, Harmozel] is established upon the first aeon – a love of the god of [truth]10 and a union of soul; second, Ōroiaēl is established over the 4

The text here is probably a little corrupt; see the clearer text in the short version. Other “luminaries” appear later in the text, as celestial agents who trick the demiurge into giving up the creative power he has stolen from Sophia, but it is not clear that they are to be identified with Harmozel and his partners (Ap. John II 19.15–28). 6 NHC IV 63.8–64.10 = III 51.14–52.16. 7 NHC IV 64.10–65.14 = III 52.16–53.20. 8 NHC IV 67.27–68.5 = III 56.13–22; IV 77.12–18 = III 65.16–22; see further Dylan M. Burns, Apocalypse of the Alien God: Platonism and the Exile of Sethian Gnosticism (Divinations; Philadelphia: University of Pennyslvania, 2014), 81, 214. 9 Zost. 18.14–19. For discussion, see John D. Turner, “Commentary: Zostrianos,” in Zostrien (ed. Catherine Barry et al.; BCNH.T 24; Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2000), 483–662, 529; Burns, Apocalypse of the Alien God, 95–106. 10 Here following the text of Barry et al., Zostrien. 5

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second (aeon), a powerful seer of truth; third, Daveithe is established upon the third (aeon), a vision of knowledge; fourth, Ēlēlēth is established upon the fourth (aeon), an appetition and preparation for truth. And the four exist insofar as [they are] discourses of truth and [knowledge. They] exist, although they do not belong to the Protophanes; rather, they belong to the mother. . . (Zost. 29,1–17)

All four luminaries are blessed in heaven amongst celestial beings, such as Pleistheia and Emmakha Seth.11 They have subaeons, with three heavenly inhabitants apiece.12 Other “luminaries,” belonging to the aeons of the Protophanes and Kalyptos aeons, appear throughout the text, as well as luminaries who simply “belong to the Barbelo.”13 We set aside the evidence pertaining to these characters here.14 Meanwhile, the opaque Untitled Treatise in the Bruce Codex manages to mention three of the Four Luminaries in a passage that terminates in a lacuna. The passage seems be part of a cosmogonic description, detailing the fashioning of the upper reaches of the material realm for the “products of matter” (ⲛⲉϫⲡⲟ ⲛⲑⲩⲗⲏ).15 The “aetherial earth” (or “airy earth” – ⲡⲕⲁϩ ⲛ̄ⲁⲏⲣ) is created, followed by the “place of the Repentance” and the “stratospheric reflections (ⲁⲛⲧⲓⲧⲩⲡⲟⲥ ⲛⲁⲉⲣⲟⲇⲓⲟⲥ).”16 This jargon is known to Zostrianos, and likely refers to the realms about the moon where reincarna11

Zost. 51.12–18. Zost. 127.15–128.8. 13 Those belonging to the Protophanes aeon are mentioned at Zost. 54.17–25; prayed to but not named at 63.13–17; listed and named on pp. 119–120. A nearly identical version of the latter pages is preserved in P.Bodmer XLIII, ed. Rodolphe Kasser and Philippe Luisier, “P. Bodmer XLIII: Un Feuillet de Zostrien,” Mus 120:3–4 (2007): 251–72. Those belonging to the Kalyptos aeon are listed and named at Zost. 126. Finally, those belonging “to Barbelo” are mentioned at 62.17–22: “Thus, invoke now Salamex and [Semen] and the absolutely perfect Armē – the luminaries of the [aeon] of Barbelo, and the immeasurable knowledge . . . See also 63.17–20. References to “luminaries” in passages too fragmentary to be clear or useful include NHC VIII 31.12–17 and 32.2–5. 14 These beings seem to be hypostasizations of heavenly helpers. They have their own sub-aeons, which seem to be servants who assist them with the celestial liturgy and baptism (see below, n. 21). 15 Text provided in The Books of Jeu and the Untitled Treatise in the Bruce Codex (ed. Carl Schmidt, trans. and rev. Violet MacDermot; NHS 13; Leiden: Brill, 1978), 263.16–264.6, pp. 49–51 in the manuscript in the reckoning of Schmidt. Eric Crégheur has recently argued that numeration of the pages should rather follow that proposed by Baynes, with the present pages in question then coming at the end of the Untitled Treatise, numbered 60–61. Crégheur, “Édition critique, traduction et introduction des ‘deux Livres de Iéou (MS Bruce 96)’, avec des notes philogiques et textuelles” (PhD diss., Université Laval, 2013), 75–76, 482–83. 16 Or, more parsimoniously, “the antitypes of Aerodios,” per MacDermot. The Graeco-Coptic word αἐρόδιος is not found in major Greek lexica. Perhaps the term is an adjective describing a passage through the ἀήρ, i.e., the stratosphere; thus “celestial,” or “heavenly.” 12

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tion takes place.17 Baptisms in the name of the Autogenes are administered there by celestial baptizers common to Sethian literature: Michar and Michael, with Barpharangēs, Zōgenethlos, “and the aeon Autogenes. Inside of it were left four luminaries: Ēlēlēth, Daveide, Ōroiaēl [. . .]”18 In fact, the content and wording of the passage is so similar to what we find on Zostrianos NHC VIII 6 that it is hardly possible that the Untitled Treatise did not know a version of Zostrianos, or share a source with it.19 Returning to Nag Hammadi, the names of the Four Luminaries appear in Melchizedek (NHC IX,3) amongst a slew of other celestial beings (some of them, such as Geradamas, also known from other Sethian texts) praised by the speaker in a doxology.20 They are called “commanders-in-chief” (ⲁⲣⲭⲓⲥⲧⲣⲁⲧⲏⲅⲟⲥ), an epithet used elsewhere in Coptic literature for the archangel Michael, as we will see. They also appear in Trimorphic Protennoia (NHC XIII,1*) as aeons produced by the Son, or Christ.21 They go on to give glory in heaven – and then, as we will see, things begin to go awry. First, however, let us summarize what we have observed thus far: the Apocryphon of John, the Egyptian Gospel, Zostrianos, the Untitled Treatise of the Bruce Codex, and Trimorphic Protennoia refer to the Four Luminaries as a distinct quartet of active beings – forming a quintet, together with the Autogenes aeon – who praise the First Principle in heaven (essentially performing a celestial liturgy for eternity), and, at the same time, passive locations, places in heaven themselves. (This tension between activity and passivity sounds strange, but is actually typical aeonic behavior).22 This “classic” account of the Four Luminaries is old: the opening theogony of the Apocryphon of John in which the Luminaries appear is 17

Zost. 5.14–27, 12.2–17. See Burns, Apocalypse of the Alien God, 96–98; on the “aetherial earth” as a name for the moon, see Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (trans. William Harris Stahl; New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), 1.11.7. Plotinus complains about the Gnostic notion of a “new earth,” which is mentioned elsewhere in the Untitled Treatise (Enn. 2.9 [33] 5.23–26, τὴν γῆν καινήν; Unt. Tr. 249.21 [Schmidt/MacDermot], ⲡⲕⲁϩ ⲛⲃⲣⲣⲉ), but this is an eschatological notion, rather than a cognomen for the “a(eth)erial earth”; see Burns, Apocalypse of the Alien God, 107. 18 Unt. Tr. 264.5–7; cf. Zost. 6.7–17. Mikhar and Mikheus also appear in Gos. Eg. IV 76.4, 9–10 = III 64.14, 20; Apoc. Adam 84.4–8; Zost. 47.24; on Barpharanges, see below. 19 I hope to investigate this evidence further elsewhere. 20 Melch. NHC IX 6.2–5, 17.6–19. 21 Trim. Prot. 38.33–39.7: “The first aeon, now, he established [on the first]: Harmēdōn, Nousa[nion, Harmozēl]; [the] second he established [upon the second aeon]: Phaionion Ainion Oroiaēl; the third (he established) upon the third aeon: Mellephanea, Lōion, Daveithai; the fourth (he established) upon the fourth: Mousanion, Amethēn, Ēlēlēth. Therefore, these are the aeons who were produced through the begotten God, the Christ.” 22 Dylan M. Burns, “Aion,” in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions (ed. Eric Orlin, et al.; London/New York: Routledge, 2016), 26.

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dependent upon or shares a source with a version of the myth ascribed by Irenaeus of Lyons (ca. 180) to certain Gnostics, a myth termed by modern scholars “Barbeloite” due to its focus on the Barbelo as divine genetrix of the intelligible cosmos.23 The “Four Luminaries,” here named Armogenes, Raguel, David, and Eleleth, are therefore a Barbleoite mythologoumenon that goes back at least to roughly the mid-second century CE. This formulation includes their association with the Autogenes-Christ aeon (also mentioned by Irenaeus), and thus the composition of the Luminaries with the Autogenes as a pentad.24 We cannot trace their existence, to the best knowledge of this author, further back than Irenaeus.25

Eleleth as Responsible for Creation Yet there are several cases in the “Sethian” corpus delineated by Schenke and Turner where one of the Four Luminaries, Eleleth, does not at all walk or talk like the Eleleth of Apocryphon of John et al. One is a peculiar literary tradition which casts responsibility for the crack in the pleroma that eventually produces the demiurge at the feet of Eleleth, rather than a fault 23 Irenaeus, Haer. 1.29, where the luminares are named Armoges, Raguel, David, and Eleleth. 24 The question of the relationship of this mythologoumenon to the mysterious rite known as the “Five Seals” I forego here. For an argument that the “Five Seals” refers to a fivefold chrismation (corresponding to these five aeonic beings), following a threefold baptism (corresponding to the Barbeloite triad of Father, Mother, and Son), see Alastair H. B. Logan, “The Mystery of the Five Seals: Gnostic Initiation Reconsidered,” VC 51 (1997): 188–206, esp. 190; Rasimus, Paradise Reconsidered, 258. 25 Proposed etymologies of their names run the gamut and tell us nothing certain, except that the names are likely of Hebrew or Aramaic origin; for survey, see Søren Giversen, Apocryphon Johannis: The Coptic Text of the Apocryphon Johannis in the Nag Hammadi Codex II, with Translation, Introduction and Commentary (ATDan 5; Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1963), 183–85. Meanwhile, Paul-Hubert Poirier and Michel Tardieu have argued the names are of “Zurvanist inspiration,” Persian terms referring to a quadpartite division of time into four salvific-historical epochs (“Catégories du temps dans les érits gnostiques non valentiniens,” LTP 37:1 [1981]: 3–13, 12–13, a suggestion admired but rejected by Gedaliahu G. Stroumsa, Another Seed: Studies in Gnostic Mythology [NHS 24; Leiden: Brill, 1984], 55 n. 7). Eugenia Smagina has instead proposed (without evidence) that the names are of Persian origin, referring to the four elements; Smagina, “Das manichäische Kreuz des Lichts und der Jesus Patibilis,” in Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West: Proceedings of the Fribourg-Utrecht Symposium of the International Association of Manichaean Studies [IAMS] (ed. Johannes van Oort, Otto Wermelinger, and Gregor Wurst; NHMS 49; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 248. Dr. Mushegh Asatryan and Dr. Khodadad Rezakhani relate to me that, pace Prof. Smagina, the names of the Luminaries do not appear to recall Old or Middle Persian terms for air, fire, earth, and water.

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on the part of Sophia.26 In Trimorphic Protennoia, the “Luminaries” praise the Invisible Spirit, as in other treatises noted already. But here, immediately following their praise, a “logos” appears from Eleleth, and poses a question presuming a rupture in the heavenly realm, apparently enacting such a rupture by doing so in what scholars might today call a “performative speech-act”: Then, a Logos was issued from the great light, Ēlēlēth, and said, “I am king! Who belongs to Chaos, and who to Hades?” At that time, his light appeared radiant, possessing afterthought . . .27

Next to this nasty logos appears a terrible demon who rules over chaos, Saklas, and it is he who adopts the familiar unpleasant characteristics of the Gnostic demiurge in the rest of our narrative. Something similar happens in the Egyptian Gospel; here, after Seth places his seed in Davithe, “five thousand years” pass, and Eleleth pronounces, “let one reign over the chaos and Hades.”28 The precise events that follow are unclear due to lacunae in the manuscripts, but the end products are “Sakla, the great angel,” and his partner in creation, “Nebruel, the great demon.”29 We seem to find Eleleth in a comparable role in the Gospel of Judas, where he summons into existence angels to rule over the underworld, including “Nebro” and “Saklas.”30 These episodes stick out in Gnostic literature, where some kind of error of Sophia or another being is usually responsible for the generation of the demiurge and the cosmos. So, why would Eleleth be singled out as culpable for the malevolent worldruler(s) in the Trimorphic Protennoia, the Egyptian Gospel, and the Gospel of Judas (if the proposed restoration of the text is correct)?31 The philosophical reason is clear enough: by exculpating Sophia of error, these texts attempt to conceive of the Gnostic cosmogony as a providential event,

26

Poirier and Tardieu, “Catégories du temps,” 10; see also John D. Turner, “Nag Hammadi Codex XIII,1*: Notes to Text and Translation,” in Nag Hammadi Codices XI, XII, and XIII (ed. Charles W. Hedrick; NHS 28; Leiden: Brill, 1990), 435–54, 441–43; Turner, Platonic Tradition, 228–30, and in the following discussion. 27 Trim. Prot. 39.13–19. 28 Gos. Eg. III 56.22–25. 29 Gos. Eg. III 56.26–57.22. See also Alexander Böhlig and Frederik Wisse, “Commentary: The Gospel of the Egyptians,” in Nag Hammadi Codices III,2 and IV,2: The Gospel of the Egyptians (The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit) (ed. Alexander Böhlig and Frederik Wisse; NHS 4; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 183. 30 Gos. Jud. 51.1–23, restoring the first word of the page as ⲏ̄ⲗvac[ⲏ︤ⲗ︦ⲏ︦ⲑ︥], per Turner, “Sethian Myth,” 100; for detailed discussion, see Jenott, Gospel of Judas, 94–97. 31 Indeed, Turner himself wonders what the benefit of this shift in Gnostic mythos obtains (Platonic Tradition, 229 n. 6).

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willed by the divine.32 What remains is the question of why Eleleth in particular is assigned responsibility for creation.

Eleleth in the Hypostasis of the Archons John D. Turner has argued that we can understand what is happening with Eleleth in Trimorphic Protennoia and the Egyptian Gospel if we turn to the evidence preserved in the Hypostasis of the Archons (NHC II,4). Scholars generally recognize that the treatise is a revealer-discourse in two parts, of clearly distinct provenances.33 It was designated “Sethian” by Schenke and Turner on the basis of the appearance of Eleleth as revelator.34 However, the text has no other references to Sethian mythologoumena – in fact, Seth himself only “appears” in a mutilated passage, where his name has to be restored to the text. He is not the revealer, savior, or cosmic being who we find in the undisputedly “Sethian” material; in fact, he plays no role at all in the rest of the narrative, which proceeds to introduce and focus on his sister, the virgin Norea.35 Indeed, Rasimus has argued convincingly that the text’s theology should be considered “Ophite,” in light of mythologoumena shared with several other Nag Hammadi texts, and especially its revisionary speculation on the famous story of Adam and Eve’s encounter with the Serpent in the Garden of Eden.36 Significantly, the revealer in the second half of the text is our friend Eleleth. Poor Norea comes under assault from the archons,37 and cries to heaven for help: 32

Thus Jenott, Gospel of Judas, 97–99. The basic insight of Rodolphe Kasser, “Formation de ‘L’Hypostase des Archontes,’” BSAC 21 (1971–1973): 88, even if one is skeptical about his reconstruction of a redaction-history for the text, as is Roger A. Bullard, “The Hypostasis of the Archons: Introduction,” in Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, together with XIII, 2*, Brit. Lib. Or.4926(1), and P.Oxy. 1. 654, 655 (ed. Bentley Layton; NHS 20; 2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1989), 1:220–33, 222, 225. 34 For summary of scholarship, see Ursula Ulrike Kaiser, Die Hypostase der Archonten (Nag-Hammadi-Codex II,4). Neu herausgegeben, übersetzt und erklärt (TUGAL 156; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter), 33–35. 35 Hyp. Arch. 91.30–92.3: “And Adam [had knowledge] of his partner, Eve, and she birthed [Seth] to Adam, and said, ‘I [have given birth to another] man, through God, in place [of Abel].’ Again Eve became pregnant, and gave birth [to Norea]. And she (Eve) said, ‘he (Adam) has begotten [me on a virgin], as aid [from] generation to generation of humanity. She is the virgin, who none of (the) powers have defiled.’” 36 On “Ophite” Gnosticism, see Rasimus, Paradise Reconsidered, 54–62. 37 For a summary of ancient traditions about the figure of Norea, see Birger Pearson, “The Figure of Norea in Gnostic Literature,” in Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Gnosticism, Stockholm, August 20–25, 1973 (ed. Geo Widengren; Stockholm: 33

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(Norea cried), “Deliver me from the rulers of unrighteousness! Save me from their clutches! – Right now!” A angel descended from the heavens, saying to her, “why do you shout up at God? Why do you dare to (act this way before) the Holy Spirit?” Norea replied: “Who are you?” The rulers of unrighteousness had withdrawn from her. He said, “It is I, Elelēth, Wisdom, the great angel who stands in the presence of the Holy Spirit. I have been sent to speak with you, and to save you from the clutches of the lawless ones. And I shall teach you about your root.” Now, as for that angel, I could never speak of his power; his appearance is like fine gold, and his robe is like snow. Nay, my mouth should be unable to bear speaking of his power, and the look on his face! The great angel Elelēth spoke to me. “It is I,” he said, “understanding. I come from the Four Luminaries, beings who stand in the presence of the Great Invisible Spirit . . .”38

Eleleth then narrates the creation of the world, and the eventual redemption of the “kingless generation” by a “True Man” through salvific chrism.39 The revelator in this passage refers to himself once as one of the Four Luminaries, but everything else about the scene leads us to think otherwise. The revealer is dubbed three times a “great angel (ⲧⲛⲟϭ ⲛ̄ⲁⲅⲅⲉⲗⲟⲥ).”40 He has a physical appearance recalling that of traditional Jewish theophanies, in stark contrast to the decidedly opaque aeons of the Autogenes we know from other “Sethian” literature.41 Indeed, the other Luminaries appear nowhere throughout the rest of the text; nor do the Autogenes aeon, nor the Invisible Spirit. In fact, the rest of the treatise prefers an entirely different appellation for the divine – “The Immortality” (often Almqvist & Wiksell, 1977), 143–52; Pearson later argued that Norea is effectively a salvatrix salvanda: “Revisiting Norea,” in Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism (ed. Karen L. King; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 265–75; cf. Stroumsa, Another Seed, 54–60. 38 Hyp. Arch. 93.1–22. 39 Hyp. Arch. 96.27–97.16. 40 Hyp. Arch. 93.8, 93.18, 94.3. 41 The “appearance like fine gold” (ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲃ ⲉⲧ⳿ⲥⲟⲧⲡ⳿) recalls 4QShirShabbg 4Q405 23 ii 9–10: “the substance of the spirit of glory is like work from Ophir, that shines” (‫כמצשי‬ ‫)אופירים מאירי ]או[ר‬, i.e. quality gold (trans. Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Study Edition [2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1997], 837; for Ophir, the Biblical “El Dorado,” as roughly synonymous with fine gold, see BrownDriver-Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon, 20b). For the “robe like snow” on the Ancient of Days, see Dan 7:9 (“his clothing was white as snow”); similarly 1 En. 14:20–21, and the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain (Mark 9:2–3, Luke 9:29). For beings with hair as white as snow, see: Apoc. Abr. 11:1–3, Jos. Asen. 22:7. For citation and discussion of these passages, I am indebted to Peter R. Carrell, Jesus and the Angels: Angelology and the Christology of the Apocalypse of John (SNTSMS 95; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 37, 61, 82–84, 163–64; cf. Kaiser, Hypostase der Archonten, 291.

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rendered by translators as “indestructibility” – Copt. ⲧⲙⲛ̄ⲧⲁⲧⲧⲁⲕⲟ = Grk. ἀφθαρσία). This term is rare to the other Sethian treatises, although it is used once in Apocryphon of John to denote the Sethian first principle, the Great Invisible Spirit, a point we shall return to below.42 In short, even though Eleleth is a central character to the second half of the Hypostasis of the Archons, the only other evidence of Barbeloite mythologumena in the text – the reference to the Four Luminaries and the Great Invisible Spirit – appears as an afterthought, distinct from the language used about divine beings (including Eleleth himself!) throughout the rest of the treatise. Turner synthesizes the evidence on Eleleth – which he delimits to the Nag Hammadi corpus and Irenaeus – as follows: “Immortality” is also one of five characteristics assigned to Barbelo in the Apocryphon of John, and so he speculates that the “Immortality” in the Hypostasis of the Archons is nothing else than a cognomen for Barbelo.43 He observes further that Norea calls for help, and Eleleth answers; now, in Trimorphic Protennoia, after Eleleth calls for the creation of the world, Epinoia-Sophia calls for help, and is forthwith restored to pleroma. Even though her cry is addressed to no one in particular, its proximity to Eleleth’s short speech leads Turner to suppose that Epinoia beseeches Eleleth.44 He then also recalls a short, fragmentary treatise from NHC IX, in which the character Norea is aided by “four holy helpers (ⲡϥ̄ⲧⲁⲩ ⲛ̄ⲃⲟⲏⲑⲟⲥ ⲉⲧⲟⲩⲁⲁⲃ⳿).”45 Turner concludes that that “the Thought of Norea, the Trimorphic Protennoia, and the Gospel of the Egyptians” witness a stage in the Christianization of the Barbeloite-Sethian myth, taking place in the late second century, where Epinoia/Sophia is innocent, “such that her restoration to the Light no longer requires repentance for a willful act performed without her consort, as is the case in the Apocryphon of John.”46 We are asked to read the “four helpers” of Norea in NHC IX as substitutes for the Barbeloite Four Luminaries; Sophia’s cry for help to no one in Trimorphic Protennoia as Norea’s cry for help answered by Eleleth in the Hypostasis of the Archons; the “Immortality” of the Hypostasis of the Archons as Barbelo in the Apocryphon of John.47 Turner’s analysis is a remarkable presentation of what could have been. But must it have been? I find it at least as likely that the reference to the “Four Luminaries” and the “Invisible Spirit” in the Hypostasis of the Ar42

Ap. John II 2.30 = BG 22.22. I thank Kristine Toft Rosland for the reference. Ap. John II 5.21, 23 = BG 28.15–16; Turner, Platonic Tradition, 107. 44 Trim. Prot. 39.32–40.4. 45 Norea 28.24–30. 46 Turner, Platonic Tradition, 99; similarly, 228–30, and 169–70 on this stage of Christianization of “the Sethian descent myth.” 47 Turner, Platonic Tradition, 108. 43

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chons (93.20–22) is a gloss on the text by a scribe who found these Barbeloite mythologumena to be attractive authorities. The “four holy helpers” of Norea could refer to any group of four angelic beings; indeed, angels like to travel in packs of four, as Turner himself recognizes.48 The “Immortality” of the Hypostasis of the Archons plays none of the usual roles of the Barbelo (i.e., the divine mother, providence, etc.), and instead seems to refer to a first principle – indeed, as it once does in the Apocryphon of John. This would make sense in the context of Jewish sapiential literature, for the Wisdom of Solomon refers to God’s creative, “immortal spirit” (Copt. ⲡⲉⲡⲛⲉⲩⲙⲁ ⲛ̄ⲁⲧⲧⲁⲕⲟ), and the “immortality” (ⲙⲛ̄ⲧⲁⲧⲧⲁⲕⲟ) in which God created Adam, which can be recovered by following the Law and returning to God.49 Rather than serving as a cognomen for Barbelo, then, the term “Immortality” as an appellation for God in the Hypostasis of the Archons draws from a greater wellspring of Jewish lore in which immortality is the binding agent between God and humanity, a wellspring from which the Apocryphon of John must have drunk as well. The Hypostasis of the Archons is thus a complex textual unit comprised of multiple sources and indebted to multiple literary traditions (Ophite and Barbeloite). If it is probably the case that the reference to the Four Luminaries and the Invisible Spirit in the Hypostasis of the Archons is a scribal gloss, lending the “great angel” the weighty authority of Barbeloite tradition, was the name of the “great angel” Eleleth, or was this name added along with the reference to the Invisible Spirit and the Four Luminaries? We cannot say. Yet, should we turn to evidence about Eleleth and the “Four Luminaries” outside of the Nag Hammadi corpus, we are forced to entertain the possibility that the references to the “Four Luminaries” and the “Great Invisible Spirit” entered the text of the Hypostasis of the Archons as glosses to Norea’s dialogue with “the great angel, Eleleth” (and not simply “the great angel”): Eleleth possessed his own authority in later first-millennium Egypt, apart from the Barbeloite mythologoumenon of the “Four Luminaries,” as a benevolent superhuman being.

48 For instance, in 1 En. 9–10, the four archangels Raphael, Uriel, Michael, and Gabriel descend from heaven to battle the Watchers. Cf. Stroumsa, Another Seed, 55 n. 7, followed by Turner, Platonic Tradition, 229 n. 6; Kaiser, Hypostase der Archonten, 289; see also n. 59 below. 49 Wis 12:1, 2:23, 6:19–20; Coptic text in Paul de Lagarde, Aegyptiaca (Göttingen: Arnoldi Hoyer, 1883). The term ἀφθαρσία refers to “immortality” in early Christian literature more widely: e.g., Apoc. Pet. 75.7.

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Eleleth and Davithe in Egyptian Magical and Homiletic Literature Indeed, Eleleth possesses his own life, not as a Barbeloite “Luminary” but a simply a powerful angel, throughout ancient and early medieval Egyptian Christian literature, particularly in magical texts. The name Eleleth – usually together with Davithe, himself also a distinct character – appears in many extant texts, six of which we shall review here. Five are preserved in Coptic, one in Greek; they range in date from the third or fourth century CE to the end of the first millennium of our era.50 The first spell is a papyrus from the British Museum published by Kropp. The spell is used to acquire a good voice. Davithe and Eleleth (or: a single entity, Davithe-Eleleth) are amongst the beings invoked: I invoke you (sg.) today, Daveithea, ye who lie upon the bed of the Tree of Life, ye in whose right hand lies the golden ring, in whose left hand lies the spiritual lyre; ye, gathering all the angels for the greeting of The Father. I invoke you (sg.) today, Davithea, Eleleth (ⲧⲓⲧⲁⲣⲕⲟ ⲙ̄ⲙⲟⲕ ⲙ̄ⲡⲟⲟⲩ ⲇⲁⲑⲉⲓⲑⲉⲁ ⲉⲗ̄ⲉ̄ⲗ̄ⲏ̄ⲑ̄), in the names of the seven holy archangels: Michael, Gabriel, Souriel, Hraphael, Asouel, Sarafouel, Abael – those who are established at the right hand of the forearm of the Father, prepared to fulfill his will entire – so that you (pl.) might obey everything that will be uttered by my mouth and act under my control,51 descend upon this cup. . .52

50

I am indebted to members of the 2014 Koptische Lesegruppe Lipsiensis – Joost Hagen, Frederic Krueger, Franziska Naether, and Tonio Sebastian Richter – with whom I read the texts discussed in this section, for their commentary on this fascinating material, some of which is reflected in the present translations and notes. Any errors remain my own of course. By incorporating not only extra-Nag Hammadi but post-conquest materials into the present study, I am inspired in part by recent historiographical reflection on the virtues of mapping trajectories across the first millennium CE, rather than simply late antiquity; see chiefly Garth Fowden, Before and After Muhammad: The First Millenium Refocused (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014). In the interest of brevity, I set aside a questionable reference to Eleleth: P.Mich. inv. 593 18.4 mentions the name “Eielaeilath” in a long list of voces magicae and names of superhuman entities (Paul Mirecki, “The Coptic Wizard’s Hoard,” HTR 87:4 [1994]: 435–60, 451). Less questionable is the Ηληλυθ we meet alongside, Michaēl, Gabriēl, Raphaēl, and Ouriēl in P.Med. I 20, a Greek spell written on papyrus dated to the fifth–sixth century CE and used as an amulet. See Robert W. Daniel and Franko Maltonmini, Supplementum Magicum Vol. II (Abhandlungen der Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Sonderreihe Papyrologica Coloniensia 16.2; Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1992), 204–8, for edition, translation, and commentary. However, Eleleth’s appearance on the gold amulet housed at the J. Paul Getty Museum (discussed below) suffices to demonstrate the angel’s circulation in Greek-language magical texts at an earlier date. 51 A somewhat free rendering of ⲛ̄ⲧⲉ̣[ⲧⲛ]ⲉⲓⲣⲉ ⲥⲁ ⲛⲁⲧⲟⲟⲧ; on the idiom ⲉⲓⲣⲉ ⲛⲁⲧⲟⲟⲧ⸗, see Crum, Coptic Dictionary, 426a. Cf. Kropp (following note), “. . . auf daß ihr allen Aussprüchen meines Mundes gehorchet, gemäß den Winken meiner Hand handelt.”

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Equally striking is another papyrus at the British Museum (P.Lond.Or. 5987), dated by Crum to the seventh or eighth century and republished by Kropp, where an exorcism and general call for power is laden with occasional “Gnostic” language (i.e., to “aeons” and Yao Sabaoth) and invocations of many angelic beings.53 The magician calls upon “Arimiel Davithe Eleleth Ermukratos Adonai Ermusr, the invisible Bainchooch.”54 Then, Davithe is described as a kind of supra-angelic figure: Davithe, with the golden hair, whose eyes are lightning-bolts, it is you, in whose hand lies the keys to divinity; when you close something, one cannot open it again; when you open, one cannot close it again. It is you, who gives from the golden cup to the church of the first-born. Davithe, you are the Allfather, you are the one who blows the golden trumpet of the Father; you blow to gather all to you who exist throughout all creation – whether principality or angel or archangel.55

Here, Davithe seems to enjoy supra-archangelic status, almost like what we would expect of a celestial vice-regent. We also come across Daviethe and Eleleth in a magical text copied onto a parchment codex, probably in the later tenth century CE,56 at the climax 52

P.Lond.Or. 6794 l.6–17 (ed. Angelicus Kropp, Ausgewählte koptische Zaubertexte; 3 vols.; Brussels: Édition de la fondation égyptologique, 1930–31), 1:29–30 (text), 2:104–5 (trans.). Daviethe remains a focal point of the spell throughout what follows. See also C. Detlef G. Müller, Die Engellehre der koptischen Kirche: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der christlichen Frömmigkeit in Ägypten (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1959), 295–96. 53 “Certain features of the language might indicate an archaic idiom, though some of these often characterize 7th and 9th cent. documents from Hermopolis (Ashmunain)” (Walter E. Crum, Catalogue of the Coptic Manuscripts in the British Museum [London: British Museum, 1905], 418). The text is re-edited, with English translation, as an appendix in A Coptic Handbook of Ritual Power (P.Macq. I 1) (ed. Malcolm Choat and Iain Gardner; Macquarie Papyri 1; Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). One “Seth” is mentioned on line 98, whom Crum and Kropp (Catalogue, 420a n. 5; Zaubertexte, 2:159, respectively) surmise to be the Egyptian god Seth-Typhon, contrasted with Jesus Christ. This is all but impossible, for “neither Seth, the son of Adam, nor Christ is ever welded with the Egyptian god Seth-Typhon” in extant ancient literature (Jarl Fossum and Ben Glazer, “Seth in the Magical Texts,” ZPE 100 [1994]: 92). 54 P.Lond.Or. 5987 l.13–14 (Kropp, Zaubertexte, 1:22, 2:149). Similarly, l.45–46. For further commentary, see Müller, Engellehre, 295. 55 P.Lond.Or. 5987 l.71–80 (Kropp, Zaubertexte, 1:24–25, 2:152–53). 56 Thus Marvin Meyer, The Magical Book of Mary and the Angels (P.Heid.Inv.Kopt. 685). Text, Translation, Commentary (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1996), 5, following the analysis of Hans Quecke, “Palimpsestfragmente eines koptischen Lektionars (P. Heid. Kopt. Nr. 685),” Mus 85 (1972): 5–24. See further Marvin Meyer, “The Persistence of Ritual in the Magical Book of Mary and the Angels: P.Heid.Inv.Kopt. 685,” in Practicing Gnosis: Ritual, Magic, Theurgy and Liturgy in Nag Hammadi, Manichaean and Other Ancient Literature. Essays in Honor of Birger A. Pearson (ed. April DeConick et al.; NHMS 85; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 360–61.

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of a protracted apotropaic spell that also invokes the Father, the Son, countless angels, and particularly the Virgin Mary: I adjure you today, by the chalice of blood from which the angels drank, until they received the Holy Spirit, that (you) send me your holy hand upon the water and the oil; set before me – me, NN – and let St. Mary, the Holy Virgin, come down upon them, and may she bless the water, that it becomes salvation and purification, so that at the moment that NN is washed in it, s/he becomes saved. Yea, yea, at once, at once! I adjure you today, (by) his four imperishable mysteries: Daveithea, Eleleth, Orem, Mosiēl, who are spread out upon the four sides of heaven . . .57

Here Daviethe and Eleleth appear with two other beings (and so in a group of four), but are not dubbed “luminaries.” No other Sethian mythologumena appear in the text. This “prayer of Mary” was popular, and is preserved (more or less) in at least eight other versions.58 The Barbeloite “Luminaries” pop up in some of these parallels as well.59 Fourthly, a newly-published parchment codex from the later first millennium CE (P.Macq. I 1) begins with an incantation which is beholden to a variety of Gnostic mythologoumena, many of them familiar to us from Sethian literature.60 Much of the text of this incantation is shared with P.Lond.Or. 5987 and P.Berl. inv. 5527,61 suggesting a shared source which the editors identify as a “Sethian Gnostic” incantation, perhaps resembling the Three Steles of Seth (NHC VII,5).62 Barbelo appears, identified as a “living wisdom, filled by the two loins of the Father. She has birthed for us a Perfect Man.”63 The magician calls upon “Sabaoth, the Lord God Al57

7.22–8.10 (trans. Meyer, Magical Book of Mary, modified). Given in Meyer, Magical Book of Mary, 58. 59 E.g., P.Copt.Mus. 4958: “Yea, yea, for I adjure you by these great luminaries (ⲛⲓⲛⲟϭ ⲉⲫⲱⲥⲧⲏⲣⲓⲟⲛ), ineffable in their glory, whose names are Taveithe, Oriēl . . . [E]leleth, who are spread out over the four corners of heaven” (tr. Meyer, Magical Book of Mary, 77 modified). Smagina is thus right to suspect that the Sethian Four Luminaries were associated by at least some with the famous Jewish tradition of four angels surrounding the throne of God (e.g., Rev 7:1), one over the domain of each of the four directions, north, south, east, and west (“Das manichäische Kreuz,” 248–49). Meyer notes that the “luminaries” are “ʽstars’ in ancient gnostic, astronomical, and astrological reflection,” and that they appear in P.Lond.Or. 5987 and Ap. John (Magical Book of Mary, 79). 60 See Choat and Gardner, Magical Handbook. The text I cite by MS page and line number, the editors’ commentary by the edition’s page number. I thank Profs. Choat and Gardner for sharing their text and translation with me in advance of its publication. 61 On the former text, see above, n. 53; the latter is published in Walter Beltz, “Die koptischen Zauberpapyri der Papyrus-Sammlung der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin,” APF 29 (1983): 61. 62 Although I generally concur with its broad strokes, the argument of Choat and Gardner is complex and calls for a point-by-point critical discussion. For reasons of space, I therefore will set it aside in the present contribution. 63 P.Macq. 1, 1.16–20. 58

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mighty, king of all the aeons, forever alive in the holy aeons, with the keys of Tavithe in his hand; if he closes, no one is able [to] open; if he opens, no one is able to close . . .”64 Sabaoth is again intoned, “in the name of Mosel, Piel, the great Hermosel, Hermopiel, Elethe, Davithe, Eleleth, Souriael – these who are within the four great luminaries, luminous, ineffable. Davithe, prepare for me your 240,000 angels . . .”65 In part of the text sharing a source with P.Lond.Or. 5987, Davithe is a kind of heavenly gatekeeper, key and trumpet in hand, eyes blazing; it is he, not Eleleth, who is repeatedly invoked as a kind of celestial vice-regent: IB Davithe, he who possesses the golden palm-branch. The Father, the Invisible one. It is you whose eyes shoot out fiery, invisible lightning. You are the new aeon; it is you who wears the golden girdle of the father. It is you who has the keys (to) the luminous heavens of God in your hand . . . It is you who has the golden trumpet in your hand. When you blow the trumpet, they all gather.66

The incantation mentions Eleleth again, as well as “Makhar Seth, Seth, the living Christ . . . the one whom they call Bainchooch, Bainchonoth,” and, in a string of nomina barbara, “Sesengenbarpharankes.”67 Fifthly, three of the Luminaries are encountered as august angels in a Coptic homily entitled the Investiture of the Archangel Gabriel. The text is preserved in J. Pierpont Morgan M593, copied 892/93 CE,68 which only offers us a terminus ante quem.69 Here, the apostles regale Jesus with questions about the “aeon of light” and the angels, and he responds by having angels come down from heaven and introduce themselves. An angel with 1000 eyes who rules over 240,000 angels introduces himself as follows: ⲁⲛⲟⲕ ⲡⲉ ⲗⲉⲗⲏⲑ.70 The initial epsilon in “Eleleth” was likely elided, following ⲡⲉ. “Harmosiel, trumpeter of the aeons of light” arrives not long afterwards, leading the souls of the righteous to “City of the Beloved One.”71

64

P.Macq. 1, 2.6–12. P.Macq. 1, 2.21–27. 66 P.Macq. 1, 4.11–19. 67 P.Macq. 1, 5.13, 7.26–8.1, 10.18–19, respectively. 68 Leo Depuydt, Catalogue of Coptic Manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library (2 vols.; Corpus of Illuminated Manscripts 4–5, Oriental Series 1–2; Leuven: Peeters, 1993), 1:214–15. 69 C. Detlef G. Müller, ed., Die Bücher der Einsetzung der Erzengel Michael und Gabriel (CSCO 225, Scriptores Coptici 31; Leuven: Secrétariat de CorpusSCO, 1962), vi. For a summary of the text`s contents, see Müller, Engellehre, 223–35. 70 Müller, Bücher der Einsetzung, 66.30–31. 71 Müller, Bücher der Einsetzung, 67.8–12. The same Harmosiel appears, together with Daueithe and his lyre, in O.Cairo 49547, published by L. Saint-Paul Gérard, “Un fragment de liturgie magique copte sur ostrakon,” in ASAE 27 (1927): 62–68; see further Kropp, Zaubertexte, 2:102; Müller, Engellehre, 311. 65

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“Daueithel” later appears as part of a different group of angels, and announces that he is “in the church of the first-born.”72 Finally, we possess one Greek spell written on a thin sheet of gold-foil, likely for use as an amulet, where Eleleth appears amongst a plenitude of other deities and angels adjured to cure one “Aurelia” of epilepsy.73 The pantheon includes the “God of Abraham,” “Lord Iao, Sabaoth,” “Raphael, Gabriel . . . Abrasax,” and “Sesengenbarpharanges Iao aieiuaei Ieou Iao Sabaoth, Adonaie, Eleleth, [I]ako.” On paleographical grounds, it was assigned by Potansky to the third-century CE, but Kearsley argues that its reference to the “Gnostic deity” Eleleth, as well as use of the Chi-Rho sign, indicate a fourth-century provenance.74 Although the document is relatively short and its description of these superhuman entities curt, it is crucial evidence for ascertaining the development of traditions about the Four Luminaries, for we see that at least one of the classic “Barbeloite” Luminaries also lived in the world of Egyptian Christian magic, at least as early as the fourth century CE – the earliest possible time the Nag Hammadi Codices could have been assembled. One might be tempted to describe that the texts discussed here as “Sethian,” or at least “Gnostic,” since they mention Eleleth and, often, Davithe. Yet what they make clear is that mention of one or two of the Four Luminaries in a spell does not make it “Sethian,” given the absence of other characteristics associated with “Sethianism,” as is quite obvious in the case of the Investiture, where (E)leleth, Daueithel, and Harmosiel are simply angels. Given that our earliest attestation of any of the names of the Luminaries is in the account of “Barbeloite” myth given by Irenaeus in the second century, it is possible that the mythologumenon of the Four Luminaries is of Gnostic provenance. At the same time, as Howard Jackson has argued, a significant amount of Gnostic nomenclature seems to ultimately derive from the culture of magical practice preserved in the Egyptian papyri.75 Recent studies support this perspective: Einar Thomassen, for instance, has demonstrated how the name “Meirotheos” – hitherto only known from the Sethian texts Zostrianos, Trimorphic Protennoia, Egyptian Gospel, and the Three Steles of Seth (NHC VII,5) – appears in a fa72

Müller, Bücher der Einsetzung, 70.26–27. Roy Kotansky, “Two Amulets in the Getty Museum: A Gold Amulet for Aurelia’s Epilepsy: An Inscribed Magical Stone for Fever, ‘Chills’, and Headache,” J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 8 (1980): 181–84. 74 Kotansky, “Two Amulets,” 181; R. A. Kearsley, in New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, Volume 6: A Review of the Greek Inscriptions and Papyri published in 1980–81 (ed. S. R. Llewelyn, with R. A. Kearsley; Macquarie University: Ancient History Documentary Research Centre, 1992), 195. 75 Howard Jackson, “The Origin in Ancient Incantatory Voces Magicae of Some Names in the Sethian Gnostic System,” VC 43 (1989): 69–79. 73

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mous Aramaic inscription alongside the name Sesengen Barpharanges (another title we find both in magical and Gnostic sources).76 Some of the “Four Luminaries” may have started out as denizens of magical literature, whence Irenaeus’ “Gnostics” – and, perhaps, the author(s) of the Hypostasis of the Archons – discovered them.

Conclusion It is thus impossible to say whether Eleleth was originally a “magical” or “Gnostic” deity, and this should not surprise us. We face this quandary with many characters from Gnostic literature who are said to be “Gnostic” or “magical” (depending on who you ask): our earliest certain attestation to Abrasax, for instance, is in the thought of Basilides, at the beginning of the second century,77 yet, given Abrasax’s ubiquity in magical papyri and gems, Jackson presumes that Basilides “borrowed the name from the magic tradition,” and thus we find Abrasaxes throughout Gnostic literature.78 What we can say is that at least some traditions that were associated with Sethianism (e.g., nomenclature for benevolent superhuman beings, like Eleleth) also circulated amongst magicians in third or fourth-century Roman Egypt, and these traditions continued to circulate all the way through the end of the first millennium CE, both in spells, as we see in MSS like P.Macq. I 1 or P.Heid.Inv.Kopt. 685, as well as in angelological texts, like that of as J. Pierpont Morgan M593. There are other examples of nomenclature shared between treatises from Nag Hammadi and later angelological Coptic texts: Melchizedek calls each of the Four Luminaries “commander-in-chief” (ⲁⲣⲭⲓⲥⲧⲣⲁⲧⲏⲅⲟⲥ), an epithet for the archangel Michael common to later Coptic manuscripts.79 “Lithargoel,” a title used by Christ 76

Einar Thomassen, “Sethian Names in Magical Texts: Protophanes and Meirotheos,” in Gnosticism, Platonism, and the Late Ancient World: Essays in Honor of John D. Turner (ed. Kevin Corrigan et al.; NHMS 82; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 71–75. On Sesengen Barpharanges, Gershom Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1960), 84–100, remains useful. 77 Irenaeus, Haer. 1.24.7. 78 Jackson, “Origin of Some Names,” 75. 79 See, e.g., the Encomium on the Four Bodiless Living Creatures attributed to John Chrysostom, in Homiletica from the Pierpont Morgan Library (ed. Leo Depuydt; CSCO 524; Louvain: Peeters, 1991), pp. 29.7–9, 35.34 –37). The manuscript, M611, which may have belonged to the same codex as M612, contains a colophon dates to the ninth century CE (Depuydt, ad loc., vii–viii). See also an Encomium on John the Baptist, also attributed to John Chrysostom, in E. A. Wallis Budge, Coptic Apocrypha in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913), 139.11–15, and the Discourse on Michael the Archangel attributed to Timothy of Alexandria, in Budge, Miscellaneous Cop-

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qua healer in the Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles (NHC VI,1), is the name of an angel in the aforementioned Investiture of the Archangel Gabriel.80 Thus we are in a position to ask: if Eleleth can appear as a distinct character, unmoored from other Sethian mythologumena, in many nonGnostic Greek and Coptic texts, why could he not appear in a similar way in a Gnostic text, like the Hypostasis of the Archons? Indeed, the Eleleth of the Hypostasis of the Archons behaves much more like the Davithe or Eleleth of Egyptian magical and homiletic literature than one of the Four Luminaries we know from the Apocryphon of John or Zostrianos. Eleleth in the Hypostasis of the Archons is a superhuman being directly invoked with respect to personal problems (in this case, unwanted attention from archons) who admits of (theophanic!) physical description and even speaks. The Eleleth of the Apocryphon of John and Zostrianos is a more traditional Gnostic “aeon,” empty of personality and anthropomorphisms; he is a projection of space and time. It is therefore altogether possible that the revelation-discourse in the second half of the Hypostasis of the Archons featured the “great angel, Eleleth,” a figure well-known to readers of Egyptian Christian ritual texts, even before the angel’s speech was glossed with the authority of the Four Luminaries and the Invisible Spirit. Eleleth’s same reputation as benevolent celestial entity amongst this readership could explain why the authors of texts like the Trimorphic Protennoia, the Egyptian Gospel, and the Gospel of Judas would choose Eleleth (as opposed to Sophia, or any of the other manifold beings populating the Sethian aeons) to be the agent responsible for generating unpleasant, angelic world-rulers: what has one to fear from Saklas if it is Eleleth, a familiar angel, who produced him? In any case, it is all but certain that the fame of Eleleth and Daveithe in Egyptian Christianity must have led those responsible for the Nag Hammadi texts to regard with great favor the Sethian literature they copied, bound, collected, and buried. Regardless, what I hope to have demonstrated in this contribution is that each of the “Sethian Four Luminaries” is, on its own, not really “Sethian” at all. In one second-century account, the Four Luminaries are four aeons that, with the Autogenes, form a divine pentad; they are associated with “Gnostics” interested in the Barbelo-aeon. In some of the Nag Hammadi literature, the Four Luminaries of these “(Barbelo)-Gnostics” comprise one of many pockets of arcana utilized in a discrete literary tradition that we tic Texts in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1915), 517.6– 10, 522.20–23, 523.1–4. 80 Robert McLachlan Wilson and Douglas Parrott, “Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles,” in Nag Hammadi Codices V,2–5 and VI, with Papyrus Berolinensis 8502, “1” and “4.” (ed. Douglas M. Parrott; NHS 11; Leiden: Brill, 1979), 214–15, with comments on NHC VI 5.15–18.

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scholars choose to dub “Sethianism.” In first-millennium Egyptian magical and homiletic literature, the Luminary Eleleth is a great angel indeed, and this is how he appears in NHC II,4 – not Sethian or magical, but Coptic, Christian. Bibliography Barry, Catherine, Wolf-Peter Funk, Paul-Hubert Poirier, and John D. Turner, eds. Zostrien. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi section “Textes” 24. Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 2000. Beltz, Walter. “Die koptischen Zauberpapyri der Papyrus-Sammlung der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin.” Archiv für Papyrusforschung 29 (1983): 59–86. –. “Die koptischen Zaubertexte der Papyrus-Sammlung der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin. Register.” Archiv für Papyrusforschung 32 (1986): 55–66. Böhlig, Alexander, and Frederik Wisse, eds. Nag Hammadi Codices III,2 and IV,2: The Gospel of the Egyptians (The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit). Nag Hammadi Studies 4. Leiden: Brill, 1975. Budge, E. A. Wallis, ed. Coptic Apocrypha in the Dialect of Upper Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913.). –., ed. Miscellaneous Coptic Texts in the Dialect of Upper Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1915. Bullard, Roger A. “The Hypostasis of the Archons: Introduction.” Pages 1:220–33 in Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, together with XIII, 2, Brit. Lib. Or.4926(1), and P.Oxy. 1. 654, 655. 2 Vols. Edited by Bentley Layton. Nag Hammadi Studies 20–21. Leiden: Brill, 1989. Burns, Dylan M. Apocalypse of the Alien God: Platonism and the Exile of Sethian Gnosticism Divinations. Philadelphia, University of Pennyslvania Press, 2014. –. “Aion.” Page 26 in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions, ed. Eric Orlin, Lisbeth S. Fried, Jennifer Wright Knust, Michael L. Satlow, and Michael E. Pregill. London/New York: Routledge, 2016. Carrell, Peter R. Jesus and the Angels: Angelology and the Christology of the Apocalypse of John. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 95. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997. Choat, Malcolm, and Iain Gardner, eds. A Coptic Handbook of Ritual Power (P.Macq. I 1). Macquarie Papyri 1. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. Crégheur, Eric. “Édition critique, traduction et introduction des ‘deux Livres de Iéou (MS Bruce 96)’, avec des notes philogiques et textuelles.” PhD. dissertation, Université Laval, 2013. Crum, Walter E. Catalogue of the Coptic Manuscripts in the British Museum. London: British Museum, 1905. Daniel, Robert W. and Franko Maltonmini, eds. and trs., Supplementum Magicum Vol. II. Abhandlungen der Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Sonderreihe Papyrologica Coloniensia 16.2. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1992. Depuydt, Leo. Catalogue of Coptic Manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library. 2 Vols. Corpus of Illuminated Manscripts 4–5, Oriental Series 1–2. Leuven: Peeters, 1993. –., ed. Homiletica from the Pierpont Morgan Library. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 524; Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, Scriptores Coptici 43. Louvain: Peeters, 1991.

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Fossum, Jarl, and Ben Glazer. “Seth in the Magical Texts.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 100 (1994): 86–92. Fowden, Garth. Before and After Muhammad: The First Millenium Refocused. Princeton/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. García Martínez, Florentino, and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Study Edition. 2 Vols. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Gérard, L. Saint-Paul. “Un fragment de liturgie magique copte sur ostrakon.” Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Egypte 27 (1927): 62–68. Giversen, Søren. Apocryphon Johannis: The Coptic Text of the Apocryphon Johannis in the Nag Hammadi Codex II, with Translation, Introduction and Commentary. Acta Theologica Danica 5. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1963. Jackson, Howard. “The Origin in Ancient Incantatory Voces Magicae of Some Names in the Sethian Gnostic System.” Vigiliae Christianae 43 (1989): 69–79. Jenott, Lance. The Gospel of Judas: Coptic Text, Translation, and Historical Interpretation of the ‘Betrayer’s Gospel’. Studies and Texts in Antiquity and Christianity 64. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011. Kaiser, Ursula Ulrike. Die Hypostase der Archonten (Nag-Hammadi-Codex II,4). Neu herausgegeben, übersetzt und erklärt. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschischte der altchristlichen Literatur 156. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006. Kasser, Rodolphe. “Formation de ‘L’Hypostase des Archontes’.” Bulletin de la Société d’Archéologie Copte 21 (1971–1973): 83–103. Kasser, Rodolphe, and Philippe Luisier. “P. Bodmer XLIII: Un Feuillet de Zostrien.” Le Muséon 120.3–4 (2007): 251–72. Kotansky, Roy. “Two Amulets in the Getty Museum: A Gold Amulet for Aurelia’s Epilepsy: An Inscribed Magical Stone for Fever, ‘Chills’, and Headache,” J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 8 (1980): 180–84. Kropp, Angelicus M., ed. Ausgewählte koptische Zaubertexte. 3 Vols. Brussels: Édition de la fondation égyptologique, 1930–1931. Lagarde, Paul de. Aegyptiaca. Göttingen: Arnoldi Hoyer, 1883. Llewelyn, S.R., with R.A. Kearsley, eds. New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity. Volume 6: A Review of the Greek Inscriptions and Papyri published in 1980–81. Macquarie University: Ancient History Documentary Research Centre, 1992. Logan, Alastair H. B. “The Mystery of the Five Seals: Gnostic Initiation Reconsidered.” Vigiliae Christianae 51 (1997): 188–206. Meyer, Marvin, ed. The Magical Book of Mary and the Angels (P.Heid.Inv.Kopt. 685): Text, Translation, Commentary. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1996. Meyer, Marvin. “The Persistence of Ritual in the Magical Book of Mary and the Angels: P.Heid.Inv.Kopt. 685.” Pages 359–76 in Practicing Gnosis: Ritual, Magic, Theurgy and Liturgy in Nag Hammadi, Manichaean and Other Ancient Literature: Essays in Honor of Birger A. Pearson. Edited by April D. DeConick, Gregory Shaw, and John D. Turner. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 85. Leiden: Brill, 2013. –. “When the Sethians Were Young.” Pages 57–73 in The Codex Judas Papers: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Tchacos Codex held at Rice University, Houston, Texas, March 13–16, 2008. Edited by April D. DeConick; Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 71. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Mirecki, Paul. “The Coptic Wizard’s Hoard.” Harvard Theological Review 87.4 (1994): 435–60. Müller, C. Detlef G. Die Engellehre der koptischen Kirche: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der christlichen Frömmigkeit in Ägypten. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1959.

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–., ed. Die Bücher der Einsetzung der Erzengel Michael und Gabriel. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 225, Scriptores Coptici 31. Leuven: Secrétariat de CorpusSCO, 1962. Pearson, Birger. “The Figure of Norea in Gnostic Literature.” Pages 143–52 in Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Gnosticism, Stockholm, August 20–25, 1973. Edited by Geo Widengren. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1977. –. “Revisiting Norea.” Pages 265–75 in Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism. Edited by Karen L. King. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988. Poirier, Paul-Hubert, and Michel Tardieu. “Catégories du temps dans les érits gnostiques non valentiniens.” Laval théologique et philosophique 37.1 (1981): 3–13. Quecke, Hans. “Palimpsestfragmente eines koptischen Lektionars (P. Heid. Kopt. Nr. 685).” Le Muséon 85 (1972): 5–24. Rasimus, Tuomas. Paradise Reconsidered in Gnostic Mythmaking: Rethinking Sethianism in Light of the Ophite Evidence. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 68. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Schenke, Hans-Martin. “The Phenomenon and Significance of Gnostic Sethianism.” Pages 2:588–616 in The Rediscovery of Gnosticism: Proceedings of the International Conference on Gnosticism. Edited by Bentley Layton. 2 Vols. Studies in the History of Religions 41. Leiden: Brill, 1980–1981. –. “Das sethianische System nach Nag-Hammadi-Handschriften.” Pages 165–73 in Studia Coptica. Edited by Peter Nagel. Berliner byzantinistische Arbeiten 45. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1974. Schenke Robinson, Gesine. “The Gospel of Judas: Its Protagonist, Its Composition, and Its Community.” Pages 75–94 in The Codex Judas Papers: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Tchacos Codex held at Rice University, Houston, Texas, March 13–16, 2008. Edited by April D. DeConick. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 71. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Schmidt, Carl, ed., and Violet MacDermot, tr. The Books of Jeu and the Untitled Treatise in the Bruce Codex. Nag Hammadi Studies 13. Leiden: Brill, 1978. Scholem, Gershom. Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition: Based on the Israel Goldstein Lectures, Delivered at the Jewish Theological Seminar of America, New York. New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1960. Smagina, Eugenia. “Das manichäische Kreuz des Lichts und der Jesus Patibilis.” Pages 243–49 in Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West: Proceedings of the Fribourg-Utrecht Symposium of the International Association of Manichaean Studies (IAMS). Edited by Johannes van Oort, Otto Wermelinger, and Gregor Wurst. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 49. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Stroumsa, Gedaliahu G. Another Seed: Studies in Gnostic Mythology. Nag Hammadi Studies 24. Leiden: Brill, 1984. Thomassen, Einar. “Sethian Names in Magical Texts: Protophanes and Meirotheos.” Pages 63–75 in Gnosticism, Platonism, and the Late Ancient World: Essays in Honor of John D. Turner. Edited by Kevin Corrigan and Tuomas Rasimus, with Dylan M. Burns, Lance Jenott, and Zeke Mazur. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 82. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Turner, John D. “Nag Hammadi Codex XIII,1*: Notes to Text and Translation.” Pages 435–54 in Nag Hammadi Codices XI, XII, and XIII. Edited by Charles W. Hedrick. Nag Hammadi Studies 28. Leiden: Brill, 1990. –. “Commentary: Zostrianos.” Pages 483–662 in Barry, Funk, Poirier, and Turner, Zostrien.

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–. Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition. Bibliothèque Copte de Nag Hammadi section “Études” 6. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2001. –. “The Sethian Myth in the Gospel of Judas: Soteriology or Demonology.” Pages 95– 133 in The Codex Judas Papers: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Tchacos Codex held at Rice University, Houston, Texas, March 13–16, 2008. Edited by April D. DeConick. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 71. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Wilson, Robert McLachlan and Douglas M. Parrott. “Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles.” Pages 197–229 in Nag Hammadi Codices V,2–5 and VI, with Papyrus Berolinensis 8502, “1” and “4.” Edited by Douglas M. Parrott. Nag Hammadi Studies 11. Leiden: Brill, 1979.

From the Apocalypse of Paul to Coptic Epic Passions: Greeting Paul and the Martyrs in Heaven JULIO CESAR DIAS CHAVES The subject of the present article derives from a specific topic treated in my PhD dissertation, in which I analysed Nag Hammadi Codex V (NHC V) in light of the literature that circulated in Coptic at the time of its presumed compilation in the fourth century. Since nothing can convincingly establish a terminus ante quem for the compilation of the Nag Hammadi Codices, and since certain other sources, such as Shenoute’s I am Amazed,1 also known as Catechesis against Apocrypha,2 clearly demonstrate that apocryphal texts continued to circulate in fifth-century Egypt, my comparanda for the Nag Hammadi texts include Coptic literature that was probably composed or circulated in the fifth century. My dissertation research employed two literary theoretical perspectives, namely reception theory and a literary-comparative approach. The goal of the first was to deal with NHC V from the perspective of its Coptic readers, as suggested by Stephen Emmel,3 analysing the Coptic text and its 1 Hans-Joachim Cristea, Schenute von Atripe: Contra Origenistas: Edition des koptischen Textes mit annotierter Übersetzung und Indizes einschließlich einer Übersetzung des 16. Osterfestbriefs des Theophilus in der Fassung des Hieronymus (ep. 96) (STAC 60; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011). 2 See Tito Orlandi, “A Catechesis against Apocryphal Texts by Shenoute and the Gnostic Texts of Nag Hammadi,” HTR 75 (1982): 85–95. 3 Stephen Emmel, “Religious Tradition, Textual Transmission and the Nag Hammadi Codices,” in The Nag Hammadi Library after Fifty Years: Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration (ed. John D. Turner and Anne Maguire; NHMS 44; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 42: “Regarding the Coptic phases of transmission, there is one obvious task that has not yet been carried out thoroughly and consistently, that is, to read the Nag Hammadi Codices as a part of Coptic literature . . . The task is to read the texts exactly as we have them in the Nag Hammadi Codices in an effort to reconstruct the reading experience of whoever owned each of the Codices. This reading would have to be undertaken in full cognizance of contemporary Coptic literature, and the culture of Upper Egypt during, say, the third to the seventh centuries. It would be a primarily Coptic enterprise, with nothing directly to do with Christian origins, nor necessarily even with ‘Gnosticism.’”

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readers rather than the context and intentions of the original author. In other words, I was not concerned with so-called Gnosticism and the battle for orthodoxy in the second century, but rather with how Coptic readers of the fourth and fifth centuries may have interpreted NHC V and its texts. For that purpose, I chose the literary-comparative approach, comparing NHC V’s treatises to other texts that presumably circulated in the same milieu during the fourth and fifth centuries. My goal in that comparison was to find similar themes and motifs in NHC V and the literature that circulated in Coptic at the time in question. I thereby argued that the texts of NHC V could get the attention of a Coptic audience and be read without causing major doctrinal problems or dilemmas. The identification of common literary motifs between NHC V and the literature that circulated in Coptic during the fourth and fifth centuries could also furnish important clues to the interpretation of the volume from a reception perspective; in other words, it could help us to understand how NHC V was interpreted and understood in the Coptic milieu where it was compiled and read. With the help of theoretical perspectives on reception conceived by scholars such as Hans R. Jauss,4 I suggested that the detection of common literary themes and motifs could help us identify the horizon of expectations5 of a given Coptic audience in relation to NHC V. My search for common literary themes and motifs proved to be most prolific in Egyptian hagiographies, which I analytically divided in two main groups: 1) Monastic Lives, and 2) Coptic Epic Passions. Among the Epic Passions, I found one motif particularly well represented, and also in the Apocalypse of Paul from NHC V, namely the hero’s arrival in heaven, where he greets or is greeted by the saints or spirits already there. In the case of the Apocalypse of Paul, the hero is Paul himself, who, after travelling through many celestial spheres, contemplating angels, witnessing the

4

See, e.g., Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception (trans. Timothy Bathi; Theory and History or Literature 2; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982); Robert C. Holub, Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction (London: Methuen, 1984), 53–58. 5 Jauss’ reader-reception theory has been summarized as follows: “Drawing on philosophical hermeneutics, Jauss argued that literary works are received against an existing horizon of expectations consisting of readers’ current knowledge and presuppositions about literature, and that the meanings of works change as such horizons shift.” See Chris Baldick, Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 282–83. According to Baldick, by “horizon of expectations,” Jauss means “the set of cultural norms, assumptions, and criteria shaping the way in which readers understand and judge a literary work at a given time . . . Such ‘horizons’ are subjected to historical change, so that a later generation of readers may see a very different range of meanings in the same work, and revalue it accordingly” (Baldick, Oxford Dictionary, 157).

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judgment of souls, and encountering an old, shining man, finally arrives at the tenth heaven where he greets the saints: Then the heav[en] open[ed] and we went up [to the] Ogdoad. I saw the twelve apostles. They greeted [me] (ⲁⲩⲣ̄ⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ ⲙ̄ⲙⲟ[ⲓ̈]), and we went up to the ninth heaven. I greeted all those who were in the ninth heaven (ⲁⲓ̈ⲣ̄ⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ ⲛ̄ⲛⲏ ⲧⲏⲣⲟⲩ ⲉⲧ`ϩ︤ⲛ︥ϯⲙⲁϩⲡⲥⲓⲧⲉ ⲙ̄ⲡⲉ). And we went up to the tenth heaven. And I greeted my fellow spirits (ⲁⲓ̈ⲣ̄ⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ ⲛ̄ⲛⲁϣⲃⲏⲣ ⲙ̄ⲡ︤ⲛ︦ⲁ︥) (Apoc. Paul 23.29–24.8).6

In the case of Coptic Epic Passions, the hero is the martyr who is killed after terrible and unbelievable sufferings and tortures; his soul is then carried to heaven and is greeted by the saints. In some Epic Passions, the martyr experiences an ascension even before martyrdom and, while traveling through the heavens, is greeted by its inhabitants.7 In both the Apocalypse of Paul and the Epic Passions, this greeting is normally expressed by the Greco-Coptic verb ⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ. It is precisely this motif that the present article will discuss. However, before discussing this motif, a few introductory remarks are necessary concerning the Apocalypse of Paul and especially the Coptic Epic Passions, since these texts are not always well-known even among scholars.

The Apocalypse of Paul (NHC V,2) The Apocalypse of Paul is the second text in NHC V, a codex which contains at least three other texts entitled as an apocalypse. The motif of apocalypses in this codex has even lead some scholars to call it the “apocalyptic codex.”8 As the Apocalypse of Paul is a small text, occupying no more than nine pages in the codex,9 it has received far less attention from scholars than other treatises in the Nag Hammadi Codices. It does not refer to Jesus, but only to his apostles – without mentioning their names – and to Paul, portraying him in a heroic and epic way.10

6

Trans. William R. Murdock and George W. MacRae, “The Apocalypse of Paul,” in Nag Hammadi Codices V, 2–5 and VI with Papyrus Berolinensis 8502 1 and 4 [ed. Douglas M. Parrott; NHS 11; Leiden: Brill, 1979], 60–63). 7 See e.g. the Second Martyrdom of Apa Victor (BL Or. 7022, f. 12b), in Ernest A. Wallis Budge, Coptic Martyrdoms etc. in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London: British Museum, 1914), 22. 8 Jean-Marc Rosenstiehl and Michael Kaler, L’Apocalypse de Paul (BCNH.T 31; Québec: Université Laval, 2005), 149. 9 The text starts at 17.19 and ends at 24.9. 10 On ‘heroic Paulinism,’ see Rosenstiehl and Kaler, L’Apocalypse de Paul, 168.

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Although the beginning of the text’s narrative is not preserved, it seems that Paul is about to go up to Jerusalem when he meets a child. The child is later identified as the Holy Spirit, and serves Paul as a guide in his heavenly ascension. After a conversation between the child and Paul,11 the two ascend into the heavens. During the ascension, Paul witnesses angels escorting a soul to judgement in the fourth heaven.12 In the fifth heaven, Paul sees other angels conducting souls to their punishment.13 In the seventh heaven, Paul meets an old, shining man14 who tries to stop his ascension by questioning him.15 When Paul successfully bypasses the old man and continues his ascent,16 he arrives at the tenth heaven, his final destination, and greets the spirits who dwell there.17 Despite the text’s brevity, the Apocalypse of Paul is full of apocalyptic clichés18 and could be easily classified as an apocalypse with an otherworldly journey, according to modern definitions of the apocalyptic genre.19 Scholars unanimously agree that the plot of the Apocalypse of Paul is an expansion on the ascension Paul mentions in 2 Cor 12:1–4.20 The same scriptural passage seems to be the basis for the text known as Visio sancti Pauli, which is partially preserved in Coptic21 and is also an otherworldly apocalypse. The fact that these two texts were preserved in Coptic indicates that Coptic readers were interested in stories about the Apostle’s otherworldly journeys. A further comment is necessary on the theological affiliations of the Apocalypse of Paul, since some scholars have suggested that the treatise is Valentinian.22 This classification is of course not my concern here.23 As I

11

Apoc. Paul 18.4–19.18. Apoc. Paul 20.5–21.22. 13 Apoc. Paul 22.2–10. 14 Apoc. Paul 22.25–30. 15 Apoc. Paul 23.1–28. 16 Apoc. Paul 23.29–30. 17 Apoc. Paul 24.6–8. 18 Julio Cesar Dias Chaves, Between Apocalyptic and Gnosis: The Nag Hammadi Apocalyptic Corpus. Delimitation and Analysis (Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2010), 45–53. 19 John J. Collins, “Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre,” Semeia 14 (1979): 1–20. 20 See Rosenstiehl and Kaler, L’Apocalypse de Paul, 34–38. 21 Ernest A. Wallis Budge, Miscellaneous Coptic Texts in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London: British Museum, 1915), 534–74 and 1043–84. 22 Mainly by Michael Kaler, the scholar who has contributed most to the study of Apoc. Paul recently. See Rosenstiehl and Kaler, L’Apocalypse de Paul, 153–58; Kaler, Flora Tells a Story: The Apocalypse of Paul and its Contexts (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008), 47–76. 12

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stated above, my goal is to analyse the text from a reception perspective, how it may have been interpreted, understood and received by late-antique Coptic readers. Valentinianism was simply not part of the theological debates and controversies of late-antique Coptic Egypt. As Egyptian Christianity in the fourth century was concerned with other theological controversies, such as the Arian and Melitian schisms,24 readers of the Apocalypse of Paul in Egypt might not even have been aware of debates over Valentianism. In other words, to use the reception-theory perspective forged by Jauss, Valentianism was not part of the “horizon of expectations” of lateantique Coptic readers who read the Apocalypse of Paul in NHC V. Therefore when dealing with this treatise from a reception perspective, focusing on its Coptic phase of transmission, it is hardly useful to assume its affiliation with Valentinian or Gnostic theologies.

Coptic Epic Passions What I refer to as Coptic Epic Passions should not be confused with what scholarship normally calls Historic Martyrdoms.25 Coptic Epic Passions are legendary tales, not historical accounts. In any case, classification is not my concern here, since I am interested in the Epic Passions as instances of what was in vogue in the literature that circulated in Coptic in late antiquity. As mentioned above, one specific motif the Epic Passions share with the Apocalypse of Paul is that the hero travels to heaven where he is greeted by its inhabitants or greets them. Most of the Coptic Epic Passions were edited in the beginning of the twentieth century or before, and since then have received little attention from scholars. In 1972, Theofried Baumeister published a book in which he discussed them in depth;26 and a year later, a group of Coptic Martyrdoms in the Pierpont Morgan Library were edited and translated into English by Eve Reymond and John Barns.27 As far as I know, these are the 23

I do not deny the importance of studying Apoc. Paul in the context of its original composition (presumably Valentinian). My primary concern here, however, is its reception in a late-antique Coptic environment. 24 For a general survey, see Charles Wilfred Griggs, Early Egyptian Christianity: From its Origins to 451 C.E. (Coptic Studies 2; Leiden: Brill, 1990). 25 Hippolyte Delehaye, Les passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires (2nd ed.; Subsidia Hagiographica 13B; Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1966). 26 Theofried Baumeister, Martyr Invictus: Der Martyrer als Sinnbild der Erlösung in der Legende und im Kult der frühen koptischen Kirche (Forschungen zur Volkskunde 46; Münster: Regensberg, 1972). 27 Eve A. E. Reymond and John W. B. Barns, Four Martyrdoms from the Pierpont Morgan Coptic Codices (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973).

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most recent major works published on the subject. The relative lack of interest in these texts might be explained by the fact that they were traditionally considered to be full of inaccurate and implausible accounts for the period in which their narratives are set.28 Although they narrate martyrdoms that took place during the Great Persecution of Diocletian – an important era for Egyptian Christianity – their fantastic and supernatural tales, as well as revisions made to them by later scribes, full of historical inaccuracy, have led them to be regarded as unreliable sources for the period in which they are set.29 One of the most prominent scholars of hagiography, Hippolyte Delehaye, even labeled them as “miserable literature.”30 However, the fact that scholars have not paid much attention to the Epic Passions does not mean that they are meaningless for the study of Coptic Christianity. Their popularity among Copts in the late-antique and Byzantine periods is suggested by the number of copies that have been preserved. Accordingly, they may not be a historical source for the study of Diocletian’s Great Persecution, but they are certainly a witness of popular piety in Christian Egypt, particularly in regard to the cult of martyrs. Thus one might expect to find in these tales literary motifs that were also current in other types of literature circulating in Coptic in late antiquity. However, this was not the impression of the scholars who first studied these martyrdoms. Rather, they emphasized the influence of Greek and Roman novels on the composition of these texts,31 or related them to Coptic homilies,32 but avoided almost any comparison to other Coptic texts from late antiquity. Nearly no one asked what relationship they might have to apocryphal literature, for example. Needless to say, no attempts to study these texts in light of apocalyptic literature were made, despite their frequent use of lit-

28

Hippolyte Delehaye, one of the greatest experts on the subject, already in 1922 commented on the lack of studies on Coptic martyrdoms: “Tout en rendant hommage aux savants qui ont eu le courage de remuer ce fatras et de rendre accessibles aux connaisseurs des textes d’une lecture rebutante, on peut regretter qu’il existe si peu d’études de détail sur les Passions coptes et ce n’est pas sans embarras que l’on aborde ces étranges récits” (“Les martyrs d’Égypte,” AnBoll 40.1 (1922): 130). Unfortunately, almost a hundred years after Delehaye’s statement, the situation has not changed much, and Coptic Epic Passions remain a marginal type of literature in the list of scholarly interests. 29 One must bear in mind that we are not dealing here with martyrdoms and passions of saints which were traditionally called “historical passions” or “historical martyrdoms” by scholars (Delehaye, Les passions des martyrs, 15–131), but with those labeled by scholars as “epic passions” or “epic martyrdoms” (Delehaye, Les passions des martyrs, 171–226). 30 Delehaye, “Les Martyres de l’Égypte,” 148. 31 E.g., Delehaye, Les passions des martyrs, 171–226; Reymond and Barns, Four Coptic Martyrdoms, 1–19. 32 Tito Orlandi, Omelie copte (Torino: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1981), 6–24.

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erary motifs related to that genre. Similarly, as far as I know, no one has ever compared the Epic Passions to Nag Hammadi treatises. Another important issue infrequently discussed by scholars is when these texts may have been composed.33 Scholars probably considered that their date of composition is either impossible to determine, or such determination is irrelevant, since the texts are clearly late compositions that would add nothing to the historical study of Diocletian’s persecution and Christian martyrs. Nevertheless, as stated above, these texts could constitute an important witness for the study of popular piety in Coptic Christianity. Moreover, they demonstrate that certain literary motifs, such as salutations between martyrs and saints in heaven, were circulating widely in Coptic Egypt. Although a full discussion of when these Epic Passions were composed is beyond the scope of the present contribution, one may state that their composition in the fifth century is plausible. A comparison of them with the Apocalypse of Paul would thus be justified,34 and we could use them to study the Apocalypse of Paul and other Nag Hammadi texts from a reception perspective. In other words, these Epic Passions, being part of the literature that circulated in Coptic in late-antique Egypt, could help us to in33 Generally speaking, the editors limited themselves to date the manuscripts in which the texts were preserved. See e.g. Reymond and Barns, Four Coptic Martyrdoms, 19–21. Attempts to date the original composition of single texts are rare, and at least in one case completely misguided. We refer here to the date of the Martyrdom of Apa Epima proposed by Togo Mina, Le martyre d’Apa Epima (Cairo: Imprimerie Nationale, 1937). In his introduction, Mina takes for granted that the pseudonymous author of the text, Julius of Aqfahs – to whom an entire ensemble of martyrdoms is pseudonymically attributed – is the actual author. Since the text says that Julius of Aqfahs personally witnessed Epima’s saga, Mina concluded that the work was composed sometime in the fourth century (Le Martyre d’Apa Epima, xi–xviii). Other scholars have emphasized how difficult it can be to date these texts. Delehaye, for example, states that “Le manque de données chronologiques certaines nous condamne à rester dans le vague. Ces récits anonymes si nombreux, si semblables, si souvent retouchés – nous reviendrons sur cette question capitale – se laissent difficilement situer dans le temps. Si l’on veut ne point sortir des généralités et s’en tenir au genre plutôt qu’à des Passions déterminés, il y a quelques indices à recueillir . . . Les manuscrits sont un point de repère insuffisant” (Delehaye, Les passions des martyrs, 223–24). More recently, Arietta Papaconstantinou has also emphasized this difficulty, saying that “En fait, le vrai problème posé par les textes hagiographiques provient de la difficulté qu’on a à les dater . . . Pendant longtemps, ces problèmes ont découragé toute tentative d’établir une chronologie” (Le culte des saints en Égypte [Paris: CNRS, 2001], 31). 34 As stated in the introduction of the present article, we work with the likely possibility that the Nag Hammadi texts circulated in Egypt during not only the fourth century, but also the fifth century. As discussed above, nothing convincingly establishes a terminus ad quem for the burial of Nag Hammadi Codices, which makes the possibility of their circulation in fifth century at least possible.

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terpret how the Apocalypse of Paul and other Nag Hammadi texts were interpreted, understood and received in their Egyptian context. That being said, one must note that our approach is more than a simple comparison between two corpora. The identification of common literary motifs in the Epic Passions and the Apocalypse of Paul may help us to understand how the latter was interpreted by late-antique Coptic readers who probably had previous contact with the former. From the point of view of Jauss’ reception theory,35 Coptic Epic Passions can help us to establish the ‘horizon of expectations’ of those who read the Apocalypse of Paul in Coptic. Determining a general date of composition for the Epic Passions (as opposed to dating them individually) is reasonable because of their high degree of literary standardization. They follow the same pattern so closely that one could almost say that the only feature that changes is the name of the characters, i.e., the martyr himself and the imperial authorities.36 Such similarities led Delehaye to posit that the hagiographers who composed these martyrdoms used paste and scissors as much as ink and pen.37 35

Jauss, Pour une esthétique de la reception. One could summarize a Coptic Epic Passion as follows: the mise en scene is always the persecution launched by Diocletian. Generally the martyr, wishing for the crown of martyrdom, presents himself before the imperial authority. The tortures inflicted upon the martyr are usually the same and are always extremely cruel (e.g. incandescent spears piercing the body; entrapment inside a burning furnace for days; scalping, dismemberment of the tongue; disembowelment; the drinking of poison, etc.). After several sessions of torture, the imperial authority realizes that he will not be able to beat the martyr’s endurance and sends him to another location. Then the martyr passes through another series of tortures at the hands of another imperial authority. While the martyr’s endurance is always labeled as magic or sorcery by the authorities, the martyr always refutes the accusation, attributing his endurance to divine power. And indeed, despite the horrible and unlikely tortures, the martyr is always saved by an angel or Jesus, and his bodily integrity is restored. A scene in which the imperial authority is deeply humiliated always takes place (he loses his voice, for example, and is obliged to write on a piece of wood that the God of the martyr, Jesus Christ, is the only God), even though he is mocked by the martyr during the entire judgment. Mass-conversion of the audience watching the trial normally takes place; generally, the crowd that was just converted is martyred right away by the sword, and their number is always unlikely (hundreds or thousands). The accounts are always full of discourses pronounced by the martyr that praise God, and sometimes attempt to discredit polytheism. After traveling from one place to another, being tortured by at least two imperial authorities, the martyr finally accomplishes his martyrdom, having his head cut off by the sword. He is normally taken to heaven by a celestial being, where he salutes the saints who are there waiting for him. The account then finishes with the transportation of the martyr’s body to the place where a shrine is built in his honour, with promises of healing and prosperity to those who will make offerings there. The foregoing description is only a brief summary of Coptic Epic Passions, but it suffices to show that these texts always follow the same patterns, valuing uniformity over creativity. For details, see Delehaye, Les passions des martyrs, 171–226. 37 Delehaye, “Les martyrs d’Égypte,” 152. 36

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Returning to the question of Epic Passions’ general date of composition, the first clue is that they always report martyrdoms that supposedly took place during the persecution of Diocletian. Even if they cannot be used as accurate sources for the study of that persecution, the fact that they use it for their mise en scene obviously establishes a terminus post quem for their composition at the beginning of the fourth century. Secondly, the composition of Coptic Epic Passions is certainly related to the development of the cult of the martyrs in Egypt. The emergence of devotional shrines, in which Christians believed the martyrs were buried, naturally led to the need of explaining how and when their bodies ended up there. Delehaye even proposed that these tales might have been produced on a large scale by a school of hagiographers, commissioned by devotees who were concerned with shrines built in honour of martyrs and their festivals.38 One can imagine that Christians venerating a martyr and offering donations in his shrine would want to know how he was martyred and how heroic was his fidelity to God. One could also expect that the composition of these texts would serve to explain and justify the existence of shrines of martyrs spread across Egypt. The preoccupation with the body of the martyr, and with the fact that it was kept incorruptible, is also found frequently in these tales; in fact, the construction of a shrine in honour of a martyr is normally motivated by the fact that his body was buried in that very place.39 And how did the martyr’s body arrive in the place where his shrine was built? Coptic Epic Passions tell us how in legendary and mythical terms. The circulation of Coptic Martyrdoms, and probably also their composition, was thus linked to the beginning and spread of the cult of the martyrs in Egypt. How can we date this development? According to Delehaye, the development of the cult of the martyrs followed the triumph of Christianity at the beginning of the fourth century: Dans les premières années qui suivirent le triomphe de l’Église, le culte des martyrs s’organisa suivant les lois d’un développement normal et logique, sans qu’aucun élément étranger vînt troubler le courant de la tradition. La ferveur et l’allégresse des fidèles, dont rien désormais ne retient plus l’expansion, donnent à la célébration de l’anniversaire le caractère d’une fête populaire autant que d’une solennité religieuse. Le modeste abri du tombeau s’élargi en un temple magnifique; mais rien n’annonce encore l’abandon de la discipline primitive, qui concentre le culte du martyr dans l’Église d’origine, et l’on ne prévoit pas que les honneurs qui lui sont réservés puissent échoir un jour à ceux qui n’ont pas un droit incontesté à ce titre incommunicable. Mais le temps est proche où la gloire

38

Delehaye, “Les martyrs d’Égypte,” 149–54. In fact, the location of the shrine in Coptic Epic Passions is one of the few elements considered accurate by scholarship. See Delehaye, “Les martyrs d’Égypte,” 148. See also Mina, Apa Epima, xxiii–xxxii. 39

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du martyr franchira partout les étroites frontières qui l’enserraient d’abord, et le martyrologue va s’ouvrir à des noms qu’il avait jusque là absolument exclus.40

Delehaye goes further, stating that “avant la fin du IVe siècle il existait déjà un bon nombre de Passions du modèle épique, on peut l’affirmer avec assurance après la lecture de Prudence, des Pères cappadociens, de S. Jean Chrysostome et d’autres auteurs.”41 The existence of the cult of martyrs at the end of fourth century was thus Baumeister’s point of departure in his discussion of the date of composition of Coptic Epic Passions.42 Even if his arguments have been questioned by recent scholarship,43 his work remains the most complete treatment of the subject.44 Baumeister sees in the Epic Passions traces of the old Egyptian religion. The idea of an indestructible life was present in old Egyptian beliefs, in the preservation and mummification of bodies, and was easily integrated into later Christian practice. The idea persisted among Egyptian Christians in the notorious preoccupation with preserving the martyr’s body: despite the physical and terrible torments inflicted upon the martyr by the Roman authorities, the integrity of his body is usually preserved by divine intervention, or is miraculously restored. Preservation or restoration of the body, either by an angel or Jesus, is a central element in these tales and constitutes the most incredible miracle in which the martyr takes part. Even in cases where the martyr dies by decapitation, both the head and the body remain incorruptible. The fact that the body of the martyr was kept away from any kind of corruption seems essential for the foundation and efficiency of a shrine where the imperishable body will lie forever, performing miracles and bringing prosperity to all those who honour the sanctuary with offerings and prayers. And since for orthodox Christianity the restoration and integrity of the body are fundamental in the general resurrection, the martyrs portrayed in Coptic Epic Passions are thus the model of redemption.45 According to this logic, a true Egyptian martyr must have his body preserved incorruptible for the foundation and future success of a shrine. 40

Hippolyte Delehaye, Les origines du culte des martyrs (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1933), 50. 41 Delehaye, Les passions des martyrs, 224. 42 Baumeister, Martyr Invictus. 43 See Orlandi, Omelie Copte. A summary of Orlandi’s suggestion can be found in Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints, 5–34. See also Willy Clarysse, “The Coptic Martyr Cult,” in Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective: Memorial Louis Reekmans (ed. Mathijs Lamberigts and Peter van Deun; BETL 117; Leuven: Peeters, 1995), 377–95. 44 As far as I know, after Baumeister’s Martyr Invictus there have been no books completely devoted to the subject of Coptic Epic Passions. 45 I have only outlined the main points of Baumeister’s theory. For a good summary, see Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints, 5–7.

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For Baumeister, then, Coptic Epic Passions were the product of the cult of the martyrs in Egypt, the practices of which were rooted in the ancient cult of the dead. Nothing would seem more natural than to write a story about how the body of the martyr was safeguarded from destruction and buried in a certain place to legitimize the power of his shrine and cult. Baumeister thus suggests that Epic Passions were starting to be composed and redacted during the first half of the fifth century. And if we accept that the Arab conquest did not provide an occasion for new martyrs and shrines, then we must agree with Baumeister that these stories were likely composed before the seventh century.46 Relevant for dating the Epic Passions are also fragments of the Martyrdom of Cyriacus and Julitta extant in the M dialect of Coptic.47 This account was preserved in other late-antique languages, and unlike our Coptic Epic Passions, its story takes place outside of Egypt.48 It belongs, however, to a similar literary genre, since it narrates terrible but ineffective tortures inflicted on the martyrs and the great miracles they performed. Cyriacus is also accused of being a sorcerer, which is another topos found in the Coptic Epic Passions.49 The fact that these fragments are preserved in the M dialect suggests an early date of composition, maybe as early as the fifth century. In any event, the strongest argument in favor of an earlier date of composition for the Coptic Epic Passions comes from Athanasius’s testimony that the cult of the martyrs was already taking shape in fourth-century Egypt. Not only does the archbishop attest to the existence of these cults, but also describes them with characteristics that resemble elements in the Epic Passions. In his forty-first and forty-second festal letters, composed in 369 and 370 respectively, Athanasius censures what he considers to be exaggerations and distortions in the way these cults operated.50 In the for46

Baumesiter, Martyr Invictus; Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints, 5–6, 31–34. Hans-Martin Schenke, “Mittelägyptische ‘Nachlese’ III: Neue Fragmente zum Martyrium des Cyri(a)cus und seiner Mutter Julitta im mittelägyptischen Dialekt des Koptischen,” ZÄS 126 (1999): 149–72. I thank Wolf-Peter Funk for alerting me to their existence. 48 This is also the case in The Martyrdom of Apa Nahroou, set in Antioch, though his body is later taken to Egypt by Jules of Aqfahs. See Hugo Lundhaug, “‘The Power of Michael Protected Him’: A New Fragment of the Coptic Martyrdom of Apa Nahroou,” Clara 1 (2016): 1–14. 49 Delehaye, Les passions des martyrs, 186–89. 50 Louis-Théophile Lefort, Athanase: Lettres festales et pastorales en copte (CSCO 150; CSCO.C 19; Leuven: Imprimerie orientaliste, 1955), 23–28, 62–67. On the controversial aspects of these letters, see David Brakke, “‘Outside the Places, Within the Truth’: Athanasius of Alexandria and the Localization of the Holy,” in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt (ed. David Frankfurter; Religions in the GraecoRoman World 137; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 445–81. 47

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ty-first festal letter, for example, he accuses Melitians of disentombing and stealing the bodies of martyrs from their graves.51 The transfer of the martyr’s body to its final resting place, where a shrine would be built in his honour, is a topos in Coptic Epic Passions too. Athanasius’s allegations thus show that this practice was taking place in Egypt as early as 369. Tales like those reported in Coptic Epic Passions would serve to justify the transfer of a martyr’s body to his shire, telling – in legendary terms – his miraculous deeds and how his body ended up in that very place.52 In the forty-second festal letter, Athanasius again bears witness to a belief that corresponds to a topos in Coptic Epic Passions, namely that shrines of martyrs have miraculous healing power. Athanasius does not refute the idea outright, but justifies it theologically by arguing that if such power is real, it comes from God and not from the site itself.53 In Coptic Epic Passions, supernatural powers attributed to martyr shrines are accompanied by the promise of prosperity, healing and health to those who honour the martyr and his shrine, particularly with donations.54 Again, Athanasius’s testimony demonstrates that certain beliefs and practices abundantly reported in Coptic Epic Passions were already current in fourth century Egypt, a fact which makes the possibility of dating these texts as early as the fourth-fifth century possible, if not likely. We can now return to a discussion of the motif that concerns us here.

Salutations between the Hero and the Saints in Heaven In the Apocalypse of Paul, the final greeting in the tenth heaven is preceded by other greetings between Paul and the apostles during their ascension. The brevity of the passage hampers its interpretation, however. Whereas the first seven heavens are described in detail, the eighth, ninth and tenth heavens are only mentioned in passing: And then the heav[en] open[ed] saw the twelve apostles. They greeted [me] ninth heaven. I greeted all those who were ⲉⲧ`ϩ︤ⲛ︥ϯⲙⲁϩⲡⲥⲓⲧⲉ ⲙ̄ⲡⲉ). And we went up to spirits (ⲁⲩⲱ ⲁⲓ̈ⲣ̄ⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ ⲛ̄ⲛⲁϣⲃⲏⲣ ⲙ̄ⲡ︤ⲛ︦ⲁ︥).55 51

and we went up [to the] eighth (heaven). I (ⲁⲩⲣ̄ⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ ⲙ̄ⲙⲟ[ⲓ̈]), and we went up to the in the ninth heaven (ⲁⲓ̈ⲣ̄ⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ ⲛ̄ⲛⲏ ⲧⲏⲣⲟⲩ the tenth heaven. And I greeted my fellow

Athanasius, 41st Festal Letter (Lefort, Lettres Festales, 62–63). See, e.g., the Martyrdom of Apa Epima (Pierpont Morgan 48 ff. 55v–56r); Mina, Le Martyre d’Apa Epima, 34–35. 53 Athanasius, 42nd Festal Letter (Lefort, Lettres Festales, 28). 54 Martyrdom of Apa Epima (Pierpont Morgan 48 ff. 54v–55r); Mina, Le Martyre d’Apa Epima, 33–34. 55 Apoc. Paul 23.29–24.8 (Murdock and MacRae, “The Apocalypse of Paul,” 60–63); cf. Rosenstiehl and Kaler, L’Apocalypse de Paul, 110–13. 52

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One observes that the Greco-Coptic verb ⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ, ‘to greet,’ is employed three times in this passage. In the first occurrence, the apostles greet Paul, while in the following occurrences, it is Paul who greets others – everyone in the ninth heaven, and then the spirits in the tenth. The same verb is employed two times earlier in the text when a little child announces that Paul will meet the apostles: “‘Now it is to the twelve apostles that you shall go, for they are elected spirits, and they will greet you (ⲁⲩⲱ ⲉⲩⲛⲁⲣ̄ⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ ⲙ̄ⲙⲟⲕ).’ He raised his eyes and saw them greeting him ([ⲁ]ⲩ̣ⲣ̄ⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ ⲙ̄ⲙⲟϥ).”56 Rosenstiehl remarks that this particular motif in the Apocalypse of Paul does not find many parallels in the ensemble of apocalyptic traditions.57 It is particularly striking that it is also quite unusual among apocalypses with an otherworldly journey, the only two examples being in the Testament of Isaac and the Visio sancti Pauli.58 In the former, Isaac says that “the angel took me up into the heavens; I saw my father, Abraham, and I made obeisance to him. He greeted me, with all the saints (ⲁϥⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ ⲙ̄ⲙⲟⲓ̈ ⲙⲛ̄ⲛⲉⲧⲟⲩⲁ̄ⲁⲃ ⲧⲏⲣⲟⲩ).”59 The same greeting-motif abounds in the Coptic version of the Visio sancti Pauli. To cite only one example, Paul says that in one of his ascents: “(The angel) said unto me, ‘These are the fathers of the people, Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob.’ And straightway when they saw me they greeted me (ⲁⲩⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ ⲙ̄ⲙⲟⲓ).”60 The fact that the few known instances of this motif are found in apocalypses preserved in Coptic suggests its popularity among Coptic readers. Although the greeting-motif does not abound in apocalyptic literature, at least in texts that have survived, it is found frequently in Coptic Epic Passions. An ensemble of martyrdoms preserved in the Coptic codices of the Pierpont Morgan Library furnishes many interesting instances of this literary topos. The Martyrdom of Saints Paese and Tecla, for example, narrates the events following Paese’s decapitation:

56

Apoc. Paul 19.15–20 (Murdock and MacRae, “The Apocalypse of Paul,” 52–53); cf. Rosenstiehl and Kaler, L’Apocalypse de Paul, 102. 57 Rosenstiehl and Kaler, L’Apocalypse de Paul, 20. 58 In the Visio sancti Pauli, Paul greets some of the characters he meets during his trip to heaven or is greeted by them; in the Coptic version, these greetings are normally expressed by ⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ. See e.g. Budge, Miscellaneous Coptic Texts, 534–35, 552–53, 555, 561, 566–69, and 572. 59 T. Isaac 10:1–2 (trans. Karl H. Kuhn, “An English Translation of the Sahidic Version of the Testament of Isaac,” JTS 18 [1967]: 333; Coptic text in Karl H. Kuhn, “The Sahidic Version of the Testament of Isaac,” JTS 8 [1957]: 235). 60 BL Or. 7022, f. 21a–21b (ed. and trans. Budge, Miscellaneous Coptic Texts, 552, 1073).

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And it befell that at midnight the angel of the Lord came to him and set the holy Apa Paese upon his shining wings and took him to heaven . . . and all the saints came out to meet him, and they greeted him (ⲁⲩⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ ⲙ̄ⲙⲟϥ), and showed him the city of Christ.61

Similar to what takes place in the Apocalypse of Paul, the hero of this story is escorted to heaven by an otherworldly being. In another text from this collection, the Martyrdom of Saint Shenoufe, one reads that when the martyr arrives in heaven “the angels and the righteous greeted him (ⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ ⲙ̄ⲙⲟⲟⲩ) in Paradise.”62 In another text, the Fourth Martyrdom of Saint Victor, preserved in the British Library, the saints in heaven are awaiting the martyr after his death. And when his soul arrives in heaven escorted by an angel named Ausouel, it is greeted by the saints: Horion lifted up his eyes to heaven, and he saw the soul of Apa Victor, which Ausouel carried in a napkin made of byssus, and the saints greeted the soul of Apa Victor (ⲁⲛⲉⲧⲟⲩⲁⲁⲃ ⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ ⲛ̄ⲧⲉⲯⲩⲭⲏ ⲛ̄ⲁⲡⲁ ⲃⲓⲕⲧⲱⲣ).”63

The Second Martyrdom of Saint Victor, also preserved in the British Library, describes an ascension by Victor before his martyrdom, in which a greeting is also narrated: And the heart of Apa Victor was carried up into the heights of heaven, and [the angels] instructed him concerning the kingdom of heaven . . . and the saints greeted him (ⲁⲛⲉⲧⲟⲩⲁⲁⲃ ⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ ⲙ̄ⲙⲟϥ).”64

As these examples show, the Apocalypse of Paul and Coptic Epic Passions share the motif of salutation between the hero who arrives in heaven and others who are there. Yet there are also some differences. In the case of the martyrdoms, the martyr is greeted, while in the case of the Apocalypse of Paul, it is Paul who greets those in heaven. One text coincides with the Apocalypse of Paul on this point, however. The Martyrdoms of Saints Apaioulle and Pteleme, also preserved in the Pierpont Morgan Library, reports that when Saint Apaioulle was killed, “Straightway the angels came and took his soul up to heaven, and they caused him to greet the saints (ⲁⲩⲧⲣⲉϥⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ ⲛ̄ⲛⲉⲧⲟⲩⲁⲁⲃ). Thereafter he greeted (ⲁϥⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ) Apa Pteleme in the kingdom of Jesus Christ.”65 61

Martyrdom of Saints Paese and Tecla, Pierpont Morgan Library M591, f. 77v ii (ed. and trans. Reymond and Barns, Four Martyrdoms, 67, 174–75). 62 Martyrdom of Saint Shenoufe, Pierpont Morgan Library M583, f. 127r i (ed. and trans. Reymond and Barns, Four Martyrdoms, 115, 211). 63 Fourth Martyrdom of Saint Victor, BL Or. 7022, f. 26a (ed. and trans. Budge, Coptic Martyrdoms, 45, 298, modified). 64 Second Martyrdom of Saint Victor, BL Or. 7022 f. 12b (ed. and trans. Budge, Coptic Martyrdoms, 22, 274, modified). 65 Martyrdoms of Saints Apaioule and Pteleme, Pierpont Morgan Library M583, f. 173r ii (ed. and trans. Reymond and Barns, Four Martyrdoms, 136, 228).

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This small difference concerning who performs the act of greeting and who is greeted might reveal something about the nature of the salutation and the status of the hero in relation to the inhabitants of heaven. I will return to this point below. For now, I believe that it is essential to state that by highlighting the presence of this motif in the Apocalypse of Paul and the Coptic Martyrdoms, I am not suggesting that the first was necessarily influenced by the second, or vice versa, or that they necessarily depend upon a common source. We can affirm, however, that this motif was popular in late-antique Coptic Egypt. The Apocalypse of Paul thus fits nicely in the context of fourth and fifth-century Coptic literature about the travels of saints to heaven. An audience that was interested in martyrdoms, and more specifically in the martyr’s ascension to heaven where he greets the saints, or is greeted by them, would find the same idea expressed in the concluding lines of the Apocalypse of Paul. This common motif complicates the presumed incompatibility between the Nag Hammadi texts and Coptic Christianity, especially monasticism, a presumption which even led to the suggestion that the Nag Hammadi Codices must have belonged to a monastery’s library heresiological literature used only to refute heretics.66 In the specific case of the Apocalypse of Paul, Coptic readers might have been interested in the motif of heavenly ascent and greeting the saints, without necessarily being concerned with the text’s potentially controversial theology. In other words, Coptic readers of the Apocalypse of Paul might not have been concerned about the demiurgic figure who is said to reside in the seventh heaven,67 or with any other so-called Gnostic features usually emphasized by modern scholars. Rather, their interests may have been in the story of the apostle Paul’s adventure as he traveled through the heavens and greeted the saints.68 We could go a step further by trying to understand how the greetingmotif might have influenced the interpretation of other passages in the Apocalypse of Paul among Coptic readers. This understanding is quite different from the interpretation given by scholars who focus on the context of the its original composition. According to Michael Kaler, the Apocalypse of Paul expresses a Valentinian perspective according to which Paul is superior to the other apostles who represent mainstream Christianity. While they do not ascend to the tenth heaven, Paul does, and greets his

66 Torgny Säve-Söderbergh, “Holy Scriptures or Apologetic Documentation? The Sitz im Leben of the Nag Hammadi Library,” in Les Textes de Nag Hammadi: Colloque du Centre d’Histoire des Religions (Strasbourg, 23-25 octobre 1974) (ed. Jacques-É. Ménard; NHS 7; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 3–14. 67 Apoc. Paul 22.25–30. 68 Apoc. Paul 24.1–8.

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fellow spirits.69 This interpretation could reflect concerns over the relationship between the twelve apostles and Paul present in the environment of the original composition. But would the same concern exist for Coptic readers in late-antique Egypt, where Paul was probably not seen as an opponent of the twelve? This question cannot be discussed here in detail, but I would argue that a Coptic audience would have read the Apocalypse of Paul in such a way that they saw the apostles ascend together with Paul to the tenth heaven. At the beginning of the apocalypse, the spirit announces that Paul will meet the apostles, and that they will greet him;70 thus the ‘fellow spirits’ whom Paul greets when he arrives at the tenth heaven could easily have been identified as the twelve apostles by later readers. This point can be further illuminated by returning to the discussion of who performs the act of greeting and who is greeted. If we take a brief look at the corpus of Coptic literature, we find numerous examples of greetings expressed by the Greco-Coptic verb ⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ, and not necessarily in heavenly ascents of heroes and martyrs. The same verb is used in stories where monks greet each other in everyday situations, and visionaries are frequently greeted by angels when they appear to them. The normal pattern in these texts is for the superior character to greet the inferior one. In the case of epiphanies, the otherworldly being takes the initiative by greeting the visionary;71 in monastic tales, a famous abbot usually takes the initiative by greeting an ordinary brother when they meet;72 and in ascent accounts, it is the heavenly saints who greet the martyr who just arrived, as seen in the examples discussed above. The story in the Martyrdoms of Saints Apaioulle and Pteleme constitutes an exception to this pattern; yet here the angels are given more responsibility for the greetings, since it says that they “made him (Apa Apaioulle) greet the saints (ⲁⲩⲧⲣⲉϥⲁⲥⲡⲁⲍⲉ ⲛ̄ⲛⲉⲧⲟⲩⲁⲁⲃ).”73 Aside from this case, the usual pattern is for the superior character to greet the subordinate.

69

Apoc. Paul 24.1–8; Roensetiehl and Kaler, L’Apocalypse de Paul, 269–80. Apoc. Paul 19.15–20. 71 See the examples of T. Isaac and the Visio sancti Pauli above. 72 See e.g. Pachomius’ greeting the brothers of the koinonia in SBo 59 and 108. In SBo 124, after the death of Pachomius, Petronius becomes the new leader of the congregation, greeting Theodore with a kiss. In SBo 126, Theodore and Zacchaeus pay a visit to Antony; Antony, who is clearly described with reverence and superiority, comes to meet them and greets them with a holy kiss. On the group of sources that form SBo, see Armand Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia: The Lives, Rules, and Other Writings of Saint Pachomius and His Disciples (3 vols.; CS 45–47; Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1980–82), 1:2. 73 Martyrdoms of Saints Apaioule and Pteleme, Pierpont Morgan Library M583, f. 173r ii (ed. and trans. Reymond and Barns, Four Martyrdoms, 136, 228). 70

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Given this pattern in Coptic literature, a Coptic reader of the Apocalypse of Paul might have interpreted the story to mean that Paul was inferior to the twelve apostles when he began his ascent, since he is greeted by them, but by the end of the story became superior to them, and even to the spirits in the tenth heaven, since it is then he who greets them. This interpretation could of course be questioned, given the exceptions to the pattern mentioned above. However, in regard to the apostles in particular, we do not see any reason to preclude the possibility that Coptic readers would have interpreted the story to mean that they did not ascend with Paul to the tenth heaven; as pointed out above, the spirit announces that Paul will meet them apostles.74 Finally, it would be fruitful to consider the usage of the greeting-motif and the verb ἀσπάζεσθαι, to ‘greet’ or ‘kiss,’ among early Christians generally. Although some scholars have spoken of this kiss as a Gnostic rite,75 I would argue that it is more precise to relate it to early Christian practices in general. Given the fact that martyrdom was interpreted by some Christians as a “baptism of blood,”76 we could consider the importance of the greeting-motif for early Christian liturgy, especially baptismal rites. Indeed, the ritual kiss or greeting, generally expressed by ἀσπάζεσθαι, is widely attested in patristic writers.77 One of the most famous examples of the ritualistic usage of ἀσπάζεσθαι is in Justin Martyr’s description of a baptismal rite observed in his church: But we, after the washing done in this way, lead the one who has been persuaded and has thrown in his lot with us to those who are called the brothers in the place where they are gathered. And, after earnestly saying prayers for ourselves and the one who was enlightened and all others everywhere that, having learnt the truth, we might be judged worthy also to be found through our deeds people who live good lives and guardians of what has been commanded, so that we might be saved in eternal salvation, we cease from prayer 74

Apoc. Paul 19.15–20. See, e.g., Armand Veilleux, La première Apocalypse de Jacques (NH V,3), La seconde Apocalypse de Jacques (NH V,4) (BCNH.T 17; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1986), 83. 76 In the New Testament, the Passion is already compared to baptism (cf. Luke 12:50 and Mark 10:38). One could also mention Origen, probably the most prominent Christian author to compare martyrdom to baptism; he clearly calls martyrdom as the “Baptism of Blood,” even evaluating it as superior to water baptism (Hom. Judges 7.2); he also classifies Jesus’ passion as a martyrdom and hence the perfect baptism (Comm. John 6,56). For further examples, see Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 417–19. Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. 6.4.3) also mentions that Origen spoke of martyrdom as the “baptism of fire.” See Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church, 417. 77 L. Edward Phillips, The Ritual Kiss in Early Christian Worship (Cambridge: Grove Books, 1996); Michael P. Penn, Kissing Christians: Ritual and Community in the Late Ancient Church (Divinations; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). 75

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and greet one another with a kiss (ἀλλήλους φιλήματι ἀσπαζόμεθα, παυσάμενοι τῶν εὐχῶν).78

The mutual greeting between the members of Justin’s community expresses the communion into which the newly baptized is now integrated. Similarly, the greeting between the martyr and the saints in heaven marks the communion between them and the welcoming of the martyr among the inhabitants of heaven. Just as baptism allows the newly baptized to join the community, the martyrdom allows the martyr to join the saints. In another famous passage concerning an early Christian baptismal rite, John Chrysostom reports that, As soon as they come forth from those sacred waters, all who are present embrace them, greet them, kiss them, rejoice with them, and congratulate them, because those who were heretofore slaves and captives have suddenly become free men and sons and have been invited to the royal table.79

In this account from the second half of the fourth century – thus chronologically closer to the Apocalypse of Paul and the Coptic Epic Passions – it is even clearer that the act of greeting the newly baptized is a way of welcoming them into the community. The act of greeting marks their acceptance into the community of saints.

Conclusion The abundant presence of the greeting-motif in Coptic Epic Passions and apocalyptic texts, and in the act of greeting during baptismal liturgies, could have established a “horizon of expectations” for Coptic readers of the Apocalypse of Paul that may have caused them to think of the arrival of martyrs in heaven when they read about Paul’s arrival in the tenth heaven and his greeting of fellow spirits. While the reception-perspective employed here has focused only on the Apocalypse of Paul from Nag Hammadi Codex V, the same analysis could be applied to the entire codex in which the Apocalypse of Paul has been preserved, and indeed to all the texts in the Nag Hammadi Codices, to better understand how and why they were read in late-antique Egypt. 78

Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 65.1–2 (trans. Denis Minns and Paul Parvis, Justin, Philosopher and Martyr: Apologies [Oxford: Oxford University, 2009], 252). 79 John Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions, 2.27 (trans. Thomas M. Finn, The Liturgy of Baptism in the Baptismal Instructions of St. John Chrysostom [CUASCA 15; Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1967], 197). The welcoming of the newly baptized in the community is expressed by five verbs, including the verb ἀσπάζεσθαι, translated here as ‘to greet.’ Greek text in Antoine Wenger, Jean Chrysostome: Huit catéchèses baptismales inédites (SC 50; Paris: Cerf, 1957), 147–49.

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Bibliography Baldick, Chris. Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Baumeister, Theofried. Martyr Invictus: Der Martyrer als Sinnbild der Erlösung in der Legende und im Kult der frühen koptischen Kirche. Forschungen zur Volkskunde 46. Münster: Regensberg, 1972. Brakke, David. “‘Outside the Places, Within the Truth’: Athanasius of Alexandria and the Localization of the Holy.” Pages 445–481 in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt. Edited by David Frankfurter. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 137. Leiden: Brill, 1998. Budge, Ernest A. Wallis. Coptic Martyrdoms etc. in the Dialect of Upper Egypt. London: British Museum, 1914. –. Miscellaneous Coptic Texts in the Dialect of Upper Egypt. London: British Museum, 1915. Clarysse, Willy. “The Coptic Martyr Cult.” Pages 377–95 in Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective: Memorial Louis Reekmans. Edited by Mathijs Lamberigts and Peter van Deun. Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 117. Leuven: Peeters, 1995. Collins, John J. “Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre.” Semeia 14 (1979): 1– 20. Cristea, Hans-Joachim. Schenute von Atripe: Contra Origenistas: Edition des koptischen Textes mit annotierter Übersetzung und Indizes einschließlich einer Übersetzung des 16. Osterfestbriefs des Theophilus in der Fassung des Hieronymus (ep. 96). Studien und Texte zu Antique und Christentum 60. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011. Delehaye, Hippolyte. “Les martyrs d’Égypte.” Analecta Bollandiana 40.1 (1922): 5–154. –. Les origines du culte des martyrs. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1933. –. Les passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires. Second Edition. Subsidia Hagiographica 13B. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1966. Dias Chaves, Julio Cesar. Between Apocalyptic and Gnosis: The Nag Hammadi Apocalyptic Corpus: Delimitation and Analysis. Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2010. Emmel, Stephen. “Religious Tradition, Textual Transmission and the Nag Hammadi Codices.” Pages 34–43 in The Nag Hammadi Library after Fifty Years: Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration. Edited by John D. Turner and Anne Maguire. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 44. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Ferguson, Everett. Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008. Finn, Thomas M. The Liturgy of Baptism in the Baptismal Instructions of St. John Chrysostom. Catholic University of America Studies in Christian Antiquity 15. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1967. Griggs, Charles Wilfred. Early Egyptian Christianity: From its Origins to 451 C.E.. Coptic Studies 2. Leiden: Brill, 1990. Holub, Robert C. Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction. London: Methuen, 1984. Husselman, Elinor M. “The Martyrdom of Cyriacus and Julitta in Coptic.” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 4 (1965): 79–86. Jauss, Hans Robert. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Translated by Timothy Bathi. Theory and History or Literature 2. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982.

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Kaler, Michael. Flora Tells a Story: The Apocalypse of Paul and its Contexts. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008. Kuhn, Karl H. “The Sahidic Version of the Testament of Isaac.” Journal of Theological Studies 8 (1957): 225–39. –. “An English Translation of the Sahidic Version of the Testament of Isaac.” Journal of Theological Studies 18 (1967): 325–36. Lefort, Louis-Théophile. Athanase: Lettres festales et pastorales en copte. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 150, Scriptores Coptici 19. Leuven: Imprimerie orientaliste, 1955. Lundhaug, Hugo. “‘The Power of Michael Protected Him’: A New Fragment of the Coptic Martyrdom of Apa Nahroou.” Clara 1 (2016): 1–14. Mina, Togo. Le martyre d’Apa Epima. Cairo: Imprimerie Nationale, 1937. Minns, Denis, and Paul Parvis. Justin, Philosopher and Martyr: Apologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Murdock, William R., and George W. MacRae. “The Apocalypse of Paul.” Pages 47–63 in Nag Hammadi Codices V, 2-5 and VI with Papyrus Berolinensis 8502 1 and 4. Edited by Douglas M. Parrott. Nag Hammadi Studies 11. Leiden: Brill, 1979. Orlandi, Tito. Omelie copte. Torino: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1981. –. “A Catechesis against Apocryphal Texts by Shenoute and the Gnostic Texts of Nag Hammadi.” Harvard Theological Review 75 (1982): 85–95. Papaconstantinou, Arietta. Le culte des saints en Égypte. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 2001. Penn, Michael P. Kissing Christians: Ritual and Community in the Late Ancient Church. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. Phillips, L. Edward. The Ritual Kiss in Early Christian Worship. Cambridge: Grove Books Limited, 1996. Reymond, Eve A. E., and John W. B. Barns. Four Martyrdoms from the Pierpont Morgan Coptic Codices. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973. Rosenstiehl, Jean-Marc, and Michael Kaler. L’Apocalypse de Paul. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, Section “Textes” 31. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2005. Säve-Söderbergh, Torgny. “Holy Scriptures or Apologetic Documentation? The Sitz im Leben of the Nag Hammadi Library.” Pages 3–14 in Les Textes de Nag Hammadi: Colloque du Centre d’Histoire des Religions (Strasbourg, 23-25 octobre 1974). Edited by Jacques-É. Ménard. Nag Hammadi Studies 7. Leiden: Brill, 1975. Schenke, Hans-Martin “Mittelägyptische ‘Nachlese’ III: Neue Fragmente zum Martyrium des Cyri(a)cus und seiner Mutter Julitta im mittelägyptischen Dialekt des Koptischen. ” Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 126 (1999): 149–72. Veilleux, Armand. Pachomian Koinonia: The Lives, Rules, and Other Writings of Saint Pachomius and His Disciples. 3 Vols. Cistercian Studies 45–47. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1980–82. –. La première Apocalypse de Jacques (NH V,3), La seconde Apocalypse de Jacques (NH V,4). Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi: Section “Textes” 17. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1986. Wenger, Antoine. Jean Chrysostome: Huit catéchèses baptismales inédites. Sources Chrétiennes 50. Paris: Cerf, 1957.

The Soul Flees to Her Treasure where Her Mind Is: Scriptural Allusions in the Authentikos Logos ULLA TERVAHAUTA Christians in Egypt during the fourth and fifth centuries read and wrote, collected, translated, edited and circulated literature that often made use of or referred to existing literary works. Their use of previous literature was creative, and the Nag Hammadi writings provide some of the most outstanding examples of this activity, for instance in the form of reinterpretations of creation myths in the Apocryphon of John, Hypostasis of the Archons, and other such writings that combine Judeo-Christian texts and traditions with interpretations that draw from Greek philosophy and mythology. 1 Writings in the collection are varied and they make use of existing literature in differing ways. References to the Scriptures can be implicit or explicit. An example of the latter is found in Codex II where the Exegesis on the Soul provides quotations of scriptural passages and Homer to support its teaching on the soul. Biblical quotes and paraphrases are weaved into a narrative of the fallen soul-maiden. The Exegesis on the Soul is thus an example of explicit and direct use of the Bible and Homer. Interestingly, a similar story with a completely different take on the Scriptures is found in Codex VI. That is the Authentikos Logos, also known as the Authoritative Teaching or Discourse, a fourteen-page treatise that tells the story of a soul’s journey from descent to ascent and weaves into its version ethical advice and exhortation, occasionally in a polemical way. There are no quotations, paraphrases or direct references to the Scriptures, and this is one of the aspects that makes Authentikos Logos different from the Exegesis on the Soul.2 Instead of quoting and paraphrasing, Authentikos Logos makes allusive and indirect use of scriptural passages and imagery. In this article I study 1 See Marvin Meyer, “Thought, Forethought, and Afterthought,” in Beyond the Gnostic Gospels: Studies Building on the Work of Elaine Pagels (ed. Eduard Iricinschi et al.; STAC 82; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 217–31. 2 Ulla Tervahauta, A Story of the Soul’s Journey in the Nag Hammadi Library: A Study of Authentikos Logos (NHC VI,3) (NTOA 107; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 78–88.

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the use of Scripture in Authentikos Logos, look at the way scriptural allusions are made, and compare that to other texts where the same scriptural passages are referred to or alluded to. My aim is to gain a better understanding of the writing and how it employs motifs from Christian literature that circulated in late ancient Egypt. The writing is not, after all, silent on the Scriptures, but incorporates them indirectly through allusions. I have selected four examples of allusion to Scripture to be discussed here.3 I study them not only to identify the scriptural image or passage that lies behind it, but also to understand how that image is employed. To achieve this, I compare these passages with the use of the same passages by other Christian writers in their works in order to determine what similarities and differences can be detected and what these reveal. First, the mixture of wheat and chaff in Auth. Teach. 25.12–26 reflects gospel sayings on wheat and chaff or weeds (Matt 3:12 par. Luke 3:17; Matt 13:24– 30). Second, the soul’s flight to its treasure and mind in Auth. Teach. 28.23–26 recalls the gospel saying “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt 6:21 par. Luke 12:34). Early variants of the saying will be discussed in order to understand why the mind has replaced the heart in Authentikos Logos, and what we may learn through comparison with other versions of the saying in early Christian literature. Third, when the soul succumbs to temptations, it conceives and gives birth to the offspring of matter, and such a view in Auth. Teach. 31.16–18 is similar to the conception of desire that leads to the birth of sin in James 1:12–13. Finally, the “light that does not set” in the doxology concluding Authentikos Logos (35.17–18) reflects the eschatological language of Isaiah and Fifth Ezra.

Previous Scholarship The story of the soul that Authentikos Logos tells is general and rather exemplary, and its use of Scripture (or other literature) is not explicit. Despite this indirectness, a close look reveals that Authentikos Logos contains allusions to Scripture or echoes of scriptural language throughout the writing. These reflect the gospels of Matthew and John, the Acts of the Apostles, several epistles (for instance, Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, and James), Revelation, and the Septuagint. Scholars have already noted some parallels or allusions in Authentikos Logos. George W. MacRae provided some references in the footnotes of his edition of 1979.4 3

See also Tervahauta, A Story, 58–70, 153–60. George W. MacRae, “Authoritative Teaching (NHC VI, 3),” in Nag Hammadi Codices V,2–5 and VI with Papyrus Berolinensis 8502,1 and 4 (ed. Douglas M. Parrott; NHS 11; Leiden: Brill, 1979), 257–89. 4

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Scriptural passages in Authentikos Logos have also been listed by Craig Evans, Robert Webb and Richard Wiebe,5 and Christopher Tuckett included the writing in his discussion of synoptic materials in the Nag Hammadi texts. 6 Clemens Scholten has pointed out that the Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John, Acts, Romans, Colossians, 1 Corinthians, and 1–2 Thessalonians are those New Testament texts that can be assumed to have been known by the author of Authentikos Logos.7 Four examples of New Testament influence and allusions were discussed by Roelof van den Broek who concluded that the writing probably stems from Alexandrian Christian Platonist circles prior to Clement of Alexandria.8 Van den Broek’s article was an important step in the discussion on Authentikos Logos, but his conclusion can and should be revised. It is necessary to ask whether such an early dating is essential and, moreover, how the writing would fit later contexts.9 The purpose of this article, which is based on my previous work on the text,10 is to take a careful look at the use of scriptural motifs in Authentikos Logos. To do that, a cautious word on allusions is called for, as they are a difficult and elusive topic.11 Allusions are indirect; they are veiled and hazy. They are not easy to pin down. William Irwin has defined an allusion as an indirect reference that is intentional and recognizable, but not necessarily accessible to all in a cultural or linguistic context. Allusions are often brief and may or may not be literary in nature.12 Stanley Porter distinguishes allusions from quotations, paraphrases, and echoes by pointing to their indirect way of invoking “a person, place, or literary work” with the aim of bringing this external element into the contemporary material.13 I follow these definitions here in their broad lines. Irwin’s definition concerns allusions in modern literature, and Porter is working with a known

5 Craig A. Evans, Robert L. Webb, and Richard A. Wiebe, eds., Nag Hammadi Texts and the Bible: A Synopsis and Index (NTTS 18; Leiden: Brill, 1993), 269–71. 6 Christopher Tuckett, Nag Hammadi and the Gospel Tradition: Synoptic Tradition in the Nag Hammadi Library (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986), 47–51. 7 Clemens Scholten, Martyrium und Sophiamythos im Gnostizismus nach den Texten von Nag Hammadi (JAC.E 14; Münster: Aschendorff, 1987), 131 n. 108. 8 Roelof van den Broek, “The Authentikos Logos: A New Document of Christian Platonism,” in Studies in Gnosticism and Alexandrian Christianity (NHMS 39; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 206–34 (originally published in VC 33 [1979]: 260–89). 9 Tervahauta, A Story, 46–48, 208–13. 10 Tervahauta, A Story, 58–68, 153–59. 11 William Irwin, “What Is an Allusion?” in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59 (2001): 287; Stanley E. Porter, “Allusions and Echoes,” in As It Is Written: Studying Paul’s Use of Scripture (ed. Stanley E. Porter and Christopher D. Stanley; SBLSymS 50; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), 29–40. 12 Irwin, “What Is an Allusion?” 287–97. 13 Porter, “Allusions and Echoes,” 33.

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ancient author, the Apostle Paul. Candida Moss has added important points to this discussion, such as a warning against putting too much emphasis on authorial intention and canonicity. Following Moss, I do not intend to find an author with a clear intention as he or she inserts an allusion to a uniform, written, canonical text into the treatise he or she is writing.14 Different stances can and have been taken as regards authorial intention. I acknowledge that alongside the unknown author there were others who transmitted the text, making changes to it on its way. Porter draws a line between allusions and echoes, the latter being more vague instances of employing language that recalls some general notion or concept from Scripture.15 It is not a simple task to draw the line between the two, as they are closely related; this is evident in scholarly discussions.16 The intentionality of allusions has often been seen as what differentiates them from echoes: if an allusion is inserted into a text on purpose, authorial intention of some degree is in play, whereas echoes stem from the familiarity of the author/reader with the biblical text.17 My focus is not on the differences between allusions and echoes, but I consider the use of Scripture in Authentikos Logos as allusions, inasmuch as it is possible to find precise passages and reflections of their key features even when Authentikos Logos is different from the texts alluded to. My interest is in how a scriptural phrase or passage is employed in comparison to its intertext as well as in relation to other ancient texts where the same phrase or text is discussed, referred to or alluded to. What I also consider an important aspect of allusions, as discussed by Porter, is how they draw “upon a common pool of shared knowledge.” The author (or authors and transmitters) and the audience share knowledge at least in an ideal case. By inquiring into scriptural allusions in Authentikos Logos, we learn about what the writing, its author(s) and transmitters, and its audience may have known and shared.18 14

Candida Moss, “Nailing Down and Tying Up: Lessons in Intertextual Impossibility from the Martyrdom of Polycarp,” in VC 67 (2013): 117–36. See also Hugo Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth. Cognitive Poetics and Transformational Soteriology in the Gospel of Philip and the Exegesis on the Soul (NHMS 73; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 3–4. 15 Porter, “Allusions and Echoes,” 29–40. Porter’s criticism is directed at Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 14–21. 16 Porter “Allusions and Echoes,” 36–40; Hays, “Echoes of Scripture,” 23–33. 17 Louis Painchaud, “The Use of Scripture in Gnostic Literature,” in JECS 4 (1996): 135. See also Devorah Dimant, “Use and Interpretation of Mikra in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,” in Mikra: Text, Tradition, Reading & Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism & Early Christianity (ed. Martin Jan Mulder; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2004), 382–83. 18 Porter “Allusions and Echoes,” 36.

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Louis Painchaud wrote in his article on the use of Scripture in the Nag Hammadi writings that identification of allusions is a worthwhile task, as they shed light on a text, make its meaning clearer, and help gain understanding of the sense of its often obscure details.19 To gain a deeper insight into the use and context of allusions, an analysis and comparison with other texts referring to or alluding to the same passages is of primary importance. Authentikos Logos will not be properly understood if the knowledge of Christian writings underlying it is not recognized, or if no questions are asked regarding the intention in using them. Simultaneously, as we gain better understanding of this Nag Hammadi treatise, we gain better understanding of the codices and the people who produced and read them.

The Wheat and the Chaff The first example of the use of the Scriptures in Authentikos Logos is found in a passage that discusses the mixture of two opposites as illustrated through an image of wheat and chaff: If chaff is mixed with wheat, not the chaff but the wheat is polluted. As they are mixed together, no one is going to buy her wheat because it is spoiled. But they are going to persuade him: “Give us this chaff,” as they see the wheat mixed in it. Once they get the chaff they will throw it together with all the other chaff, and that chaff gets mixed with all other matter. But pure seed is kept in storehouses that are secure. (25.12–27, my trans.)

The image is part of a section that develops around the soul’s bodily life, which starts with a family metaphor (Auth. Teach. 23) and continues with an image of the soul’s earthly life compared to a woman imprisoned in a brothel and falling into drunkenness and forgetfulness. The preceding section (on page 24) advises the recipients to live wisely and choose wisely: life and death are the two ways from which to choose, a foolish person lives the life of animals, not understanding how to speak, whereas the gentle son brings joy to his father. Page 25 continues with a warning of the defiling effect of lusting thoughts on virgins and how gluttony cannot be mixed with moderation. The message of the wheat and chaff image that follows elaborates the point of these preceding images, that the combination of two disparate parts or essences is harmful to the more valuable. If wheat is mixed with chaff, the wheat is spoiled, not the chaff. There is some vagueness in the image: it is not clear who the characters that approach the owner of the wheat are, persuading him to give them the mixture of chaff and wheat, and it remains unclear why the wheat is “her” 19

Painchaud, “The Use of Scripture,” 136.

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wheat (ⲡⲥ̄ⲥⲟⲩⲟ), when it is a “him” who is asked to give it up. The result also does not proceed in the way one might expect: the flatterers are not after the wheat in order to separate it from the chaff and so to get it for free. If they get the mixture, they will simply throw it in with all other materials, and the wheat will be even less valuable than before. Two or three gospel texts can be heard behind the wheat and the chaff metaphor: John the Baptist’s witness of Jesus as the one who separates wheat and chaff (Matt 3:12 par. Luke 3:17), and perhaps also Jesus’ parable of weeds secretly sown among the wheat (Matt 13:24–30) and the saying about tasteless salt (Matt 5:13, Mark 9:50, Luke 14:34). There are remarkable differences: no story context is provided and neither Jesus nor John the Baptist is mentioned. The emphasis and the interpretation of the images differ from the gospel versions, which also appear to have somewhat merged in Authentikos Logos.20 In John the Baptist’s saying in Matt 3:12/Luke 3:17, Jesus emerges as the one with a winnowing-fork in his hand. He is the one who clears the threshing floor, gathers the wheat into the granary, and burns the chaff in unquenchable fire. Both Matthew and Luke give this as John the Baptist’s witness of Jesus in the context of a discussion of John’s baptismal activity, John and Jesus’ relationship, and the baptism of Jesus.21 The owner of the wheat in Authentikos Logos is not the judge-like Jesus of John the Baptist’s saying who separates the good from the bad, but someone in danger of losing the wheat if it gets mixed with the chaff. The indication is that allowing some mixture will lead to a worse mixture, and the mixed wheat will be as worthless as the chaff. The conclusion states that the pure seed belongs in storage that is secure, using the same Greek word ἀποθήκη that is employed in Matt 3:12; but whereas the gospel saying ends with a warning note of the unquenchable fire, no destroying or purifying fire is mentioned in Authentikos Logos. We thus have the image of wheat and chaff 20 There is not much evidence for similar agricultural images in the background even though the act of separating wheat from chaff was common in the ancient world. Xenophon (Oec. 18) mentions wheat and chaff in a purely agricultural context. Apart from Jer 23:28 (LXX), Matt, and Luke, it is not otherwise employed in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. 21 In Matthew the saying is preceded by John’s warnings to Pharisees and Sadducees of the axe by the tree and exhortation to repentance. After John’s words, Jesus arrives from Galilee to be baptized, John and Jesus discuss who should baptize whom, after which John accepts his task and baptizes Jesus who, ascending from the water, sees the heavens opening and the spirit descending as a dove and hears the voice from heaven. Luke instead directs his words of repentance at the people, who ask what they are to do; John exhorts them to share; tax-collectors and soldiers are exhorted not to ask for more than their due. When people ponder if John may be the Messiah, John claims not to be worthy of loosening his sandals, and says Jesus will baptize in spirit and fire. After this follows the threshing-floor saying, followed by a brief mention of John’s imprisonment.

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that are mixed and then separated in the gospel version, and mixed in the Authentikos Logos, storage where the wheat is collected in both, and no reference to a burning of the chaff in Authentikos Logos. This gospel image was employed by early Christian writers in various ways. It is useful to discuss some of these and inquire after similarities and differences in interpretations, in order to learn how Authentikos Logos is positioned in this context. In Dial. 49.3.13, Justin Martyr simply quotes the words but does not otherwise elaborate or explain them. More interpretation is included in the version provided by Irenaeus in Haer. 1.3.5. As he names aeons of Valentinian teaching, he connects the wheat and chaff of Matt 3:12 to the aeon pair Limit/Cross (ὅρος/σταυρός). In Haer. 1.1.6, Irenaeus writes that the Valentinians gave this pair the role of sustaining and separating, and they interpret John’s words as referring to the faculty of the Cross that like fire consumes all that is material, but purifies that which is saved like the winnowing fork purifies the wheat.22 In this interpretation, the idea of separation is maintained and combined with the teaching on aeons. In the Extracts from the Prophets, a work attributed to Clement of Alexandria, it is suggested that fire refers to the spirit since the spirit/wind separates the wheat from the chaff and has a separating effect on material powers (ἐνεργειῶν ὑλικῶν) (Ecl. 25.1–4). Although the focus here too is on the idea of separation and, unlike Authentikos Logos, the role of the spirit is discussed, there is something similar between Authentikos Logos and the reference to the material powers as well as the play on the double meaning of wind/spirit. Authentikos Logos in this context plays on the double meaning of ⲧⲱϩ as “chaff” (noun) and its verbal meaning, “to mix.” Origen interprets John the Baptist’s words in Homily on Luke 26, and he too focuses on the separating effect and Jesus’ role as the one separating the wheat from the chaff. Winnowing cannot be done in still weather, but rather in a strong wind that blows the chaff away but lets the wheat fall to the ground. Origen emphasizes any Christian’s personal qualities that are decisive when temptations arrive: if your soul proves weak during temptation, it is not the temptation that makes you into chaff, but because you are chaff, you are proved light and without faith. Likewise, if you are steadfast through the temptation, it is not the temptation that makes you faithful and steadfast, but the strength or ability (δύναμις) in you to be steadfast is revealed.23 Although Origen maintains the idea of separation in his explanation, he also approaches the winnowing fork and the fire from the view-

22 23

Epiphanius repeats this in Pan. 2.31.15. Origen, Hom. Luc. 26.

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point of temptations and emphasizes the importance of endurance, which goes in the same direction as the image in Authentikos Logos.24 In Haer. 6.9, Hippolytus refers to a teaching of Simon Magus where a connection is made with the wheat and chaff image. Hippolytus claims that Simon took the expression “God is a burning and consuming fire”25 as affirming that fire is the originating principle of the universe. Hippolytus describes and criticizes Simon’s theory, which makes use of the gospel image of wheat, chaff, fire and the granary. According to Hippolytus, Simon was not only wrong, but he plagiarized Heraclitus. According to Simon, fire, the principle of the universe, is twofold, partly secret and partly visible, in the same way that Aristotle speaks of potentiality and energy, and Plato of the intelligible and sensible. 26 Hippolytus says that Simon illustrated his views with a tree-image: the invisible or secret parts are the intellect, the visible parts of the cosmic fire are likened to the root, branches, and leaves of the tree. These parts would be consumed in the alldevouring fire, whereas the fruit – now the image of καρπός turns into one of grain and takes after the gospel saying – will be collected and taken into storage, not cast into the fire as is done to the chaff, or its stem.27 These examples, I suggest, illustrate the varying ways of employing the image of wheat and chaff by early Christian authors. As in Irenaeus’, Clement’s, and Hippolytus’ accounts, the metaphor of Authentikos Logos refers to the general duality between the material and the immaterial, but unlike Authentikos Logos, the other texts focus on the idea of separation that is missing in Authentikos Logos. Compared with the interpretations of the Valentinians or Simon, no philosophical theory or system is apparent in the background of Authentikos Logos. In some ways Authentikos Logos comes close to Origen’s emphasis on endurance and askesis, as the focus is on moral purity and avoidance of mixture. There is another passage in the gospel of Matthew that can be seen reflected in the image of wheat and chaff. In Matt 13 the kingdom of heaven is likened to a field where a man sowed wheat (σίτος), but his enemy secretly planted weeds (ζιζάνια) among the wheat. When the slaves of the man ask whether they should clear the field, they are told to wait for the harvest so that the wheat shall not be damaged. The parable of wheat and weeds presents the mixture of the good and bad as caused by the man’s 24

Irenaeus and Origen read the saying as a metaphor for martyrdom: the chaff is apostasy; wheat, as the fruit-bearing faith, will be put into granaries; affliction (θλῖψις) tests those who are saved (Irenaeus, Haer. 5.28.4 / Fr. Gr. 22.35–48; Origen, Schol. Apoc. 38). In Sel. Ps., Origen says the just are the wheat, the unjust the chaff (PG 12:1505.17). 25 This refers to Deut 4:24. 26 Prudence Allen, The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution 750 BC–AD 1250 (Montreal: Eden Press, 1985), 83–126. 27 Hippolytus, Haer. 6.9.8–10. The Greek καρπός can mean both grain and fruit.

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enemy; the focus is on allowing the mixture to exist until the harvest so that the wheat is not be damaged if the weeds are removed. After the harvest the two are separated, wheat for the storehouse (ἀποθήκη), weeds for the fire. According to Clement of Alexandria, in Valentinian teaching the weed that grows with the divine soul is the material soul (or the ensouled body).28 The two, soul and body, must stay together until death. The view is similar to that of Authentikos Logos, where the chaff refers to life that is material, or the material things of life, but no release is suggested. In Excerpts from Theodotus, the weed is the body in which the soul has to live, not matter or material life. The way gospel images are employed in Authentikos Logos indicates that (some of) the (intended) audience of Authentikos Logos would have needed to be adequately versed in the Scriptures and their language in order to be able to recognize the allusions. In the wheat and chaff imagery several overlapping images are called to mind, and the approach to the text is such that it was not seen as necessary to retain everything of the original. Further clues to the interpretation of the wheat and the chaff allusion are provided in two comments preceding the metaphor: that a desirous thought defiles a person who is a virgin and that gluttony cannot mix with moderation (25.6–11). The tone is that of paraenesis and the recipients are reminded that they are to restrain themselves in matters of sexuality and eating, even in thoughts. “Desire” can mean more than sexual desire, but the reference to a virgin suggests sexual abstinence. Control of sexuality and eating are among the central concerns of an ascetic way of life,29 and, according to this text, one should not so much as give room to the wrong type of thoughts.30 The wheat and chaff image also ends with a revealing statement: “But pure (or holy) seed is kept in secure storage” (25.24–25).31 It is not difficult to imagine that this could have been aimed at real-life 28

Clement, Exc. 51.3, 53.1. Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 218–22; Andrew Crislip, “‘I Have Chosen Sickness’: The Controversial Function of Sickness in Early Christian Ascetic Practice,” in Asceticism and Its Critics: Historical Accounts and Comparative Perspectives (ed. Oliver Freiberger; AARCCS; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 179–209; Richard Valantasis, “Nag Hammadi and Asceticism: Theory and Practice,” in Papers Presented at the Thirteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 1999: Ascetica, Gnostica, Liturgica, Orientalia (ed. Maurice F. Wiles and Edward J. Yarnold; StPatr 35; Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 172–90. 30 Compare this strictness of morals with Mark 9:43–49; Matt 5:28–30, 18:8–9. 31 The saying is the last one in the section that ends with the authorial comment, “All of this we have spoken” (25.26–27). The “pure/holy seed” is an expression that appears in 1 and 2 Esdras and in early Christian Isaiah commentaries and homilies, for example 1 Esd 8:67; 2 Esd 9:2; Origen, Hom. Jer. 5.13.26 (in pl.); Eusebius, Comm. Isa. 1.42.102– 109; John Chrysostom, Comm. Isa. 6.6.53. 29

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virgins and ascetics who should keep themselves in “secure storehouses” of ascetic seclusion, or that it could have been heard as having such aim.32

Flight of the Soul to its Treasure, the Mind After the wheat and chaff image the discussion in Authentikos Logos concerns the great contest in the world in which people have to take part. The main theme, the journey of the soul, is resumed at the end of page 27, and on page 28 the story of the soul takes a new direction. The soul gains its strength and is victorious over its enemies. Here, again, the image of a storehouse appears: She (the soul) will speak boldly in her might, and with her sceptre. When her enemies look at her, they are ashamed. She is fleeing upwards to her treasure – that is where her mind is – and to her strong storehouse. Not one of the things that have a beginning has seized her, nor has she allowed a stranger into her house. (28.20–30, my trans.).

The passage describes the soul’s victory over opposing forces, its humiliated enemies, and contains an allusion to the gospel saying “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” in Matt 6:21 (par. Luke 12:34).33 The Coptic ⲁϩⲟ is an equivalent to the Greek θησαυρός and it is parallel with ἀποθήκη just below. To render the allusion more transparent, I have translated it as “treasure,” contrary to MacRae and Meyer who opted for “treasure-house.”34 It may at first emerge as intriguing that Authentikos Logos employs the word “mind” (νοῦς), instead of “heart” (καρδία), but we note that the Sahidic New Testament uses the word ϩⲏⲧ that means both “heart” and “mind” in Matt 6:21.35 But this is not an exceptional version of the saying even in Greek sources. It occurs in several early Christian texts that quote or refer to this saying. Sometimes the order is changed so that the mind is mentioned first, and treasure after that. Roelof van den Broek discussed some of the evidence (Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Macarius, and the Gospel of Mary) in his early article on Authentikos 32

Tervahauta, A Story, 170–71. Ὅπου γάρ ἐστιν ὁ θησαυρός σου, ἐκεῖ ἔσται καὶ ἡ καρδία σου. In Matthew’s version (6:21) the pronoun “your” is singular (σου), while in Luke 12:34 it is plural (ὑμῶν). 34 MacRae, “Authoritative Teaching,” 273; Marvin Meyer, trans., “Authoritative Discourse,” in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition (ed. Marvin Meyer; New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 385. 35 Walter Ewing Crum, A Coptic Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), 714. One may hypothesize that if the work was originally written in Greek, the translator decided that the καρδία of a hypothetical Greek original should be rendered as ⲛⲟⲩⲥ rather than ϩⲏⲧ, or that a scribe at some point decided that ⲛⲟⲩⲥ rather than ϩⲏⲧ is meant here. I thank Hugo Lundhaug for these notions. 33

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Logos,36 but more material is taken into account here, and hence different conclusions will be drawn. Already Justin Martyr in 1 Apol. 15.16.2 replaced the heart of the gospel versions with the mind, but kept the original order: ὅπου γὰρ ὁ θησαυρός ἐστιν, ἐκεῖ καὶ ὁ νοῦς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου.37 After Justin the quote appears in several Christian authors who have replaced “heart” with “mind”, and sometimes changed the order as well. Two of the inverted-order quotes appear in Clement of Alexandria’s On the Salvation of the Rich Man (17.1.7) and Stromata (7.12.77): ὅπου γὰρ ὁ νοῦς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, ἐκεῖ καὶ ὁ θησαυρὸς αὐτοῦ.38 Further, a Coptic version with the words ⲛⲟⲩⲥ and ⲁϩⲟ is found in the Gospel of Mary: ⲡⲙⲁ ⲅⲁⲣ ⲉⲧⲉⲣⲉⲡⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲙ̄ⲙⲁⲩ ⲉϥⲙⲙⲁⲩ ⲛϭⲓ ⲡⲉϩⲟ (10:15–16).39 Other texts where this version of the saying is attested are the commentaries of Didymus the Blind and the sermons and homilies of PseudoMacarius. In his Commentary on Psalms, Didymus first explains that “heart” and “mind” mean the same, and then provides the saying in the gospel order: ἡ καρδία καὶ ὁ νοῦς ταὐτὸν σημαίνει· ὅταν γὰρ λέγῃ· “ὅπου ὁ θησαυρός, ἐκεῖ καὶ ἡ καρδία σου ἔσται”, ἐκεῖ καὶ ὁ νοῦς σου.40 Further on in the Commentary Didymus again repeats the saying (ἐπεὶ γὰρ ὅπου ὁ θησαυρός, ἐκεῖ καὶ ὁ νοῦς ἐστιν “καρδία” ὀνομαζόμενος).41 The saying is quoted with some variation in the homilies and sermons of PseudoMacarius, in the gospel form as well as with inverted order and mind instead of heart.42 Further, in the letters of the sixth-century Palestinian ascetics Barsanuphius and John of Gaza, the version with original order, but

36

See also van den Broek, “The Authentikos Logos,” 225–26. It is unlikely that the allusion refers directly to a Q-saying, as Matthew was of course known in third- and fourth-century Egypt; cf. Tuckett, Nag Hammadi, 49. The gospel saying is also referred to (differently from Auth. Teach.) in Teach. Silv. 88.15–17 (“Live in Christ and you will acquire a treasure in heaven”), and Sent. Sextus 316 = 27.17–20 (“Where your thought is, there is also your good”), and Testim. Truth 31.18–22. 37 “Where the treasure is, there is the mind of a person” (Justin, 1 Apol. 15.16.2). 38 Ὅπου γὰρ ὁ νοῦς τινος, φησίν, ἐκεῖ καὶ ὁ θησαυρὸς αὐτοῦ (Clement, Strom. 7.12.77.6). Roelof van den Broek also lists Strom. 4.33.5, but this appears to be a mistake. 39 Both Auth. Teach. and Gos. Mary use the Greek νοῦς, whereas the Sahidic version of Matthew reads ϩⲏⲧ. See the discussion by Christopher Tuckett, The Gospel of Mary (OECGT; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 65–67, 171–73. 40 Didymus the Blind, Comm. Ps. 20–21 (codex p. 53.18); Comm. Eccl. 44.16. 41 Didymus the Blind, Comm. Ps. 35–39 (codex p. 276.27). 42 The gospel version is quoted in Ps-Macarius, Spiritual Homilies 50 (collection H) 27.270 and the inverted order and the word νοῦς in 43.32 in Dörries, Klostermann, and Krüger, eds., Die 50 geistlichen Homilien des Makarios (PTS 4; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1964), 228, 286. See also Ps-Macarius, Spiritual Homilies 50, 11.114–117.

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mind instead of heart, is quoted twice (Ep. 77.51 and Ep. 153.24).43 The saying is attested in this form even in later Christian literature, and it is still known by Gregory of Palamas in the 14th century.44 It is worth noting that Pistis Sophia 90 and Mani’s Kephalaia 89.3–4 and 91.8–10 refer to it, but they have ϩⲏⲧ instead of ⲛⲟⲩⲥ. This, obviously, renders unlikely any suggestion that the choice of “mind” (νοῦς) reflects any “Gnostic” interpretation. Roelof van den Broek considered the replacement of heart with mind and the inverted order a deviant version of the saying that possibly stems from an independent translation of an original Aramaic saying of Jesus, and suggested a fixed, literary tradition.45 However, the evidence can also be taken as an indication of the fluidity of the saying: heart or mind can be used, and the order varies. It is certainly clear that the version with “mind” circulated amongst Christian authors in the east from the second to the fifth centuries and much later on. Only Justin who, although born in Flavia Neapolis, Palestine (modern-day Nablus), taught in Rome. It is thus possible that the heart/mind variation originates from different translations of Semitic ‫לֵב‬, from Justin who is the first written source, or the influence of the Coptic language. Wherever that change lies, the dual meaning between heart and mind would have made sense in the Egyptian context, since Coptic ϩⲏⲧ has both meanings. Finally, since in Authentikos Logos the mindtreasure maxim is alluded to and not quoted, this can be taken to suggest that this version of the saying was well known, perhaps in both versions (the gospel-order and the inverted order, with νοῦς).

The Soul Gives Birth to the Offspring of Matter Throughout Authentikos Logos the soul is under constant attack from its enemies and adversaries. Occasionally adversaries become the Adversary in the singular, for example, on page 31 where the long and winding parable of the fish and the fishermen continues. The section is part of the explanation of the fishing imagery: that the fish refer to people and the bait 43

Ὅπου ὁ θησαυρὸς αὐτῶν (Ep. 153.24: σου), ἐκεῖ καὶ ὁ νοῦς αὐτῶν ἐστι (Ep. 153.24: ὁ νοῦς σου). Barsanuphius (d. 540) was born in Egypt but spent most of his life as a hermit in Gaza. Many late fourth-century Egyptian monks from Scetis and elsewhere fled the controversy and persecution of the Origenist controversy and found refuge in the Gaza area. See Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Arieh Kofsky, “Monasticism in the Holy Land,” in Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land: From the Origins to the Latin Kingdoms (ed. Ora Limor and Guy G. Stroumsa; CELAMA 5; Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 267. 44 Gregory Palamas, Hom. 44.9.29, 62.1.22. 45 Van den Broek, “The Authentikos Logos,” 225.

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to different desires and vices placed in front of the people. The consequences of taking the bait are explained: Then the Adversary prepares all these beautifully and spreads them before the body. He wants the heart46 of the soul to incline towards one of them, and like a hook that pulls her by force, submerge her in ignorance. He deceives her until she conceives by evil and gives birth to offspring of matter. She leads a tainted life and pursues many desires and greed. The sweetness of carnal things entices her into ignorance. (31.8–24, my trans.)

The Adversary deceives the soul who, in turn, conceives and gives birth to the offspring of matter (or material offspring). The soul takes the bait and succumbs to the temptations that are spread before the body, and in that way the Adversary gets to the soul. The idea is illustrated with rather commonplace imagery of sexual seduction, but biblical language can be heard here, and was perhaps also heard by ancient audiences. A similar process is suggested in Jas 1:14–15. In that text, the writer exhorts the recipients to be steadfast in temptations, and never to think that God would send temptations. Rather, “one is tempted by one’s own desire that draws and entices him, and when the desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when the sin is fully grown, it gives birth to death.”47 The concepts of desire, deception, pulling, conception, and birth-giving form the common ground between Authentikos Logos and the Epistle of James. In James, everyone is tempted by their own desire, and that is what pulls and deceives them, whereas in Authentikos Logos the Adversary deceives the soul. In James, the result of desire’s conception is the birth of sin that in turn gives birth to death. In Authentikos Logos, the soul conceives and gives birth to the offspring of matter. Desire is connected to the image as the soul pursues desires in her earthly life. The most significant, even striking, difference between the two texts is the lack of the words “sin” or “death” in Authentikos Logos, where, however, “evil” (κακόν) and “matter” (ὕλη) are given similar roles. An example of this image from the Epistle of James is found in Vit. Ant. 21 where the audience is exhorted to struggle against being tyrannized by anger or ruled by desire because it is written that “the wrath of man does not produce God’s justice, and desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death.” Jas 1:15 and 1:20 are then quoted.48 The Life of Antony combines the images of conception 46 The Coptic term employed here is ϩⲏⲧ that, as discussed above, could also be translated as “mind.” 47 Jas 1:14–15: ἕκαστος δὲ πειράζεται ὑπὸ τῆς ἰδίας ἐπιθυμίας ἐξελκόμενος καὶ δελεαζόμενος· εἶτα ἡ ἐπιθυμία συλλαβοῦσα τίκτει ἁμαρτίαν, ἡ δὲ ἁμαρτία ἀποτελεσθεῖσα ἀποκύει θάνατον. 48 Athanasius, Vit. Ant. 21.1, citing Jas 1:20 and 1:15 with minor changes (κατεργάζεται instead of James’ ἐργάζεται).

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and giving birth to sin with advice on how the ascetics are to live: “Thus living (πολιτευόμενοι), let us be sober, without swerving, and, as it is written, ‘Keep our heart with all vigilance.’” Also, Eph 6:12 and its idea of evil forces that oppose people is added to the discussion: “We have terrible and cunning enemies, evil demons. And against these ‘is our struggle,’ as says the apostle, ‘not against blood and flesh, but rulers, authorities, cosmic powers of the darkness of this age, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places,’” and he goes on to discuss demons, their nature and activities. Authentikos Logos does not exhort directly in the manner of the Life of Antony, but rather describes the soul’s final turning away from evil and how the soul chooses such a new way of life (πολιτεία) that enables her ascent.49 Both works discuss evil forces. In Authentikos Logos the Adversary is to be associated with the Devil, who was mentioned on the previous page (30.27), and in the Life of Antony the opponents of the soul are demons. Both connect their discussions to the way of life.

The Light that Does Not Set Authentikos Logos is not a pessimistic text. It does not mention sin or gloomy repentance: the soul reaches its goal when it realizes the transient nature of passions and, discarding fleeting things, changes its direction and goes after what connects it with true life. This turn takes place immediately after the warning that the soul that succumbs to temptations will give birth to the offspring of matter. The victory of the soul contains imagery that alludes to, or at least echoes biblical language. The shepherd standing at the gate of the sheepfold (32.9–11) reflects Christ as the Good Shepherd who guards the gate of the sheepfold in John 10:2–16. The defeated slavetraders (32.18–23) who weep for the loss of their merchandise resemble the defeated merchants of the great Babylon in Rev 18:11–15.50 The very end of Authentikos Logos describes the sweet rewards of the rational soul: “She acquired knowledge of God, reached her rising, rested in the one who is at rest, lay down in the bridal chamber, ate of the meal for which she had hungered, received the food of immortality, found what she had sought, and received rest from her sufferings.”51 The text concludes by praising a never-setting light: “The light that shines upon her does not set, and to it belongs the glory, might and revelation for ever and ever. Amen.”52

49

Auth. Teach. 31.24–32.16. For the latter, see Tervahauta, A Story, 178–81. 51 Auth. Teach. 35.2–16. 52 Auth. Teach. 35.17–22. 50

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The resemblance of this doxology, ⲉⲣⲉⲡⲟⲩⲟⲉⲓⲛ ⲉⲧ⳿ⲡⲣ̄ⲣⲓⲱⲟⲩ ⲉϩⲣⲁⲓ̈ ⲉϫⲱⲥ ⲉⲙⲁϥϩⲱⲧⲡ̄⳿· ⲡⲁⲓ̈ ⲉⲧⲉ ⲡⲱϥ ⲡⲉ ⲡⲉⲟⲟⲩ ⲙⲛ̄ ⲡⲁⲙⲁϩⲧⲉ ⲙⲛ̄ ⲡⲟⲩⲱⲛϩ̄ ⲉⲃⲟⲗ ϣⲁ ⲉⲛⲉϩ ⲛ̄ⲧⲉ ⲛⲓⲉⲛⲉϩ ϩⲁⲙⲏⲛ, to the doxology that came to be attached to the Lord’s Prayer is apparent. What is the light that does not set, to which it is addressed? The never-setting or perpetual light (φῶς ἀνέσπερον or φῶς ἄδυτον) is a common biblical and Christian image that symbolizes different things in Christian texts: it can be an image of Christ, or refer to salvation.53 In a sermon of Ephrem the Syrian, it is promised, together with rest (ἀνάπαυσις), to those who are weary. 54 As will be seen, the scriptural background, especially Isa 60, of the light image identifies the light as the Lord, and hence a similar reference can be suggested here. In addition to Isa 60, Rev 21:22–25 and 5 Ezra (2 Esd) 2:35 will be discussed, as will three writings from the Nag Hammadi Library that use the image. Isaiah 60 celebrates the bright future of Jerusalem and the glory of the Lord upon her, the time when kings and nations shall walk by her brightness and gather in Jerusalem. 55 Prosperity, peace, and righteousness (δικαιοσύνη, Isa 60:17) replace injustice, destruction, and hardship (ταλαιπωρία, Isa 60:18). This time is described as bathing in the brightness of God: And the sun shall not be your light by day, nor shall the rising of the moon give you light at night, but the Lord will be to you an everlasting light and God your glory. The sun shall not go down for you, and the moon shall not eclipse for you, for the Lord will be to you an everlasting light, and the days of your sorrow shall be fulfilled. (Isa 60:19–20 NETS, modified).56

Isaiah speaks of the collective salvation of the people of Israel and the nations. Some of the vocabulary is similar to Authentikos Logos, but in Authentikos Logos the shared words (φῶς/ⲟⲩⲟⲉⲓⲛ, ταλαιπωρία, ἀνατολὴ, αἰών, and δόξα) describe the aim of the soul’s ascent. The idea of a blissful end in both indicates that an allusion is most probably knowingly made. Read against the background of Isaiah, it can be suggested that the Lord (Christ) is the never-setting light in the doxology of Authentikos Logos. 53 Light refers to Christ, e.g., in Origen, Cels. 6.66 and Methodius, Symp. 1.5; to salvation in Ps.-Epiphanius, “Homilia in divini corporis sepulturam” 43.440.44–50. See also Hugo Lundhaug, “‘These Are the Symbols and Likenesses of the Resurrection’: Conceptualizations of Death and Transformation in the Treatise on the Resurrection (NHC I,4)” in Metamorphoses: Resurrection, Body and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity (ed. Turid Karlsen Seim and Jorunn Økland; Ekstasis 1; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 198–99. 54 Ephrem, Sermon on the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, 43.13–44.1. 55 Van den Broek, “The Authentikos Logos,” 206–34. 56 Καὶ οὐκ ἔσται σοι ὁ ἥλιος εἰς φῶς ἡμέρας, οὐδὲ ἀνατολὴ σελήνης φωτιεῖ σοι τὴν νύκτα, ἀλλ᾽ ἔσται σοι κύριος φῶς αἰώνιον καὶ ὁ θεὸς δόξα σου. οὐ γὰρ δύσεται ὁ ἥλιός σοι, καὶ ἡ σελήνη σοι οὐκ ἐκλείψει· ἔσται γὰρ κύριός σοι φῶς αἰώνιον, καὶ ἀναπληρωθήςονται αἱ ἡμέραι τοῦ πένθους σου.

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The Isaiah text is further echoed in two books that are part of the wider collection of Christian Scripture: The Revelation of John and the deuterocanonical Fifth Ezra. In Revelation, the new, heavenly Jerusalem needs no sun or moon, because the glory of God will illuminate it (Rev 21:22–25, 22:5). Revelation attests the Christian way of employing the idea of the eternal day from eschatology, but it is not the only occasion where this concept appears. Similarly, 5 Ezra 2 depicts the prophet Ezra receiving a message from the Lord on Mount Horeb to proclaim his message to the nations after the people of Israel have rejected him. In a manner that reflects Isa 60, 5 Ezra 2 addresses the nations and exhorts them to receive the promises and rewards of the Lord: Therefore I say to you, O nations that hear and understand: “Wait for your shepherd; he will give you everlasting rest, because he who will come at the end of the age is close at hand. Be ready for the rewards of the kingdom, because perpetual light will shine on you for evermore. Flee from the shadow of this age, receive the joy of your glory; I publicly call on my saviour to witness. Receive what the Lord has entrusted to you and be joyful, giving thanks to him who has called you to the celestial kingdoms. Rise, stand erect, and see the number of those who have been sealed at the feast of the Lord. Those who have departed from the shadow of this age have received glorious garments from the Lord. (5 Ezra/2 Esd 2:34–39 NRSV)

Fifth Ezra is a Christian text and its message is directed at Christians, inheritors of Israel who have refused God’s commandments. Again, this collective form of address uses language that can be heard in the more individualistic description of the destination of the soul and its rewards that precede the doxology in Authentikos Logos. The soul that has ascended (risen) and received rest takes part in the δεῖπνον and is clothed in her wedding clothes (in Authentikos Logos), “glorious garments” (in Fifth Ezra). These are images of salvation in both texts. Differences include the collective nature of Ezra’s proclamation, and the exhortation to good works that precedes the Ezra passage.57 Could Authentikos Logos allude to Fifth Ezra at all? That is far from certain, for the provenance of Fifth Ezra is unknown: it is not even certain whether Fifth Ezra was known in Egypt at the time Authentikos Logos was circulating. Fifth Ezra exists today as part of the deuterocanonical 2 Esdras, which is a composite of three texts. The oldest part of the book consists of chapters 3–14 (Fourth Ezra), to which were added chapters 15–16 (Sixth Ezra), and finally, 1–2 (Fifth Ezra).58 Fifth Ezra is today extant only 57 Found in 2 Esd 2:15–32; perhaps worth noting for the similar, albeit briefer exhortation in Gos. Truth. The polemical section in Auth. Teach. 33.4–34.32 could be read as a form of exhortation (it is said that even pagans give alms), but that is not the primary tone of the section. 58 Theodore A. Bergren, “Christian Influence on the Transmission History of 4, 5, and 6 Ezra,” in The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity (ed. James VanderKam

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in Latin manuscripts, 59 but on linguistic grounds it is assumed that both Fifth and Sixth Ezra were originally written in Greek, and there is evidence for this for Sixth Ezra, a short Greek fragment of which has been found at Oxyrhynchus.60 One of the first Christian authors to quote Fourth Ezra (2 Esdras 5:35) is Clement of Alexandria in Strom. 3:16, as stemming from “Esdras the prophet.” Theodore Bergren has suggested that the association of the three Ezras was probably known in the mid-fifth century at the latest.61 Fifth Ezra may (or may not) have been circulating separately before it was textually connected with the 4/6 Ezra corpus.62 This raises the question of to what extent the Ezra-excerpts were known in late ancient Egypt. That is not known, but it has been suggested that it could have been written in the second century. 63 Clement’s knowledge of Fourth Ezra, as well as the Oxyrhynchus fragment of Sixth Ezra render it possible to assume that Fifth Ezra may also have been known in Egypt in the first centuries CE. Apart from Isaiah and Fifth Ezra, the image of never-setting light is also employed in three other Nag Hammadi writings: the Gospel of Truth (NHC I,3), the Tripartite Tractate (NHC I,5), and the Gospel of Philip (NHC II,3). Only the Gospel of Truth occurrence appears to contain ideas similar to those in Authentikos Logos, whereas in the Tripartite Tractate and the Gospel of Philip the connection is tied to a discussion of rituals, baptism, and William Adler; CRINT; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 102–3, 115–20; David A. deSilva, Introducing the Apocrypha: Message, Context, and Significance (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 323–24; Hugo Duensing and Aurelio de Santos Otero, “Das fünfte und sechste Buch Esra,” in Neutestamentliche Apokryphen in deutscher Übersetzung II: Apostolisches Apokalypsen und Verwandtes (ed. Edgar Hennecke and Wilhelm Schneemelcher; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1989), 581–82; Graham N. Stanton, “5 Ezra and Matthean Christianity in the Second Century,” JTS 28 (1977): 67–83. 59 Bergren, “Christian Influence,” 102–3, 115; deSilva, Introducing the Apocrypha, 346; Jacob Martin Myers, I and II Esdras: Introduction, Translation and Commentary (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 107. Fifth Ezra is “quoted extensively in both the Roman and Mozarabic liturgies, many elements of which go back at least to the 5th century” (Bergren, “Christian Influence”, 115). Interestingly, the never-setting light that shines on the soul, mentioned in Auth. Teach. and 5 Ezra, is associated with departed souls in a Latin requiem that quotes the passage from 5 Ezra in the Introit: “Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Te decet hymnus Deus, in Sion, et tibi reddetur votum in Ierusalem. Exaudi orationem meam; ad te omnis caro veniet. Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.” Cf. Duensing and Santos Otero, “Das fünfte und sechste Buch Esra,” 582. 60 DeSilva, Introducing the Apocrypha, 347; Duensing and Santos Otero, “Das fünfte und sechste Buch Esra,” 581; Myers, I and II Esdras, 153, 115, 118. 61 Bergren, “Christian Influence,” 126–27, cf. 117. 62 Bergren, “Christian Influence,” 120. 63 Duensing and Santos Otero, “Das fünfte und sechste Buch Esra,” 581; Stanton, “5 Ezra and Matthean Christianity,” 67–83.

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and the bridal chamber respectively. This attests to the popularity of the image in the works of Christian authors. The Gospel of Truth 31.35–32.37 explains the good shepherd and the one lost sheep of a flock of one hundred in Matt 18:12–14, and the shepherd who will rescue a sheep that has fallen into a pit in Matt 12:11–12. The shepherd is the Father, and the Sabbath is the day of salvation: it is the day that has no night and a light that does not set: this is in line with Isa 60 and 2 Esd 2. This never-setting light dwells within “you” (the assumed recipients of Gos. Truth), and they are to speak of this light to those who seek it or who have sinned.64 The inner light, therefore, is the salvation that the faithful have within themselves, and they are to proclaim the salvation to others. This combination of salvific imagery and exhortation recalls 2 Esdras, and it continues in a way that also suits the spirit of Matt 25:31–46. The Gospel of Truth makes it very clear that talk of salvation is not enough, but deeds of charity must accompany the message. The feet of those who stumble are to be strengthened, hands must be reached out to those who are sick, the hungry fed, and the weary given rest.65 It is obvious that this section of the Gospel of Truth is firmly based on the gospel tradition. As in Isa 60, 2 Esd 2, and Authentikos Logos, the never-setting light is associated with salvation. Differing from the others, however, Auth. Teach. 35 focuses on the soul’s salvation, without suggesting that salvation is the Sabbath (or that the Sabbath should be explained as salvation), or that salvation should be proclaimed to others, accompanied by deeds of charity. The promoted lifestyle rather focuses on combat against vice as a crucial aspect of true Christian life. This does not necessarily exclude charity, but charity is not discussed in Authentikos Logos. The two other references to the unsetting light are connected with a discussion of rituals. In Tripartite Tractate 128.25–129.10 the true meaning of baptism is “garment,” “confirmation of truth,” “silence,” “bridal chamber,” “flameless light that does not set,” and “immortality.” The final section of the Gospel of Philip (85–86) contains teaching on the mystery of the bridal chamber: the person who experiences this mystery, receives the perfect light (Gos. Phil. 85.25–28). This is a marriage of the day: its mysteries are perfected in day and in light, and neither its day nor its light ever sets (86.1–4). The connecting point between Authentikos Logos, the Tripartite Tractate and the Gospel of Philip is the language that portrays salvation as eternal light, but what this salvation is, is perceived somewhat differently. In Authentikos Logos the ascent is the soul’s salvation; in the 64 According to Philip Tite, the text exhorts its audiences to proclaim salvation; Tite, Valentinian Ethics and Paraenetic Discourse: Determining the Social Function of Moral Exhortation in Valentinian Christianity (NHMS 67; Leiden: Brill, 2009), 239, 263–64. 65 Gos. Truth 33.1–11. See also Tite, Valentinian Ethics, 241.

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Tripartite Tractate it is baptism; and in the Gospel of Philip it is also baptism, including chrismation and Eucharist. The images of rest, the bridal chamber, immortal food, and the shining light that does not set describe salvation and reaching the goal.

Conclusion In this article, I set out to discuss scriptural allusions in the Authentikos Logos from Nag Hammadi Codex VI. Four passages where allusions can be detected were studied with the aim of understanding how they are employed within the text in comparison with their original contexts and other texts where the same passages are referred to or alluded to. In the metaphor of the wheat and chaff, gospel images of harmful mixtures are maintained, whereas the idea of separation is absent. On the other hand, in the allusion to “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” the change of the word “heart” to “mind” is not unusual, but can be found in the works of several early Christian authors from Justin onwards. That means the fluidity and variation for this maxim is well-attested, and places Authentikos Logos firmly within the Christian traditions around the eastern Mediterranean. Further, the birth-giving images suggest that an allusion to, or perhaps echoes of, the Epistle of James is found in Authentikos Logos. It is adapted in a way that discards such central elements of the intertext as sin and death. Finally, the doxology of Authentikos Logos is dedicated to “the light that does not set,” which reflects scriptural language, and is used in a context that is similar to the intertexts. Just as in Isa 60 and 2 Esd 2, the “light that does not set” is used in an eschatological context, but in Authentikos Logos the end-times’ collective eschatology is replaced by a lyrical description of the soul’s eschaton, its final ascent. Isaiah 60:19 and 20 directly state that “the Lord will be your everlasting light,” and perhaps the light to which the doxology is dedicated in Authentikos Logos can be interpreted as a reference to the Christ. Nag Hammadi texts have been and are still often associated with socalled Gnostic Christianity. The last allusion that was discussed reveals considerable differences between Authentikos Logos and three other texts from the Nag Hammadi Codices that also employ the image, the Gospel of Truth, the Tripartite Tractate, and the Gospel of Philip. Although the Nag Hammadi Codices contain many writings that can be read as representatives of Valentinian and other such traditions, the case of Authentikos Logos reminds one not to approach all the writings in these codices within such a framework. Also, it has to be borne in mind that the context of the codices is in any case different from the second-century origins of many of

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the writings. Too much emphasis on hypothetical origins can be problematic, just as focus on authorial intention is a complicated question in the discussion of allusions. A more interesting and fruitful aspect of allusions is what they suggest about (ideal) readers and shared familiarity with the Scriptures between the author(s) and readers. When it comes to the readership and what the allusions reveal about the (intended or actual) audience that read or heard Authentikos Logos, we can assume that ideally a recipient would have had a profound enough knowledge of Christian Scriptures to have been able to appreciate these connections. The intended readers would have been well versed in Scriptures either because they read them or because they heard them read. Whether this was actually so may be impossible to prove, but Authentikos Logos and Codex VI as well as other books in the Nag Hammadi collection do point to readers with wide literary interests and knowledge.66 Finally, what can be said about the relationship between the Exegesis on the Soul and Authentikos Logos? Why does one use the Scriptures directly to explain and prove while the other hides and veils what lies behind? In my view the two texts remind us that the two approaches to Scripture are not mutually exclusive but exist side by side. These similar and yet different texts gave their audiences advice regarding their progress on their ascetic journeys and spiritual quests, one by drawing directly from the Scriptures of the past, the other, through a glass, darkly. Bibliography Allen, Prudence. The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution 750 BC–AD 1250. Montreal: Eden Press, 1985. Bergren, Theodore A. “Christian Influence on the Transmission History of 4, 5, and 6 Ezra.” Pages 102–27 in The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity. Edited by James VanderKam and William Adler. Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1996. Bitton-Ashkelony, Brouria, and Arieh Kofsky. “Monasticism in the Holy Land.” Pages 257–91 in Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land: From the Origins to the Latin Kingdoms. Edited by Ora Limor and Guy G. Stroumsa. Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 5. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. Broek, Roelof van den. “The Authentikos Logos: A New Document of Christian Platonism.” Pages 206–34 in Studies in Gnosticism and Alexandrian Christianity. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 39. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Originally published in Vigiliae Christianae 33 (1979): 260–89. Brown, Peter. The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

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Cf. Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 4, 146.

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Crislip, Andrew. “‘I Have Chosen Sickness’: The Controversial Function of Sickness in Early Christian Ascetic Practice.” Pages 179–209 in Asceticism and Its Critics: Historical Accounts and Comparative Perspectives. Edited by Oliver Freiberger. American Academy of Religion Cultural Criticism Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Crum, Walter Ewing. A Coptic Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939. deSilva, David A. Introducing the Apocrypha: Message, Context, and Significance. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2002. Dimant, Devorah. “Use and Interpretation of Mikra in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha.” Pages 379–419 in Mikra: Text, Tradition, Reading & Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism & Early Christianity. Edited by Martin Jan Mulder. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2004. Duensing Hugo, and Aurelio de Santos Otero. “Das fünfte und sechste Buch Esra.” Pages 581–90 in Neutestamentliche Apokryphen in deutscher Übersetzung II: Apostolisches Apokalypsen und Verwandtes. Edited by Edgar Hennecke and Wilhelm Schneemelcher. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1989. Evans, Craig A., Robert L. Webb, and Richard A. Wiebe, eds. Nag Hammadi Texts and the Bible: A Synopsis and Index. New Testament Tools and Studies 18. Leiden: Brill, 1993. Irwin, William. “What Is an Allusion?” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59 (2001): 287–97. Lundhaug, Hugo. “‘These Are the Symbols and Likenesses of the Resurrection’: Conceptualizations of Death and Transformation in the Treatise on the Resurrection (NHC I,4).” Pages 187–205 in Metamorphoses: Resurrection, Body and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity. Edited by Turid Karlsen Seim and Jorunn Økland. Ekstasis: Religious Experience from Antiquity to the Middle Ages 1. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009. –. Images of Rebirth: Cognitive Poetics and Transformational Soteriology in the Gospel of Philip and the Exegesis on the Soul. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 73. Leiden: Brill, 2010. MacRae, George W. “Authoritative Teaching (NHC VI,3).” Pages 257–89 in Nag Hammadi Codices V,2–5 and VI with Papyrus Berolinensis 8502,1 and 4. Edited by Douglas M. Parrott. Nag Hammadi Studies 11. Leiden: Brill, 1979. Meyer, Marvin. “Authoritative Discourse.” Pages 383–89 in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition. Edited by Marvin Meyer. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. –. “Thought, Forethought, and Afterthought.” Pages 217–31 in Beyond the Gnostic Gospels: Studies Building on the Work of Elaine Pagels. Edited by Eduard Iricinschi, Lance Jenott, Nicola Denzey Lewis, and Philippa Townsend. Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 82. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013. Moss, Candida. “Nailing Down and Tying Up: Lessons in Intertextual Impossibility from the Martyrdom of Polycarp.” Vigiliae Christianae 67 (2013): 117–36. Myers, Jacob Martin. I and II Esdras: Introduction, Translation and Commentary. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Painchaud, Louis. “The Use of Scripture in Gnostic Literature.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 4 (1996): 129–46. Porter, Stanley E. “Allusions and Echoes.” Pages 29–40 in As It Is Written: Studying Paul’s Use of Scripture. Edited by Stanley E. Porter and Christopher D. Stanley. Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series 50. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008.

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Scholten, Clemens. Martyrium und Sophiamythos im Gnostizismus nach den Texten von Nag Hammadi. Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, Ergänzungband 14. Münster: Aschendorff, 1987. Stanton, Graham N. “5 Ezra and Matthean Christianity in the Second Century” Journal of Theological Studies 28 (1977): 67–83. Tervahauta, Ulla. A Story of the Soul's Journey in the Nag Hammadi Library: A Study of Authentikos Logos (NHC VI,3). Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus 107. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015. Tite, Philip. Valentinian Ethics and Paraenetic Discourse: Determining the Social Function of Moral Exhortation in Valentinian Christianity. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 67. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Tuckett, Christopher. Nag Hammadi and the Gospel Tradition: Synoptic Tradition in the Nag Hammadi Library. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986. –. The Gospel of Mary. Oxford Early Christian Gospel Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Valantasis, Richard. “Nag Hammadi and Asceticism: Theory and Practice.” Pages 172–90 in Papers Presented at the Thirteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 1999: Ascetica, Gnostica, Liturgica, Orientalia. Edited by Maurice F. Wiles and Edward J. Yarnold. Studia Patristica 35. Leuven: Peeters, 2001.

Part III Religious Diversity in Egypt

Hermes between Pagans and Christians: The Nag Hammadi Hermetica in Context CHRISTIAN H. BULL1 The scholarship on the Hermetic treatises in Nag Hammadi Codex VI has largely focused on the authorial stage of the texts, formulating hypotheses on what the original context of the Greek originals were, and the literary relationship between Hermetic and “Gnostic” teachings in the second and third centuries. The fourth century context of the actual manuscript has received next to no attention, however, and it is this context that will be the subject of the present contribution. Jean-Pierre Mahé, in his twovolume critical edition of the Nag Hammadi Hermetica, considered the Coptic translator(s) and the scribe of Codex VI to be Gnostics who held an interest in Hermes Trismegistus.2 Since Hermetism is often referred to as a form of pagan Gnosticism, such an interest would according to this point of view be understandable. Furthermore, the presence of the Hermetica in the Nag Hammadi Codices has been used to argue against the hypothesis that the collection could have belonged to monks, since orthodox monks 1 This article has been written under the aegis of project NEWCONT (New Contexts for Old Texts: Unorthodox Texts and Monastic Manuscript Culture in Fourth- and FifthCentury Egypt) at the University of Oslo, Faculty of Theology. The project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) / ERC Grant Agreement no. 283741. 2 Jean-Pierre Mahé, Hermès en Haute-Égypte (2 vols.; BCNH.T 3, 7; Québec: Les presses de l’université Laval, 1978–1982), 1:26–8, 2:114–20. Other important editions of the Coptic Hermetica are Martin Krause and Pahor Labib, Gnostische und hermetische Schriften aus Codex II und Codex VI (Glückstadt: J. J. Augustin, 1971); Douglas M. Parrott (ed.), Nag Hammadi Codices V, 2–5 and VI with Papyrus Berolinensis 8502, 1 and 4 (NHS 11; Leiden: Brill, 1979), 341–451; Alberto Camplani, Scritti ermetici in copto: L’Ogdoade e l’Enneade; Preghiera di ringraziamento; Frammento del Discorso Perfetto (TVOA 8; LEGC 3; Brescia: Paideia, 2000). The standard edition for the Greek corpus and the Latin Asclepius is Arthur D. Nock and André-Jean Festugière, Hermès Trismégiste: Corpus Hermeticum (4 vols.; Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1945–1954). I will hereafter use the standard abbreviations for the texts found in this edition: CH = Corpus Hermeticum (vol.1–2); SH = Stobaei Hermetica (vol. 3–4); FH = Fragmenta Hermetica (vol.4).

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could allegedly have had no interest in pagan writings such as those of Trismegistus. 3 Subsequent to Mahé’s magisterial treatment of the texts, scholarship on the Nag Hammadi Codices has seen a deconstruction of the essensialistic term “Gnosticism”4 and a resurgence of interest in the monastic hypothesis,5 and it is consequently high time to revisit the question of who translated and copied the Coptic Hermetica, and why. In order to answer these questions, we shall divide our enquiry into three parts: The first part will consider what evidence we have for Hermetism – that is, Hermetic cult practices – in the fourth century, and in Upper Egypt in particular. The second part will explore what use Christian authors had, in the fourth and early fifth centuries, for the literary products of such a pagan community. Third and finally, I will consider what this can tell us about the inclusion of Hermetica in Codex VI of the Nag Hammadi collection, as well as the now certain inclusion of a Coptic translation of the Hermetic treatise On the rebirth (CH XIII) in Codex Tchacos.6

Hermetism in Fourth Century Egypt Similar to the modern term Gnosticism, deriving from the adjective γνωστικός,7 the modern term Hermetism has a precursor in the adjective ἑρμαϊκός. Unlike the former, however, the latter is not a heresiological 3

Torgny Säve-Söderbergh, “Holy Scriptures or Apologetic Documentations? The ‘Sitz im Leben’ of the Nag Hammadi Library,” in Les textes de Nag Hammadi: Colloque du Centre d’Histoire des Religions (Strasbourg, 23–25 octobre 1974) (ed. Jacques É. Ménard; NHS 7; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 10; Alexandr Khosroyev, Die Bibliothek von Nag Hammadi: Einige Probleme des Christentums in Ägypten während der ersten Jahrhunderte (Altenberge: Oros, 1995), 82–3. 4 Michael A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Karen L. King, What Is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003). 5 Cf. Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott, The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices (STAC 97; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015). 6 Jean-Pierre Mahé according to Gregor Wurst, “Preliminary Codicological Analysis of Codex Tchacos,” in The Gospel of Judas: Together with the Letter of Peter to Philip, James, and a Book of Allogenes from Codex Tchacos. Critical Edition (ed. Rodolphe Kasser et al.; Washington D. C.: National Geographic, 2008), 29–30; Gregor Wurst, “Weitere neue Fragmente aus Codex Tchacos: Zum ‘Buch des Allogenes’ und zu Corpus Hermeticum XIII,” in Judasevangelium und Codex Tchacos: Studien zur religionsgeschichtlichen Verortung (ed. Enno E. Popkes and Gregor Wurst; WUNT 297; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 10–12. 7 Morton Smith, “History of the Term Gnostikos,” in Sethian Gnosticism (ed. Bentley Layton; vol. 2 of The Rediscovery of Gnosticism: Proceedings of the International Conference on Gnosticism at Yale, New Haven, Connecticut, March 28–31, 1978; SHR 41; Leiden: Brill, 1981), 796–807.





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term, but is used mostly sympathetically to designate “that which pertains to Hermes.” It is most commonly used to refer to astrological influences from the planet Mercury, but also to books, teachings or in one case a magical spell derived from Hermes.8 The term is not found in the Hermetica themselves, however, which suggests that it was probably not a term of self-designation. Rather, Hermes speaks of a Way of Immortality in his treatises,9 designating a specific ritual course of teaching and initiation that culminated first in a rebirth and then a visionary ascent to heaven. 10 By Hermetism, then, we mean this ritual tradition, not some vaguely defined set of teachings and beliefs.11 Hermetism thus implies a community who saw themselves as adherents to the Way of Hermes, as scholars have come to call it.12 It should be pointed out that the existence of such a community is not attested outside of the internal evidence of the Hermetica, and remains hypothetical. However, the similarities between the practices referred to in the Hermetica and those prescribed in the magical papyri as well as Neoplatonism arguably make the existence of a Hermetic ritual community likely.13 In the following we shall evaluate the probability that such communities were still in existence in fourth century Egypt. A good point of departure is Iamblichus, who testifies to Hermetic practices at the turn of the fourth century. Writing under the pseudonym of the Egyptian high-priest Abammon,14 Iamblichus defended Egyptian “theurgy” 8 Astrological: e.g., Alexander, In Aristotelis metaphysica commentaria 704.12; Anubion, Fr. 2.203.21, Ps.-Clement, Rec. 9.27.6–7. Teachings: Iamblichus, Ab. Resp. 8.4–6; Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum 4.117.21. Books: Iamblichus, Ab. Resp. 10.7; Cyril of Alexandria, C. Jul. 1.41.10. Spell: PGM XIII.138. 9 Cf. Jean-Pierre Mahé, “La voie d’immortalité à la lumière des Hermetica de Nag Hammadi et de découvertes plus récentes,” VC 45 (1991): 347–75; Christian H. Bull, “The Tradition of Hermes: The Egyptian Priestly Figure as a Teacher of Hellenized Wisdom,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Bergen, 2014), 133ff. 10 Cf. Carsten Colpe and Jens Holzhausen, Das Corpus Hermeticum deutsch (2 vols.; Stuttgart: Frommann Holzboog, 1997), 1:159; Wouter J. Hanegraaff, “Altered States of Knowledge: The Attainment of Gnosis in the Hermetica,” JPT 2 (2008): 128–63; and Bull, “The Tradition of Hermes,” 237ff. Mahé sees the ascent to the Ogdoad and Ennead to be a different version of the rite of rebirth, passim, e.g., Hermès, 1:46–7. 11 In this I follow Kevin van Bladel, The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to Prophet of Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 17–22; cf. also Bull, “Tradition of Hermes,” 21–23. 12 E.g., Anna van den Kerchove, La voie d’Hermès: Pratiques rituelles et traités hermétiques (NHMS 77; Leiden: Brill, 2012). 13 I have argued this at length in my dissertation: Bull, “Tradition of Hermes.” 14 Although most scholars accept Proclus’ assertion that Iamblichus hides behind the pseudonym Abammon, there are still some who claim that Abammon must have been an actual Egyptian priest, due to his knowledge of Egyptian rituals and mythology. See the most recent discussion of the pseudonym in Henri Dominique Saffrey and Alain-Philippe Segonds, Porphyre: Lettre à Anébon l’égyptien (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2012), XIX–

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against Porphyry, who had written a critique in his Letter to Anebo. In the latter work, which is today only extant in fragments, Porphyry must have expressed doubt regarding the alleged high antiquity of the books of Hermes, as well as the authenticity of their Egyptian provenance, for Iamblichus is defensive in this regard, asserting: “Those documents, after all, which circulate under the name of Hermes contain Hermetic doctrines (ἑρμαϊκὰς δόξας), even if they often employ the terminology of the philosophers; for they were translated from the Egyptian tongue by men not unversed in philosophy.”15 According to Iamblichus, then, the books of Hermes contained ancient Egyptian wisdom that had been translated more recently by Egyptian priests conversant with Greek philosophy. Iamblichus also accepts the astrological literature ascribed to Hermes as authentic, but claims that they represent the lower, cosmic levels of the system, to be completed by the teachings dealing with the higher, noetic realms. Furthermore, Iamblichus defends the practices of traditional Egyptian cult as preparatory and conducive to the soul’s ascent, since they are sensible symbols of noetic realities. 16 According to Iamblichus’ testimony, then, Egyptian priests were involved in the writing of Hermetica, and Hermetic practices were still kept in Egypt in his time. Iamblichus must be considered well-informed, for he demonstrates knowledge of the religious practices of Egyptian priests and provides a Hermetic protogony that is likely related to the Poimandres. 17 Thus, at the turn of the fourth century, this Syrian philosopher defended a set of practices and ideas that he perceived to be still current in Egypt. Polymnia Athanassiadi has gone so far as to suggest that Iamblichus might himself have been initiated into a Hermetic community in Egypt. 18 This hypothesis is attractive, as it would explain Iamblichus’ familiarity with Hermetic teachings and practices, but cannot be proven; another explanation would be that he had simply derived his knowledge from the books of Hermes. At any rate, we can use Iamblichus’ testimony as a point of departure, and consider the degree to which Her XXXVIII; idem, Jamblique: Réponse à Porphyre (De mysteriis) (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2013), LXI–LXXI. 15 Iamblichus, Myst. 8.4: τὰ μὲν γὰρ φερόμενα ὡς Ἑρμοῦ ἑρμαϊκὰς περιέχει δόξας, εἰ καὶ τῇ τῶν φιλοσόφων γλώττῃ πολλάκις χρῆται· μεταγέγραπται γὰρ ἀπὸ τῆς αἰγυπτίας γλώττης ὑπ’ ἀνδρῶν φιλοσοφίας οὐκ ἀπείρως ἐχόντων. Ed. Saffrey and Segonds, Jamblique, 196; Trans. Emma C. Clarke, John M. Dillon and Jackson P. Hershbell, Iamblichus: On the Mysteries (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 315. 16 Cf. Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 127ff. 17 Shaw, Theurgy, 127–88, 231–42; Iamblichus, Myst. 8.2–3; cf. Bull, “Tradition of Hermes,” 95–102. 18 Polymnia Athanassiadi, La lutte pour l’orthodoxie dans le platonisme tardif: De Numénius à Damascius (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2006), 162–66.





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metic practices could still be found in Egypt in the fourth century, namely cult practices directed towards earthly images, astrological computation, and rites and contemplative practices that lead to the soul’s ascent. Confirmation that these elements were all important in Hermetism can be found in the Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth (NHC VI,6). This text, which describes the ascent of Hermes and his son to the eighth and ninth noetic spheres, claims to be translated from a hieroglyphic stele placed in the temple of Hermes in Thebes (61.18–22). Here it was supposed to be erected during a specific astrological juncture (62.16–19), and guarded from trespassers by divine statues and an imprecatory oath (62.4– 10, 22–28, 63.15–32). Even though this is certainly fiction, it still testifies to the continued importance of temples, statues, and astrological computation in Hermetism, as well as visionary ascent.19 Egyptian Temples and their Statues That the cult of statues with its sacrifices played some role in Hermetism is indicated especially by the Perfect Discourse, known as the Asclepius in its Latin translation, which gives an apology and rationale to the practice.20 Here, Hermes mentions temples and statues of Isis, Osiris, Hermes, and Asclepius, the latter two being ancestors of the homonymous protagonists of the treatise. The earthly gods are demons called down from heaven into statues by means of sacred rites, in order that they may heal and predict the future, but also harm those who anger them (Asclepius 23–24 & 37–38). Hermes predicts that a time will come when godlessness and foreign rule make the gods leave their statues. This will leave Egypt, “the temple of the world,” bereft of divine presence, which in turn will cause the breakdown of cosmic and societal order, with the result that the good demiurge purges the world with floods and conflagrations, in order to remake it as it was in the beginning (Asclepius 24–26=NHC VI 70.3–74.11). The care of the earthly gods in the Egyptian temples was thus vital to ensure the continued 19 Cf. Christian H. Bull, “The Notion of Mysteries in the Formation of Hermetic Tradition,” in Mystery and Secrecy in the Nag Hammadi Collection and Other Ancient Literature: Ideas and Practices (ed. Christian H. Bull, Liv I. Lied, and John D. Turner; NHMS 76; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 422. 20 Cf. Van den Kerchove, La voie d’Hermès, 185–274; eadem, “Les hermétistes et les conceptions traditionelles des sacrifices,” in L’Oiseau et le poisson: Cohabitations religieuses dans les mondes grec et romain (ed. Jean-Daniel Dubois and Nicole Belayche; Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris Sorbonne, 2011), 61–80, who argues that the practices have been discontinued, and only their memory remains. Against this, cf. Christian H. Bull, “No End to Sacrifice in Hermetism,” in Philosophy and the End of Sacrifice: Disengaging Ritual in Ancient India, Greece and Beyond (ed. Peter Jackson and Anna-Pya Sjödin; Sheffield: Equinox, 2016), 143–66. Cf. also CH XVII, which is a brief apology for statues of the gods.

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life of the cosmos, according to Hermes. I have elsewhere suggested that this prediction likely dates to the early third century, since it seems to make reference to a law issued in year 199 by the prefect Saturninus against oracular processions, which were vital to Egyptian religion.21 The prediction would later be interpreted by Lactantius and Augustine as presaging the demise of paganism and triumph of Christianity. 22 Roelof van den Broek points out that the philosopher Olympius likely has the prediction of Hermes in mind, when during the defense of the Serapeum in 391 he says that the the statues consist of perishable matter, and that when they are destroyed their indwelling powers fly up to heaven.23 Also the fourthcentury philosopher Antonius, who gathered disciples around him in a temple in Canopus, predicted that the temples would become tombs and a gloom would fall over the world, reminiscent of the Perfect Discourse.24 The extent to which traditional Egyptian cult practices were still being performed in the fourth and fifth centuries has been the subject of vigorous debate.25 David Frankfurter has argued for the widespread continuation of popular practices even though the temple complexes had been steadily de21

Bull, “Tradition of Hermes,” 341–42. Lactantius, Div. Inst. 7.18.3–4; Augustine, Civ. Dei 8.24. Robin Lane Fox, in his review of Fowden’s The Egyptian Hermes (JRS 80 [1990]: 238), has crucially overlooked the former passage and consequently questions the dating of the prophecy to before Lactantius, citing only Div. Inst. 7.15.10 and 16.4, which may be from the Sibylline Oracles. 23 Sozomen, HE 7.15; Roelof van den Broek, “The Hermetic Apocalypse and other Greek Predictions of the End of Religion,” in From Poimandres to Jacob Böhme: Gnosis, Hermetism and the Christian Tradition (ed. Roelof van den Broek and Cis van Heertum; Amsterdam: In de Pelikaan, 2000), 97–113 at 102–3. 24 Eunapius, Vit. Soph. 6.11.10; Van den Broek, “Hermetic Apocalypse,” 108–12. 25 Jean Maspero, “Horapollon et la fin du paganism égyptien,” BIFAO 11 (1914): 184ff.; Brinley R. Rees, “Popular Religion in Graeco-Roman Egypt: II. The Transition to Christianity,” JEA 36 (1950): 86–100; Roger Rémondon, “L’Égypte et la suprême résistance au Christianisme (ve–viie siècles),” BIFAO 51 (1952): 63–78; Friedrich Zucker, “Priester und Tempel in Ägypten in den Zeiten nach der decianischen Christenverfolgung,” in Akten des VIII. internationalen Kongresses für Papyrologie, Wien 1955 (Wien: Rudolf M. Rohrer, 1956), 167–74; Johannes Geffcken, The Last Days of Greco-Roman Paganism (trans. Sabine MacCormack; Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1978), 124, 170, 174; Françoise Thelamon, Païens et chrétiens au IVe siècle: L’apport de l’‘Histoire ecclésiastique’ de Rufin d’Aquilée (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1981), 157–243; Eva Wipszycka, “La christianisation de l’Égypte aux IVe –VIe siècles: Aspects sociaux et ethniques,” Aeg 68 (1988): 117–65; Lázló Kakosy, “Das Ende des Heidentums in Ägypten,” in Graeco-Coptica: Griechen und Kopten im byzantinischen Ägypten (ed. Peter Nagel; Halle: Martin Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 1984), 61–76; Roger S. Bagnall, “Combat ou vide: christianisme et paganisme dans l’Égypte romaine tardive,” Ktema 13 (1988): 285–96; idem, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 261ff.; Françoise Dunand and Christiane Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt: 3000 BCE to 395 CE (trans. David Lorton; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 276–81, 339–41. 22





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clining since the third century, while his detractors have accused him of reading too literally hagiographic reports of iconoclastic activities, such as those of Shenoute, which had become a trope by the fourth century.26 The question lies outside the scope of the present contribution, although it is clear that some pagan activities continued into the fourth century and beyond, to a varying degree in different places:27 The temple of Isis at Philae was only shut down by Justinian in 535–537, and cultic practices possibly continued even after that date.28 At any rate, while the Asclepius presupposes the continued existence of the cult of the earthly gods, it is clear that the teachings of Hermes are presented as supplementing this cult, not being coterminous with it. Since humans are said to be binary beings, consisting of an immortal, noetic essence and a mortal, material body, they also have a double set of duties: to contemplate and worship heaven, and to cultivate the world (Asclepius 9). Given the decidedly worldly benefits of the earthly gods, it seems likely that their cult is considered to belong to the worldly duties of mankind. The individual members of the Hermetic communities would therefore likely be involved in temple worship, either as priests or lay worshippers, while the practices of the Hermetic groups would be geared towards the cultivation of their immortal inner selves.29 The gradual demise of the temples need therefore not necessarily have entailed the disbanding of the Hermetic communities, though it would likely give rise to the sort of despair testified to in the prediction of Hermes in the Perfect Discourse. 26

David Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); idem, “Onomastic Statistics and the Christianization of Egypt: A Response to Depauw and Clarysse,” VC 68 (2014): 284–9; Roger S. Bagnall, “Models and Evidence in the Study of Religion in Late Roman Egypt,” in From Temple to Church: Destruction and Renewal of Local Cultic Topography in Late Antiquity (ed. Johannes Hahn, Stephen Emmel, and Ulrich Gotter; RGRW 163; Leiden: Brill, 2008), 23–41; Mark Depauw and Willy Clarysse, “How Christian was Fourth Century Egypt? Onomastic Perspectives on Conversion,” VC 67 (2013): 407–35; idem, “Christian Onomastics: A Response to Frankfurter,” VC 69 (2015): 327–29; Mark Smith, “Aspects of the Preservation and Transmission of Indigenous Religious Traditions in Akhmim and its Environs during the Graeco-Roman Period,” in Perspectives on Panopolis: An Egyptian Town from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest (ed. Arno Egberts, Brian P. Muhs, and Jacques van der Vliet; PLB 31; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 245–47; idem, Following Osiris: Perspectives on the Osirian Afterlife from Four Millennia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 421–537; Lorenzo Medini, “Chronique d’une mort annoncée? Le crépuscule des temples et des païens d’Égypte,” Topoi 20 (2015): 239–80. 27 Medini, “Chronique,” 258–60. 28 Procopius, De bellis 1.19.36; Jitse H. F. Dijkstra, “A Cult of Isis at Philae after Justinian? Reconsidering ‘P. Cair. Masp.’ I 67004,” ZPE 146 (2004): 137–154. For a critical view, cf. Smith, Following Osiris, 460–62. 29 Asclepius 5, 7, 9, 11.

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Thoth and Hermopolis We must take into special consideration the temples of Thoth, who was universally considered to correspond to the Egyptian Hermes by both pagans and Christians. For example, Cicero identified one of five Hermeses as the Egyptian Theuth (Nat. d. 3.56), who Plato refers to in two dialogues as either a god or a divine human (Phaedr. 274c–e; Phileb. 18b), an ambiguity that remained even in the later Hermetic texts (Asclepius 37; SH XXIII). This Egyptian Hermes was given the epithet Trismegistus at least as early as the first century CE.30 The epithet demonstrably derives from Ptolemaic-era Egyptian developments, where Thoth was hailed first as the twice, then thrice greatest Lord of Hermopolis, which already in the second century BCE was translated into Greek as the “greatest and greatest god, great Hermes,” 31 and in one recorded case the Egyptian title was simply transliterated with Greek characters as the “great, great, great lord of Shmun” (ΩΩΩ νοβ Ζμουν).32 Although Thoth received temples and cult throughout Egypt, he was in particular the tutelary god of two cities called Hermopolis, a lesser one in the Delta and a greater one in the Thebaïd – the Egyptian Shmun. The cult of the sacred bird of Thoth, the ibis, was popular throughout Egypt, and local chapters kept in touch with the cult center through delegations that brought mummified ibises to be buried in the extensive subterranean cemeteries for sacred animals there. 33 This practice, however, seems to have disappeared in the first or second century of our era.34 The temple complex of Thoth lay in the north quarter of the city, and there were no archaeological deposits between the New Kingdom level and around 400 CE, which suggested to the excavators that the temple was active until this time.35 The veneration of Thoth was around three millennia old in the fourth century, when we still find it practiced despite the decline of Egyptian 30

Cf. Bull, “Tradition of Hermes,” 29–30. Theodore C. Skeat and Eric G. Turner, “An Oracle of Hermes Trismegistus at Saqqâra,” JEA 54 (1968): 199–208. Cf. John D. Ray, The Archive of Hor (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1976), for Demotic attestations of the epithet from the same archive. 32 Victor Girgis, “A New Strategos of the Hermopolite Nome,” MDAI.K 20 (1965): 121. 33 Dieter Kessler and Abd el Halim Nur el-Din, “Tuna al-Gebel: Millions of Ibises and Other Animals,” in Divine Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt (ed. Salima Ikram; Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2005), 120–63. The personal reminiscences of the excavator of these animal cemeteries can be found in Sami Gabra, Chez les derniers adorateurs du Trismégiste: La Nécropole d’Hermopolis Magna, Touna el Gebel (Souvenir d’un Archéologue) (Cairo: al-Hayʼah al-Miṣrīyah al-ʻĀmmah, 1971), 156ff. 34 Kessler and Nur el-Din, “Tuna al-Gebel,” 149. 35 Alan J. Spencer, Excavations at El-Ashmunein II: The Temple Area (London: British Museum Publications, 1989), 76–77. 31





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temples. We know this from the papyri of Theophanes, a well-travelled entrepreneur from Hermopolis, who had many letters in his care.36 Two of these are from Anatolius, who identifies himself as the Chief-Prophet of Hermes Trismegistus. One letter is addressed to the “all-wise” Ambrosius, who Anatolius calls “champion of the wisdom of the Greeks.”37 The letter is only a short greeting, but demonstrates that this Egyptian priest was friendly with a Greek philosopher, or at least someone inclined towards philosophical literature. In another letter, to a certain Sarapion, Anatolius excuses himself that he is unable to make a visit due to his duties related to the festivals and processions of Thoth.38 As a high-priest, Anatolius would walk in the processions, probably carrying the most sacred insignia of his rank.39 There are still archaeological remains of the “stone-paved processional way of thrice great Hermes” leading up to the temple where the statue of Thoth was kept.40 These letters thus assure us that the traditional cult of Thoth was still active in the early fourth century, and that the Egyptian high-priest identified his god with Hermes Trismegistus. 41 We can however not be sure if either Hermetic astrology or rites of rebirth and ascent were practiced by Anatolius. At least we can infer that he was likely interested in philosophy from his correspondence with Ambrosius, and given the reputation of Hermes Trismegistus it would not be too farfetched to assume that Ambrosius wished to gain access to the hieratic wisdom and ritual competence of the high-priest. Similarly, the Alexandri36

Editions in Brinley R. Rees, Papyri from Hermopolis: And other Documents of the Byzantine Period (PEES.GR 42; London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1964) and Alessandro Moscadi, “Le lettere dell ‘archivio di Teofane,’” Aeg 50 (1970): 88–154. Cf. Brinley R. Rees, “Theophanes of Hermopolis Magna,” BJRL 51 (1968): 164–83; Hélène Cadell, “Les archives de Theophanes d’Hermoupolis: Documents pour l’histoire,” in Egitto e storia antica dall’ellenismo all’eta araba: Bilancio di un confronto: Atti del colloquio internazionale, Bologna, 31 agusto – 2 settembre 1987 (ed. Lucia Criscuolo and Giovanni Geraci; Bologna: CLUEB, 1989), 315–23; John Matthews, The Journey of Theophanes: Travel, Business, and Daily Life in the Roman East (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 12–40. 37 P.Herm.Rees 3 (Moscadi 8); cf. Matthews, Journey of Theophanes, 22. 38 P.Herm.Rees 2 (Moscadi 7); cf. Matthews, Journey of Theophanes, 21; Medini, “Chronique,” 359–60.. 39 Apuleius, Met. 11.11–12; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 6.4.35–36. 40 P.Flor. I 50.97: τοῦ λιθοστρώτου δρόμου Ἑρμοῦ θεοῦ τ̣ρισ̣μεγάλου. Cf. Lorenzo Medini, “La topographie religieuse d’Hermopolis à l’époque gréco-romaine,” Camenulae 7 (2011): 1–14; idem, “Hermopolis gréco-romaine ou les limites de l’archéologie d’une ville disparue,” n.p. [1 May 2017]. Online: http://anthropologiedelart.org/ramage/?page_ id=452. 41 Other letters refer to Theophanes as a (ἀγαπητὸς ἀδελφός) which has been taken to indicate either that the letters reflect a brotherhood of Hermetists, or that Theophanes or some of his family and friends were Christian. For an overview, cf. Malcolm Choat, Belief and Cult in Fourth-Century Papyri (SAA 1; Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 90ff.

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an philosopher Demetrius Cythras in the year 359 admitted to having offered sacrifice and asked for oracular responses from the Egyptian god Bes, who had a shrine in Abydos in Upper Egypt.42 Another indication that Hermetism, or at least its memory, was still prevalent in Hermopolis is the so-called Strasbourg Cosmogony, a hexametric poem on a papyrus most likely from fourth-century Hermopolis.43 The fragmentary poem describes how Hermes emanates from his father, Zeus, to create the universe. Hermes first ends the strife of the elements and unites them in friendship, reminiscent of Empedocles, and then he makes the sphere of heaven which he divides into seven zones. Hermes then goes to earth with his son, Logos, and looks for a temperate place in Egypt to found his city, alluding to Hermopolis. There are some points of similarity here with the Poimandres, where the demiurgic Nous and Logos – possibly alluded to in the persons of Hermes and his son Logos in the poem – first separate the elements and then put the heavenly spheres in motion (CH I, 5–11). The brevity of the fragment does not however allow us to say much about Hermetic practices. However, as we shall see, there are contemporary priestly writings from elsewhere in Upper Egypt that testify to such practices, which increases the likelihood that Anatolius, as the high-priest of Hermes Trismegistus, would also have been a practitioner of Hermetic rites. Panopolis: Ammon Scholasticus and Zosimus Pagan temples were still active in fourth-century Panopolis. 44 The late third and fourth century archive of Ammon Scholasticus contains letters from an elite family possessing the high priesthood of the first rank temples of Panopolis’s tutelary god Min. 45 The members of this family was 42

Ammianus Marcellinus 19.12.12. Cf. also the horoscope written on the wall of the temple of Sethos I in Abydos, dated to 352: “By Bes! May I not be wiped out” (νη τον βησαν ου μη εξαλειψω), cf. Otto Neugebauer and Henry B. van Hoesen, Greek Horoscopes (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1987), 69. 43 Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 175. Greek text and English translation in Denys L. Page, Select Papyri III: Poetry (LCL 360; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), 544–51. The papyrus was dated to the early fourth century by early scholars, but to its second half by Daria Gigli Piccardi, La cosmogonia di Strasburgo (Firenze: Università degli studi di Firenze, 1990), 13, who also tentatively suggests Andronicus of Hermopolis as its author (pp. 60ff.). 44 Smith, Following Osiris, 429. Cf. Karolien Geens, “Panopolis, a Nome Capital in Egypt in the Roman and Byzantine Period (ca. AD 200-600)” (PhD-diss., KU Leuven 2007), 440–41, 452–54. 45 Cf. Geens, “Panopolis,” 231; Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 174; Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, 272–73; Gerald M. Browne, “Harpocration Panegyrista,” ICS 2 (1977): 184–96; William H. Willis, “The Letter of Ammon of Panopolis to his Mother,” in Actes





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also well versed in Hellenic philosophy and literature. 46 The letters are fragmentary and largely devoted to mundane affairs but there are scattered references to issues relevant to our purposes. First, in a letter to his mother, Ammon refers to the cycles (κύκλοι) of the stars as determining fortune; now the cycles are negative, he informs his mother, but soon they will turn for the better.47 Furthermore Ammon says that he wanted to come home earlier, but that fortune had decreed otherwise. This seems to imply that Ammon had consulted his horoscope on whether he should go home or not, and if the state of affairs will improve. Such horoscopes are known from great quantities of papyri, spread fairly evenly over the first five centuries CE,48 and several astrological papyri and ostraca have been found in the vicinity of Panopolis.49 Several zodiacs from the area are also known, including one in the temple of Min.50 We cannot, however, be sure if Ammon cast his own horoscope or consulted a professional astrologer. Ammon was probably a priest himself,51 who might therefore have benefitted from a priestly education, and Egyptian priests were by the Roman period recognized as expert astrologers. In another letter, a petition to the catholicus regarding a dispute over some slaves, Ammon diplomatically states that when the catholicus was in charge, “the providence of the gods to

du XVe Congrès International de Papyrologie 2: Papyrus inédits (ed. Jean Bingen, Georges Nachtergael, and Eric G. Turner; PapyBrux 17; Brussels: Fondation égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, 1979), 98–115; William H. Willis and Klaus Maresch, eds., The Archive of Ammon Scholasticus of Panopolis (P. Ammon) 1: The Legacy of Harpocration (PapyCol 26/1; Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1997); Peter van Minnen, “The Letter (and other papers) of Ammon: Panopolis in the fourth Century A.D.,” in Perspectives on Panopolis: An Egyptian Town from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest (ed. Arno Egberts, Brian P. Muhs, and Jacques van der Vliet; PLB 31; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 177–99; Frank Feder, “Ammon und seine Brüder: Eine ägyptische Familie aus Panopolis (Achmim) im 4.Jh. zwischen ägyptisch-hellenistischer Kultur und Christentum,” in Genealogie: Realität und Fiktion von Identität (ed. Martin Fitzenreiter; IBAES 5; London: Golden House Publications, 2005), 103–7. On the culture of late antique Panopolis, cf. Alan Cameron, “The empress and the poet: paganism and politics at the court of Theodosius II,” YCS 27 (1982): 217–21. Curiously, in his lengthy survey of the survival of pagan religion in Akhmim Smith (Following Osiris, 423–47) does not once mention the priestly family of Ammon. To the contrary, he claims that the last reference to any chief priest of an indigenous cult in all of Egypt is from the year 180 CE (ibid., 518). 46 Geens, “Panopolis,” 379. 47 Willis and Maresch, Archive of Ammon, 24. The passage in question is lacunose, but the general sense is clear. 48 Otto Neugebauer and Henry B. van Hoesen, Greek Horoscopes (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1959), 162. 49 Smith, “Indigenous Religious Traditions,” 242–43. 50 Smith, Following Osiris, 425. 51 Geens, “Panopolis,” 233.

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gether with Agathos Daimon was guiding the land of the Upper Egyptians.”52 Agathos Daimon is a well-known figure from the Hermetica, although the term may be used as an epithet for several Egyptian gods, e.g. Sarapis. However, the father of Ammon, the former high-priest, was called Petearbeschinis, 53 a theophoric name of Harbeschinis, who must be the same as Harnebeschênis, the Horus of Letopolis (Ḥr-nb-Sḫm), who is called “king of philosophy” in SH XXVI, 9. Admittedly this does not amount to evidence of the presence of Hermetism, but it confirms that by the mid-fourth century there were still high-priests of Min in Panopolis who had an affinity for divine figures associated with the Hermetica and astrological predictions. It should also be noted that those responsible for the transmission of religious knowledge in the House of Life in the temple of Min were priests of Thoth, who also had a temple in the city, and that Panopolis also had ibis and baboon cemeteries which might earlier have been connected to those in Hermopolis Magna by the sending of sacred delegations. 54 Futhermore, a votive inscription was set up in the city around the middle of the third century to “the great god, Hermes Trismegistos.”55 The papyri of Ammon that are dated to 348 CE are also the last attestations of the office of “High Priest of Alexandria and All of Egypt,” an equestrian office in charge of the administration of the Egyptian temples. The Ammon papyri are finally interesting because they give us some background to another famous Panopolitan, the alchemist Zosimus. Zosimus of Panopolis was probably writing around the turn of the fourth century, and was thus roughly contemporary with Ammon and his family.56 Recently Shannon Grimes has argued, on the basis of those writ52

P.Ammon 12.2–3 and 13.2–3 (Willis and Maresch, Archive of Ammon, 114, trans. 136): τῆς θεῶν προνοίας ἡγουμένης σὺν Ἀγαθῶι Δαίμονι τῆς χώρας τῆς τῶν ἄνω Αἰγυπτιων. The text is attested in two drafts, each lacunose. I have translated πρόνοια as “providence” instead of “goodwill,” suggested by the editors. 53 Πετεαρβεσχίνις: P.Ammon 5.1 & 6.2; Willis and Maresch, Archive of Ammon, 70, 74, and cf. 19 n. 1. 54 Smith, “Indigenous Religious Traditions,” 242; Maria T. Derchain-Urtel, “Thot à Akhmim,” in Hommages à François Daumas (ed. Antoine Guillaumont; Montpelier: Université de Montpelier, 1986), 173–80. 55 OGIS 716: θεὸν μέγαν Ἑρμῆν | Τρισμέγιστο[ν] | Γάϊος Ἰούλιος Σεουῆρο[ς] | λεγ(εῶνος) βʹ Τρ(αϊανῆς) Ἰσχυρᾶς | Γορδιανῆς εὐχ[ὴν] | ἀνέθηκα. 56 Marcellin Berthelot, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (3 vols.; Paris: G. Steinheil, 1887–1888), vol. 2; André-Jean Festugière, La révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste (4 vols.; Paris: Lecoffre, 1949–1954), 1:260–82; Jack Lindsay, The Origins of Alchemy in Graeco-Roman Egypt (London: F. Muller, 1970), 323–57; Howard M. Jackson, Zosimus of Panopolis on the Letter Omega (Missoula: Scholars press, 1978), 11; Michèle Mertens, Zosime de Panopolis: Mémoires authentiques (Les alchimistes grecs 4.1; Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1995), xi; eadem, “Alchemy, Hermetism and Gnosticism at Panopolis c. 300 A.D.: The Evidence of Zosimus,” in Perspectives on Panopolis: An Egyptian





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ings of Zosimus that are only preserved in Syriac, that Zosimus must have been connected to the House of Life, the Egyptian temple scriptorium, and since he refers to other alchemists as prophets, he might be one himself.57 In that case he might have been personally acquainted with some of the priests in Ammon’s family, namely his father Petearbeschinis, his halfbrother Horion I, or the latter’s son, Horion II. However, it is not certain that Zosimus was a priest. Grimes cites multiple passages where Zosimus demonstrates intimate knowledge of priests and of what goes on within the temple, but other passages seem to be ambivalent to priests and the statues of the gods. For example, when discussing books of Hermes kept hidden in temples, Zosimus indicates that he has knowledge of these books, but at the same time he seems to distance himself from the priests who keep them hidden: Many other people want to give their names to the formulas, but they are censured by the priests, by those who possess the books. The priests have a copy to read in the sanctuaries of the temples; everyone knows that the books are by Hermes and other Egyptian authors. Some people say that the black tincture and the excellent (?) white tincture of copper are to be found there.58

Town from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest (ed. Arno Egberts, Brian P. Muhs, and Jacques van der Vliet; PLB 31; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 165–75; Shannon Grimes, “Zosimus of Panopolis: Alchemy, Nature, and Religion in Late Antiquity,” (Ph.D. diss., Syracuse University, 2006), 25. 57 Grimes, “Zosimus,” 37; with no reference to the crucial article by Alan H. Gardiner, “The House of Life,” JEA 24 (1938): 157–79. 58 Zosimus, On the Letter Waw (Syriac) 6.19; Marcellin Berthelot and Rubens Duval, La chimie au Moyen âge, vol. II: l’alchimie syriaque (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1893), 226: “Beaucoup d’autres veulent donner leur nom aux recettes; personne ne les en empêche. Mais ils sont blâmés par les prêtres, par ceux qui possèdent les livres. Les prêtres en font lire une copie dans les sanctuaires des temples. Tout le monde sait que ces livres sont d’Hermès et d’autres auteurs égyptiens. Quelques-uns disent qu’on y trouve la teinture noire et la teinture blanche excellente (? Loupariston) du cuivre.” Unfortunately, neither the Syriac text nor a full translation of this important text have yet been published. An edition and translation is however in preparation by Matteo Martelli, who has also provided the Syriac text and French translation of part of the passage above, in Matteo Martelli, “Zosime gréco-syriaque, Plutarque et la teinture noire des statues égyptiennes,” forthcoming in Religion in the Roman Empire. I thank the author for sharing a draft of this article with me. Cf. also Mertens, Zosime, lxx–lxxvii. Alberto Camplani, “Procedimenti magico-alchemici e discorso filosofico ermetico,” in Il tardoantico alle soglie del duemila (ed. Giuliana Lanata; Pisa: Edizione ETS, 2000), 73–98 at 75–76, provides the Syriac text and Italian translation of some further pages. Matteo Martelli, “L’alchimie en syriaque et l’oeuvre de Zosime,” in Sciences en syriaque (ed. Émilie Villey; Études syriaques 11; Paris: Geuthner, 2014), 191–214 at 199–211, suggests that the fifteenth century codex contains an abridged version of a Syriac translation from the end of the fifth- or beginning of the sixth century.

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Why would Zosimus say that “some people” say that the black and white tinctures are found in the hidden books, if he belonged to the group that has access to the books and could have found it out for himself? Zosimus elsewhere unequivocally states that the books of Hermes contained information about tinctures, though he criticizes him for being secretive about them, since he hid his books within temples.59 Zosimus is critical of the secrecy of the prophets, but he is also polemical about certain people who vainly want to gain fame by adding their name to the priestly teachings. These fame-seekers are also called prophets in another passage, where Zosimus informs us that he has given up seeking out their books because they are guarded jealously with oaths of secrecy.60 This jealousy is identified as a destructive passion, leading to further wickedness, and in another passage, preserved in Greek, Zosimus seems to attribute jealousy to the demons that receive the sacrifices in the temples: So then the overseers, who were expelled by the men who were then great, took counsel together to use the natural tinctures against us, so that they should not be expelled by humans, but rather be served and invoked and sustained by sacrifices, and so they did. They hid all the natural and self-acting tinctures, not only because they envied them (the humans), but also because they had thought for their own life, so that they should not be whipped and expelled, and not be punished with famine from not receiving sacrifices. This is what they did: They hid the natural tincture and introduced their own unnatural one, and they gave it to their own priests, and if the commoners neglected the sacrifices they even prevented success with the unnatural tinctures.61 All those who mastered the so-called doctrines of the age produced water, and their sacrifices became abundant because of custom, law, and fear. And no longer did they fulfill even the lies they had promised. But when there then occurred a revolution in the stars that govern the area of the country,62 and the area was carried into war, and the human race left that area, and their temples became deserted, and their sacrifices were neglected, they seduced the humans that remained with their lies 59

Zosimus, Final Quittance 4–5. Zosimus, On the Letter Waw 6.4; Berthelot and Duval, La chimie, 223–4: “Cette recette capitale était la principale pour les anciens, et elle était tenue cachée. Non seulement le secret était obligatoire, mais il était aussi prescrit par tous les serments qui en sanctionnaient le mystère. Ainsi que nous l’avons dit, les divers symboles des prêtres ont été expliqués par les anciens maîtres et les différents prophètes, dont le nom est devenu célèbre, et qui ont prévalu avec toute la puissance de la science. Quant à moi, j’ai vu combien on éprouve de difficulté à obtenir ces désignations de la part des gens envieux, en raison de l’espoir de vanité fondé sur elles et de la jouissance qu’ils en retiraient. … j’ai détourné ma face de tous ces écrits.” Grimes, “Zosimus,” 37, takes this passage to support Zosimus’ alleged priestly status. 61 Reading ἀφυσικῶν for ἀφύσικον. 62 Berthelot, Collection, 2:235 (tr.) omits this astrological sentence in his translation, with no explanatory comment. Festugère, Révélation, 279 n. 5, admits that the meaning is obscure. Cf. Heliodorus, Comm. in Paulum Alexandrinum (Emilie Boer, Heliodori, ut dicitur, in Paulum Alexandrinum commentarium [Leipzig: Teubner, 1962], 130): λέγε ὅτι τοσαῦτα ἔτη ἐκεῖνο τὸ ζῴδιον εἰς ἀποκατάστασιν ἔχει ἐν τῷ κλίματι ἐκείνῳ· 60





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and many portents, as through dreams, to observe the sacrifices. And once they again made false and unnatural promises, all the hedonistic, wretched, and unlearned humans were delighted. This is also what they want to do to you, woman, through their false prophet. They seduce you, those who in each place hunger not only for sacrifice, but also for your soul.63

Who are these deceivers who receive sacrifice? They are likely demons, since in the following passage Zosimus contrasts God who is everywhere to the demons who are in low places. 64 It should also be noted that the whole account of the deceivers follows directly after a quote that Hermes is said to have inscribed on stelae in ancient times: “These (tinctures) act naturally, but they are begrudged by those surrounding the earth: but when someone who has been initiated expels them, he will find what he seeks.”65 It would make sense to call the demons “those who surround the earth” since they are normally placed in the sublunary atmosphere in the Platonic

63 Zosimus, The Final Quittance 7 (my trans.): οἱ οὖν ἔφοροι ἐκδιωκόμενοι ποτε παρὰ τῶν τότε μεγάλων ἀνθρώπων, συνεβουλεύσαντο ἀντὶ ἡμῶν τῶν φυσικῶν ἀντιποιῆσασθαι, ἵνα μὴ διώκωνται παρὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ἀλλὰ λιτανεύωνται καὶ παρακαλῶνται, οἰκονομῶντα διὰ θυσιῶν, ὅ καὶ πεποίηκασιν· ἔκρυψαν πάντα τὰ φυσικὰ καὶ αὐτόματα, οὐ μόνον φθονοῦντες αὐτοῖς, ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ τῆς ἑαυτῶν ζωῆς φροντίζοντες, ἵνα μή μαστιζῶνται ἐκδιωκόμενοι καὶ λιμῷ τιμωρῶνται, θυσίας μὴ λαμβάνοντες. ἐποίησαν οὕτως· ἔκρυψαν τὴν φυσικὴν καὶ εἰσηγήσαντο τὴν ἑαυτῶν ἀφύσικον, καὶ ἐξέδωκαν αὐτὰ τοῖς ἑαυτῶν ἱερεῦσι, εἴ τε δημόται ἠμέλουν τῶν θυσιῶν, ἐκώλυον καὶ αὐτοὶ τὴν ἀφύσικον φιλοτιμίαν· ὅσοι δὲ κατεκράτησαν, τὴν νομιζομένην δόξαν τοῦ αἰῶνος ὑδρογεννήσαντο καὶ ἐπληθύνθησαν ἔθει καὶ νόμῳ καὶ φόβῳ αἱ θυσίαι αὐτῶν. οὐκέτι οὐδὲ τὰς ψευδεῖς αὐτῶν ἐπαγγελίας ἀπεπλήρουν· ἀλλ’ ὅτε ἐγένετο ἄρα ἀποκατάστασις τῶν κλημάτων, καὶ διεφέρετο κλίμα πολέμῳ καὶ ἐλείπετο ἐκ τοῦ κλίματος ἐκείνου τὸ γένος τῶν ἀνθρώπων καὶ τὰ ἱερὰ αὐτῶν ἠρημοῦντο, καὶ αἱ θυσίαι αὐτῶν ἠμελοῦντο· τοὺς περιλειπομένους ἀνθρώπους ἐκολάκευον ὡς δι’ ὀνειράτων διὰ τὸ ψεῦδος αὐτῶν διὰ πολλῶν συμβόλων, τῶν [τῶν] θυσιῶν ἀντέχεσθαι, αὐτὰς δὲ πάλιν παρεχόντων τὰς ψευδεῖς καὶ ἀφυσίκας ἐπαγγελίας· καὶ ἥδοντο πάντες οἱ φιλήδονοι ἄθλιοι καὶ ἀμαθεῖς ἄνθρωποις· ὥστε καί σοι θέλουσιν ποιῆσαι, ὦ γύναι, διὰ τοῦ ψευδοπροφήτου αὐτῶν· κολακεύουσιν σε, τὰ κατὰ τόπον , πεινῶντα, οὐ μόνον θυσίας, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν σὴν ψυχήν. Ed. Festugière, Révélation, 366–67. An alternate translation can be found in Lindsay, Origins of Alchemy, 338; French trans. Festugière, La révélation, 1:279–80. Grimes, “Zosimus,” 53–4, quotes the passage but does not seem to realize that it creates problems for her thesis of Zosimus’ priestly occupation. 64 Zosimus, The Final Quittance 8: θεὸς ἥξει πρὸς σὲ ὁ πανταχοῦ ὢν, καὶ οὐκ ἐν τόπῳ ἐλαχίστῳ ὡς τὰ δαιμόνια· Note that Festugère added two references to demons in brackets in the passage above. 65 Zosimus, The Final Quittance 6: καὶ τὰ εἴδη τῶν χρωμάτων ἐμήνυσεν [sc. Ἑρμῆς]· αὗται φυσικῶς ἐνεργοῦσιν· φθονοῦνται δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν περγείων · ἐπὰν δέ τις μυηθεὶς ἐκδιώκει αὐτοὺς, τεύξεται τοῦ ζητουμένου. Berthelot, Collection, 2:243 (Gr.) suggests περγείων and believes it necessary to postulate a lacuna after the word, where Festugière supplies (La révélation, 1:366 ln. 16).

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demonology of the imperial age.66 It thus seems that Egyptian priests are identified with the alchemists who use “unnatural”, timely tinctures, which depend on the whim of the demons to be efficient.67 However, it is clear that Zosimus also presents himself as someone who has access to the authentic art of alchemy, hidden in the secret recesses of Egyptian temples. Associating the recipients of sacrifices with deceitful demons is hardly the kind of attitude one would expect from someone deriving their livelihood from the temples. Like Hermes in the Asclepius, Zosimus identifies demons as the recipients of sacrifice in the temples, but these demons teach their worshippers about “unnatural tinctures” and hide the legitimate natural ones.68 There are three phases in the history laid out by Zosimus: first, in ancient times, some “great men” repelled the demons. Then, in response, the demons took control of the natural tinctures, and substituted them with their own unnatural tinctures to make humans worship them with sacrifices in the temples. Finally, a war laid the area waste, put a stop to sacrifices, and left the temples deserted. In the Hermetica, those who are enlightened by God are able to repel the demons that affect the body, just like the “great men of old” of Zosimus.69 However, these demons cannot be the same ones as the demons who are summoned in order to inhabit the statues in the Asclepius, for the latter are beneficent demons. 70 It seems that Zosimus willfully subverts the narrative of the Asclepius, where the discovery of how to make earthly gods is a great achievement of the ancestors of Hermes and his disciples (§ 37), and instead turns it into a ruse on the part of the demons. The third phase of Zosimus’ narrative has the clearest parallel to the Asclepius: Hermes predicts that foreigners will invade Egypt, that Egyptians will become extinct, and that the temples will become deserted, all of which is described as something that has already happened by Zosimus. His demons resemble the “wicked angels” of the Asclepius, who will remain on earth after the gods have left Egypt in order to teach humans unnatural things (ϩ︤ⲙ︥ⲡⲁ[ⲣ]ⲁⲫⲩⲥⲓⲥ), a close match to Zosimus’ unnatural tinctures (ἀφυσίκα).71 The most likely explanation seems to 66

Cf. Frederick E. Brenk, “In Light of the Moon: Demonology in the Early Imperial Period,” ANRW 16.3 (1986): 2068–145. 67 This is also the conclusion of Matteo Martelli, “Alchemy, Medicine and Religion: Zosimus of Panopolis and the Egyptian Priests,” forthcoming in an anthology on ancient alchemy edited by Cristina Viano. I am grateful to the author for sharing a draft of this article with me. 68 Cf. Mertens, Zosime, 62 n. 9; Daniel Stolzenberg, “Unpropitious Tinctures. Alchemy, Astrology & Gnosis according to Zosimos of Panopolis.” Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences 49 (1999.): 3-31, on natural and timely or propitious tinctures. 69 Cf. CH I, 22–23; IX, 3; X, 21; XII, 4; XIII, 7–9; XVI, 15–16. 70 Cf. Asclepius 5, 24, 37–38. 71 Asclepius, NHC VI 73.5–12: ⲛ̣̄ⲁ̣[ⲅⲅⲉ]ⲗ̣ⲟ̣[ⲥ ⲇⲉ ⲙ̄]ⲡⲟⲛ̣ⲏⲣⲟⲥ [ⲥ]ⲉⲛⲁϣⲱϫ︤ⲡ︥ ⲟ̣[ⲩ]ⲁ̣ⲉⲧⲟⲩ





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be that Zosimus had read the prediction of Hermes, and perceived it to have been fulfilled by the crisis of the third century, when indeed the Egyptian temples were in decline, the country was briefly under the control of the Palmyrene empire, and the Thebaid was invaded by Blemmyes from the south.72 Further complicating matters, Zosimus states in another Syriac passage that most people believe the statues are animated, but only a few people know that they are in fact man-made, since this was taught in secret by the ancients to the priests. 73 Does this imply that Zosimus himself was a priest? And how can this view be harmonized with the idea that demons receive the sacrifices, if they are not believed to inhabit the statues? Further research needs to be undertaken on the Syriac texts in order to answer these questions. We might at present only conclude provisionally that it is unlikely that Zosimus was an Egyptian prophet, given his extensive criticism of these, but he had obviously had extensive dealings with priests and prophets, with mixed results. One possibility is that Zosimus intends his critique only for certain prophets, such as his rival Nilus,74 who is probably the “false prophet” trying to seduce Theosebeia, but in that case one would have expected him to distinguish clearer between legitimate and illegitimate prophets. Another possibility is that Zosimus was a priest of a lower ⲛ̄ⲛ̄ⲣⲱⲙⲉ ⲉⲩϣⲟⲟⲡ ⲛⲙ̣̄ⲙⲁⲩ ⲉⲩⲥⲱⲕ ϩⲏⲧ̣ⲟⲩ ⲁϩⲟⲩⲛ ⲁⲙⲡⲉⲧϩⲟⲟⲩ ϩ︤ⲛ︥ⲟⲩⲧⲟⲗⲙⲏⲣⲓⲁ· ⲁⲩⲱ ⲁϩⲟⲩⲛ ⲁⲛⲙ︤ⲛ︦ⲧ︥ⲁⲧⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲙ︤ⲛ︥ ϩⲉⲛⲡⲟⲗⲉⲙⲟⲥ ⲙ︤ⲛ︥ ϩⲉⲛⲧⲱⲣ︤ⲡ︥ ⲉⲩϯ ⲥⲃⲱ ⲛⲁⲩ ⲉϩ︤ⲙ︥ⲡⲁ[ⲣ]ⲁⲫⲩⲥⲓⲥ· = Asclepius 25: soli nocentes angeli remanebunt qui, humanitate commixti, ad omnia audaciae mala miseros manu iniecta conpellent: in bella, in rapinas, in fraudes et in omnia quae sunt animarum naturae contraria. These wicked angels might have been influenced by those of the Book of Watchers, cf. Marc Philonenko, “Un allusion de l’Asclepius au livre d’Hénoch,” in Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults (ed. Jacob Neusner; 4 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 2:161–63. Zosimus quotes a passage of Hermes that deals with fallen angels teaching mankind the works of nature or alchemy, preserved in the Syriac corpus and the Greek Ecloga chronographica of George Syncellus; cf. Berthelot, La chimie, 238–9 and William Adler and Paul Tuffin, The Chronography of George Synkellos: A Byzantine Chronicle of Universal History from the Creation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 18. 72 Cf. Lindsay, Origins of Alchemy, 339–40. 73 Zosimus, On the Letter Waw (Syriac) 6.31 (Berthelot and Duval, La chimie, 228– 29): “Je pense que les anciens, par suite de leur esprit de jalousie, n’écrivirent pas ces choses; mais ils les firent connaître en secret aux prêtres seuls. Les hommes étaient saisis de crainte à la vue des images; ils pensaient qu’elles étaient animées et qu’elles tenaient leurs couleurs de la nature vivante; à tel point qu’ils n’osaient pas les regarder en face, par crainte de la nature vivante des membres et de la figure de l’objet façonné. Peu nombreux étaient ceux qui pensaient qu’elles étaient faites par la compositions et l’artifice des hommes; attendu que cela ne se disait qu’en secret et en cachette.” The Syriac text and English translation of this passage is forthcoming in Martelli, “Alchemy.” 74 Zosimus, Traitement du corps de la magnesia 8 (Berthelot, Collection, 2:191); Berthelot and Duval, La chimie, 228–29.

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rank or a craftsman connected to a temple, who did not have access to the books of the prophets and eventually became resentful of their reticence. It could also be that he was a former priest, who had been deprived of his office due to the general decline of the temples, and that he felt some resentment from this, or that he at some point converted to Christianity. It is plausible and even probable that Zosimus was part of a Hermetic ritual community.75 He matches exactly the profile of the type of person we would suspect were members, associating with Egyptian priests, being a practitioner of the “occult science” of alchemy, and having a strong interest in Greek philosophy as well as Jewish and Christian apocryphal literature.76 He frequently cites Hermes Trismegistus approvingly as an authority, but most telling is the fact that he encourages his protégée Theosebeia, a priestess who he refers to as “sister” and “queen”, in these words: “When you recognize yourself, that you have become perfect, and the natural tinctures, spit on matter, and by hastening towards Poimenandres and immersing yourself in the mixing-bowl, return to your race.”77 This is undoubtedly a reference to the Poimandres (CH I; cf. XIII, 15) and to The Mixing Bowl (CH IV), and in the latter text the son of Hermes is indeed encouraged to immerse himself in the mixing bowl filled with nous.78 The Final Quittance and The Mixing-Bowl are the only two Greek texts that feature this striking image of immersing oneself in a mixing-bowl, and both texts specify that in order to do so it is necessary to estrange oneself from matter. Although less certain, it is also possible that the exhortation to “return to your race” echoes the treatise On the Rebirth, where Hermes tells his son about a “race” that cannot be taught but only reminded by God, to which the son, Tat, replies that he is born of the “paternal race.”79 Supporting the supposition that Zosimus might allude to On the Rebirth is that both texts makes a withdrawal from matter a prerequisite for attaining to this “race”, and furthermore Zosimus has earlier in the text discussed twelve “fates of death,” connected with the passions that are to be resisted, which may be related to the twelve avengers of matter and darkness in On the Rebirth (CH XIII, 7–12). Certainly, the number twelve 75 Cf. Kyle A. Fraser, “Baptised in Gnôsis: The Spiritual Alchemy of Zosimos of Panopolis,” Dionysius 15 (2007): 33–54. 76 Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 120–26. 77 Zosimus, The Final Quittance 8: ὅταν δὲ ἐπιγνῷς σαυτὴν [ms. ἐπιγνοῦσα αὐτὴν] τελειωθεῖσαν, τότε καὶ τῶν φυσικῶν τῆς ὕλης κατάπτυσον [ms. κατάπτησον], καὶ καταδραμοῦσα ἐπὶ τὸν Ποιμένανδρα καὶ βαπτισθεῖσα τῷ κρατῆρι, ἀνάδραμε ἐπὶ τὸ γένος τὸ σόν. Festugière, Révélation, 368, justifies his emendations on the basis of a parallel passage from Olympiodorus. 78 Cf. Camplani, “Procedimenti,” 83. 79 CH XIII, 2–3: Τοῦτο τὸ γένος, ὦ τέκνον, οὐ διδάσκεται, ἀλλ’ ὅταν θέλῃ, ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ ἀναμιμνήσκεται . . . ἀλλότριος υἱὸς πέφυκα τοῦ πατρικοῦ γένους.





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is a number generally associated with astral fatality, but there are more convergences that point in the direction of a common tradition. In both texts the quelling of the twelve is a prerequisite to summon divinity, and when the divinity arrives one should make a sacrifice of another kind: a “rational sacrifice” in On the Rebirth, and sacrifices that are “not useful, nourishing or soothing to them (i.e. the demons), but rather unnourishing and destructive to them,” in the Final Quittance. 80 Zosimus goes on to state that these sacrifices are the ones that Membres instructed to King Solomon, and that the latter also wrote of them himself. This would seem to go against a Hermetic provenance, but the name Membres is likely derived from Iambres, the name that certain Jewish and Christian apocrypha gave to one of the two Egyptian magicians that competed with Moses before Pharaoh. It is thus likely that Membres is considered to be an Egyptian sage instructing king Solomon. Similarly, in a Syriac text of Zosimus he writes that the Egyptians possess a book entitled On the Seven Heavens that is often attributed to Solomon, but actually was brought to “our priests,” i.e. to Egyptian priests, who then seem to have transmitted this to Solomon.81 It is currently not possible to reach any firm conclusions on the relationship between Zosimus and Hermetism, but it should be clear that Zosimus is a highly interesting figure for the type of person who would read Hermetica as well as Christian and Jewish apocryphal literature around the turn of the fourth century, and he was in all likelihood familiar with the type of rituals we see in the Hermetica. Hermetism in Thebes We have seen that the arch-prophet of Hermes Trismegistus, Anatolius, corresponded with the Greek philosopher Ambrosius, possibly because the latter was interested in the ritual competence of the Egyptian priest of Thoth, the supposed source of Pythagoras and Plato, an interest that Iamblichus also testifies to. If we cannot be sure if the priests of Hermopolis practiced Hermetic rituals, then we at least know that similar rites were practiced by Egyptian priests a little further up the Nile, past Nag Hammadi, in Thebes. The so-called Thebes-cache or Thebes library is a group of papyri from the early third to the early fourth century, brought to diverse European institutions by the nineteenth century entrepreneur Gio80

CH XIII, 18: δι’ ἐμοῦ δέξαι τὸ πᾶν λόγῳ, λογικὴν θυσίαν; 19: δέξαι ἀπὸ πάντων λογικὴν θυσίαν; 21: σοί, γενάρχα τῆς γενεσιουργίας, Τὰτ θεῷ πέμπω λογικὰς θυσίας; Zosimus, The Final Quittance 8: πρόσφερε θυσίας τοῖς , μὴ τὰς προσφύρους, μὴ τὰς θρεπτικὰς αὐτῶν, καὶ προσηνεῖς, ἀλλὰ τὰς ἀποτρεπτικὰς αὐτῶν, καὶ ἀναιρετικὰς. 81 Berthelot, La chimie, 264–65.

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vanni Anastasi.82 Several papyrus rolls and codices have with varying degrees of certainty been said to belong to this library.83 A far too often overlooked fact, in studies of ancient magic, is that these texts contain numerous spells in Demotic, Old Coptic, and even some Hieratic glosses, and therefore must have been written and read by people with a priestly education from the House of Life, since this was the only place these languages were taught in the Roman period, as far as we know.84 The centrality of this institution is indicated in the Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth, where the Coptic expression for hieroglyphs is “letters of the scribe of the House of Life.”85 Scholars have tended to see Late Antique Thebes as having degenerated into a collection of villages, as Strabo described it (17.1.46), due to several failed uprisings in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. However, David Klotz has recently demonstrated that temple building and cultic activity continued into the Roman Period, and at least some cultic processions continued into the fourth century.86 In this collection we find a wide range of ritual procedures, from erotic spells and spells to gain wealth to methods of acquiring divine power, visions and even ascent. Hermes-Thoth is frequently invoked, both as a divine power and as the originator of the proce82 Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 168–72; Richard Gordon, “The Religious Anthropology of Late-Antique ‘High’ Magical Practice,” in The Individual in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (ed. Jörg Rüpke; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 166; Michela Zago, Tebe magica e alchemica: L’idea di biblioteca nell’Egitto romano: la Collezione Anastasi (Padova: Libreriauniversitaria.it, 2010); Smith, Following Osiris, 512–18. 83 Cf. Korshi Dosoo, “A History of the Theban Magical Library,” BASP 53 (2016): 251–74. The number of manuscripts included in the cache varies, cf. for example Zago, Tebe, 59–78, who includes far more manuscripts than Dosoo. 84 Sven P. Vleeming, “Some Notes on Demotic Scribal Training in the Ptolemaic Period,” in Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Papyrologists, Copenhagen, 23-29 August, 1992 (ed. Adam Bülow-Jacobsen; Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1994), 185–7; W. John Tait, “Some Notes on Demotic Scribal Training in the Roman Period,” ibidem, 188–92; Gordon, “Religious Anthropology,” 167–69; Jacco Dieleman, Priests, Tongues, and Rites: The London-Leiden Magical Manuscripts and Translation in Egyptian Ritual (100–300 CE) (RGRW 153; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 22, 203–84; Frankfurter, Religion, 198–237, 249–51. 85 NHC VI 61,20: ϩⲉⲛⲥϩⲁⲓ̈ ⲛ̄̄ⲥⲁϩ ⲡⲣⲁⲛ︦ϣ︦; 61,30: ϩ︦ⲛ︦ⲥϩⲉⲉⲓ ⲛ̄ⲥⲁϩ ⲡⲣⲁⲉⲓϣ; 62,15: ϩⲛ̄ⲥϩⲁⲉ︦ⲓ ⲛ̄ⲥⲁϩ ⲡⲣⲁⲉⲓϣ. Cf. Mahé, Hermès, 1:124–25; Enzo Lucchesi, “A propos du mot Sphransh” JEA 61 (1975): 254-56, also discusses the Bohairic ⲥⲫⲣⲁⲛϣ̄ used to translate the Septuagint’s ἐξηγητής (Gen 41:8 & 24). 86 David Klotz, Caesar in the City of Amun: Egyptian Temple Construction and Theology in Roman Thebes (MRE 15; Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 380, 398–401 (Buchis coronation until 340), 388 (reduced Amun-cult in 4th c.), 397–98 (continued Sokar festival). Smith, Following Osiris, 518–26, is skeptical that Egyptain religion continued past the early third century.





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dures. In the “Great Paris Magical Papyrus” (P. Bibliothèque nationale Supplément grec. 574; PGM IV), the Mithras Liturgy –falsely so-called– has recently been identified as an early Hermetic rite of immortalization and ascent by Hans Dieter Betz. 87 Though this has not been universally accepted, there are certainly strong similarities between the spell and the Hermetic rites of rebirth and ascent. 88 Another spell in the same manuscript is meant to produce a trance in a boy or adult, in which Osiris-ReAmun enters this medium, and it uses the secret names of this god that Hermes Trismegistus had allegedly written in hieroglyphs in Heliopolis.89 Some of the spells in the codex are written in Old Coptic, which is indicative of a priestly context.90 In another manuscript in the group, one of the versions of the famous Leiden Kosmopoiia (PGM XIII) is labeled as a “Hermetic” spell (ἑρμαϊκὸς), and the cosmogony therein has structural similarities to the Poimandres (CH I) and the Hermetic cosmogony reported by Iamblichus (Myst. 8.4). 91 Whereas Hermetic treatises such as the Poimandres, On the Rebirth, and the Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth present idealized narratives of visions and rebirth, some spells of the Thebes-cache contain recipes for rites meant to actually obtain similar experiences. Even though far from all the names, mythemes, or practices described in the Thebes-cache have any parallel in the philosophical Hermetica, the substantial overlap makes the continued existence of a Hermetic community in early fourth century Thebes not only possible but even probable. Thebes is furthermore mentioned in the Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth, where Hermes instructs his son to inscribe the treatise on a 87 Hans Dieter Betz, The “Mithras Liturgy”: Text, Translation, and Commentary (STAC 18; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 35–38; Camplani, “Procedimenti,” 86. 88 Cf. Bull, “Tradition of Hermes,” 423–35. 89 PGM IV.883–887: δεῦρό μοι διὰ τοῦ δεῖνα ἀνθρώπου ἢ παιδίου καὶ ἐξήγησόν μοι μετὰ ἀκριβείας, ἐπεί σου λέγω τὰ ὀνόματα, ἃ ἔγραψεν ἐν Ἡλιουπόλει ὁ τρισμέγιστος Ἑρμῆς ἱερογλυφικοῖς γράμμασι· 90 Cf. however Edward O. D. Love, Code-Switching with the Gods: The Bilingual (Old Coptic-Greek) Spells of PGM IV and their Linguistic, Religious, and Socio-Cultural Context in Late Roman Egypt (ZÄS Beihefte 4; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016). Love follows Smith, Following Osiris, chap. 7, in arguing that there were no Egyptian priests and thus no one competent in Egyptian scripts in the early fourth century, and that therefore the last owner of the Thebes-cache was merely a Greek-literate descendant of priests who kept the Demotic manuscripts as now-incomprehensible heirlooms. Love ignores the testimony of the archives of Theophanes and Ammon, as well as that of Zosimus. Moreover, he mentions the Buchis-stela of 340 from Armant, a mere 10 miles south of Thebes, but neglects to notice that it is engraved with Hieroglyphs, thus testifying that there were people in the Thebes-area still competent in Egyptian scripts. Cf. Jean-Claude Grenier, “La stèle funéraire du dernier taureau Bouchis (Caire JE 31901 = Stèle Bucheum 20). Ermant - 4 novembre 340,” BIFAO 83 (1983): 197–208. 91 Bull, “Tradition of Hermes,” 102.

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hieroglyphic stele in his temple in Diospolis, probably referring to Diospolis Magna, one of the names for Thebes (NHC VI 61.19). Furthermore, an imprecatory oath and guardian statues should be added to the stele, to guard it against the uninitiated, and it should be erected at a specific astrological conjunction. This passage demonstrates the continued confluence of noetic ascent, Egyptian temples, and magico-astrological thinking in the Hermetica, a confluence which could have been dismissed as exoticizing fiction were it not for the Thebes-cache, which indicates that Egyptian priests were still involved in such activities.92 Furthermore, in Papyrus Mimaut (P.Louvre 2391; PGM III) we find the Hermetic Prayer of Thanksgiving, also found in the Latin Asclepius and Nag Hammadi Codex VI, completing a spell to gain a ritual union with the sun-god Helios (PGM III.494–611). This manuscript has been grouped with the Thebes-cache by some scholars, although there is no conclusive evidence that it belonged to the same collection. Indeed, similar ritual handbooks also existed elsewhere in Egypt. 93 Papyrus Mimaut contains similar spells as those in the Thebes-cache, some of which are in Old Coptic, and was likely written by someone versed in priestly lore.94 The manuscript thus testifies that Hermetic hymns could be used in the third or fourth century in ritual practices to invoke the sun-god and be “illuminated with knowledge.”95 There is, then, good reason to suppose the continued existence of a Hermetic ritual system of gaining divine power and ascending to the heavenly spheres in fourth century Egypt, and that the priests of the dwindling temples were instrumental in this tradition. In the final years of the fourth century, Ammianus Marcellinus wrote that divine knowledge had spread from Egypt to the rest of the world: “There, for the first time, long before other men, they discovered the cradles, so to speak, of the various religions, and now carefully guard the first beginnings of worship, stored up

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Bull, “Tradition of Hermes,” 299–323. Dosoo, “History,” 263–64. The Trismegistos database lists the provenance as Thebes. 94 Christine Harrauer, Meliouchos: Studien zur Entwicklung religiöser Vorstellungen in griechischen synkretistischen Zaubertexten (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1987), 12–14 and passim. Cf. now Edward O. D. Love, “The ‘PGM III’ Archive: Two Papyri, Two Scribes, Two Scripts, and Two Languages,” ZPE 202 (2017): 175–88, who demonstrates that PGM III consists of two separate manuscripts, first partially written by one scribe, and later filled out by a second scribe, who also supplied the Old Coptic spells. 95 PGM III.584–585: ἵνα με νῦν ἐρατῶν πρὸς σὲ τὴν γνῶσιν ἐλλυ[χνιάσ]ῃς. Dosoo, “History,” 262, dates the ms to the third century, whereas Harrauer, Meliouchos, 12, dates it to after 300 CE. Cf. Mahé, Hermès, 1:141–46; Camplani, “Procedimenti,” 86–87. 93





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in secret writings.”96 The present tense indicates that Ammianus believes the Egyptian priests still guard their secret writings. Elsewhere, he mentions an “ancient authority” who invented the hieroglyphs, and this authority is no doubt Hermes Trismegistus, who is listed before Apollonius of Tyana and Plotinus as experts on the guardian spirit. 97 Describing the transfer of an obelisk from Thebes to Rome in 357, he refers to Rome as the “temple of the entire world,” an expression used for Egypt in the Asclepius.98 Just around this time, as we have seen, both Christians like Augustine and pagans like Antonius believed that Hermes’ predicted demise of the Egyptian religion had already come to pass. After the fourth century any trace of Hermetism as a living ritual tradition seems to disappear, although certain pagan intellectuals from Alexandria might have had some sort of allegiance to Hermes, or at least an interest in his teachings.99 Towards the end of the century, after the destruction of the Serapeum, we hear of the two pagan teachers of Socrates Scholasticus, Helladius and Ammonius, who leave Alexandria for Constantinople. These two were reportedly priests respectively of Sarapis and “The Ape” (πίθηκος), most likely Thoth, but we know little else of them.100 Other contemporaries, such as Theon, father of Hypatia, Paul of Alexandria, and the anonymous astrologer of 379, were at least interested in astrological Hermetica. Alan Cameron has argued that Theon, Hypatia, and Synesius were likely involved in Iamblichean theurgy steeped in the Chaldaean Oracles and the Hermetica,101 and their contemporaries Olympiodorus and Stephanus were interested in alchemical Hermetica.102 In the late fifth century the brothers Asclepiades and Heraiscus both wrote on Egyptian theology and rituals, and the latter “dwelt in shrines and places of initiation, as he re96 Ammianus Marcellinus 22.16.20: lbi primum homines longe ante alios ad varia religionum incunabula (ut dicitur) pervenerunt et initia prima sacrorum caute tuentur condita scriptis arcanis. Ed. and trans. John C. Rolfe, Ammianus Marcellinus (3 vols.; LCL 300, 315, 331; London: W. Heinemann, 1952–1963), 2:306–7. 97 Ammianus Marcellinus 17.4.8 (on hieroglyphs): initialis sapientiae vetus insignivit auctoritas; 21.14.5 (on guardian spirit): Hermesque Termaximus, et Tyaneus Apollonius atque Plotinus. Cf. R. L. Rike, Apex Omnium: Religion in the Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 20, 33–34. 98 Ammianus Marcellinus 17.4.13: ablatum uno templo miraculum Romae sacraret, id est in templo mundi totius; Ascl. 24: terra nostra mundi totius est templum. Cf. Rike, Apex, 98–99 nn. 60 and 65. 99 Cf. Ilsetraut Hadot, Athenian and Alexandrian Neoplatonism and the Harmonization of Aristotle and Plato (SPNPT 18; Leiden: Brill, 2015), 5 ff. 100 William C. McDermott, The Ape in Antiquity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins press, 1938), 37. 101 Alan Cameron, Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 50–58, 290–97. 102 Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 178.

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vived the ancestral rites not just in Egypt, but also abroad wherever any such customs might have survived. He put all his efforts in the collection of information on the secret worship of the gods.”103 Certainly it is at least possible that such a person could have been an inheritor of the Hermetic tradition, especially since it is implied that he had undergone a rebirth rendering him divine.104

The Christian Reception of Hermes in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries Egyptian Christians could in the fourth century, as we have seen, have encountered either members of Hermetic groups or the literature deriving from such groups. There is however no direct evidence for Christians encountering Hermetic cult practices. In the second century, Clement of Alexandria had designated the books known by Egyptian priests as books of Hermes, and he described a procession he had witnessed, in which the priests carried their insignia and books, though the contents of the books seem to correspond more to traditional Egyptian priestly literature than to the philosophical Hermetica.105 Clement’s point in describing the wisdom of the Egyptians contained in these encyclopedic books of Hermes was to show that the Greeks had stolen their philosophy from the Egyptians, a polemical use that will be reprised over two hundred years later by his fellow Alexandrian Cyril, as we shall see. In the late fourth century, Philastrius of Brescia catalogued a haeresis of Hermes Trismegistus, characterized by their preoccupation with astral phenomena.106 However, the only thing Philastrius tells us about this haeresis is that it dares to give names to the stars, names which are in fact only knowable to Jesus Christ. It thus seems likely that Philastrius made up the haeresis solely on the basis of

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Damascius, V. Isid. 72BC Athanassiadi: ἐν ἀδύτοις ἑκάστοτε καὶ τελεστηρίοις ἐνδιαιτᾶσθαι τὴν ψυχήν, οὔτι κατ’ Αἴγυπτον μόνην κινοῦντι τὰς πατρίους τελετάς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς ἀλλοδαπῆς, εἴπου τι κατελέλειπτο τῶν τοιούτων. ὁ δὲ ἐσπούδασεν εἰς τὸ δυνατὸν πρὸς ἀγυρισμὸν τῆς ἀπορρήτου τῶν θείων θεραπείας. Ed. & trans. Polymnia Athanassiadi, Damascius: The Philosophical History (Athens: Apamea, 1999), 185. 104 Damascius, V. Isid. 76E Athanassiadi: the first birth of Heraiscus is said to also have been sacred and mystical, which implies a sacred and mystical second birth as well. 105 Clement of Alexandria, 6.4.35–37. Cf. Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 58–59. 106 Philastrius, Div. her. 103.1. Cf. also 10.2 on the “Heliognosti,” and 113.1. Ed. Firmin Heylen, “Filastrii episcopi Brixiensis Diversarum hereseon liber,” in CCSL 9 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1957), 207–324. Walter Scott, Hermetica (4 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1924–1936), 4:166–68; Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 210–11 n. 87.





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Hermetic astrological writings. Otherwise we have no testimonies of encounters between Christians and Hermetists.107 On the other hand, we do know that several Christians were interested in the Hermetic literature.108 One of the most avid readers of Hermes was Lactantius, who wrote his Divine Institutes in the early fourth century in North Africa. This work is in Latin, and was therefore likely not widely read in Egypt, but it still merits some attention here since it contains the largest number of quotations from and references to Hermes after Cyril of Alexandria’s Against Julian, written over a century later. It has also been argued that the Divine Institutes had a profound influence on the religious policy of Constantine, despite the fact that it was hardly in line with what would eventually become Christian orthodoxy.109 Lactantius’ strategy was to use pagan prophets to convince educated pagans of the truth of Christianity, since he realized that they would not be persuaded by Jewish prophecies.110 Accordingly, Hermes is repeatedly cited and quoted, often in tandem with the Sibyl. Scholars such as Antonie Wlosok have argued that Hermes in fact played a crucial role in the religious outlook of Lactan-

107 Philastrius’ treatise has been hypothesized to derive from Hippolytus’ lost Syntagma, and so is a fourth century treatise on the church, wrongly ascribed to Anthimus of Nicomedia and possibly authored by Marcellus of Ancyra. Philastrius and Ps.-Anthimus are moreover the only sources to list a heresy of Hermes and Seleucus, though Philastrius (55–56) gives the name as Hermias and informs us that these heresiarchs were Anatolian. According to Iamblichus, someone called Seleucus wrote about the books of Hermes (Myst. 8.1), probably the same Seleucus that Porphyry states was a theologus, since both authors mention him in conjunction with Manetho, the Egyptian priest and historian (Abst. 2.55). It must remain conjectural if this Seleucus is the same that Suidas (200) says was an Alexandrian grammarian who wrote 100 books on the gods and was a sophist in Rome, and who Suetonius says was forced to commit suicide by Tiberius (Tib. 56). Cf. Scott, Hermetica, 4:53; Clarke et al., Iamblichus, 307 n. 397. Ps.-Anthimus states that all the Gnostics, from Menander to Valentinus, had in fact derived their teachings from Hermes, Plato, and Aristotle rather than the apostles, and he provides some Hermetic quotes, most of them also known from other sources. Cf. Alastair H. B. Logan, “Marcellus of Ancyra (Pseudo-Anthimus), ‘On the Holy Church’: text, translation, and commentary,” JTS 51 (2000): 81–112. We also know from Eusebius’ Against Marcellus (1.4.41) that Marcellus accused Eusebius of following Hermes and Valentinus in making the Logos a second and distinct god, cf. Scott, Hermetica, 4:154. 108 Cf. Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, “L’ermetismo nelle testimonianze dei Padri,” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 7 (1971): 215–51. 109 Elisabeth D. Digeser, The Making of a Christian Empire: Lactantius & Rome (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 64ff. 110 On the sources of Lactantius cf. Robert M. Ogilvie, The Library of Lactantius (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 33–36 (on Hermetica); Jochen Walter, Pagane Texte und Wertvorstellungen bei Laktanz (Hyp 165; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), 152–71 (on Hermetica).

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tius,111 an outlook that Elisabeth D. Digeser has called “an inclusive Christianity.”112 Claudio Moreschini has singled out three topics that interested Lactantius the most in the Hermetica.113 First, Hermes was a witness to the Euhemerist teaching that the gods of Egypt were really mortal kings who were “translated” into gods. Lactantius says that Hermes identified both Ouranos and Kronos, as well as his own namesake, as mortal men that had become divine (Inst. 1.61). A similar teaching can be found in CH X and the Perfect Discourse, where the former text mentions the deified Ouranos and Kronos (CH X, 5), while the latter mentions the deified ancestors and namesakes of Hermes and Asclepius (Asclepius 38). The deified ancestors function in the text to anchor the already ancient sage Hermes Trismegistus to an even more remote past. This motif is again connected to the second topic of concern to Lactantius, namely primordial history. Hermes was ostensibly in a privileged position to have knowledge of the nascence of the world, as the keeper of the ancient wisdom of Egypt, handed down from the primordial gods themselves. As G. S. Boys-Stones has shown, such a preoccupation with primordial wisdom was a general feature of the philosophy of the Imperial Age. 114 Primordial wisdom is generally associated with culture heroes, such as Orpheus, Musaios, Oannes, Zarathustra, and – of course – Hermes Trismegistus. One particular point of importance in the Christian attitude to Hermes as a culture hero is that he was connected to Moses through their common connection to Egyptian wisdom. Already in the second century BCE, Artapanus the Jew identified Hermes with Moses, claiming that he instituted the cult of animal gods, including the ibis in Hermopolis, the city he founded, in order to keep the populace in check, while he also invented philosophy and gave the priests their sacred writings.115 Later, in 111

On the influence of the Hermetica on Lactantius’ thought, cf. Antonie Wlosok, Laktanz und die philosophische Gnosis (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1960), 115–42, 222–31. 112 Digeser, Making, 84–90. 113 Claudio Moreschini, Hermes Christianus: The Intermingling of Hermetic Piety and Christian Thought (CM 8; Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 33–48. Cf. also Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, “L’ermetismo nelle testimonianze dei Padri,” in Studia Patristica vol. XI: Papers Presented to the Fifth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 1967, Part II: Classica, Philosophica et Ethica, Theologica, Augustiniana (TUGAL 108; Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1972), 58–64, who argues that Lactantius and Cyril seem to be intersted only in “monistic,” and not “dualistic” Hermetism. More on Lactantius and the Christian reception of Hermes prior to him can be found in Andreas Löw, Hermes Trismegistos als Zeuge der Wahrheit: Die christliche Hermetikrezeption von Athenagoras bis Laktanz (Theoph 36; Berlin: Philo, 2002). 114 George R. Boys-Stones, Post-Hellenistic Philosophy: A Study of Its Development from the Stoics to Origen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 115 Artapanus, Concerning the Jews, via Alexander Polyhistor, cited by Eusebius,





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the Acts of the Apostles (7:22), we hear that Moses was well versed in the wisdom of Egypt, which made Christians assume that he was taught by Hermes or vice versa.116 Hermes was thus early on a part of what Jan Assmann calls “the Moses-discourse,” where the figure of Moses is variously put in stark opposition to Egyptian idolatry, or made the inheritor of Egypt’s esoteric monotheism.117 This function of Hermes as the symbol of the cultural and religious heritage of Egypt is important for the polemics against Greek philosophy as derivative of Egyptian wisdom, as we shall see. The third topic that interested Lactantius was the theology of Hermes. As in Christianity, the Hermetic system also has a demiurgic logos that is issued from the godhead as its beloved son. Lactantius consequently interpreted Trismegistus as a testimony to John’s preexistent logos, Christ, in anticipation of his incarnation. Hermetic elements less congenial to Lactantius’ Christianity were largely bypassed in silence. One might add a fourth topic of interest to Lactantius, not mentioned by Moreschini, namely prophecy. Lactantius knew well Hermes’ prediction of the twilight of the gods of Egypt, which he took to be a prophecy of the inevitable triumph of Christianity. As we shall see, these four topics were also of concern to Christian authors in the fourth and early fifth centuries, and may thus have some explanatory power as to the reason why the three Hermetica were included in the Nag Hammadi Codices. Didymus the Blind Two testimonia of Hermes in Didymus’ On the Trinity were already known, and included in Scott’s collection of testimonia. 118 These correspond to two of Cyril’s testimonia, and Didymus was therefore only included in the critical apparatus of the testimonia of Cyril edited by Nock and Festugière.119 However, in 1941 eight papyrus codices were found below the cloister of Dair al-Qusair, in a quarry at Tura in Egypt, which Praep. ev. 9.27.3–10. Cf. Gerard Mussies, “The Interpretatio Judaica of Thoth-Hermes,” in Studies in Egyptian Religion: Dedicated to Professor Jan Zandee (ed. Mathieu S. H. G. Heerma van Voss et al.; SHR 43; Leiden: Brill, 1982), 89–120. 116 Cf. Ton Hilhorst, “‘And Moses Was Instructed in All the Wisdom of the Egyptians’ (Acts 7.22),” in The Wisdom of Egypt: Jewish, Early Christian, and Gnostic Essays in Honour of Gerard P. Luttikhuizen (ed. Anthony Hilhorst and George H. van Kooten; AGJU 59; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 164, for the estoteric nature of this wisdom. 117 Cf. Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997). 118 Scott, Hermetica, 4:168–76. Scott also includes a passage from Trin. 3.1, which does not explicitly refer to Hermes, but which Scott plausibly suggests might have been adapted by Didymus from Hermes. 119 FH 23–24; Nock and Festugière, Hermès, 126–29.

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turned out to contain a number of biblical commentaries by Didymus.120 Since the manuscripts also contained writings by Origen and had been intentionally damaged in antiquity, it is a reasonable assumption that they were disposed of in the course or aftermath of the Origenist controversy. These manuscripts contain two new testimonia of Hermes Trismegistus, which certainly deserve to be taken into consideration. After the Tura discovery, the attribution of On the Trinity to Didymus has been questioned, but I will proceed on the assumption that if the treatise is not by Didymus himself it was written by someone in his circle, and is thus a witness to the reception of Hermes in late fourth-century Egypt.121 Unlike Lactantius, Didymus’ audience is Christian, so he is able to rely on biblical literature, and yet he quotes quite a few pagan authors.122 The two Hermetic passages in On the Trinity both appear in book 2, although Robert Grant has pointed out that there is also an uncredited paraphrase of SH I, 1 in the beginning of book 3.123 Book 2 is devoted to demonstrating the divinity of the Holy Spirit against the so-called Pneumatomachi or Macedonians, 124 and in chapter 3.26–28 there appear three paraphrases from CH VI, That the Good is in God Alone and Nowhere Else. Hermes is however only mentioned in passing, after a direct quote from CH VI following the paraphrases, where Didymus writes “as also Hermes called Trismegistus says.”125 The point that Didymus derives from Hermes is that the essence of the good only pertains to uncreated beings, whereas created beings can only be given the name “good,” in the relative degree that evil 120

Louis Doutreleau, “Que Savons-nous aujourd’hui des papyrus de Toura?” RSR 43 (1955): 161–93; Henri-Charles Puech, “Les nouveaux écrits d’Origine et de Didyme découverts à Toura,” RHPR 31 (1951): 293–329; Octave Gueraud, “Note préliminaire sur les papyrus d’Origène decouverts à Toura,” RHR 131 (1946): 85–108; Richard Layton, Didymus the Blind and His Circle in Late-Antique Alexandria: Virtue and Narrative in Biblical Scholarship (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 2–4. 121 Cf. Grant D. Bayliss, The Vision of Didymus the Blind: A Fourth-Century VirtueOrigenism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 46–55, for an overview of the works of Didymus. Bayliss suggests that if Trin. was not written by Didymus then the author was someone from his circle. 122 Robert M. Grant, “Greek Literature in the Treatise De Trinitate and Cyril Contra Julianum,” JTS 15 (1964): 265–69; Seiler, Didymus, xiii–xiv, lists the quotes from profane literature used in book 2, chap 1–7. Besides Hermes these include two from unknown hymns, two from Homer, and one each from Hesiod, Euripides, and Oppian. 123 Grant, “Greek Literature,” 267. Since Didymus also has a quotation from the Timaeus that is closer to an excerpt from that work in the florilegium of Stobaeus than the textus receptus, Grant claims that “in the third book Didymus is relying in part upon the anthology traditionally ascribed to Stobaeus.” 124 Ingrid Seiler, Didymus der Blinde: De trinitate, Buch 2, Kap. 1–7 (BKP 52; Meisenheim am Glan: Hain, 1975), vii. 125 Didymus, Trin. 2.3.28: εἲρηται καὶ τῷ Ἑρμῇ τῷ ἐπίκλην Τρισμεγίστῳ.



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is lacking and gives way to participation in the good. Therefore, Didymus concludes, the spirit, since it is uncreated, has the same good nature as God the Father and the Son. Hermes is not really used as an authority to prove this point, but it seems Didymus feels the need to credit him for the direct quote and the evocative phrase “for where there is darkness, there is no light, and where there is night there is no day.”126 The second Hermetic passage occurs near the end of book two, among a series of quotes from pagan authors who have testified that the Son, as the Word, and the Spirit are equal to God.127 Hermes is preceded by an anonymous oracle, which Migne suggests is Sibylline,128 and two short phrases by Orpheus and Plato Comicus, and he is followed by a passage from Porphyry’s History of Philosophy. Didymus is here more specific than earlier, and states that the three quotes he repeats are derived from the three books of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius. However, he then immediately goes on to say that at least the first quote is an oracular response of Agathodaimon to a question regarding the “thrice holy spirit.”129 It is thus likely that Hermes in his treatises to Asclepius was quoting his own teacher, Agathodaimon, as he also does in CH XII.130 The epithet “thrice holy” is likely to be supplied by Didymus himself, as it is not attested in the Hermetica, while Didymus uses it twice elsewhere in On the Trinity (2.7.8 & [PG 39] 657.16). The gist of the prophecy is that the spirit is what animates and upholds the cosmos, a teaching also found elsewhere in the Hermetica, where the spirit is commonly viewed as the instrument of the Demiurge. 131 Following the prophecy Didymus adds a confounding passage indicative of his view of Hermes: And moreover, he subjects the multitude to the noblest teaching, namely those who have no accurate knowledge about the self-sufficient Triad which is undefiled, immeasurable, unspeakable, and forever the same. And regarding its majesty, which is so great that no human is high-minded and lofty enough to behold something proper to it, he utters the following: “For it is not possible to deliver such mysteries to the uninitiated, but listen with your mind: There existed one single noetic light before the noetic light, and it is 126 Didymus, Trin. 2.3.28: ἔνθα γὰρ σκότος, οὐδαμοῦ τὸ φῶς· καὶ “ὅπου νύξ, οὐχ ἡμέρα. ὅθεν (εἴρηται καὶ τῷ Ἑρμῇ τῷ ἐπίκλην Τρισμεγίστῳ) ἀδύνατον ἐν γενέσει εἶναι τἀγαθόν, ἐν μόνῳ δὲ τῷ ἀγενήτῳ. ὥσπερ δὲ μετουσία πάντων ἐστὶν τῇ ὕλῃ δεδομένη, οὕτω καὶ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ.” Cf. CH VI, 2. 127 Didymus, Trin. (PG 39) 753.1ff. These chapters have not received a modern edition after Migne. 128 PG 39, col. 753 n. 6. 129 Didymus, Trin. (PG 39) 756.14–16: Ἑρμοῦ Τρισμεγίστου ἐκ τῶν πρὸς τὸν Ἀσκληπιὸν λόγων τριῶν. Ἐρομένου τινὸς τὸν ἀγαθὸν δαίμονα, περὶ τοῦ τρισαγίου Πνεύματος ἔχρησεν οὕτως· 130 Cf. CH XII, 1, 8, 9, 13. Agathodaimon may be identified with divine mind; cf. CH X, 23. 131 CH I, 9; XIII, 19; NHC VI 57.10–11; Asclepius 16–17.

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forever the mind of the luminous mind, and it was nothing else than its unity. Although it is always in it, it always encompasses everything with its mind and light and spirit.”132

What does it mean that Hermes has subjected the multitude, including the ignorant, to the noblest teaching? It seems likely that the cryptic statement alludes to the idea of an esoteric monotheism in Egypt: While the populace at large was kept in check with idolatrous and zoolatrous practices, the inner echelons of the priesthoods, initiated in the deeper mysteries of Egyptian wisdom, knew that God was in fact one – or rather three seen with Trinitarian optics.133 This is the meaning derived from Hermes’ statement that such mysteries cannot be delivered to the uninitiated. Likewise, in the sentences of Hermes to Tat (SH XI), it is said that the multitude should be kept ignorant of the true doctrine, so that they will be kept in check by “fear of the unseen.”134 Didymus explicitly interprets the mysteries of Hermes as referring to the Trinity: “Mind from mind, and noetic light from noetic light, but furthermore also Spirit, through which he encompasses everything. It is God the Father, the only-begotten and his one holy spirit that he refers to.”135 It seems that Hermes must have been translated to the gods, as Lactantius also stated, since it is asserted that no mere human is able to behold the mysteries of the Trinity.136 We can infer then that the ancient mysteries of the Trinity taught by the divine Hermes must be related to the insight of Moses, and this corresponds to the picture of Hermes in the treatises which are undisputably authored by Didymus. In his commentary on Ecclesiastes, Didymus explains that “since Moses, then, was educated in all the wisdom of the

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Didymus, Trin. (PG 39) 757.8–760.2 (my trans.): Αὖθίς τε τῇ εὐγενεστέρᾳ γνώμῃ καθυποτάττων τοὺς πολλοὺς, καὶ οὐκ ἀκριβεῖς περὶ τὴν γνῶσιν, τὴν ἕνεκα τῆς ἀχράντως, ἀμετρήτως, ἀφάτως, καὶ ἀεὶ καὶ ὡσαύτως ἐχούσης αὐτοτελοῦς Τριάδος, περὶ ἧς οὐδεὶς οὕτως μεγαλοφρονέστατος, οὐδὲ ὑψηλονούστατος ἀνθρώπων ἐστὶν, ὃς ἄξιόν τι τῆς τοσαύτης ὑπεροχῆς αὐτῆς θεωρῆσαι δύναται, ἀποφθέγγεται τοιάδε· “Οὐ γὰρ ἐφικτόν ἐστιν εἰς ἀμυήτους τοιαῦτα μυστήρια παρέχεσθαι· ἀλλὰ τῷ νῷ ἀκούσατε· Ἓν μόνον ἦν φῶς νοερὸν πρὸ φωτὸς νοεροῦ, καὶ ἔστιν ἀεὶ νοῦς νοὸς φωτεινός· καὶ οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἦν, ἢ ἡ τούτου ἑνότης. Ἀεὶ ἐν αὐτῷ ὢν, ἀεὶ τῷ ἑαυτοῦ νοῒ καὶ φωτὶ καὶ πνεύματι πάντα περιέχει.” 133 Cf. Artapanus apud Eusebius, Praep. ev. 9.27.3–10. 134 SH XI, 5: διὸ χρὴ τοὺς πολλοὺς φυλάττεσθαι μὴ νοοῦντας τῶν λεγομένων τὴν ἀρετήν . . . διὸ φυλακτέον αὐτούς, ὅπως ἐν ἀγνοίᾳ ὄντες ἔλαττον ὦσι κακοὶ φόβῳ τοῦ ἀδήλου. 135 Didymus, Trin. (PG 39) 760.9–12 (my trans.): Νοῦν ἐκ νοῦ, καὶ φῶς νοερὸν ἐκ φωτὸς νοεροῦ, ἔτι δὲ καὶ Πνεῦμα, ᾧ πάντα περιέχει· τὸν Θεὸν Πατέρα, καὶ τὸν Μονογενῆ, καὶ τὸ ἓν αὐτοῦ ἅγιον Πνεῦμα δηλοῖ. Cf. Sfameni Gasparro, “L’ermetismo,” 238–41, who attributes this commentary to Cyril, but who rightly connects the Hermetic excerpt to teachings found in the Poimandres and On Rebirth. 136 Cf. Lactantius, Div. inst. 1.6.1; 7.13.4.





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Egyptians (Acts 7:22)” – as Didymus also reminds the reader elsewhere137 – “he had something more than the other Hebrews, having ‘the treasure of kings and provinces’ (Eccl 2:8), i.e. of the teachers of the Egyptian wisdoms.” 138 The true wisdom of the Egyptians must be distinguished from the “low” practices of popular religion, a distinction Didymus makes elsewhere: “The wizards and enchanters of Egypt think highly of their sorcery and sophistry, but Moses, the Hierophant of God, having in himself a steadfast heart, went forth and overturned the deceit which they thought so highly of.”139 Here Moses is designated a Hierophant, i.e. an officer of the mysteries, as opposed to the wizards and sorcerers. In another passage from the commentary to the Psalms, Didymus explains the rod of Aaron in Gen 7:10–12 allegorically as the “scepter of truth” which devours the sophistry of the Egyptians.140 Likewise, in the Tura Commentary to the Psalms, Didymus uses Hermes to counter the casters of horoscopes while discussing Ps 24:17 (“the troubles of my heart are enlarged; bring me out of my distresses”): Indeed, one should not pay attention to those who peddle horoscopes, for they say that “fate allots something to humans.” But if someone is reverent to God and becomes wise according to God, he gets away from the things that threaten him. Also the learned men among the Egyptians, one of whom is Hermes Trismegistus, say that “the wise man is no longer subject to fate, he gets away from the world.” And just as the savior says that it is possible to be in the world but no longer of it, whenever one possesses the higher mind and heavenly citizenship, so they speak unclearly and say in imitation of us that “the wise man dissolves his fate.” At least some of the purveyors of horoscopes understand the great words in this manner, that “There are judgements (?) that I am subject to. Make me exterior to them, dissolve fate.”141 137

Didymus, Comm. Job 108.29; Comm. Ps. 87.11. Didymus, Comm. Eccles. 40.7–10 (my trans.): “Μωϋσῆς” γοῦν “παιδευθεὶς πάσῃ σοφίᾳ | Αἰγυπτίω̣[ν]” πλέον τι εἶχεν τῶν ἄλλων Ἑβραίων ἔχων “περιουσιασμὸν βασιλέων | καὶ τῶν χ[ω]ρῶν” τῶν εἰσηγητῶν τῶν Αἰγυπτίων σοφιῶν. Ed. Gerhard Binder and Leo Liesenborghs, Didymos der Blinde. Kommentar zum Ecclesiastes I (PTA 25; Bonn: Habelt, 1979). 139 Didymus, Fragmenta in Psalmos (e commentario altero) 648a.11–15 (my trans.): Μέγα ἐφρόνουν ἐπὶ γοητείᾳ καὶ σοφιστείᾳ οἱ Αἰγύπτου φαρμακοὶ καὶ ἐπαοιδοί, ἀλλ’ ὁ θεοῦ ἱεροφάντης Μωυσῆς, ἔχων ἐν ἑαυτῷ καρδίαν βαθεῖαν, προσελθὼν ἀνέτρεψε τὴν ἀπάτην ἐφ’ ᾗ μέγα ἐφρόνουν. καὶ οὕτως ὑψώθη θεὸς πρὸς πάντων ἀνυμνούμενος. ὁ ταύτην δὲ τὴν βαθεῖαν νόησιν ἔχων δέχεται αὐτὴν ὑπὸ τοῦ τὰ πάντα ἐρευνῶντος πνεύματος. Ed. Ekkehard Mühlenberg, Psalmenkommentare aus der Katenenüberlieferung (2 vols.; PTS 15–16; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1975–1977). 140 Didymus, Comm. Ps. 104.18–20: τὸ γὰρ σκῆπτρον τῆς ἀληθείας, ὃ ὁ θεραπευτὴς τοῦ θεοῦ κατέχει, ῥιφὲν | καὶ προταθὲν καταπίνει τὰς σοφιστείας τῶν Αἰγυπτίων. Ed. M. Gronewald, Didymos der Blinde. Psalmenkommentar II (PTA 4; Bonn: Habelt, 1968). 141 Didymus, Comm. Ps. 88.10–18 (my trans.): οὐ γὰρ προσεκτέον τοῖς εἰσηγουμένοις γενεθλιαλογίαν· τοῦτο γὰρ ἐ|κεῖνοι λέγουσιν ὅτι ἐπιμετρεῖ τινα ἡ εἱμαρμένη τοῖς ἀνθρώποις. ἐὰν δέ τις θεοσεβήσῃ καὶ κατὰ θεὸν | σοφὸς γένηται, ἔξω γίνεται τῶν 138

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Didymus disagrees with the astrologers that all humans are subject to fate, since those who are reverent to God are free from astral fatality, at least those who become wise in divine matters. Hermes is invoked to bolster Didymus’ claim that wisdom is the key to freedom from the world, and it is here interesting to note that he is considered to be one of the learned men of Egypt, and he is used against the astrologers, of whom he is often considered to be the tutelary god. However, Hermes is accused of imitating the saying of the savior, that it is possible to be in the world but not of the world (cf. John 17:11, 14–18), when he says that “the wise man dissolves his destiny.” This saying is attributed to Hermes in the Commentary on Ecclesiastes, considered below. The last sentence is likely also taken from Hermes, and some of the astrologers are in that case said to agree with him that it is possible to become exempt from astral fatality. According to Didymus, then, Hermes is in agreement with the savior, although he expressed himself in less clear terms (ψελλίσαντες) and in fact imitated the Christian logos (ἀπὸ τῶν ἡμετέρων λέγ).142 The second quote from Hermes in the Tura papyri, in the Commentary to Ecclesiastes, also deals with the dissolution of destiny by the wise man. Didymus here again uses Hermes to confirm a point he has made: And do not be amazed if we say this. Also that Egyptian who they call Trismegistus says that “the wise man dissolves fate. He is not subject to necessity, nor is he subject to the world, but he has transcended heaven, his understanding has transcended the apparent world.” So they say that common people are subject to it (fate). So the one who has transcended the human existence is also the one who is able to say: “I do not see the apparent but the invisible,” since the apparent is temporal while the invisible is [etern]al.143

ἐπηρτημένων. καὶ Αἰγυπτίων οὖν οἱ λόγιοι, ὧν ἐστιν ὁ τρισ|μέγιστος Ἑρμῆς, λέγ ὅτι ὁ σοφὸς οὐκέτι ὑπόκειται τῇ εἱμαρμένῃ, ἔξω γίνεται τοῦ κόσμου. ὡς | λέγει ὁ σωτὴρ δυνατὸν εἶναι ὄντα ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ μηκέτι ἐξ αὐτοῦ εἶναι, ὅταν ἄνω ἔχῃ τὸν νοῦν | καὶ τὴν πολιτείαν οὐράνιον, οὕτω ἐκεῖνοι ψελλίσαντες ἀπὸ τῶν ἡμετέρων λέγουσιν ὅτι | ὁ σοφὸς λύει τὴν εἱμαρμένην. τινὲς γοῦν τῶν περὶ γενεθλιαλογίαν ἐχόντων οὕτως εἰσακού|ονται τὰ τοιαῦτα ῥητὰ ὅτι· “κρισσαί εἰσιν αἷς ὑπόκειμαι. ἔξω τούτων με ποίησον, λῦσον τὴν εἱμαρμέ|νην”. Ed. Gronewald, Psalmenkommentar II. The word κρισσαί is a hapax, and the editors have not translated it. I have assumed it is a corruption of κρίσεις. 142 The editors have emended the singular λεγι in the ms to λέγουσιν, the plural referring to the learned men of Egypt, but the parallel in the Commentary to Ecclesiastes shows that it is Hermes who is credited with the saying. 143 Didymus, Comm. in Eccl. 167.15–23 (my trans.): καὶ οὐ θαυμαστόν, εἰ ἡμεῖς τοῦτο λέγομεν. καὶ ὁ Αἰγύπτι[ο]ς | ἐκεῖν̣ο̣[ς ὃν] λέγουσ[ι]ν, Τρισμέγιστος λέγει, ὅτι {οὐ} λύει τὴν εἱμαρμένην ὁ σοφός· | ο̣ὐ̣κ̣ ἔ̣[στιν ὑ]π̣ὸ̣ τ̣ὴ̣ν̣ ἀ̣ν̣άγκην, οὐδὲ ὑπὸ τὸν κόσμον ἔστιν, ἀλλὰ ἄνω γέγο̣[ν]εν | τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, ἄνω γέγ̣[ο]ν̣[εν] ἡ δι̣ά̣νοια τῶν φαινομένων. τοὺς [ἀ]γελαίους οὖν | ἀνθρώπους λέγουσιν ὑπ’ αὐτὴν εἶναι. ὁ οὖν ὑπ[ε]ρ[ανα]βεβηκὼς τὸν ἀνθρώπ[ι]|νον βίον [κ]α̣ὶ δυνάμενος εἰπεῖν· “σκοπῶ ο[ὐ τὰ] φαινόμενα, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὴ βλε|πόμενα” τ[ῷ] τὰ φαινόμενα πρόσκαιρα εἶναι, [αἰών]ια δὲ τὰ μὴ φαινόμενα. Ed. Johannes Kramer, Didymos der Blinde. Kommentar zum Ecclesiastes III (PTA 13; Bonn:





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Here it is clear that Hermes has “transcended the human existence” and has thus become divine. The statement “I do not see the apparent but the invisible” is reminiscent of what Tat says after he has been reborn in On the Rebirth (CH XIII): “I no longer picture things with the sight of my eyes but with the mental energy that comes through the powers,” and Hermes subsequently confirms that the rebirth entails no longer picturing things in three dimensions.144 Such a teaching was naturally interesting to Didymus, who reportedly was told by Antony that he should not mourn the loss of his bodily vision, since he had been blessed with heavenly eyes that see God. 145 Being reborn, according to CH XIII, also entails that the twelve avengers related to the Zodiac, which represent bodily passions, are chased away, and consequently fate no longer has any power over such a person.146 If the author of On the Trinity is not Didymus, then it is at least clear that he like Didymus had access to and read sympathetically treatises by Hermes. Although the relationship between Hermes and Moses is not spelled out, it is clear that both are connected with the wisdom of the Egyptians, which consisted of an esoteric monotheism, as opposed to the religion of the common Egyptians and the spells of the wizards. A comparison with the points of interest to Lactantius shows that Didymus’ main concern was the theology of Hermes, but also his authority derived from having become divine (euhemerism) and his status as the culture hero of Egypt, which connects him to Moses. Cyril of Alexandria Cyril was about twenty years old when Didymus died in 398, and might thus have encountered the blind sage, who was after all a prominent Christian teacher in Alexandria where the future bishop grew up. 147 Rufinus studied with Didymus from 371 to 377, but also attended the lessons of Cyril’s uncle, Theophilus. 148 Since Didymus was only condemned as an Origenist after his death, it is possible that Cyril attended his lessons; at Habelt, 1970). 144 CH XIII, 11 and 13: φαντάζομαι, οὐχ ὁράσει ὀφθαλμῶν ἀλλὰ τῇ διὰ δυνάμεων νοητικῇ ἐνεργείᾳ . . . Αὕτη ἐστὶν ἡ παλιγγενεσία, ὦ τέκνον, τὸ μηκέτι φαντάζεσθαι εἰς τὸ σῶμα τὸ τριχῇ διαστατόν. On seeing the invisible, cf. also CH IV, 5–6; V, 5; X, 4, 6; XIII, 3; Asclepius 29. 145 Jerome, Ep. 68.2; Rufinus, HE 2.7; Layton, Didymus, 19–26; Elizabeth A. Clark, The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 182–83. 146 CH XIII, 12. Cf. Bull, “Tradition of Hermes,” 209–16. 147 Layton, Didymus, 15ff. 148 Norman Russell, Cyril of Alexandria (ECF; London: Routledge, 2000), 4, 204 n. 8.

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least he reproduces the same quotes of Hermes that Didymus or his associate used in On the Trinity, along with an uncredited paraphrase of the comments on the quotes, so Cyril must at least have read this treatise well.149 It is however likely that Cyril did not merely reproduce the quotes from On the Trinity, but also had access to the same Hermetic treatises, since he specifies that the quotes are from the third of the three books of Hermes to Asclepius.150 It is in his rebuttal of the polemics against Christianity, written by the long deceased Emperor Julian, that Cyril makes extensive use of Hermetica. 151 He quotes from four treatises known from elsewhere, and another thirteen otherwise unknown treatises.152 The reason that he resorts to Hermes in this work, and not in any other of his writings, is no doubt due to the fact that he here – like Lactantius in the Divine Institutes – wrote for a pagan and not a Christian audience. The pagan contemporaries of Cyril in Egypt must consequently still have considered Hermes an authority, making him an apt tool to turn against the philosopher-emperor still admired by the pagans. Cyril had attracted opprobrium for the murder of the influential philosopher Hypatia in 415, no matter what his actual role in the deed was, and it is likely that the treatise is his unrepentant response to those of her pupils who still venerated her teachings, which we have seen were likely influenced to some degree by the Hermetica. Hypatia’s Christian student, Synesius, who stayed in Alexandria for a significant period, reflects the standing of Hermes when he places him on the same level as Amous, Zoroaster, and Antony.153 In the treatise On Providence, Synesius 149

Cf. Grant, “Greek Literature,” 271, 273–74. Cyril, c. Jul. 1.556 A & B = FH 23 & 24. Jacques Liébaert, “Saint Cyrille d’Alexandrie et la culture antique,” Mélanges de science religieuse 12 (1955): 5–21, thinks it most likely that Cyril had access to a Hermetic florilegium. 151 Cf. Nock and Festugière, Hermès, 4:125–43; Paul Burguière and Pierre Évieux, Cyrille d’Alexandrie: Contre Julien, tome I, Livres I et II (SC 322; Paris: Cerf, 1985); Christoph Riedweg, ed., Kyrill von Alexandrien: Gegen Julian (2 vols.; GCS.NF 20–21; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016–2017), clxviii–ix. I thank Professor Riedweg for generously sharing the sections relevant to Hermes before publication. 152 Cyril, c. Jul. 1.43 (= SH I, 1); 2.22 (= CH XI, 22); 2.42 (= CH XIV, 6–10); 4.23 (= Asclepius 29). The remaining fourteen excerpts are FH 23–35, in Nock and Festugière, Hermès, 4:125–43. 153 Synesius, Dion 10.26–30: ὦ τολμηρότατοι πάντων, εἰ μὲν ἠπιστάμεθα ὑμᾶς εὐμοιρήσαντας ἐκείνην τῆς ψυχῆς τὴν ἀξίαν, ἣν Ἀμοῦς, ἣν Ζωροάστρης, ἣν Ἑρμῆς, ἣν Ἀντώνιος, οὐκ ἂν ἠξιοῦμεν φρενοῦν, οὐδὲ διὰ μαθήσεως ἄγειν, νοῦ μέγεθος ἔχοντας, ᾧ προτάσεις εἰσὶ καὶ τὰ συμπεράσματα. Cf. Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 179, who thinks Ἀμοῦς refers to Ammon, similar to Hadot, Athenian and Alexandrian Neoplatonism, 6–7, who points out that Amous is a likely corruption of Thamous in Plato’s Phaedrus, who is the recipient of the letters of Theuth (i.e. Thoth-Hermes). See also Lindsay, Origins of Alchemy, 360. 150





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furthermore presents the myth of Osiris and Typhon as a political allegory for the contemporary court at Constantinople, and the myth betrays familiarity with Hermetic teachings.154 Julian had accused Christianity of being a new-fangled superstition, breaking with both Greek and Jewish traditions, and Cyril in response had to demonstrate that Christianity is in accord with the teaching of Moses, which is superior to, and more ancient than Greek philosophy.155 Hermes is however not counted among the Greeks, and he is quoted with approval. The reason for this enthusiasm is that it is crucial for Cyril’s argument to prove the antiquity of Moses in relation to the Greek philosophers, and to show that what few genuine insights they had were actually stolen from Moses.156 Hermes helps him demonstrate this, since his texts are proof that Egyptian wisdom harmonizes with Moses: But I think Hermes the Egyptian, who they say also had the title of ‘Trismegistus,’ should be considered worthy of consideration and mention. For the men of that time held him in high esteem and, as some think, they likened him to the one who, according to myth, was born of Zeus and Maia. Now, this Hermes of Egypt, although he was an initiator of certain rites and always resided near the temples of idols, appears to have had the same doctrines as Moses, even if not absolutely and faultlessly, but at any rate in part; and he also benefited from them.157

Despite his connection to initiatory rites and idolatrous temples, Hermes has profited from the teachings of Moses and has thus approached the truth. According to this version, Atlas, the maternal grandfather of Hermes, was ostensibly born when Moses was seven (c. Jul. 1.11), and so it follows that Hermes was born two generations after Moses. Cyril quotes a doctored passage from Diodorus Siculus to the effect that Moses was the one who gave the Egyptians their laws, and was therefore called by them a God. In fact, Diodorus states that Hermes gave the Egyptians their laws, while Moses gave the Judeans theirs.158 Another source quoted by Cyril, 154

Cameron and Long, Barbarians and Politics, 52, 264, 290–99. Burguière and Évieux, Cyrille, 59–60. 156 Claudio Morescini, “I sapienti pagani nel Contra Iulianum di Cirillo di Alessandria,” Cassiodorus 5 (1999): 11-33 at 28. 157 Cyril, c. Jul. 1.41 (trans. Moreschini, Hermes Christianus, 85): Οἶμαι δὲ δεῖν ἀξιῶσαι λόγου καὶ μνήμης τὸν Αἰγύπτιον Ἑρμῆν, ὃν δὴ καὶ ‘Τρισμέγιστον’ ὠνομάσθαι φασί, τετιμηκότων αὐτὸν τῶν κατ’ ἐκεῖνο καιροῦ καί, καθά τισι δοκεῖ, τῷ ἐκ Διὸς καὶ Μαίας μυθολογουμένῳ γενέσθαι παρεικαζόντων αὐτόν. οὑτοσὶ τοιγαροῦν ὁ κατ’ Αἴγυπτον Ἑρμῆς, καίτοι τελεστὴς ὢν καὶ τοῖς τῶν εἰδώλων τεμένεσι προσιζήσας ἀεί, πεφρονηκὼς εὑρίσκεται τὰ Μωσέως, εἰ καὶ μὴ εἰς ἅπαν ὀρθῶς καὶ ἀνεπιλήπτως, ἀλλ’ οὖν ἐκ μέρους· ὠφέληται γὰρ καὶ αὐτός. Ed. Riedweg, Kyrill, 69 (the emendation is unnecessary). 158 That Moses was called a god by the Egyptians Cyril explains with reference to Exodus: “Behold, I have given you as a god to Pharaoh” (Exod 7.1). 155

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from fifteen Hermetic books composed by an Egyptian living in Athens,159 credits Hermes with dividing Egypt into nomes and making it arable, and furthermore inventing arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, astrology, the arts, and grammar (c. Jul. 1.41). Thus, according to Cyril, the culture hero of Egypt, Hermes, relied on the teachings and laws of the culture hero of Israel, Moses. This reverses the position of Didymus, where Moses is the beneficiary of Egyptian wisdom, by which he means Hermes’ teachings. Many centuries after Hermes, according to Cyril, Pythagoras and Plato spent time in Egypt, acquiring the sciences (μαθήματα) and coming to admire the writings of Moses that were revered there (1.18–19), and that is why their philosophies are better than those of other Greek philosophers who did not go to Egypt. After the passage quoted above, which describes the antiquity of Hermes Trismegistus, Cyril recounts the opinions of Pythagoras, Plato and Porphyry on the topic of God, and then delivers a lengthy Hermetic passage meant to demonstrate that these Greek philosophers relied on Hermes. The illegitimate line of successors is thus traced from Moses through Hermes to the Greek philosophers. Hermes’ appreciation of Moses was only partial, and it follows that the Greek philosophers had an even more imperfect understanding of the true doctrine. An example of this is a lengthy rebuttal of the view Julian had derived from Plato’s Timaeus (41ad), that the creator god let subordinate creator gods create humans and animals; here Cyril uses a number of Hermetic passages to demonstrate the Mosaic position, that one and the same god created both the world as well as the beings living in it.160 Cyril then goes on to demonstrate that Hermes and the philosophers also had an imperfect understanding of the logos, which Hermes identifies as the son of God, as well as the spirit. Hermes is thus not only an early witness of Christ, but also of the Holy Trinity.161 Like Lactantius, Cyril sees Hermes as a human made into a god and an early witness of the truth of Christianity, though he reduces his antiquity so that he postdates Moses. This is important for him in order to affirm the priority of Moses, on whom ultimately everything that is of any worth in the Platonic and Pythagorean philosophies depends. We thus see the archbishop of Alexandria, the champion of Trinitarian orthodoxy, embrace Hermes in his battle against Greek philosophy, even though he has some reservations concerning his connections with Egyptian idolatry. This attitude is quite close to that of Augustine, who in his City of God, written shortly before Against Julian, also commends Hermes on his insights con159 This anonymous source must be an Egyptian because he refers to Hermes as a fellow countryman. 160 Cyril, c. Jul. 2.32ff. Cf. Moreschini, “Sapienti,” 32. 161 Cf. Moreschini, “Sapienti,” 31.





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cerning the one true God, while lamenting his defense of idolatry in the Perfect Discourse, which he says must have been due to demonic inspiration. 162 Interestingly, Cyril probably knew the Perfect Discourse, for he uses a passage from this work to argue against sacrifices to the gods.163 Cyril must consequently either have known the passage in question only from an excerpt, similar to the one we have in NHC VI (in fact the quote of Cyril starts just where our Coptic excerpt ends), or he ignores Hermes’ idolatry on purpose, in order to turn him against Julian more effectively. Augustine also shares Cyril’s chronology, saying that philosophy first flourished in Egypt under Hermes Trismegistus, who lived two generations after Moses. 164 Both Cyril and Augustine probably rely on Eusebius’ Chronicle in making Atlas and Moses coeval.165

Hermes in Nag Hammadi Codex VI The question now remains if the foregoing evaluation of the role of Hermes among Christians and Pagans in Egypt of the fourth and early fifth century can shed any light on why Hermes was included in Nag Hammadi Codex VI. The apparent disparity of the contents of this codex, as compared to the other codices in the collection, has caused some puzzlement to scholars. After the overtly Christian Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles (NCH VI,1), we are treated to a revelatory self-predication from a female wisdom figure in Thunder: Perfect Mind (NCH VI,2), and then a treatise on the soul in the Authoritative Discourse (NCH VI,3), a treatise on the ages of the world from the creation until the present in the Concept of Our Great Power (NCH VI,4), and a short, anonymized excerpt from Plato’s Republic (NCH VI,5). Then follow the three Hermetica, of which the first, The Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth (NCH VI,6), describes the ascent of Hermes and his son Tat to the eighth sphere above the stars; the second is a Prayer of Thanksgiving (NCH VI,7), corresponding to the one preserved in Latin at the end of the Perfect Discourse, and in Greek in Papyrus Mimaut (PGM III); and the third is an excerpt from the Perfect Discourse (NCH VI,8), containing an elaboration of the relationship between

162

Augustine, Civ. Dei 8.23–26. Cyril, c. Jul. 4.23. 164 Augustine, Civ. Dei 18.39. 165 Eusebius’s Chronicle is only preserved in an Armenian translation and Jerome’s Latin adaptation. For the dating of Moses and Atlas, see Josef Karst, Eusebius’ Werke V: Die Chronik aus dem Armenischen übersetzt mit textkritischem Commentar (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1911), 86, 161. 163

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humans and the gods, a prophecy of the end of the world, and a description of what happens to the soul after death. In the early stages of research on the Nag Hammadi Codices, the presence of pagan works in Codex VI was attributed to the eclectic tendencies of the “Gnostics” who were believed to possess the library.166 When the hypothesis of a Pachomian provenance for the library was first advanced, following John Barns’ discovery of Pachomian material in the cartonnage,167 the presence of pagan texts were considered to preclude the notion that the library was ever used as the “sacred texts” of one and the same congregation: As an antithesis [to the pagan text Asclepius (NHC VI,8)] we may recall the chapter κατὰ εἰδωλολατρείας in the Greek Pachomian Paralipomena where the subject in both cases is man as creator of gods, in the Hermetic version in a positive sense and in the Pachomian version naturally in a negative sense.168

Instead it was argued that the texts may be interpreted as heresiological weapons used by the Pachomian monks to combat the heretics.169 It was later recognized that the Pachomian material in the bindings did not necessitate a Pachomian origin of the texts, since papyri for binding codices could be bought from a local papyrus-seller, or procured from dumps of discarded papyri. Many therefore argued that the presence of “Gnostic” and “pagan” texts made a monastic provenance unlikely. Indeed, JeanPierre Mahé, the authority on Hermetism, echoed the sentiments of Doresse in seeing the readers of the Nag Hammadi Codices as Gnostics who might have been sympathetic to Hermetic teachings. 170 Alexandr Khosroyev later wrote an influential monograph attacking the monastic hypothesis, suggesting instead that the owners of the codices were untraditional, educated urbanites who were interested in esoteric literature.171 Monks, he 166

Jean Doresse and Togo Mina, “Nouveaux textes gnostiques coptes découverts en haute-Égypte: La bibliotheque de Chenoboskion,” VC 3 (1949): 137. 167 John W. Barns, “Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Covers of the Nag Hammadi Codices: A Preliminary Report,” in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts: In Honour of Pahor Labib (ed. Martin Krause; NHS 6; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 9–18. 168 Torgny Säve-Söderbergh, “Holy Scriptures or Apologetic Documentations? The ‘Sitz im Leben’ of the Nag Hammadi Library,” in Les textes de Nag Hammadi: Colloque du Centre d’Histoire des Religions (Strasbourg, 23–25 Octobre 1974) (ed. JacquesÉtienne Ménard; NHS 7; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 10. 169 Säve-Söderbergh, “Holy Scriptures,” 12. 170 Mahé, Hermès, 26; cf. Armand Veilleux, “Monasticism and Gnosis in Egypt,” in The Roots of Egyptian Christianity (ed. Birger A. Pearson and James E. Goehring; SAC; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 284. 171 Alexandr Khosroyev, Die Bibliothek von Nag Hammadi: Einige Probleme des Christentums in Ägypten während der ersten Jahrhunderte (Altenberge: Oros, 1995), 98, 101





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conjectured, could have found little of use in unbiblical literature.172 Stephen Emmel later expanded on Khosroyev’s thesis, claiming that the urban Christians translating Greek esoteric literature into Coptic in fact endeavored to replace the ancient Egyptian pagan literature with “a new ‘esotericmystical Egyptian wisdom literature’ – being ‘Egyptian’ above all by virtue of being in Coptic rather than in Greek.”173 He bases this idea on an article by Niclas Förster, but Förster speaks only of The Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth as relying on Egyptian wisdom-speculations, and then only in its Greek Vorlage, not the Coptic Nag Hammadi collection as a whole.174 But contra the hypothesis of Khosroyev and Emmel, there is nothing to preclude that monastic readers may have been interested in treatises that claimed to represent ancient Egyptian wisdom, such as the Hermetica and in part the Thunder: Perfect Mind, and other authors have suggested that monks did indeed read pagan literature. 175 It is important to recall that Didymus the Blind was a monk with a cell in Nitria, who obviously had read Hermetica, and sympathetically at that. We shall also see that the two Alexandrian monks Panodorus and Annianus, writing in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, had read certain Hermetic treatises that they made use of in their chronographies. This proves that monks did read Hermetica in Lower Egypt, and there is no particular reason that the same should not also be the case in Upper Egypt, where we have seen that Hermetic groups were still likely in existence in the fourth century. It remains to be seen how monks were likely to read and understand the Hermetica. In his seminal deconstruction of the term “Gnosticism,” Michael Williams also took the pagan Hermetic texts into consideration, and argued that these could very well have been read by Christians as edifying literature, in unison with the rest of Codex VI. Williams rightly pointed out that the apocalypse of the Perfect Discourse could have been read in light of 172

Khosroyev Bibliothek, 82–83: “Deshalb ist es schwer vorzustellen, dass die Pachomianer als ihre erbauliche Lektüre Bücher benutzt haben könnten, die oft nicht nur mit der Bibel und den Geboten der Väter nichts zu tun hatten, sondern auch das Entgegengesetzte lehrte.” 173 Stephen Emmel, “The Coptic Gnostic Texts as Witnesses to the Production and Transmission of Gnostic (and Other) Traditions,” in Das Thomasevangelium: Entstehung–Rezeption–Theologie (ed. Jörg Frey, Enno E. Popkes, and Jens Schröter; BZNW 157; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), 48. 174 Niclas Förster, “Zaubertexte in ägyptischen Tempelbibliotheken und die hermetische Schrift ‘Über die Achtheit und Neunheit,’” in Coptic Studies on the Threshold of a New Millennium: Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Coptic Studies, Leiden, August 27–September 2, 2000 (ed. Mat Immerzeel and Jacques van der Vliet; OLA 133; Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 737. 175 Frederik Wisse, “Gnosticism and Early Monasticism in Egypt,” in Gnosis: Festschrift für Hans Jonas (ed. Barbara Aland; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1978), 440.

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the eschatology of The Concept of Our Great Power.176 However, he overlooked the fact that the reason the world is predicted to end in the Perfect Discourse is that the gods will leave their statues and abandon Egypt. This twilight of the gods is caused by the decline of true religion which is lamented as a great disaster. This attitude to idolatry is thus the complete opposite to that found in the Authoritative Discourse, where it is said that the Father of the Universe is exalted over the idols worshipped by the pagans (ⲛⲉⲩⲉⲓⲇⲱⲗⲟⲛ; 33.27–32), and that the temples of the pagans are mere stones that will perish (34.13–17).177 Furthermore, the Coptic translator of Plato’s Republic has interpolated a passage saying that it is profitable to “cast down every likeness (ⲡⲓⲛⲉ ⲛⲓⲙ) of the evil beast and trample them along with the likenesses of the lion (ⲛ̄ⲉⲓⲛⲉ ⲙ̄ⲡⲙⲟⲩⲉⲓ)” (50.25–28).178 We would expect the monastic reader to sympathize with these denouncements of idolatry against the endorsement of Hermes Trismegistus. Williams moreover suggested that the character Asclepius in the Perfect Discourse could have been identified with Christ as a doctor in Peter and the Twelve.179 However, in order to produce this parallel Williams relies on a passage describing the homonymous ancestor of Asclepius as the inventor of medicine, a passage which is only found in the full version of the text in a Latin translation (Asclepius 38), and not in the Coptic fragment. This goes against his principle of reading Codex VI as a unity, since it presupposes that the reader had knowledge that cannot be found in the codex. Yet, although we cannot assume that a reader knew the other passage from the Perfect Discourse, a well-informed reader might still in the fourth and fifth century be expected to know that Asclepius was the patron god of medicine. But in that case Williams still has to explain that whoever composed the codex intended for the reader to see in the god Asclepius, in the last treatise of the codex, an allusion to Christ as a doctor in the first treatise. Would the reader be likely to identify Christ with the Egyptian Asclepius, Imouthes/Imhotep? The deity had a sanitarium for incubation oracles in nearby Thebes, but that became defunct around 200 CE, although sacrifices to an unnamed god continued into the early fourth century.180

176

Williams, Rethinking, 258. Admittedly the pagans are here portrayed as better than the ignorant and mindless people, who hear the call to salvation but do not heed it. 178 On the interpolations in this text, cf. Christian H. Bull, “An Origenistic Adaptation of Plato in Nag Hammadi Codex VI,” in Studia Patristica (Leuven: Peeters, forthcoming). 179 Williams, Rethinking, 259. 180 Adam Łajtar, “Proskynema Inscriptions of a Corporation of Iron-Workers from Hermonthis in the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut in Deir el-Bahari: New Evidence for Pagan Cults in Egypt in the 4th Cent. A.D.,” JJP 21 (1991): 53–70. 177





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In a later article, Michael Williams with Lance Jenott again discusses the coherence of Codex VI.181 An important part of their argument is the scribal note, which explains that the scribe has had many treatises “of that one” – i.e., of Hermes – available to him, but has copied only one, fearing that his recipients already possessed them. The note is important in several respects: It proves that more Hermetica circulated in Coptic milieus, as has recently been confirmed by the inclusion of Corpus Hermeticum treatise XIII, On the Rebirth, in Codex Tchacos;182 it indicates that whoever commissioned the book had a set order in mind, which the scribe took it upon himself to change; and it demonstrates that the recipients of the codex were a community who had a common library, since they are addressed in the plural and reference is made to their books. The latter point in all likelihood points to a monastic community.183 Williams and Jenott further argue that the unifying principle of Codex VI is a preoccupation with divine power and a revelatory Logos, sometimes conveyed in writing, and that it was read seamlessly by its Christian readers. Although the problem of the attitude to idolatry is again avoided, one can readily agree with Williams and Jenott that revelation is a major concern in the codex. However, in light of what we know of the Christian reception of Hermetic literature we need not postulate that the readers of Codex VI harmonized Hermes completely with Christian tenets. We have seen that Christian authors seem to have been especially interested in Hermes as a witness to Trinitarian theology, euhemerism, primordial history, and eschatology. There are indeed several theological passages in the Nag Hammadi Hermetica that are similar to those utilized by Lactantius and Cyril. In the Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth we learn that the word is an offspring of light (55.26–27), and that there is an unbegotten, self-begotten, and begotten divinity (57.13–18; 63.21–23). The father is at one point also referred to as spirit (59.7). In the Perfect Discourse there is a passage also 181

Michael A. Williams and Lance Jenott, “Inside the Covers of Codex VI,” in Coptica – Gnostica – Manichaica: mélanges offerts à Wolf-Peter Funk (ed. Louis Painchaud and Paul-Hubert Poirier; BCNH.É 7; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2006), 1025–52. 182 Wurst, “Weitere neue Fragmente.” 183 It is possible that the scribe was not himself a monk, for the scribal note lacks any of the pious well-wishing found in the other colophons. As in Codex II: “Remember me also, my brethren, [in] your prayers: Peace to the saints and the spiritual ones” (NHC II 145.20–3). Or consider the note between The Teachings of Silvanus and Three Steles of Seth, in Codex VII (118.8–9): “Ichthys, wonder, extraordinary!” and at the end of the codex: “This book belongs to the fatherhood. It is the son who has copied it. Bless me, Father. I bless you, Father, in peace. Amen” (127.29–33). Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 197–206, have however plausibly argued that a monastic book-exchange network would account for the scribal note.

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quoted in Lactantius, stating that “when these things happen,” namely the cosmic calamities predicted, “the Lord and Father and God and creator of the first and only God will look upon events, and will defy disorder with his own will, which is goodness …”184 Lactantius interpreted this passage to confirm the Christian idea that God will send his Son to destroy all evildoers and liberate the pious, and it is likely that the readers of Codex VI would understand the passage in the same way. We also find traces of euhemerism in that both Hermes and Tat are clearly humans who became divine upon their ascent to heaven in Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth, and Hermes refers to “my temple” in Diospolis, 185 while the Perfect Discourse claims that the statues of the gods are made “from the lowest being of humans,” according to the appearance of human bodies.186 A later passage in the Asclepius elaborates that the earthly gods are indeed divinized humans of ancient times, but that passage is not preserved in the Coptic, so we may not presume that the readers of Codex VI knew this doctrine.187 It is likely that a monastic reader would agree with Augustine and Cyril that Hermes’ adherence to idolatry was misguided, and would rather follow the admonition of the rewritten Republic of Plato, that the images should be trampled.188 There is no explicit reference to the primordium in the three Hermetic treatises in the Nag Hammadi Codices, but there is reason to believe that one of the main reasons for their inclusion was Hermes’ reputation as an ancient Egyptian sage. A preoccupation of the codex seems to be not only revelation, as Williams and Jenott have pointed out, but especially revelations uttered by primordial or transcendent revealers. In Thunder: Perfect Mind the revealer is the “first and the last,” whereas that of the Concept of Our Great Power is the titular Great Power who existed from the beginning. Likewise, the Trimorphic Protennoia, which was included within the covers of Codex VI some time before its burial, is also narrated by the titular primordial “First thought in three forms.” The idea of placing the Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles in the beginning of the codex might thus have been to show that the primordial revealers are in accord with the highly allegorical tale of Christian redemption contained in that text, in 184

Lactantius, Div. inst. 7.18.4: Ἐπὰν δὴ ταῦτα γένηται, ὦ Ἀσκληπιέ, τότε ὁ κύριος καὶ πατὴρ καὶ θεὸς καὶ τοῦ πρώτου καὶ ἑνὸς θεοῦ δημιουρός, ἐπιβλέψας τοῖς γενομένοις, καὶ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ βούλησιν, τοῦτ’ ἐστιν τὸ ἀγαθόν, ἀντερείσας τῇ ἀταξίᾳ = Asclepius 73.23–29: ⲉⲣⲉϣⲁⲛⲁⲓ̈ ⲇⲉ ϣⲱⲡⲉ ⲱ̂ ⲁⲥⲕⲗⲏⲡⲓⲉ ⲧⲟⲧⲉ ⲡϫⲟⲉⲓⲥ ⲡⲉⲓⲱⲧ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲙ̄ⲡϣⲟⲣ̄ⲡ ⲟⲩⲁⲁϥ· ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲡⲇⲏⲙⲓⲟⲩⲣⲅⲟⲥ ⲉⲁϥϭⲱϣ̄ⲧ ⲉϫ̄ⲛ ⲛⲉⲣϣⲱⲡⲉ· ⲁⲩⲱ ⲡⲉϥϣⲟϫⲛⲉ ⲉⲧⲉ ⲡⲁⲅⲁⲑⲟⲛ ⲡⲉ ⲁϥⲥⲁϩⲱϥ ⲉⲣⲁⲧϥ̄ ⲉϫⲛ̄ ⲧⲁⲧⲁⲝⲓⲁ· 185 Disc. 8–9 61.19 and 62.4. 186 On the difficult Coptic, cf. Mahé, Hermès, 2:226. 187 Cf. Asclepius 37–38. 188 Cf. Bull, “Origenistic Adaptation.”





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which it is necessary to lose all worldly possessions in order to avoid the robbers and beasts that obstruct the road to the heavenly city with ten gates. Granted, the remaining two texts, the Authoritative Discourse and the excerpt from Plato’s Republic, are anonymous and thus lack such primordial revealers, but the former tells the story of the soul from the primordium to its present situation, whereas the latter is more of an appendix, also dealing with the soul. It bears emphasizing that even though the Authoritative Discourse and the Concept of Our Great Power are Christian compositions, or at the very least have undergone Christian redaction, their Christianity is unobtrusive.189 Indeed, the first person to report on the contents of the codex, Jean Doresse, thought they were both Hermetic.190 On this background Hermes was likely included as the local Egyptian, primordial revealer, similar to that of Thunder: Perfect Mind, “whose image is great in Egypt, and who has no image among the barbarians.”191 The narrative framework in the Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth and the Perfect Discourse is clearly in ancient times, and thus fit in with the primordial history of the soul and the world in the Authoritative Discourse and the Concept of Our Great Power. That monks could have an interest in non-Christian primordial history is demonstrated from the testimony of the Byzantine chronographer George Syncellus concerning two of his sources, the Alexandrian monks Panodorus and Annianus. 192 The former was a contemporary of Theophilus, while the latter wrote his work a little later. Panodorus, in his chronogra189 George W. MacRae considered Auth. Disc. to be an unchristian text, and Francis Williams suggests that the first stage of composition of the Great Pow. was written by a Samaritan or Jewish Gnostic; cf. George W. MacRae, “A Nag Hammadi Tractate on the Soul,” in Ex Orbe Religionum. Studia Geo Widengren oblata (ed. C. J. Bleeker et al.; 2 vols.; SHR 21–22; Leiden: Brill, 1972), 1:471–79; Francis E. Williams, Mental Perception: A commentary on NHC VI,4; The Concept of Our Great Power (NHMS 51; Leiden: Brill, 2001). For critical rejoinders, cf. Michel Desjardins, “What can we learn from Scholarship on The Concept of Our Great Power (CG VI, 4),” in Essays in Honour of Frederik Wisse: Scholar, Churchman, Mentor (ed. Warren A. Kappeler; ARC 33; Montréal: McGill University, 2005), 183–96, and Ulla Tervahauta, “A Story of the Soul’s Journey in the Nag Hammadi Library: A Study of the Authentikos Logos (NHC VI,3),” ThD. diss., University of Helsinki, 2013. 190 Jean Doresse, The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics: An Introduction to the Gnostic Coptic manuscripts discovered at Chenoboskion (New York: Viking Press, 1960), 241–48. Doresse counts five Hermetic treatises grouped together, apparently not counting the excerpt from Plato’s Republic (not yet recognized as such at the time) as a separate text. 191 Thund. 16.6–9: ⲁ̣[ⲛⲟⲕ] ⲡⲉⲧⲛⲁϣⲉ ⲡⲉⲥⲉⲓⲛⲉ ϩⲛ̄ ⲕⲏⲙⲉ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲧⲉⲧⲉ ⲙⲛ̄ⲧⲉⲥ ⲉⲓⲛⲉ ϩⲛ̄ ⲛ̄ⲃⲁⲣⲃⲁⲣⲟⲥ. 192 Cf. William Adler, Time Immemorial: Archaic History and Its Sources in Christian Chronography from Julius Africanus to George Syncellus (DOS 26; Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1989), 72ff.

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phy, made use of a list of gods who ruled as kings over Egypt before the flood.193 This list was ostensibly written in a sacred language by Thoth, the first Hermes, before the flood, and rediscovered by Hermes Trismegistus after the flood, who transcribed them with hieroglyphic characters in books that he placed in the Egyptian temples. From there, they were ostensibly presented by the Egyptian priest and historian Manetho to king Ptolemy II Philadelphus.194 While Eusebius brushed away the reign of gods as fiction, Panodorus used the list to demonstrate that the gods corresponded to the antediluvian Enochic fallen angels. 195 It is also likely that Panodorus is Syncellus’ source for a quote from Zosimus, which attributes the doctrine of angels sleeping with human women to the Physika of Hermes, which is explicitly made to correspond to the Enochic Book of Watchers.196 Panodorus thus read Hermes as a primordial witness to the truth of the sacred history of the Bible, and to some extent he harmonized Hermes with sacred history. It is possible that those who commissioned Codex VI had a similar idea. For example, the Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth could be seen to illustrate the first nine gates of the heavenly city with ten gates in Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles, thus placing the ultimate Christian reality one level above that of Hermes. Something similar may be the case with the eschatology of the Perfect Discourse, which we have seen was popular among readers such as Lactantius and Augustine, and probably known to Cyril. The future twilight of the gods of Egypt, so lamented by Hermes, leads to cosmic disruptions that closely resemble those described by the Concept of Our Great Power, when the second age of the soul is consumed by fire, and the third age of the spirit emerges. Furthermore, there is a strong reminiscence in the Authoritative Discourse – “the pagans know the way to their temples of stone, which will perish, and they worship their idol” 197 – to the eschaton of the Perfect Discourse in which “Egyptians 193

George Syncellus, Chronographia 18–9; Adler and Tuffin, Chronography, 24–25. George Syncellus, Chronographia 41; Adler and Tuffin, Chronography, 54–55. Scholars generarlly identify the Hermetic list as belonging to the Book of Sothis by pseudo-Manetho. I have argued that the list might be authentically Manethonian; cf. Bull, “Tradition of Hermes,” 48–87. 195 Georg Syncellus, Chronographia 41–43; Adler and Tuffin, Chronography, 56–57. Cf. Christian H. Bull, “Women, Angels, and Dangerous Knowledge: The Myth of the Watchers in the Apocryphon of John and its Monastic Manuscript-Context,” in Women and Knowledge in Early Christianity (ed. Ismo Dunderberg, Outi Lehtipuu, Ivan Miroshnikov, and Ulla Tervahauta; VCSup; Leiden: Brill, 2017), forthcoming. 196 Georg Syncellus, Chronographia, 14; Adler and Tuffin, Chronography, 18. Cf. Heinrich Gelzer, Sextus Julius Africanus und die byzantinische Chronographie (3 vols.; Leipzig: Teubner, 1880–1898), 2:192 n. 1. 197 Auth. Disc. 34.13–15: ϫⲉ ⲛ̄ϩⲉⲑⲛⲟⲥ ⲅⲁⲣ ⲥⲉⲥⲟⲟⲩⲛ ⲛ̄ⲑⲓⲏ ⲛ̄ⲃⲱⲕ ⲉⲡⲟⲩⲣ̄ⲡⲉ ⲛ̄ⲱⲛⲉ ⲉⲧⲛⲁⲧⲁⲕⲟ ⲛ̄ⲥⲉⲟⲩⲱϣⲧ̄ ⲙ̄ⲡⲉⲩⲉⲓⲇⲱⲗⲟⲛ. 194





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will turn out to have served the divine in vain,” Egypt “will no longer be full of temples but of tombs,” and its “wondrous words are stone.”198 Also, the Authoritative Discourse admits that pagans know that the God of heaven is above their idols, but they have not received the word.199 This in fact corresponds quite closely to the Christian view of Hermes, although some Christian authors also thought Hermes had knowledge of the word of God. Beyond the texts in Codex VI, the apocalypse of Hermes would also likely remind the reader of Isaiah’s oracle concerning Egypt: “Behold, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud and comes to Egypt; and the idols of Egypt will tremble at his presence, and the heart of the Egyptians will melt within them.” 200 The following list of calamities that will befall Egypt strongly resembles that of the Perfect Discourse, which is derived from similar chaos-descriptions in ancient Egyptian prophecies.201 This native prophetic tradition is also used in the Apocalypse of Elijah, which was likely composed in the third century, and was read in Coptic and Greek in Egyptian monasteries in the fourth and fifth centuries.202 Finally, it is worth emphasizing again that at the time the Nag Hammadi Codices were composed and read in the Thebaid there were likely still people who followed the Way of Hermes in the close vicinity, in cities such as Hermopolis, Panopolis, and Thebes. Papyrus Mimaut was likely owned and read by Egyptian priest(s) and contains the same Hermetic Prayer of Thanksgiving as the one in Codex VI, only in Greek and as part of a spell to make the sun-god appear to the ritualist. Was there any contact between the monastic readers of the Nag Hammadi Codices and the pagan Hermetists, beyond a shared interest in Hermetic literature? We have seen that a person like Zosimus was interested in the same kind of literature as that found in the Nag Hammadi Codices, and it is possible that he converted to Christianity at some point. If someone like Zosimus became a Christian monk, would he bring his non-Christian books? An anecdote from the Apophthegmata patrum portrays a meeting between a monk and a pagan Egyptian priest that has some verisimilitude, even if it is not demonstrably historical: 198 Perf. Disc. 70.11–15: ⲁⲧⲥⲟⲟⲩⲛ ϫⲉ ⲟⲩⲛ̄ ⲟⲩⲟⲉⲓϣ ⲛⲁϣⲱⲡⲉ ⲛ̄ϩⲣⲁⲓ̈ ⲛ̄ϩⲏⲧϥ̄ ⲥⲉⲛⲁⲟⲩⲱⲛϩ̄ ⲉⲃⲟⲗ ⲛ̄ϭⲓ ⲛ̄ⲣⲙ̅ⲛ̅ⲕⲏⲙⲉ ⲉⲁⲩϩ͡ⲓⲥⲉ ⲉⲧⲙⲛ̅ⲧⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲉⲡϫⲓⲛϫⲏ; 70.33–34: ⲟⲩⲕⲉⲧⲓ ⲥⲁⲙⲟⲩϩ ⲛ̄ⲣ̄ⲡⲉ ⲁⲗⲗⲁ ⲥⲁⲙⲟⲩϩ ⲛ̄ⲧⲁⲫⲟⲥ; 71.3–4: ϩⲉ̣ⲛⲱⲛⲉ ⲛⲉ ⲛⲉⲕϣⲁϫⲉ ⲉⲧ̣[ⲉ] ⲛ̣̄ϣⲡⲏⲣⲉ. 199 Auth. Disc. 33.27–34.2. 200 Isa 19:1 LXX: Ἰδοὺ κύριος κάθηται ἐπὶ νεφέλης κούφης καὶ ἥξει εἰς Αἴγυπτον, καὶ σεισθήσεται τὰ χειροποίητα Αἰγύπτου ἀπὸ προσώπου αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἡ καρδία αὐτῶν ἡττηθήσεται ἐν αὐτοῖς. 201 Mahé, Hermès, 2:68–113. Mahé makes no mention of Isa 19. 202 David Frankfurter, Elijah in Upper Egypt: The Apocalypse of Elijah and Early Egyptian Christianity (SAC; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 21–23 on monastic mss; 67– 74 on Elijah as monastic ideal; 159–238 on traditional Egyptian Chaosbeschreibung.

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Abba Olympius said this, ‘One of the pagan priests came down from Scetis one day and came to my cell and slept there. Having reflected on the monks’ way of life, he said to me, “Since you live like this, do you not receive any visions from your God?” I said to him, “No.” Then the priest said to me, “Yet when we perform the rites to our God, he hides nothing from us, but discloses his mysteries; and you, giving yourselves so much hardship, vigils, prayer and asceticism, say that you see nothing? Truly, if you see nothing, then it is because you have impure thoughts in your hearts, which separate you from your God, and for this reason his mysteries are not revealed to you.” So I went to report the priest’s words to the old men. They were filled with admiration and said this was true. For impure thoughts separated God from man.’203

The saying testifies to an interest among monks in the visionary prowess of Egyptian priests, although we cannot be certain if it circulated in Egypt before the Apophthegmata were written down, probably during the first half of the sixth century in Palestine.204 A vision similar to that described by the pagan priest is gained by Hermes and his son in the Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth, when they “pray to God with all our mind and all our heart and our soul,” saying: “We have walked in [your way and have] renounced [evil] so the vision may come.”205 A monastic reader would be likely to find such sentiments congenial, even if he did not share the pagan prophet’s sense of loss over the departure of the old gods from Egypt, still an on-going process at the time.

203

Ap. Patr. (PG 65) 313.36–52: Εἶπεν ὁ ἀββᾶς Ὀλύμπιος, ὅτι Κατέβη ποτὲ ἱερεὺς τῶν Ἑλλήνων εἰς Σκῆτιν, καὶ ἦλθεν εἰς τὸ κελλίον μου, καὶ ἐκοιμήθη· καὶ θεασάμενος τὴν διαγωγὴν τῶν μοναχῶν, λέγει μοι· Οὕτως διάγοντες, οὐδὲν θεωρεῖτε παρὰ τῷ Θεῷ ὑμῶν; Καὶ λέγω αὐτῷ· Οὐχί. Καὶ λέγει μοι ὁ ἱερεύς· Τέως ἡμῶν ἱερουργούντων τῷ Θεῷ ἡμῶν, οὐδὲν κρύπτει ἀφ’ ἡμῶν, ἀλλὰ ἀποκαλύπτει ἡμῖν τὰ μυστήρια αὐτοῦ· καὶ ὑμεῖς τοσούτους κόπους ποιοῦντες, ἀγρυπνίας, ἡσυχίας καὶ ἀσκήσεις, λέγεις ὅτι Οὐδὲν θεωροῦμεν; Πάντως οὖν, εἰ οὐδὲν θεωρεῖτε, λογισμοὺς πονηροὺς ἔχετε εἰς τὰς καρδίας ὑμῶν, τοὺς χωρίζοντας ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ ὑμῶν, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο οὐκ ἀποκαλύπτεται ὑμῖν τὰ μυστήρια αὐτοῦ. Καὶ ἀπῆλθον, καὶ ἀνήγγειλα τοῖς γέρουσι τὰ ῥήματα τοῦ ἱερέως. Καὶ ἐθαύμασαν, καὶ εἶπαν ὅτι οὕτως ἐστίν. Οἱ γὰρ ἀκάθαρτοι λογισμοὶ χωρίζουσι τὸν Θεὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. Trans. Benedicta Ward, Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection (Michican: Cistercian publications, 1975), 160. I have replaced Ward’s imprecise “make a sacrifice” with “perform the rites” for ἱερουργούντων. Cf. Frankfurter, Religion, 262. 204 Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 86–88. 205 Disc. 8–9 55.10–14: ⲱ̂ ⲡⲁϣⲏⲣⲉ̣ ⲡⲉⲧⲉϣϣⲉ ⲡⲉ ϩⲙ̄ ⲡⲉⲛⲙ[ⲉ]ⲉⲩⲉ ⲧⲏⲣϥ̄ ⲙⲛ̄ ⲡⲉⲛϩⲏⲧ ⲧⲏⲣϥ̄ ⲙⲛ̄ ⲧⲉⲛⲯⲩⲭⲏ ⲉⲧⲣⲉⲛϣⲗⲏⲗ ⲉⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ; 56.32–57.3: ⲁⲛⲙⲟⲟϣⲉ ⲅⲁⲣ ϩⲛ̄ [ⲧⲉⲕϩ︦ⲓⲏ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲁⲛ]ⲕ̣ⲱ ⲛ̄ⲥⲱⲛ[ⲛ̄ⲧⲕⲁⲕⲓⲁ ⲉⲛ]ⲧ̣ⲣⲉⲥϣⲱⲡⲉ [ⲛ̄ϭⲓ] ⲧ̣ⲉ̣ⲑ̣[ⲉⲱ]ⲣ̣ⲓ̣ⲁ. The English edition has ⲧ̣ⲉⲕ̣[ⲑⲉⲱ]ⲣ̣ⲓ̣ⲁ, with no reference to Mahé, yet from the facsimile it is clear that the letter resembles a theta more than a kappa, and anyway there is not enough room for the inclusion of a kappa. Even though this sentence is lacunose, it is clear also from the following sentences that a vision is sought.





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Doresse, Jean, and Mina Togo. “Nouveaux textes gnostiques coptes découverts en hauteÉgypte: La bibliotheque de Chenoboskion.” Vigiliae Christianae 3 (1949): 129–141. Doresse, Jean. The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics: An Introduction to the Gnostic Coptic manuscripts discovered at Chenoboskion. New York: Viking Press, 1960. Dosoo, Korshi. “A History of the Theban Magical Library.” The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 53 (2016): 251–274. Doutreleau, Louis. “Que Savons-nous aujourd'hui des papyrus de Toura?” Recherches des Sciences Religieuses 43 (1955):161–193. Dunand, Françoise, and Christiane Zivie-Coche. Gods and Men in Egypt: 3000 BCE to 395 CE. Translated by David Lorton. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. Emmel, Stephen. “The Coptic Gnostic Texts as Witnesses to the Production and Transmission of Gnostic (and Other) Traditions.” Pages 33–49 in Das Thomasevangelium: Entstehung–Rezeption–Theologie. Edited by Jörg Frey, Enno E. Popkes, and Jens Schröter. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 157. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008. Feder, Frank. “Ammon und seine Brüder: Eine ägyptische Familie aus Panopolis (Achmim) im 4.Jh. zwischen ägyptisch-hellenistischer Kultur und Christentum.” Pages 103–107 in Genealogie: Realität und Fiktion von Identität. Edited by Martin Fitzenreiter. InternetBeiträge zur Ägyptologie und Sudanarchäologie 5. London: Golden House Publications, 2005. Festugière, André-Jean. La révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste. 4 vols. Paris: Lecoffre, 1949– 1954. Förster, Niclas. “Zaubertexte in ägyptischen Tempelbibliotheken und die hermetische Schrift ‘Über die Achtheit und Neunheit.’” Pages 723–737 in Coptic Studies on the Threshold of a New Millennium: Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Coptic Studies, Leiden, August 27-September 2, 2000. Edited by Mat Immerzeel and Jacques van der Vliet. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 133. Leuven: Peeters, 2004. Frankfurter, David. Elijah in Upper Egypt: The Apocalypse of Elijah and Early Egyptian Christianity. Studies in Antiquity and Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress press, 1993. –. Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998. –. “Onomastic Statistics and the Christianization of Egypt: A Response to Depauw and Clarysse.” Vigiliae Christianae 68 (2014): 284–289. Fraser, Kyle A. “Baptised in Gnôsis: The Spiritual Alchemy of Zosimos of Panopolis.” Dionysius 15 (2007): 33–54. Gabra, Sami. Chez les derniers adorateurs du Trismégiste: La Nécropole d’Hermopolis Magna, Touna el Gebel (Souvenir d’un Archéologue). Cairo: al-Hayʼah al-Miṣrīyah alʻĀmmah, 1971. Gardiner, Alan H. “The House of Life.” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 24 (1938): 157–179. Geens, Karolien. “Panopolis, a Nome Capital in Egypt in the Roman and Byzantine Period (ca. AD 200-600).” PhD-diss., KU Leuven 2007. Geffcken, Johannes. The Last Days of Greco-Roman Paganism. Translated by Sabine MacCormack; Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1978. Gelzer, Heinrich. Sextus Julius Africanus und die byzantinische Chronographie. 3 vols. Leipzig: Teubner, 1880–1898. Gigli Piccardi, Daria. La cosmogonia di Strasburgo. Firenze: Università degli studi di Firenze, 1990. Girgis, Victor. “A New Strategos of the Hermopolite Nome.” Mitteilungen des Deutschen archäologischen Instituts Abteilung Kairo 20 (1965): 121.

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–. La voie d’Hermès: Pratiques rituelles et traités hermétiques. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 77. Leiden: Brill, 2012. van Minnen, Peter. “The Letter (and other papers) of Ammon: Panopolis in the fourth Century A.D.” Pages 177-199 in Perspectives on Panopolis: An Egyptian Town from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest. Edited by Arno Egberts, Brian P. Muhs, and Joep van der Vliet. Papyrologica Lugduno-Batava 31. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Veilleux, Armand. “Monasticism and Gnosis in Egypt.” Pages 271–306 in The Roots of Egyptian Christianity. Edited by Birger A. Pearson and James E. Goehring. Studies in Antiquity and Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 271-306. Vleeming, Sven P. “Some Notes on Demotic Scribal Training in the Ptolemaic Period.” Pages 185–187 in Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Papyrologists, Copenhagen, 23-29 August, 1992. Edited by Adam Bülow-Jacobsen. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1994. Walter, Jochen. Pagane Texte und Wertvorstellungen bei Laktanz. Hypomnemata: Untersuchungen zur Antike und zu ihrem Nachleben 165. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006. Ward, Benedicta. Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Michican: Cistercian publications, 1975. Williams, Francis E. Mental Perception: A commentary on NHC VI,4; The Concept of Our Great Power. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 51. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Williams, Michael A. Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. Williams, Michael A., and Lance Jenott. “Inside the Covers of Codex VI.” Pages 1025–1052 in Coptica–Gnostica–Manichaica: mélanges offerts à Wolf-Peter Funk. Edited by Louis Painchaud and Paul-Hubert Poirier. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section « Études » 7. Québec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 2006. Willis, William H. “The Letter of Ammon of Panopolis to his Mother.” Pages 98–115 in Actes du XVe Congrès International de Papyrologie 2: Papyrus inédits. Edited by Jean Bingen, Georges Nachtergael, and Eric G. Turner. Papyrologica Bruxellensia 17. Brussels: Fondation égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, 1979. Willis, William H. and Klaus Maresch (eds.). The Archive of Ammon Scholasticus of Panopolis (P. Ammon) 1: The Legacy of Harpocration. Papyrologica Coloniensia 26/1. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1997. Wipszycka, Eva. “La christianisation de l’Égypte aux IVe -VIe siècles: Aspects sociaux et ethniques.” Aegyptus 68 (1988): 117–65. Wisse, Frederik. “Gnosticism and Early Monasticism in Egypt.” Pages 431–440 in Gnosis: Festschrift für Hans Jonas. Edited by Barbara Aland. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978. Wlosok, Antonie. Laktanz und die philosophische Gnosis. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1960. Wurst, Gregor. “Weitere neue Fragmente aus Codex Tchacos: Zum ‘Buch des Allogenes’ und zu Corpus Hermeticum XIII.” Pages 1–12 in Judasevangelium und Codex Tchacos: Studien zur religionsgeschichtlichen Verortung. Edited by Enno E. Popkes and Gregor Wurst. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 297. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012. Zago, Michela. Tebe magica e alchemica: L’idea di biblioteca nell’Egitto romano: la Collezione Anastasi. Padova: Libreriauniversitaria.it, 2010. Zucker, Friedrich. “Priester und Tempel in Ägypten in den Zeiten nach der decianischen Christenverfolgung.” Pages 167–174 in Akten des VIII. internationalen Kongresses für Papyrologie, Wien 1955. Wien: Rudolf M. Rohrer, 1956.

What Has Nag Hammadi to Do with Medinet Madi? The Case of Eugnostos and Manichaeism RENÉ FALKENBERG In the first half of the twentieth century two remarkable groups of Coptic texts were discovered in Upper Egypt. The seven Medinet Madi codices were found in 1929, Manichaean in origin;1 and the thirteen Nag Hammadi Codices were unearthed in 1945, consisting of 52 Coptic texts, commonly classified as ‘gnostic.’2 The Nag Hammadi text under scrutiny here is the letter of Eugnostos. It is primarily known from two versions in Nag Hammadi Codex III and V, but also in a rewritten form from two Coptic versions of the Wisdom of Jesus Christ.3 Since the reception of Eugnostos is attested in other Coptic texts, and in the church fathers as well, it seems to have been one of the more popular texts now preserved in the Nag Hammadi Codices.4 The problem with Eugnostos is that there is little scholarly consensus concerning its religio-historical background, even if there is a general agreement on its Egyptian origin.5 Scholars are hardly unanimous in dating 1

The texts are the Manichaean Homilies, the Psalm Book, the Berlin Kephalaia, the Dublin Kephalaia, some letters of Mani, excerpts from Mani’s Living Gospel, a historical work, and leaves not yet identified. Only the first text has been fully edited, the next two have been partially edited, whereas critical editions of the rest still await publication. 2 Since Michael A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), an increasing number of scholars, myself included, tend to avoid the ‘gnosticism’ category and instead include the Nag Hammadi texts under a wider definition of ‘Christianity’. 3 Eugnostos is the third text in NHC III (70.1–90.13) and the first text in NHC V (1.1– 17.18). It is to a large extent reused in Soph. Jes. Chr., which is the fourth text in NHC III (90.14–119.18) and the third text in P. Berol. 8502, also known as the Berlin Gnostic Codex or BG (77.8–127.12). Additionally, a Greek witness of Soph. Jes. Chr. is attested in a fragmentary papyrus leaf from Oxyrhynchus (P. Oxy. 1081). 4 René Falkenberg, “Noetic Exegesis in the Nag Hammadi Library: Eugnostos the Blessed as a Point of Departure,” in Kanon in Konstruktion und Dekonstruktion: Kanonisierungsprozesse religiöser Texte von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart: Ein Handbuch (ed. Eve-Marie Becker and Stefan Scholz; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 516. 5 An Egyptian provenance is suggested by a reference to a 360-day year (NHC III 84.4–5; V 12.13–14). Cf. Douglas M. Parrott, Nag Hammadi Codices III,3–4 and V,1

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Eugnostos since they have situated its original composition within a time span of three centuries, ranging from the first century BC until the second century AD. 6 A similar vagueness is found in speculation about its religious affiliation, as there is no consensus whether it originated in a Jewish or Christian milieu.7 Literary connections with Egyptian religion, Hermetiwith Papyrus Berolinensis 8502,3 and Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1081: Eugnostos and the Sophia of Jesus Christ (NHS 27; Leiden: Brill, 1991), 7; Judith Hartenstein, “Eugnostos (NHC III,3; V,1) und die Weisheit Jesu Christi (NHC III,4; BG,3),” in Nag Hammadi Deutsch. 1. Band: NHC I,1–V,1 (ed. Hans-Martin Schenke et al.; GCS.NF 8, KoptischGnostische Schriften 2; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001), 329. Other scholars specify Alexandria as the place of composition owing to the use of Philonic exegesis and wisdom speculation; cf. Roelof van den Broek, “Jewish and Platonic Speculations in Early Alexandrian Theology: Eugnostus, Philo, Valentinus, and Origen,” in The Roots of Egyptian Christianity (ed. Birger A. Pearson and James E. Goehring; SAC; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 190–95; Anne Pasquier, “Eugnoste (NH III,3; V,1),” in Écrits gnostiques: La bibliotèque de Nag Hammadi (ed. Jean-Pierre Mahé and Paul-Hubert Poirier; BPl 538; Paris: Gallimard, 2007), 582–83; Birger A. Pearson, Ancient Gnosticism: Traditions and Literature (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 218. 6 The earliest dating (first century BC) presupposes the latest time of activity of the philosophers refuted (NHC III 70.8–71.5; V 1.9 ff.); cf. Parrott, Nag Hammadi Codices, 5. The latest dating assumes influence from Valentinianism (c. 175 AD): cf. Michel Tardieu, Écrits gnostiques: Codex de Berlin (SGM 1; Paris: Cerf, 1984), 60–61; or the Stoic concept of an inner and outer logos (140–180 AD): cf. Gregor Wurst, “Das Problem der Datierung der Sophia Jesu Christi und des Eugnostosbriefes,” in Jesus in apokryphen Evangelienüberlieferungen: Beiträge zu außerkanonischen Jesusüberlieferungen aus verschiedenen Sprach- und Kulturtraditionen (ed. Jörg Frey and Jens Schröter; WUNT 254; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 386. However, an early second-century date seems to have reached greater scholarly consensus. Due to the lack of dependence on the systems of, e.g., Basilides, Marcion, and Valentinus, this date is suggested by Demetrios Trakatellis, The Transcendent God of Eugnostos: An Exegetical Contribution to the Study of the Coptic Text of Nag Hammadi, with a Retroversion of the Lost Original Greek Text of Eugnostos the Blessed (trans. Charles Sarelis; Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1991), 14 (though his is an argument from silence). It has also been suggested that Eugnostos was composed during the Jewish revolt (115–117 AD); cf. Anne Pasquier, Eugnoste. Lettre sur le dieu transcendant (NH III,3 et V,1). Commentaire (BCNH.T 33; Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 2010), 220–22. I have argued for the first half of the second century as well, since a common source is shared with Aristides of Athens (see Roelof van den Broek, “Eugnostus and Aristides on the Ineffable God,” in Knowledge of God in the Graeco-Roman World [ed. Roelof van den Broek et al.; EPRO 112; Leiden: Brill, 1988], 205–11), and since the negative theology used in Eugnostos seems to align with other early Christian apologists; see René Falkenberg, “Eugnostos the Blessed: An Exegetical Analysis and Interpretation of the Coptic Version in Nag Hammadi Codex III,3” (PhD diss., Aarhus University, 2010), 10. 7 The preference for a Christian rather than Jewish background seems to have gained increasing momentum; cf. Tuomas Rasimus, Paradise Reconsidered in Gnostic Mythmaking: Rethinking Sethianism in Light of the Ophite Evidence (NHMS 68; Leiden: Brill 2009), 177; Pasquier, Eugnoste . . . Commentaire, 182–86; Falkenberg, “Eugnostos,” 8; Päivi Vähäkangas, “Rejection and Reception of Philosophy in the Letter of Eugnostos

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cism, Sethianism, and Valentinianism have been observed, but evidence has hitherto been insufficient to determine the religious background of the text.8 Based on the methodology of new philology, I will re-approach, if not bypass, the former question of religio-historical affiliation, since focus here will be on literary connections between Eugnostos and Manichaean texts, in particular those from Medinet Madi. Earlier studies have tried to bring the texts from Nag Hammadi and Medinet Madi closer together, but almost always with the presumption that the Nag Hammadi texts influenced Manichaean thought, and not the other way around.9 This conclusion has easily been drawn since the bulk of Nag Hammadi texts have traditionally been dated, in composition, to the second and third centuries, whereas the Manichaean texts from Medinet Madi have been dated to about a century later. However, in accordance with new philology, I will instead take (NHC III,3 and V,1) and Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions” (PhD diss., University of Helsinki, 2012), 15–17. This view counters that of, e.g., Hartenstein, “Eugnostos,” 331, and Pearson, Ancient Gnosticism, 218. 8 As an alternative to a Jewish or Christian origin, Egyptian religion has been suggested by Parrott, Nag Hammadi Codices, 9–16; an affiliation to Hermeticism is proposed by Jean-Pierre Mahé, “Παλιγγενεσία et structure du monde supérieur dans les Hermetica et le traité d’Eugnoste de Nag Hammadi,” in Deuxième Journée d’Études Coptes: Strasbourg 25 mai 1984 (ed. Jean-Marc Rosenstiehl; CBCo 3; Leuven: Peeters, 1986), 140–41; and Eugnostos has even been viewed as a precursor to Sethianism and Valentinianism; cf. John D. Turner, Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition (BCNH.É 6; Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 2001); Einar Thomassen, “Notes pour la delimitation d’un corpus valentinien à Nag Hammadi,” in Les textes de Nag Hammadi et le problème de leur classification: Actes du colloque tenu à Québec du 15 au 19 septembre 1993 (ed. Louis Painchaud and Anne Pasquier; BCNH.É 3; Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 1995), 255–56. 9 E.g. Gedaliahu A. G. Stroumsa, Another Seed: Studies in Gnostic Mythology (NHS 24; Leiden: Brill, 1984), 145–67; Paul Van Lindt, “The Religious Terminology in the Nag Hammadi Texts and in Manichaean Literature,” in The Nag Hammadi Texts in the History of Religions: Proceedings of the International Conference at the Royal Academy of Sciences and Letters in Copenhagen, September 19–24, 1995, on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the Nag Hammadi Discovery (ed. Søren Giversen et al.; Historiskfilosofiske skrifter 26; Copenhagen: Reitzel, 2002), 191–98. However, single studies have been more favourable towards Manichaean influence on the Nag Hammadi texts; cf. Alberto Camplani, “Sulla trasmissione di testi gnostici in copto,” in L’Egitto Cristiano: Aspetti e problem in età tardo-antica (ed. Alberto Camplani; SEAug 56; Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1997), 121–75; Louis Painchaud and Jennifer Wees, “Connaître la différence entre les hommes mauvais et les bons: Le charisme de clairvoyance d’Adam et Ève à Pachôme et Théodore,” in For the Children, Perfect Instruction: Studies in Honor of Hans-Martin Schenke on the Occasion of the Berliner Arbeitskreis für koptish-gnostische Schriften’s Thirtieth Year (ed. Hans-Gebhard Bethge et al.; NHMS 54; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 144–46; Timothy Pettipiece, “Towards a Manichaean Reading of the Nag Hammadi Codices,” JCSCS 3–4 (2012): 43–54.

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into consideration the date of the physical codices (not hypothetical dates of the texts’ composition), which is probably the fourth or fifth century for both the Nag Hammadi and Medinet Madi codices.10 Besides the fact that the two corpora are contemporary, they also share an Egyptian provenance, the Coptic language, and a strong connection to the Christian religion. Therefore it is possible that Medinet Madi texts influenced those from Nag Hammadi, and not vice versa, as Manichaeans were active in Egypt for almost a century before the Nag Hammadi codices were produced.11 Before studying connections between Eugnostos and Manichaean texts, I will explain how my methodology provides a historically sound basis for comparing Eugnostos with Manichaeism. Then, in the following analyses, I will compare the Manichaean idea of intellectual limbs with the intellectual faculties described in Eugnostos in light of theology, anthropology, cosmology, and ecclesiology. Finally, expanding on my discussion of cosmology, I will analyse the view of the world and its government, especially in regard to Eugnostos where one finds a refutation of a type of astrology that can be associated with Manichaeism.

10 All of the Nag Hammadi Codices have been dated on the basis of a ‘deed of surety’ (dated to 348) found in the cartonnage of NHC VII; cf. John W. B. Barns, “Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Covers of the Nag Hammadi Codices: A Preliminary Report,” in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts in Honour of Pahor Labib (ed. Martin Krause; NHS 6; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 12. A fourth century dating of the Medinet Madi Codices, based on paleography, is given by Carl Schmidt and Hans J. Polotsky, Ein Mani-Fund in Ägypten: Originalschriften des Mani und seiner Schüler (SPAW.PH; Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1933), 35, 84. A fifth-century date has been suggested for both the Nag Hammadi Codices and the Medinet Madi Codices; cf. Stephen Emmel, “The Coptic Gnostic Texts as Witnesses to the Production and Transmission of Gnostic (and Other) Traditions,” in Das Thomasevangelium: Entstehung – Rezeption – Theologie (ed. Jörg Frey et al.; BZNW 157; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 38–40; BeDuhn, Jason D., and Greg Hodgins, “The Date of the Manichaean Codices from Medinet Madi, and its Significance”, in: Samuel N.C. Lieu, Erica Hunter, Enrico Morano, and Nils Arne Pedersen (eds.), Manichaeism East and West: Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium of the International Association of Manichaean Studies (SOAS, London, 9th–13th September, 2013), Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum, Analecta Manichaica 1, Turnhout: Brepols 2017, 10–28. 11 A letter paleographically dated to the late third century, possibly from Theonas, bishop of Alexandria, warns against Manichaeans; cf. Colin H. Roberts, Catalogue of the Greek and Latin Papyri in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, Volume III: Theological and Literary Texts (Nos. 457–551) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1938), 38–46; Samuel N. C. Lieu, Manichaeism in the Roman Empire and Medieval China (2nd rev. ed.; WUNT 63; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 115.

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New Philology Earlier discussions of Eugnostos’s religio-historical background aimed to find and contextualise its original Greek text which we unfortunately no longer possess. I agree that the two Coptic versions of Eugnostos show traces of a Greek original, but neither version witnesses a stable transmission of it. The task of tracing such an original leaves the scholar in danger of falling into a pit of essentialism while making the Greek original identical with its later Coptic version on a one-to-one scale. The general problem with non-canonical religious texts is that they are often rewritten over and over again, depending on changes in language and social, religious, and institutional contexts. Such rewriting is clearly attested by the many doublet texts from the Nag Hammadi codices and their two sister codices, Berlin (BG 8502) and Tchacos,12 and even more so by the different versions of the many apocryphal acts of the apostle. Apart from these writings, my favourite example is the Apophthegmata Patrum, to which numerous people, over centuries of textual transmission and multiple translations, added and removed passages, and changed the order and meaning of words, sentences, and whole passages, making it an impossible enterprise for any scholar to track down the original sayings.13 According to the observations made above, it would be more profitable if we developed a growing sensitivity towards the Nag Hammadi texts as ‘living literature’ characterised by textual fluidity. 14 Yet when we take leave of the hypothetical original, and focus instead on later, often extensively rewritten versions, then how can we contextualise the extant texts that we do possess? An answer to this question lies in the methodology of new philology.15 We need to determine the historical facts available to us, 12 Hugo Lundhaug, “An Illusion of Textual Stability: Textual Fluidity, New Philology, and the Nag Hammadi Codices” in Snapshots of Evolving Traditions: Jewish and Christian Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New Philology (ed. Liv Ingeborg Lied and Hugo Lundhaug; TUGAL 175; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017), 20–54; Lance Jenott, “Reading Variants in James and the Apocalypse of James: A Perspective from New Philology,” in Snapshots of Evolving Traditions, 55–84. 13 Samuel Rubenson, “Textual Fluidity in Early Monasticism: Sayings, Sermons and Stories,” in Snapshots of Evolving Traditions: Jewish and Christian Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New Philology (ed. Liv Ingeborg Lied and Hugo Lundhaug; TUGAL 175; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017), 178–200. 14 Paul F. Bradshaw, “Liturgy and ‘Living Literature,’” in Liturgy in Dialogue: Essays in Memory of Ronald Jasper (ed. Paul F. Bradshaw and Bryan Spinks; London: SPCK, 1993), 138–53; Hugo Lundhaug, “The Nag Hammadi Codices: Textual Fluidity in Coptic,” in Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies: An Introduction (ed. Alessandro Bausi et al.; Hamburg: COMSt, 2015), 419–23. 15 New philology was developed in the field of medieval manuscript studies; cf. Bernard Cerquiglini, Éloge de la variante: Histoire critique de la philologie (Paris: Seuil,

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namely the physical artefacts, in this case NHC III and V in their fourth- or fifth-century context.16 By applying this approach to the study of Eugnostos, the previous religio-historical questions of dating and religious background are easily answered: Even if the differences between the two versions witness to a textual transmission where subsequent scribes modified the text, in their present form both versions are certainly to be understood as Christian since they were included in codices with other Christian texts and thus received as such by their scribes and intended readers.17 I am not proposing that a fourth- or fifth-century context is the only one available to us. My point is that the context of the two primary versions of Eugnostos (NHC III and V) is not limited to a first- or second-century date of the hypothetical original, but extends into the period of the preserved codices, in the fourth and fifth centuries. With regard to the texts copied in these codices, we need to be open-minded in order to trace influences and rewriting strategies of later origin. Such strategies could easily be inspired by, say, Origenism, Arianism, monasticism and, as I will argue, Manichaeism. 18 Eugnostos likely originated as a proto-Manichaean text; but since Manichaeism flourished in Egypt for almost a century before the two extant manuscripts of Eugnostos were copied, the possibility of mutual literary influence cannot be ruled out. Although the mythological systems

1989); Stephen G. Nichols, “The New Philology. Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture,” Speculum 65 (1990): 1–10; Hugo Lundhaug and Liv Ingeborg Lied, “Studying Snapshots: On Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New Philology,” in Snapshots of Evolving Traditions: Jewish and Christian Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New Philology (ed. Liv Ingeborg Lied and Hugo Lundhaug; TUGAL 175; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017), 1–19. 16 The context of the production and use of the codices was most likely that of Egyptian monasticism; see Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott, The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices (STAC 97; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015). 17 NHC III has the short recension of Ap. John, Gos. Eg., Eugnostos, Soph. Jes. Chr., and Dial. Sav. NHC V has Eugnostos, Apoc. Paul, two texts entitled Apoc. Jas., and the Apoc. Adam. Some scholars consider the latter text non-Christian, but from the perspective of new philology it certainly was read as a Christian text, as was Eugnostos. 18 I have recently argued for Arian influence on the version of Eugnostos in NHC V, since in contrast to the version in NHC III it places a stronger emphasis on the transcendence of the godhead (e.g. NHC V 2.8–14 and 4.12–16), and in a rather lacunous passage seems to add a further differentiation between the first and second principles: “he (the second principle) did not know him (the first principle)” (NHC V 4.25). In a Christian context this could be understood to mean that the Son did not know the Father, which is a hallmark of Arianism (René Falkenberg, “‘Not like the idea we have received or seen’ – Ritualistic Theology in Eugnostos and the Apostolic Constitutions,” paper presented at the conference The Nag Hammadi Codices in the Context of Fourth- and Fifth-Century Christianity in Egypt, University of Oslo, December 16, 2013).

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found in Eugnostos and Manichaean texts are complex and not easily comparable, they nevertheless show common ground.19

Intellectual Limbs In the fourth and fifth centuries, and probably even earlier, Manichaeans were fond of mythical speculation related to the number five, especially with regard to theology, anthropology, and cosmology.20 One of the many Manichaean pentads consists of the five intellectual limbs, that is, mind (ⲛⲟⲩⲥ, νοῦς), thought (ⲙⲉⲩⲉ, ἔννοια), intention (ⲥⲃⲱ, φρόνησις), reflection (ⲥⲁϫⲛⲉ, ἐνθύμησις), and reasoning (ⲙⲁⲕⲙⲉⲕ, λογισμός). 21 Scholars have already noticed that Eugnostos and the Wisdom of Jesus Christ refer specifically to these intellectual faculties.22 However, before analysing these parallels, we need to linger a bit on the different versions of Eugnostos and on the content of the text. Unfortunately the version of NHC V is so severely damaged that nearly half the text is missing. The version from NHC III will therefore be our primary witness, except in the analysis of parallels with the Manichaean intellectual limbs, which will include both versions of Eugnostos, and its two rewritten versions in the Wisdom of Jesus Christ. Eugnostos is presented as a letter written by Eugnostos and addressed to his pupils. From the epistolary prologue we learn that all human beings live as dust and thus, by implication, lack the spirit. Then, in a polemical section aimed at three philosophical opinions, it is said that philosophers search for God by observing the ordering of the universe, but their search has hitherto been in vain. According to Eugnostos, this problem has a solu19

On the mythology of Eugnostos, see Falkenberg, “Eugnostos,” 14–18 (also described below); as for Manichaean mythology, see Lieu, Manichaeism, 7–32; Ian Gardner, The Kephalaia of the Teacher: The Edited Coptic Manichaean Texts in Translation with Commentary (NHMS 37; Leiden: Brill, 1995), xxiv–xxxiii. 20 Timothy Pettipiece, Pentadic Redaction in the Manichaean Kephalaia (NHMS 66; Leiden: Brill, 2009). 21 References to these five intellectual limbs in Manichaean sources are given in Mark Vermes and Samuel N. C. Lieu, Hegemonius: Acta Archelai (The Acts of Archelaus) (Manichaean Studies 4; Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 52–53 n. 61–66. The five intellectual limbs are also mentioned in one of Mani’s own letters, The Seventh Letter of Ktesiphon (B.24); cf. Ian Gardner, “The Reconstruction of Mani’s Epistles from Three Coptic Codices (Ismant el-Kharab and Medinet Madi),” in The Light and the Darkness: Studies in Manichaeism and its World (ed. Paul Mirecki and Jason BeDuhn; NHMS 50; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 100. 22 The first to notice these striking parallels was Antonio Orbe, Hacia la Primera Teologia de la Procesion del Verbo: Estudios Valentinianos Vol I/1 (AnGr 99, SFT, Sectio A 17; Rome: Apud Aedes Universitatis Gregorianae, 1958), 375–77.

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tion: God can in fact be sought and found by those who possess the divine spirit and the proper understanding of Scripture. By combining the Pythagorean-Platonic concept of unity/multiplicity with Judaeo-Christian mythology based on the first chapters of Genesis, the letter presents a salvation history that involves five primary gods: 1) the godhead, 2) his Image, 3) the Man, 4) the Son of Man, and 5) the Saviour. The second, fourth, and fifth of these divinities represent different aspects of a Christ figure. Their purpose is to assist humankind in reaching God by providing the spiritual principle. Even if these Christ figures play a prominent role in the letter, the first and third gods are actually the main characters in the overall presentation: the transcendent God, since attaining a visio Dei is the ultimate goal of the reader, and the Man, since he represents the reader and his or her noetic capacity. This special importance of God and the Man is emphasised in Eugnostos since only these two divinities possess the intellectual faculties. These faculties, as shown in the following two tables, are also well-known in Manichaean theology.23 Eug-III (73.8–13) For that one is entirely mind (ⲛⲟⲩⲥ), thought (ⲉⲛⲛⲟⲓⲁ), reflection (ⲉⲛⲑⲩⲙⲏⲥⲓⲥ), intention (ⲫⲣⲟⲛⲏⲥⲓⲥ), reasoning (ⲗⲟⲅⲓⲥⲙⲟⲥ), and power (ⲇⲩⲛⲁⲙⲓⲥ). They are all of equal power and the sources of the entireties.

Eug-V ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲉⲛⲛⲟⲓⲁ [ⲙ]ⲉⲉⲩⲉ ⲥⲃⲱ ϣⲟϫⲛⲉ ϭⲟⲙ

SJC-BG

SJC-III

ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲉⲛⲑⲩⲙⲏⲥⲓⲥ ⲉⲛⲛⲟⲓⲁ ⲙⲛ̄ⲧⲥⲁⲃⲉ ⲙⲉⲉⲩⲉ ϭⲟⲙ

ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲉⲛⲛⲟⲓⲁ ⲫⲣⲟⲛⲏⲥⲓⲥ ⲉⲛⲑⲩⲙⲏⲥⲓⲥ ⲗⲟⲅⲓⲥⲙⲟⲥ ϭⲟⲙ

Manichaean Limbs νοῦς / ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ἔννοια / ⲙⲉⲩⲉ φρόνησις / ⲥⲃⲱ ἐνθύμησις / ⲥⲁϫⲛⲉ λογισμός / ⲙⲁⲕⲙⲉⲕ —

Table 1: God’s Intellectual Nature

23

All translations from Coptic and Greek are my own unless otherwise stated. Eug-III is Eugnostos in NHC III and Eug-V is that in NHC V (3.10–13; 7.6–9); Coptic text from Anne Pasquier, Eugnoste. Lettre sur le dieu transcendant (NH III,3 et V,1): Texte établi et présenté (BCNH.T 26; Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 2000). SJC-III is the Soph. Jes. Chr. in NHC III (96.4–7; 102.21–103.1) and SJC-BG is that in the Berlin Codex (86.17–87.1; 96.14–19); Coptic text from Catherine Barry, La Sagesse de JésusChrist (BG,3; NH III,4): Texte établi, traduit et commenté (BCNH.T 20; Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 1993). Greek words for the Manichaean intellectual limbs are from Epiphanius, Pan. 66.28.1, ed. Karl Holl, Epiphanius (Ancoratus und Panarion) III: Panarion Haer. 65–80, De Fide (GCS 37; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1933), 63; Coptic text from the Kephalaia 95.17–23, ed. Hans J. Polotsky and Alexander Böhlig, Kephalaia Band I: 1. Hälfte (Lieferung 1–10) (MHSMB; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1940), 95.

What Has Nag Hammadi to Do with Medinet Madi? Eug-III (78.5–12) He has inside an individual mind (ⲛⲟⲩⲥ), a thought (ⲉⲛⲛⲟⲓⲁ), as far as he exists with it, a reflection (ⲉⲛⲑⲩⲙⲏⲥⲓⲥ), an intention (ⲫⲣⲟⲛⲏⲥⲓⲥ), a reasoning (ⲗⲟⲅⲓⲥⲙⲟⲥ), and a power (ⲇⲩⲛⲁⲙⲓⲥ). All limbs (ⲙⲉⲗⲟⲥ ⲛⲓⲙ) are perfect and immortal. According to incorruption they are equal; according to power there is a difference.

269

Eug-V

SJC-BG

SJC-III

Manichaean Limbs

ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲉⲛ[ⲛⲟⲓⲁ] ⲟⲩⲱϣ ⲙⲉⲉⲩⲉ ⲥⲃ̣[ⲱ] ϣⲟϫⲛⲉ ϭⲟⲙ

ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲉⲛⲛⲟⲓⲁ — ⲉⲛⲑⲩⲙⲏⲥⲓⲥ ⲫⲣⲟⲛⲏⲥⲓⲥ ⲙⲉⲉⲩⲉ ϭⲟⲙ

ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲉⲛⲛⲟⲓⲁ — ⲫⲣⲟⲛⲏⲥⲓⲥ ⲉⲛⲑⲩⲙⲏⲥⲓⲥ ⲗⲟⲅⲓⲥⲙⲟⲥ ϭⲟⲙ

νοῦς / ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ἔννοια / ⲙⲉⲩⲉ — φρόνησις / ⲥⲃⲱ ἐνθύμησις / ⲥⲁϫⲛⲉ λογισμός / ⲙⲁⲕⲙⲉⲕ — Limbs (ⲙ̄ⲙⲉⲗⲟⲥ) / ‘names of the soul’ (τῆς ψυχῆς ὀνόματα)

Table 2: Man’s Intellectual Limbs

As in the two presentations of the intellectual faculties of God and the Man in Eugnostos, the Manichaeans also present their intellectual limbs in connection with the godhead (theology) and humankind (anthropology). 24 However, in contrast to the five intellectual limbs of Manichaeism, the different versions of Eugnostos include a sixth faculty, namely ‘power’ or ‘potentiality’ (ⲇⲩⲛⲁⲙⲓⲥ/ϭⲟⲙ).25 The section on the Man in Eug-V even has seven faculties, adding ‘will’ (ⲟⲩⲱϣ) as third in the sequence. Furthermore, the Manichaean notion of intellectual limbs (ⲙ̄ⲙⲉⲗⲟⲥ) appears in Eugnostos’s description of the Man’s ensemble of faculties as “all limbs” (ⲙⲉⲗⲟⲥ ⲛⲓⲙ). These limbs are most likely a reference to parts of the soul, attested also in Manichaean thought as the “names of the soul” (τῆς ψυχῆς ὀνόματα). Although an exact sequence parallel to the Manichaean limbs is found only in one version of the Wisdom of Jesus Christ (SJC-III), there are clearly literary connections between the intellectual faculties in the different versions of Eugnostos and the intellectual limbs in Manichaeism. However, there is an important difference between Eugnostos and Manichaean thought, which is the reason why Eugnostos designates the six intellectual powers as ‘faculties’ rather than ‘limbs’ (even if they are called limbs in connection with the Man). While the godhead is “entirely mind” 24

As for a theological use of the five intellectual limbs, cf. Psalm Book II 166.35– 167.2; also in connection with the highest pantheon, cf. Kephalaia 76.19–24; 91.18–31. As for an anthropological use, cf. Psalm Book II 23.14–19; 120.3–11; 126.3–12; 167.29– 24; also in connection with the deutero-Pauline concept of the old and new man (Eph 4:22–24; Col 3:9–11), cf. Kephalaia 96.13–97.3; 344.2–27. 25 It has been suggested by Tardieu (Écrits gnostiques, 357) that this last faculty should be understood as a generic designation, rather than an intellectual faculty in its own right.

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(ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲧⲏⲣϥ̄), the Man possesses “an individual mind” (ⲟⲩϩⲓⲇⲓⲟⲛ ⲛ̄ⲛⲟⲩⲥ). Whereas all the faculties of God are “of equal power” (ϩⲓⲥⲟⲇⲩⲛⲁⲙⲓⲥ), those of the Man are differentiated: “according to power there is a difference” (ⲕⲁⲧⲁⲧϭⲟⲙ ⲟⲩ︤ⲛ︥ ⲟⲩⲇⲓⲁⲫⲟⲣⲁ). The godhead does not have a composite nature with parts or limbs since he is the “mind” with which the other five faculties are identical (“of equal power”). He functions more like intellectual aspects of mind rather than independent limbs. Philosophically speaking, God thus comes to represent the superior world of unity and being, in the Platonic sense. In this respect, Eugnostos’s theology is more philosophically coherent than Manichaeism, since it presents God as a noncomposite unity; in contrast, the Manichaean godhead, the Father of Greatness, is of a composite nature with his five intellectual limbs (e.g. Kephalaia 64.20–24; 76.24). Unlike the godhead in Eugnostos, the Man is a composite entity with a mind of his own and differentiated limbs of the soul. He therefore comes to represent the intellectual faculties of the godhead in the inferior world of multiplicity and becoming. Another interesting cosmological feature in Eugnostos is its gender speculation. The superior, divine world is inhabited by the first two gods (the godhead and his Image) who in essence are genderless. The inferior, created world is inhabited by the last three gods (the Man, the Son of Man, and the Saviour) each of whom have double-gendered natures with female counterparts in order to mark them as entities active in the created world. This scenario is similar to one of Mani’s own writings, the Treasury of Life, where he says that the gods of the highest world, the Land of Light, may have male and female names, but since they have no reproductive organs they are all of a similar, genderless nature.26 In both Manichaeism and Eugnostos the highest pantheon is genderless, whereas gender polarisation belongs to the created world as a symptom of earthly existence.

The Creative Role of Intellectual Limbs Not only does the Man in Eugnostos possess divine intellectual faculties as parts of his soul, but he also uses them as building-blocks in the creation of the inferior world. The following passage (in the left column) describes an emanation of a hierarchy of numbers and intellectual faculties. Such numbers are attested in the philosophical tradition as mathematical principles or building-blocks of the universe. The passage thus gives a creation ac26

The excerpt from Mani’s lost work is found in Taḥqīq mā lil-Hind of Bīrūnī; see John C. Reeves, Prolegomena to a History of Islamicate Manichaeism (Comparative Islamic Studies; Sheffield: Equinox, 2011), 110.

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count of the Man, which is later imitated in a re-creation by one of the Christ figures and his female aspect, Wisdom (the right column). Emanations from the Man NHC III 78.16–23 + V 7.24–8.6

Emanations from Saviour and Wisdom NHC III 82.7–83.10

Among begotten ones the monad is first, the dyad and the triad follows it up until the decades. But the decades rule over the hecatontads, the hecatontads rule over the chiliads, the chiliads rule over the myriads. Such is the pattern of immortals. 27 The monad and the [th]ought belong to [the immortal] Ma[n, and] (also) the reflection [up] until the dec[ade]. And the hecatontads a[re the inten]tions, [the chiliads] are the reasonings, [the] myriads [a]re the powers [. . .] (4 lines damaged)

Then Saviour attained harmony with his partner, Faith Wisdom, and revealed six spiritual ones, being androgynous and types of those before them …

[And since] the begin[ning, from] min[d appeared thought] and re[flect]ions, [from] reflection[s in]tentions, f[rom intentions] reasonings, fro[m reasonings] a power.

[And from their] harmony I just described appeared thoughts in the established aeons, from thought reflections, from reflections intentions, from intentions reasonings, from reasonings wills, from wills words.

(List of six males and six females, the twelve spiritual powers)

Although the two creation accounts differ at the beginning, their conclusions reflect almost identical emanation hierarchies of the intellectual faculties. Where the creation scheme of the Man associates the faculties with numbers, the creation of the Saviour and his partner, Wisdom, associates them with spiritual powers. Figure 1 below presents these two creation accounts in separate emanation schemes. The first difference between the two is that the emanation scheme of the Man includes number speculation (monad, dyad, triad, decades, hecatontads, chiliads, and myriads), most likely based on the philosophical concept of the tetractys (here ‘decades’). 28 We can be fairly certain that Eugnostos here refers to the creation of the world, since, according to Iamblichus, earlier Pythagoreans described the structuring of the universe with precisely these numbers (or mathematical principles).29 In Eugnostos

27

Due to a missing folio in NHC III 79–80, what follows is the text in NHC V. Turner, Sethian Gnosticism, 208 n. 21. 29 Iamblichus, Theology of Arithmetic 80; cf. Robin Waterfield, The Theology of Arithmetic: On the Mystical, Mathematical and Cosmological Symbolism and the First Ten Numbers: Attributed to Iamblichus (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Phanes, 1988), 109–10. 28

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this numerological hierarchy is paralleled with the parts of the soul, or six intellectual faculties of the Man, as we saw above. Emanations from the Man Monad

= Mind (ⲛⲟⲩⲥ)

Decades

Dyad

= [Thought]

↓

Triad

= Reflections

Hekatontads ↓ Chiliads ↓ Myriads

= Intentions = Reasonings = Power(s) (ϭⲟⲙ)

Emanations from Saviour and Wisdom Harmony (ⲥⲩⲛⲫⲱⲛⲏⲥⲓⲥ) ↓ Thoughts (ⲉⲛⲛⲟⲓⲁ) ↓ Reflections (ⲉⲛⲑⲩⲙⲏⲥⲓⲥ) ↓ Intentions (ⲫⲣⲟⲛⲏⲥⲓⲥ) ↓ Reasonings (ⲗⲟⲅⲓⲥⲙⲟⲥ) ↓ Wills (ⲑⲉⲗⲏⲥⲓⲥ) ↓ Words (ⲗⲟⲅⲟⲥ)

Fig. 1: Creation Accounts

The second difference between the two creations is that some of the faculties of the Man are substituted by others in the Saviour and Wisdom’s emanation scheme: mind (ⲛⲟⲩⲥ) with harmony (ⲥⲩⲛⲫⲱⲛⲏⲥⲓⲥ); power (ϭⲟⲙ) with will (ⲑⲉⲗⲏⲥⲓⲥ). Furthermore, the Saviour and Wisdom’s creation adds a new faculty, words (ⲗⲟⲅⲟⲥ). I will not go into further discussion of why these changes are made, but will point only to the peculiarity that Eugnostos goes on to say that the last faculty of the Man, i.e. power (ϭⲟⲙ), has an important function in the creation of the visible world and of corporeal human beings.30 This brings us to the third difference between the two emanation schemes. The basic problem with the creation of the Man is not his creation as such but rather its lack of the spiritual principle. That is the reason why the Saviour needs to commence a second creation. Therefore in the second emanation scheme, the Saviour and his partner (ⲥⲩⲛⲍⲩⲅⲟⲥ), Wisdom, reveal six androgynous spiritual ones (ⲙ̄ⲡⲛⲉⲩⲙⲁⲧⲓⲕⲟⲛ), which constitute twelve spiritual powers.31 The reason for bringing forth these spiritual 30

Falkenberg, “Eugnostos,” 172–78. In the fourth or fifth century, Christian readers of Eugnostos probably thought that the Saviour and his twelve powers signified Christ and his apostles; but if so, how might they have understood the androgynous nature of the Saviour and spiritual ones? First of all, Eugnostos understands the whole created world as double-gendered, waiting for gender to be dissolved into the genderless world to come. Could this gender theme point to a 31

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powers is to alter, and ultimately substitute, the creation brought forth earlier by the power of the Man. Manichaeism also teaches that the intellectual limbs were involved in the constitution of the created world: In prehistoric time, the First Man waged war against the forces of darkness; but in the battle he lost his divine, sentient armour, which then became the light elements, or souls, caught and devoured by evil powers. To save these souls, numerous divinities from the highest pantheon engaged in another battle against the dark forces. In order to regain the lost elements of light, now mixed with evil matter, the material world was built as a ‘salvation machine’ by the Living Spirit’s five sons who came forth from the five intellectual limbs.32 According to this Manichaean myth, the scattered light elements still await liberation and reintegration into the Land of Light by means of members of the Manichaean church.33 The story’s primordial scattering of light elements, and its expectation of their eschatological summoning, can thus be termed a ‘scatter-recollect’ system.34 A simpler, but similar vision is found in Eugnostos, where a multitude of souls gather and unify in the church (ⲉⲕⲕⲗⲏⲥⲓⲁ) in eschatological time (NHC III 86.14–24). The Manichaeans also present their intellectual limbs hierarchically. Yet whereas Eugnostos provides a scheme of emanation by descent, the Manichaeans count the limbs in a scheme of heavenly ascent. It is reasoning (ⲙⲁ̣ⲕ̣ⲙ̣ⲉ̣ⲕ̣) that shall […] they shall be raised up […] is reflection (ⲥⲁϫⲛⲉ); [they sh]all be raised up to intention (ⲥⲃⲱ, φρόνησις) which is the First Man [who d]wells in the ship of the night (i.e., the moon); fr[om] insight they shall ris[e u]p to thought (ⲙⲉⲩⲉ) which is the Ambass[ad]or who dwells in [the sh]ip of the day (i.e., the sun); and

fourth- or fifth-century social background, such as a monastic, perhaps even a Manichaean, community? We know that Mani saw himself as a representative of the Christian Saviour, his heavenly ⲥⲩⲛⲍⲩⲅⲟⲥ called the Paraclete (though not as a female counterpart), inspired by the Gospel of John (14:16–17:26, esp. 15:26). In addition, we know that Mani’s church had female chosen ones (electae), though not in the higher levels of their church hierarchy, so here the Manichaean parallels are less obvious. 32 This mythology is described in Theodorus bar Kōnī, Liber Scholiorum XI 313.27– 315.18 (trans. Pettipiece, Pentadic Redaction, 223–26). The connection between the creative gods and the five intellectual limbs is mentioned in XI 314.17–20. 33 Certain kinds of food, especially vegetables, were thought to be rich in lightsubstance. They were offered by lay Manichaeans (hearers) to be eaten by the chosen ones (elect), and then, through their digestion and prayer, were transmitted first to the moon (called “ship of the night”), then through the Milky Way (“column of light”), on to the sun (“ship of the day”), and finally to the New Aeon, where they will find salvation in the Land of Light; cf. Lieu, Manichaeism, 20, 28. 34 E.g. kephalaion 71, “Concerning the Gathering in of the [E]lements” (trans. Gardner, Kephalaia, 185); cf. Kephalaia 175.25–176.8.

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he too, great glor[ious] thought, [shall bring] them to mind (ⲛⲟ̣ⲩⲥ) which is the Father, the Go[d] of truth, the great Mind of all the [ae]ons of glory (Kephalaia 20.24–31).35

Although there are clear similarities between Eugnostos and Manichaeism, there also important differences. For example, they deviate in their respective presentation of the cosmological use of the intellectual faculties or limbs: While in Eugnostos the faculties form the building blocks of the world, in Manichaeism the intellectual limbs represent the divine builders of the physical cosmos. The most important difference is that Manichaeans have no concept of a spiritual re-creation similar to the one in Eugnostos (cf. NHC 82.7–83.10 and Fig. 1).

Spiritual Powers and Cosmological Dwelling Places In this section I focus on the prominence of the numbers 12, 72, and 360 in the cosmology of Eugnostos. As the following passages show, these numbers are used to describe the emanation hierarchy of the spiritual powers and their new dwelling places in the cosmos. The Spiritual Powers NHC III 83.10–20 So the 12 (spiritual) powers (ϭⲟⲙ) I just described attained harmony with each other, and the six males and the six females each revealed (six powers) so that there are 72 powers. Each of the 72 revealed five spiritual (powers), and these are the 360 powers. The sum of them all is the will.

Their Cosmological Dwellings NHC III 84.12–85,6 But when those (12 powers) I just described appeared, All-begetter (i.e., the Saviour), their father, first made for them 12 aeons for service together with the 12 angels, and in all the aeons there were six (heavens) in each of them, so that there are 72 heavens for the 72 powers which appeared in him. And in all the heavens there were five firmaments in each, so that there were 360 firm[ament]s [for] the 360 powers [that app]eared in them. When the firmaments were completed, they were named The 360 Heavens according to the name of the heavens before them.

35 Trans. Gardner, Kephalaia, 25 (modified); Coptic text from Polotsky and Böhlig, Kephalaia, 20. Another parallel is found in Kephalaia 76.24–25. We notice at the end of the present quotation that the highest god, in contrast to the first four intellectual limbs, is characterised primarily as “mind (ⲛⲟ̣ⲩⲥ) which is the Father, the Go[d] of truth, the great Mind (ⲡⲛⲁϭ ⲛ̄ⲛⲟⲩⲥ) of all the [ae]ons of glory.” It thus accords with Eugnostos, wherein the godhead first and foremost is designated as “entirely mind” (ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲧⲏⲣϥ̄).

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Again the two passages can be displayed in the following schematic form: The Spiritual Powers Saviour and Faith Wisdom ↓ 12 powers (= 6 + 6) ↓ 72 powers (= 12 x 6) ↓ 360 powers (= 72 x 5)

Their Cosmological Dwellings All-begetter (the Saviour) ↓ 12 aeons for the 12 powers ↓ 72 heavens for the 72 powers ↓ 360 firmaments for the 360 powers

Fig. 2: The Spiritual Powers and their Heavenly Dwelling Places

Since the passage in the left column above (NHC III 83.10–20) follows immediately after the spiritual emanation scheme of the Saviour and his Wisdom (NHC III 82.7–83.10; Fig. 1), the hierarchy of the 12, 72, and 360 powers is closely connected to the spiritualised intellectual faculties of the Saviour and his partner. The same can be concluded regarding the 12 aeons, the 72 and 360 heavens, and the 360 firmaments, since they also are brought forth by the Saviour (here called All-begetter) and thus share a spiritual nature with the 12, 72, and 360 powers. This is important to notice since all the cosmological dwellings are labelled “The 360 Heavens according to the name of the heavens before them.” Thus it becomes clear that the spiritual heavens of the Saviour are created after already existing models. These models are probably the heavens created earlier by the Man, elsewhere called “the heavens of Chaos” (NHC III 89.14), suggesting that the spiritual heavens will eventually substitute for these inferior heavens. The idea that new heavens shall replace the old stems from the New Testament.36 This idea is not found clearly in Manichaean texts, though they witness a related notion of the New Earth (or New Aeon) that serves as a celestial dwelling place between the material world and the Land of Light.37 As for the numbers 12 and 72, a fourth- or fifth-century Christian reader might have understood these 12 and 72 spiritual powers as an allusion to Jesus sending out 12 apostles and 72 disciples according to the commissioning story in the Gospel of Luke (9:1–2, 12; 10:1, 17). This Lukan tradition is also attested in Western Manichaeism (Kephalaia 12.27–28). However, to my knowledge, the Manichaeans in the West never refer to 36 2 Pet 3:13; Rev 21:1. For the notion that the new reality will substitute the present reality, see Acts 3:21; Rom 8:19–23; 2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:14–15. 37 E.g. Kephalaia 103.2–10; cf. Lieu, Manichaeism, 20. Manichaean use of the phrase “New Earth” may in fact be an allusion to the “new earth” (γῆν καινήν) of Rev 21:1.

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the numbers 12, 72, and 360 together. In fact, the number 360 does not seem to occur in any extant Western Manichaean text, which is odd since the numbers 12, 72, and 360 are frequently used in Eastern Manichaeism to describe the ecclesiastical hierarchy.38

Ecclesiology of the Intellectual Limbs Eastern Manichaeism envisaged the ecclesiastical structure as an earthly manifestation of divine cosmological realities.39 The five intellectual limbs were also part of their cosmological-ecclesiological speculation, as seen in the following Middle Iranian fragment: (Glück, Freude usw. werde bereitet) der gesamten Fünf-pṭ ywδn [= intellectual limbs]Kirche, (nämlich) dem Gott (Herrn) Führer der Kirche, den zwölf Lehrern, den 72 Bishöfen (Diakonen), den 360 Presbytern, den Erwählten Gerechten Dēndāren [= electi], und den Seele liebenden Hörern (T II D 207 V 1–7).40

Here the five intellectual limbs constitute the Manichaean church consisting of one leader, 12 teachers, 72 bishops, 360 presbyters as well as the chosen ones together with the hearers. As in Eastern Manichaeism, Eugnostos also displays an ecclesiology, though not associated with numbers but with the intellectual faculties: The powers that were named ‘gods’ appeared from its (the Church’s) harmony and thought, and the gods 41 revealed from their intentions divine gods, the gods revealed from their intentions lords (of the lords), the lords of the lords revealed from their words lords, the lords revealed from their powers archangels, the archangels revealed angels (NHC III 87.9–22).

The preceding passage may be dispayed schematically as follows:

38

Lieu, Manichaeism, 27; Gardner, Kephalaia, xxxv. Cf. Claudia Leurini, The Manichaean Church: An Essay Mainly Based on the Texts from Central Asia (SOR.NS 1; Rome: Scienze e lettere, 2013), 91–93. 40 An unpublished Sogdian fragment where “pṭ ywδn bezeichnet die sogenannten (freilich auch von den Manichäern selbst so genannten) ‘Seelenglieder’ νοῦς, ἔννοια usw.” Trans. Walter B. Henning, “Ein manichäisches Bet- und Beichtbuch,” in Walter B. Henning: Selected Papers I (ed. Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin et al.; ActIr 14, Hommages et opera minora 5; Leiden: Brill, 1977), 491. The reference was kindly provided by Claudia Leurini. 41 Emended according to the parallel versions of Soph. Jes. Chr. (NHC III 111.16; BG 112.9–10); the Eugnostos version from NHC V is too damaged here. 39

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From harmony (ⲙⲉⲧⲉ) and thought (ⲉⲛⲛⲟⲓⲁ) of the church (ⲉⲕⲕⲗⲏⲥⲓⲁ) appeared: ↓ The gods (of the gods) from their intentions (ⲫⲣⲟⲛⲏⲥⲓⲥ): ↓ Gods from their intentions (ⲫⲣⲟⲛⲏⲥⲓⲥ): ↓ Lords of the lords from their words (ⲗⲟⲅⲟⲥ): ↓ Lords from their powers (ϭⲟⲙ = δύναμις): ↓ Archangels ↓ Angels Fig. 3: Emanation-Hierarchy of the Church’s Intellectual Faculties

Earlier we saw that the prime faculty, mind (ⲛⲟⲩⲥ), in the Man’s emanation scheme was replaced with harmony (ⲥⲩⲛⲫⲱⲛⲏⲥⲓⲥ; here ⲙⲉⲧⲉ is used) in the Saviour’s scheme, and also that the latter added ‘words’ (ⲗⲟⲅⲟⲥ) (NHC III 82.7–83.10; Fig. 1). Hence the ecclesiological use of the intellectual faculties is associated with the spiritual creation earlier brought forth by the Saviour and his partner, even if the two sequences are not exactly identical.42 Nevertheless, both the Eastern Manichaean fragment and Eugnostos describe their congregations as closely connected with the intellectual limbs and faculties, and as such, these intellectuals are thought to characterise the reality within their churches, or at least be closely connected to the members of that churches. Eugnostos’s ⲉⲕⲕⲗⲏⲥⲓⲁ is not explicitly populated with persons, as is the Manichaean church, but instead with heavenly beings: gods, lords, archangels, and angels. Yet it is possible that a fourth- or fifth-century Christian saw him- or herself as part of the heavenly congregation, as it was a common goal of ascetics at that time to live the ‘angelic life.’43 42 Harmony between the two texts could be achieved by emendation: the first ⲫⲣⲟⲛⲏⲥⲓⲥ (intention) to ⲏⲥⲓⲥ (reflection) and ⲗⲟⲅⲟⲥ (words or reason) to ⲗⲟⲅⲟⲥ (reasoning). However, such emendations are not supported by the parallels in the other three versions of Eugnostos. 43 For literature on ascetics living the bios angelikos, see Ellen Muehlberger, “Ambivalence about the Angelic Life: The Promise and Perils of an Early Christian Discourse of Asceticism,” JECS 16 (2008): 448–49.

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Cosmological Typologies The following passage from Eugnostos serves as a bridge between the two pericopes represented in Fig. 2 with the spiritual powers and the cosmological dwellings. It presents an astronomical typology of the last three primary gods (the Man, the Son of Man, and the Saviour) together with the 12 and 360 powers, and focuses on units of time (years, months, days, hours, and moments) determined by the movement of the cosmos. This section also shares traditions with a passage in the Manichaean Kephalaia. Eugnostos NHC III 83.20–84.11

Kephalaia 145.8–1644

So, as for the immortal Man, our aeon was a type (ⲧⲩⲡⲟⲥ) of him; time was a type of First-begetter, his son (i.e., Son of Man); [the year (ⲣⲟⲙⲡⲉ)] was a type of [the Saviour; the] 12 months (ⲉⲃⲟⲧ) were types of the 12 powers (ϭⲟⲙ); the 360 days (ϩⲟⲟⲩ) of the year were types of the 360 powers which appeared in Saviour; as for the innumerable angels who came to be from these, their hours (ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲟⲩⲉ) and moments (ⲥⲟⲩⲥⲟⲩ) were types of them.

There are five types (ⲧⲩⲡⲟⲥ) of authorities and leaders appointed in the sphere of zodiacal signs, and the heavens above it. They have names they are called by: The first name is the year (ⲣⲁⲙⲡⲉ); the sec[on]d is the month (ⲉⲃⲁⲧ); the third is the day (ϩⲟⲟⲩⲉ); the fou[rth] is the hour (ⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩ); the fifth is the moment (ⲥⲟⲩⲥⲟⲩ). Now, these five positions, and these five houses, exist in the sphere and the heavens; these places have five powers, and they are made master over them.

The Kephalaia shows the importance of celestial speculation in Manichaeism, using astrological vocabulary to describe the cosmological hierarchy (i.e. zodiac, heavens, houses, and units of time), while Eugnostos focuses more on the divinities and their relation to time units. In fact elsewhere, Eugnostos polemicises strongly against astrology. Before analysing Eugnostos’s refutation of astrology, it should be noted that a special kind of Christology, shared with Manichaeism, is found in the present passage. The third god is presented as standing in a generative relationship with the fourth god, since the Man has the Son of Man as “his son” (ⲡⲉϥϣⲏⲣ̣[ⲉ]).45 A close parallel can be found in the anti-Manichaean writings of Augustine, when he accuses some Manichaeans of saying that the Son of Man is identical with the son of the First Man.46 44 Trans. Gardner, Kephalaia, 152 (modified); Coptic text from Polotsky and Böhlig, Kephalaia, 145. 45 This seems confirmed in NHC V 8.27–9.3, even if the text is rather damaged (NHC III lacks a folio here). The notion that the Man is the father of the Son of Man most likely stems from an interpretation of Paul’s description of the first and last Adam in 1 Cor 15:45–49. 46 Augustine, Faust. 2.4–5; 5.4; 11.3. The reference was kindly provided by Nils Arne Pedersen. An interesting parallel is also found in the enigmatic saying “Man exists and Son of Man” attested (with variations) in Irenaeus, Haer., Ap. John, and Gos. Eg.; cf.

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Refutation of Astrology In the prologue of Eugnostos we have a refutatio section dealing with three philosophical positions on “the governance (ⲇⲓⲟⲓⲕⲏⲥⲓⲥ) of the world” (NHC III 70.9–10) and how this cosmos is governed. I cite the first part of the refutation here in full, but focus the analysis on the last of the three positions, which concerns astrology.47 Since the governance is described in three lessons by all the philosophers, they are not in harmony. For some among them say of the world that it is maintained by itself alone, others that it is providence, others again that it is a thing reckoned to happen (ⲟⲩⲡⲉⲧⲏⲡ ⲉϣⲱⲡⲉ) (Eugnostos NHC III 70.12–22).

The Coptic terms used to describe the third philosphy in the other versions of Eugnostos are as follows:48 Wisdom of Jesus Christ NHC III 93.3: Wisdom of Jesus Christ BG 81.10–11: Eugnostos NHC V 1.22:

ⲟⲩⲡⲉⲧⲏⲡ ⲉϣⲱⲡⲉ ⲟⲩⲧⲉⲑⲟⲛⲧ ϩ᷍ⲓⲙⲁⲣⲙⲉ̣[ⲛⲏ]

On the basis of the parallel from NHC V, it is clear that the expressions ⲟⲩⲡⲉⲧⲏⲡ ⲉϣⲱⲡⲉ and ⲟⲩⲧⲉⲑⲟⲛⲧ equal ϩ᷍ⲓⲙⲁⲣⲙⲉ̣[ⲛⲏ] as an abbreviation of ἡ εἱμαρμένη μοῖρα, i.e. “the allotted destiny/fate.” The use of the Coptic indefinite article ⲟⲩ before determined relative clauses (ⲧⲉⲑⲟⲛⲧ and ⲡⲉⲧⲏⲡ ⲉϣⲱⲡⲉ) attests to an alteration from a compound expression to a fixed lexeme, most likely a specific terminus technicus related to astrology. The term ⲟⲩⲧⲉⲑⲟⲛⲧ is also attested as ⲧⲉⲧϩⲁⲛⲧ in two of the other versions of Eugnostos, as we will see below. Of special interest here is the stative of ⲧⲉⲧϩⲁⲛⲧ, i.e. ϩⲁⲛⲧ (A2 [or L4] from ϩⲱⲛⲧ49). In fact, in Coptic literature this stative occurs only in the two versions of Eugnostos, the Wisdom of Jesus Christ from NHC III (twice), and in the Medinet Madi codices (four times). Two quotations from the Kephalaia from Medinet Rasimus, Paradise Reconsidered, 171–83, where the figure of the Son of Man in Eugnostos is analysed on the basis of Adam Christology. 47 E.g. Douglas M. Parrott, “Eugnostos and ‘All the Philosophers,’” in Religion im Erbe Ägyptens: Beiträge zur spätantiken Religionsgeschichte zu Ehren von Alexander Böhlig (ed. Alexander Böhlig and Manfred Görg; ÄAT 14; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1988), 157–58. 48 Coptic text from Pasquier, Eugnoste … Texte, 34, 62; Barry, Sagesse, 50, 120. 49 In Walter Ewing Crum, A Coptic Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), 691b, ϩⲱⲛⲧ is described as a rare occurrence of ϩⲱⲛ (“approach”); but in the linguistic study of new semantic parallels by Wolf-Peter Funk it is suggested, convincingly I think, that the verb’s stative form (ϩⲁⲛⲧ) can translate “determine” (bestimmen) as well; see Funk, “Tethont oder die vermeintliche ‘Nähe’ des Schicksals: Zum lexikalischsemantischen Hindernislauf der Heimarmene in einigen koptischen Gnostica,” GM 177 (2000): 20–21.

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Madi will serve as examples, not only regarding the use of ϩⲁⲛⲧ but also of the related ⲧⲱϣ (stative ⲧⲏϣ).50 As for those not yet killed – they will be killed! – the stars in the zo[di]acal sphere were fixed (ⲧⲱϣ) and determined (ⲛⲉⲧⲥϩⲁⲛⲧ) for those born under them, and their root was chained by their zodiacal signs (Kephalaia 117.34–118.3).51 Thus all the apostles who were sent [preached] once more the hope determined (ⲧ̣ⲉⲧ̣ϩⲁⲛⲧ̄) and fixed (ⲧⲏϣ) for them (Kephalaia 16.10–11).52

The first Kephalaia passage witnesses a clear-cut astrological use of ⲛⲉⲧⲥϩⲁⲛⲧ, lit. ‘those determined,’ and ⲧⲱϣ, ‘fixed.’ The two other passages from the Medinet Madi codices not quoted here utilize identical terminology, and also in an astrological context: ⲧⲏϣ ⲁϣⲱⲡⲉ and ⲧⲉⲧϩⲁⲛ̄ⲧ (Kephalaia 352.11–13); and ϩⲁⲛⲧ̄ ⲁϣⲱⲡⲉ (Psalm Book II 39.28). Semantically, the two Manichaean expressions ⲧⲏϣ ⲁϣⲱⲡⲉ, ‘fixed to happen,’ and ϩⲁⲛⲧ̄ ⲁϣⲱⲡⲉ, ‘determined to happen,’ can be understood as equal to ⲟⲩⲡⲉⲧⲏⲡ ⲉϣⲱⲡⲉ, ‘a thing reckoned to happen,’ in the passage quoted from Eugnostos above. At first sight, and in comparison with Manichaean texts, the use of the term ⲟⲩⲡⲉⲧⲏⲡ ⲉϣⲱⲡⲉ in Eugnostos is astrological. At second sight, when including the second Kephalaia quotation above (16.10–11), this astrological connection becomes problematic: The Manichaean “apostles” are there said to preach “the hope determined and fixed for them,” but the astrological context is absent, even if the two technical terms are employed (ⲧ̣ⲉⲧ̣ϩⲁⲛⲧ̄ and ⲧⲏϣ). Since only this pericope attests to a positive use of the terminology, and the other three Medinet Madi passages demonstrate a negative use, it seems as if the terminology in Kephalaia 16.10–11 refers to a Manichaean notion of predestination. According to the world-view of Manichaeism, all human beings are under some kind of influence; but where non-Manichaeans were influenced by the demonic movement of the stars (astrology), Manichaeans understood themselves to be influenced by the divine salvation plan of the godhead (predestination). Manichaeans were fond of astrological speculation, were accused of being astrologers by outsiders, and viewed astrological influence as demonic and something they should escape.53 It may be concluded, then, 50 Four examples from Medinet Madi are mentioned by Funk, “Tethont,” 16–19: Besides the two quoted here, he also suggests Psalm Book II 39.28 (ϩⲁⲛⲧ̄ ⲁϣⲱⲡⲉ) and Kephalaia 352.11–13 (ⲧⲏϣ ⲁϣⲱⲡⲉ and ⲧⲉⲧϩⲁⲛ̄ⲧ). The latter two examples are discussed below. 51 Trans. from Coptic text in Polotsky and Böhlig, Kephalaia, 117–18. 52 Trans. from Coptic text restored by Funk, “Tethont,” 18. 53 Only a few studies have been dedicated to the Manichaean view on astrology: Victor Stegemann, “Zu Kapitel 69 der Kephalaia des Mani,” ZNW 37 (1938): 214–23; F. Stanley Jones, “The Astrological Trajectory in Ancient Syriac-Speaking Christianity

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that the Medinet Madi texts use specific terms (ϩⲁⲛⲧ and ⲧⲱϣ) that not only point to astrology (negatively), but also to the related concept of predestination (positively). Returning to Eugnostos: In the second part of its refutatio, we have an actual refutation of ⲧⲉⲧϩⲁⲛⲧ as an astrological term in a passage related to the one quoted above. Again, I will focus the discussion here on the last of the three refutations of philosophers:54 So, as for the three voices I just described, none of them are reckoned as the truth. For that which is from itself alone is an empty life; it makes itself. Providence is stupidity. That which is determined is an undiscerning thing (ⲧⲉⲧϩⲁⲛⲧ ⲟⲩⲙⲉⲥⲉⲥⲑⲁⲛⲉ ⲧⲉ) (NHC III 70.20–71.5).

The parallels in the other versions of Eugnostos are as follows: Wisdom of Jesus Christ NHC III 93.15–16: Wisdom of Jesus Christ BG 82.7–8: Eugnostos NHC V:

ⲧⲉⲧϩⲁⲛⲧ̇ ⲇⲉ ⲟⲩⲙⲉⲥⲉⲥⲑⲁⲛⲉ ⲧⲉ ⲧⲉⲑⲟⲛⲧ ⲇⲉ ⲟⲩⲉⲓⲉ ⲙⲁⲥⲁⲓⲥⲑⲁⲛⲉ ⲧⲉ (Too damaged to read.)

Each extant versions agree on refuting “that which is determined” (ⲧⲉⲧϩⲁⲛⲧ and ⲧⲉⲑⲟⲛⲧ) on the basis that it is “an undiscerning thing” (ⲟⲩⲙⲉⲥⲉⲥⲑⲁⲛⲉ), or otherwise formulated: “something that cannot perceive.” The term ⲧⲉⲧϩⲁⲛⲧ is criticised for showing non-animate behaviour without any inclination towards good or bad, simply being a mechanical principle that automatically determines the whereabouts of humankind. This critique partially agrees with the negative view found in the Manichaean texts when we consider ⲧⲉⲧϩⲁⲛⲧ (and ⲧⲉⲑⲟⲛⲧ) as referring to an astrological concept. The question that naturally arises: Do Eugnostos and the Manichaeans view the cosmos as related to some kind of sentient being? The answer seems to be yes. In Eugnostos the world is created by means of the Man’s intellectual faculties (the limbs of his soul) as building-blocks. Similarly, we know of the concept of a living world-soul in the philosophical tradition (i.e., in Platonism and Stoicism), which is most likely the source of the idea of a sentient, moving cosmos. The Manichaeans also considered the cosmos to be a living entity, at least the zodiacal signs and the five planets that they believed were identical with the evil forces from the realm of darkness; and since the Manichaeans thought these dark powers still exercised influence on humankind, they considered them to be animate beings (e.g., Kephalaia 167.11–20). In summary, there are three strong indications of literary dependence between the Manichaean view of astrology and the third philosophical (Elchasai, Bardaisan, and Mani),” in Atti del Terzo Congresso Internazionale di Studi “Manicheismo e Oriente Cristiano Antico” (ed. Luigi Cirillo and Alois van Tongerloo; Manichaean Studies 3; Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 183–200; Lieu, Manichaism, 177–79. 54 Coptic text from Pasquier, Eugnoste … Texte, 34–36; Barry, Sagesse, 52, 120.

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view refuted by Eugnostos. Fairly unique astrological terminology is found in both. First, the term ϩⲁⲛⲧ, in its sub-Achmimic stative form, is extremely rare, only attested by six occurrences, none outside the Nag Hammadi and Medinet Madi codices. Second, Eugnostos’s expression ⲟⲩⲡⲉⲧⲏⲡ ⲉϣⲱⲡⲉ, ‘a thing reckoned to happen,’ is seen in two closely related parallels as ⲧⲏϣ/ϩⲁⲛⲧ̄ ⲁϣⲱⲡⲉ, ‘fixed/determined to happen,’ in the Medinet Madi texts. Third, both use this terminology in an astrological context, and both considered astrological influence as a negative force to be avoided.

Conclusions So what has Nag Hammadi to do with Medinet Madi? In the case of Eugnostos, evidently a lot. Its close literary connections with Manichaean texts strongly suggests that it exchanged ideas and concepts with Manichaean sources. Eugnostos and Manichaean texts both present a similar set of intellectual faculties or limbs with four comparable functions according to 1) theology, defining the nature of the godhead; 2) anthropology, describing the divine limbs (or parts) of the human soul; 3) cosmology, the building-blocks or builders of the physical world; and 4) possibly ecclesiology, a guarantee of the divine at work in the church (even if the idea existed mainly in Eastern Manichaeism). Moreover, they both employ an identical and rare astrological vocabulary and agree in their negative view of astrological influences. The centrality of the numbers 12, 72, and 360 in Eugnostos is also attested in Eastern Manichaeism (though not in its Western branch). Finally, Eugnostos and adherents of Manichaeism considered the highest pantheon to be genderless, share an ecclesiological ‘scatterrecollect’ scheme, and envisage a peculiar Christology according to which the Son of Man is the son of the Man (Eugnostos) or the son of the First Man (Manichaeism). From the perspective of new philology, Eugnostos is a Christian text, copied into Christian codices. In light of all its literary connections with Manichaeism, would we not also be justified in concluding, insofar as our sources come from the same time period, that part of the religious colour of Eugnostos is also Manichaean? Even if the two diverge in their views of the cosmos and its purpose, I would, taking the fourth- or fifth-century context into account, answer the question in the affirmative.

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Lundhaug. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 175. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017. Schmidt, Carl, and Hans J. Polotsky. Ein Mani-Fund in Ägypten. Originalschriften des Mani und seiner Schüler. Sitzungsberichte der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse. Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1933. Stegemann, Victor. “Zu Kapitel 69 der Kephalaia des Mani.” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 37 (1938): 214–23. Stroumsa, Gedaliahu A. G. Another Seed: Studies in Gnostic Mythology. Nag Hammadi Studies 24. Leiden: Brill, 1984. Tardieu, Michel. Écrits Gnostiques: Codex de Berlin. Sources gnostiques et manichéennes 1. Paris: Cerf, 1984. Thomassen, Einar. “Notes pour la delimitation d’un corpus valentinien à Nag Hammadi.” Pages 243–59 in Les textes de Nag Hammadi et le problème de leur classification: Actes du colloque tenu à Québec du 15 au 19 septembre 1993. Edited by Louis Painchaud and Anne Pasquier. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi: Section “Études” 3. Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 1995. Trakatellis, Demetrios. The Trancendent God of Eugnostos: An Exegetical Contribution to the Study of the Coptic Text of Nag Hammadi. With a Retroversion of the Lost Original Greek Text of Eugnostos the Blessed. Translated by Charles Sarelis. Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1991. Turner, John D. Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi: Section “Études” 6. Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 2001. Vähäkangas, Päivi. “Rejection and Reception of Philosophy in the Letter of Eugnostos (NHC III,3 and V,1) and Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions.” PhD diss., University of Helsinki, 2012. Van Lindt, Paul. “The Religious Terminology in the Nag Hammadi Texts and in Manichaean Literature.” Pages 191–98 in The Nag Hammadi Texts in the History of Religions: Proceedings of the International Conference at the Royal Academy of Sciences and Letters in Copenhagen, September 19–24, 1995: On the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the Nag Hammadi Discovery. Edited by Søren Giversen, Tage Petersen, and Jørgen Podemann Sørensen. Historisk-filosofiske skrifter 26. Copenhagen: Reitzel, 2002. Vermes, Mark, and Samuel N. C. Lieu. Hegemonius: Acta Archelai (The Acts of Archelaus). Manichaean Studies 4. Turnhout: Brepols, 2001. Waterfield, Robin. The Theology of Arithmetic: On the Mystical, Mathematical and Cosmological Symbolism and the First Ten Numbers: Attributed to Iamblichus. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Phanes, 1988. Williams, Michael A. Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Wurst, Gregor. “Das Problem der Datierung der Sophia Jesu Christi und des Eugnostosbriefes.” Pages 373–86 in Jesus in apokryphen Evangelienüberlieferungen: Beiträge zu ausserkanonischen Jesusüberlieferungen aus verschiedenen Sprach- und Kulturtraditionen. Edited by Jörg Frey and Jens Schröter. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 254. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010.

Books of the Dead or Books with the Dead? Interpreting Book Depositions in Late Antique Egypt PAULA TUTTY In 1984, archaeologists uncovered the grave of a young girl, approximately twelve years old, in a late antique cemetery 25 miles south of the GraecoRoman city of Oxyrhynchus. According to the scanty excavation reports, a book of Psalms, complete with a small ankh carved from bone attached to it by a leather thread, was placed underneath her head.1 What prompted the relatives or friends of this child to place such an extravagantly expensive gift into her grave? The most obvious answers would be that it was merely a sentimental keepsake from her grieving family or a treasured and wellread volume. However, another, more complex suggestion has been proposed for such book burials: could this be a Christianised version of the ancient Egyptian practice of supplying a Book of the Dead to the deceased in order to effectuate their ascent into the afterlife? It is an intriguing suggestion that the use of such books persisted into late antiquity.2 It has been endorsed by several scholars over the years and it has recently been re-

1

Now preserved in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, 12488 (TM107731 in the Leuven Database of Ancient Books). For a description of the excavation and discovery see Gawdat Gabra, Der Psalter im oxyrhynchitischen (mesokemischen/mittelägyptischen) Dialekt (ADAI.K 4; Heidelberg: Heidelberger Orientverlag, 1995), 23–26. The full facsimile is to be found in Rudolphe Kasser, L’ensemble des photographies de travail encore impubliées du Psautier copte mésokémique M4 d’Al-Moudil (Neges Ebrix; Yverdon-les-Bains: Institut d’archéologie yverdonnoise, 2000). See also Hans-Martin Schenke, “Die Psalmen im mittelägyptischen Dialekt des Koptischen (der Mudil Codex),” Enchoria 23 (1996): 86–144. 2 For a discussion of the use of the Book of the Dead and other Ancient Egyptian religious writings in a performative context, see Christopher Eyre, The Cannibal Hymn: A Cultural and Literary Study (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002), 64–69. See also Scott B. Noegel’s discussion of written utterances with performative power in an Egyptian setting: “Literary Craft and Performative Power in the Ancient Near East,” in Approaches to Literary Readings of Ancient Jewish Writings (ed. Klaas Smelik and Karolien Vermeulen; Leiden: Brill, 2014), 22–28.

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vived with reference to the deposition of the Nag Hammadi Codices.3 This suggestion has important implications for how we view the purpose behind the creation of a significant group of religious texts in the late antique period. Could the Nag Hammadi Codices have been conceived primarily as ritualistic artefacts rather than works of theological discourse and religious education meant to be read by the living?

The Nag Hammadi Codices as ‘Books of the Dead’ The concept of a ‘magical’ manuscript whose performative function is to secure entrance into the afterlife is an attractive one,4 and indeed such texts have a lengthy history of usage in ancient Egypt.5 Its longevity as an es3 E.g. by George Nickelsburg in 1990, when discussing Codex Panopolitanus (“Two Enochic Manuscripts: Unstudied Evidence for Egyptian Christianity,” in Of Scribes and Scrolls: Studies on the Hebrew Bible, Intertestimal Judaism, and Christian Origins [ed. Harold W. Attridge, John J. Collins, and Thomas H. Tobin; Lanham: University Press of America, 1990], 252–54). In 2007, Franҫoise Dunand remarked that, “In a tomb at Akhmim, there was a manuscript of Peter’s Apocalypse; it contains a quite detailed account of the last days, judgement, hell, and the punishment of sinners: a kind of Book of the Dead” (“Egyptian Funerary Practices in Late Antiquity,” in Egypt in the Byzantine World, 300–700 [ed. Roger S. Bagnall; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007], 180). See most recently Nicola Denzey Lewis, “Death on the Nile: Egyptian Codices, Gnosticism, and Early Christian Books of the Dead,” in Practicing Gnosis: Ritual, Magic, Theurgy and Liturgy in Nag Hammadi, Manichaean and Other Ancient Literature: Essays in Honor of Birger A. Pearson (ed. April DeConick, Gregory Shaw, and John D. Turner; NHMS 85; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 161–83; Denzey Lewis and Justine Ariel Blount, “Rethinking the Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices,” JBL 133:2 (2014): 399–419. 4 The concept of the performative utterance was first posited by Jeoffrey L. Austin in How To Do Things with Words (ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), 5–6. In discussing the phrase “performative sentence,” Austin noted that it “indicated that the issuing of the utterance is the performing of an action” (ibid., 6). For a detailed discussion of the concept of performative utterances and the underlying theory in application to a religious work, see David Hellholm, “Beatitudes and Their Illocutionary Function,” in Ancient and Modern Perspectives on the Bible and Culture: Essays in Honor of Hans Dieter Betz (ed. Adela Yarbro Collins; Scholars Press Homage Series 22: Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 286–344. 5 The introduction of the notion of performativity into an ancient Egyptian context was first promoted by Jan Assmann, The Search for God in Ancient Egypt (trans. David Lorton; New York: Cornell University Press, 2001), 51. The use of recitation and speech acts in ancient Egyptian religious writings and rituals is discussed in further detail by Erika Meyer-Dietrich, “Recitation, Speech Acts, and Declamation,” in UCLA Encyclopaedia of Egyptology (ed. Willeke Wendrich), n.p. [Cited 30 July 2015]. Online: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1gh1q0md. On the performative function of covenantal language in the Hebrew Bible, see Gerda Elata-Alster and Rachel Salmon, “Biblical Covenants as Performative Language,” in Summoning: Ideas of the Covenant and

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sential feature of ancient Egyptian religious funerary ritual has prompted the suggestion that the practice survived into the late antique period. Recently, Nicola Denzey Lewis and Justine Ariel Blount have argued in a similar vein, suggesting that the purpose of creating certain codices in this period may have been their function as Christian ‘Books of the Dead.’ 6 This, the authors propose, accounts for the creation and burial of at least some of the Nag Hammadi Codices which, they believe, were created as Books of the Dead to aid the post-mortem ascent of their wealthy owner (or owners): we suggest that the Nag Hammadi codices could just as plausibly have been private productions commissioned by late ancient Egyptian Christians with antiquarian interests. The books were later deposited in graves, following a late antique modification of a custom known in Egypt for hundreds of years. Furthermore we contend that their eventual placement in graves may not have been coincidental; the arrangement of certain volumes reflect eschatological as well as antiquarian interests, meaning that at least some volumes may have been intentionally crafted as funerary deposits, Christian “Books of the Dead” that only make sense in the context of late antique Egypt.7

The use of the native language, Coptic, has an added significance for Denzey Lewis and Blount in that, “the language connected those who commissioned such volumes with an archaic practice of leaving guides for the afterlife in Egyptian graves.”8 In order to evaluate this suggestion, it will be useful to examine the broader history of the Book of the Dead’s function and development in Egypt. Through this discussion, it will become apparent that there is a serious misapprehension on the part of some scholars as to what the Egyptian Book of the Dead was and how it functioned in Egyptian religious practice. To be sure, the Book of the Dead played a key role in ancient Egyptian eschatology. In many respects it could be considered as a sort of magical Baedeker’s guide to the underworld, revealing a path through the numerous obstacles placed in the way of the unwary traveller and containing the spells, passwords, prayers and utterances needed to guide the deceased to his or her final destination. But could belief in the efficacy of such texts be so profound that it clung on tenaciously into the Christian period? Could it be a cultural memory that remained deeply embedded despite the shifts in religious beliefs and social values over the centuries? Interpretive Theory (ed. Ellen Spolsky; New York: State University of New York Press, 1993), 27–47. As an aspect of speech-act theory, the role of utterances that count as doing is explored by Jim W. Adams, The Performative Nature and Function of Isaiah 40– 55 (London: T & T Clark, 2006). 6 Denzey Lewis and Blount, “Rethinking the Origins,” 410–13; Denzey Lewis, “Death on the Nile,” 172–73. 7 Denzey Lewis and Blount, “Rethinking the Origins,” 400–401. 8 Denzey Lewis and Blount, “Rethinking the Origins,” 416.

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My intent here is to show the implausibility of a Christian Book of the Dead. The religious practices of the Christian community in Egypt, as revealed in material culture and literary evidence alike, witness against the continued existence of such a book in the Christian period. In what follows, I shall first examine the evidence for book deposition in late antique funerary contexts, and then discuss the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, both its function and the reasons for its eventual demise. In doing so, I intend to show that the contents of such books and the circumstances surrounding late antique book burials speak against the existence of Christian Books of the Dead.

Funerary Book Burials What is the evidence for the deposition of books in ancient Egyptian burials and how does it compare to what we know about funerary practices in late antiquity? The first example has already been briefly described – the find of a miniature Coptic psalter at al-Mudil in the Beni Sueif district, a settlement which was only seven kilometers from the large town of elHibeh (Graeco-Roman Ankyronpolis) 9 in the Oxyrhynchite nome. The psalter was allegedly placed in the grave of a twelve or thirteen year-old girl, an adult by the standards of her era.10 Unfortunately no archaeological reports were ever made of this discovery, no photographs were taken of the codex in situ, nor have there been any publications regarding the tomb or the cemetery site. Gawdat Gabra’s suggestion that the codex dates to the fourth century remains questionable. There are marked differences between this codex and a comparison of the handwriting found in the Nag 9

El-Hibeh was a major settlement from the Late Period onwards and is situated on the east bank of the Nile approximately 55 miles south of Beni Sueif. In 2007 a team from the University of Berkeley explored a small Coptic cemetery adjacent to the town wall which through carbon 14 analysis of mummy wrappings was found to date from the fourth and sixth centuries CE. There is also evidence that the town was occupied until at least the end of the Late Antique period. See Carol A. Redmount, “El-Hiba,” in The Encyclopedia of Ancient History (ed. Rodger Bagnal; Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 5:2373–74. 10 The proculiani of the imperial period considered twelve to be the fixed age for the transition of girls to adulthood. See Christian Laes and Johan Strubbe, Youth in the Roman Empire: The Young and the Restless Years? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 31. Evidence from Egyptian census material indicates that women began to marry at the age of twelve, although this was not necessarily common practice, and the bulk of marriages seem to have taken place between the ages of fifteen and twenty. See Bruce W. Frier, “Roman Demography,” in Life, Death and Entertainment in the Roman Empire (ed. David S. Potter and David J. Mattingly; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 91.

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Hammadi Codices, where at least one codex (NHC VII) has a terminus post quem of 348 CE. In contrast, Codex Glazier, another Mesokemic text, is very close in style to the al-Mudil psalter.11 As the radiocarbon dating of Codex Glazier’s cover places it between 420 and 598 CE, the al-Mudil codex likely dates to the fifth or even sixth century also.12 Following the psalter’s discovery, media interviews given by Gabra, at that time director of the Coptic Museum in Cairo, highlighted the popularity of Psalms in early Christianity, a fact that is well attested. Gabra commented on the similarities between the provision of books in late antique funerary contexts and the ancient Egyptian Book of Dead, and also recalled how Psalms had been used for “magical purposes” by Coptic Christians throughout the centuries.13 Whilst it is certainly correct that selections from Psalms are often found on protective amulets,14 it does not necessarily follow that the Psalms codex was buried for an esoteric purpose. The wear and tear seen on its pages are clear indications that it was a much-used book. The reading of Psalms was highly recommended at this period by authority figures, such as Athanasius in his Letter to Marcellinus, who dwells at length on the benefits of reading Psalms when faced with the trials of everyday life. 15 That the young woman simply valued the Psalms codex as a personal possession provides a more plausible explanation for its place in this grave than does its purported function as a Book of the Dead intended to guide her through 11

The relationship and likely proximity of the find sites for both manuscripts were noted by Hans-Martin Schenke. For his comments regarding this and the possible date of codex Glazier, see Schenke, Apostelgeschichte 1,1–15,3 im mittelägyptischen Dialekt des Koptischen (Codex Glazier) (TUGAL; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1991), 4–6. 12 For the radiocarbon dating see John Lawrence Sharpe III, “The Earliest Bindings with Wooden Board Covers: The Coptic Contribution to Binding Construction,” in International Conference on Conservation and Restoration of Archive and Library Materials, Erice (Italy), CCSEM, 22nd – 29th April 1996 (ed. Daniela Costanini Piero Colaizzi; Rome: Istituto centrale per la patologia del libro, 1996), 383 n. 13. Alin Suciu prefers a late sixth-century date for this codex based on similarities with manuscripts from the Monastery of Jeremiah at Saqqara: http://alinsuciu.com/2014/04/06/ radiocarbon-dating-of-codex-glazier/. A re-calibration of the results by Hugo Lundhaug, using the latest versions of the OxCal calculator and calibration curve, produced a date range between 401–490 CE with a 95.4% probability. 13 Associated Press, “Egyptian Find From 4th Century: Book in Grave Earliest Known Text of Psalms,” Los Angeles Times (24 December 1988). Cited 30 July 2015. Online: http://articles.latimes.com/1988-12-24/news/ss-570_1_4th-century-ad. One must of course also allow for the exaggeration of the press in these reports, and these comments do not appear in Gabra’s Der Psalter (1995). 14 Don C. Skemer, Binding Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 84–86. 15 Robert C. Gregg, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 101–30. I am grateful to Lance Jenott for the reference.

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the afterlife. The book was more likely to have been deposited in order to signal the piety of its young owner, or at least those of her relations. A similar find of a psalter (BL Or. 5000) was made in Upper Egypt in 1896.16 According to its editor, E. A. Wallis Budge, it was found by two Egyptian fellahin who were searching for sebakh at the “ruins of an ancient Coptic church and monastery in Upper Egypt.”17 The name of the monastery is not specified, only that the psalter was found in a stone box and wrapped in linen cloth along with a book of homilies (BL Or. 5001). It was dated by Budge to the sixth century, with additional repairs made in the eleventh or twelfth century.18 This book’s long period of use is a cautionary reminder that the early date of a manuscript does not necessarily mean an early date of disposal. The fact that this book was discovered in a church and monastic setting, and that it is a book of Psalms, has lent it an aura of orthodoxy protecting it from accusations of being a ‘magic book.’ It is a useful example of the popularity of the Psalms at the time of its deposition, and strengthens the argument that there is nothing unusual in the burial of the al-Mudil Codex beyond the fact that it was a lavish grave good (hence the rarity of such finds). As Budge was keen to find other manuscripts similar to the Coptic Psalter from Upper Egypt, he urged his Egyptian workers to look inside Coptic graves. In 1911, this search led to the discovery of a codex containing Deuteronomy, Jonah, Acts, and the opening section of the Apocalypse of Elijah in a grave in el-Ashmunein (Graeco-Roman Hermopolis). 19 The grave was situated at the end of a Coptic cemetery, still in use from an earlier Roman burial site, wherein bodies were interred wrapped in coarse linen with Coptic iron crosses attached. The body of its owner was placed in a pagan coffin from an earlier era, wrapped in what Budge describes as ‘Akhmim linen’ with an iron chain around his waist.20 Budge was shown 16

Now in the possession of the British Library, BL Or. 5000 (TM108024). E. A. Wallis Budge, The Earliest Known Coptic Psalter: The Text in the Dialect of Upper Egypt, Edited from the Unique Papyrus Codex Oriental 5000 in the British Museum (London: Keegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1898), vii. 18 Budge, Earliest Known Coptic Psalter, xii. 19 BL Or. 7594 (TM107763); E. A. Wallis Budge, Coptic Biblical Texts in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London: The British Museum, 1912), 1–271. Budge thought that the excerpt from Apoc. El. was only a colophon (ibid., 270–71), but it was later recognised by Carl Schmidt, “Der Kolophon des Ms. Orient. 7594 des Britischen Museums: Eine Untersuchung zur Eliasapokalypse,” Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse (1925), 312–21. 20 E. A. Wallis Budge, By Nile and Tigris: A Narrative of Journeys in Egypt and Mesopotamia on Behalf of the British Museum between the Years 1886 and 1913 (2 vols.; London: J. Murray, 1920), 2:372–75. Bentley Layton subsequently identified three different hands in the manuscript (Catalogue of Coptic Literary Manuscripts in the British Library Acquired Since the Year 1906 [London: The British Library, 1987], 3–5). 17

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the two chambered tombs, but did not see the codex in situ and could only rely on the description of the discoverer who claimed that it was placed between the feet of the corpse and wrapped in linen. Budge came to the conclusion, based on the presence of the iron chain, that this was an ascetic, perhaps an anchorite, who was of some import to his community. This supposition, and the suggestion that the owner was also the scribe who wrote the codex, were of course purely speculative, but not beyond reason. The codex and cartonnage from its cover were examined by Harold Bell,21 and it was assigned a fourth century date on palaeographical grounds by Kenyon.22 Assuming that Budge’s account accurately describes the context of the find (and there is nothing to suggest that this is not the case beyond the clear absence of Christian symbolism in the re-used grave and coffin), how should we interpret the deposition of this codex? One could speculate as to a common theme in its texts, for example, leadership in times of difficulty: Moses striving in the desert with the recalcitrant tribes of Israel; Jonah called upon by God against his will to serve as prophet; and the apostles sent to preach the good news under trying circumstances. It is far too easy to speculate this way without a shred of evidence to hint at authorial intent; but whether this was the idea behind the inclusion of these particular texts or not, there is nothing here to imply that it is a codex constructed for use as a Book of the Dead, and indeed no scholar has so far suggested it. As is the case with the al-Mudil psalter, this codex is well worn in a way that implies it was read often and was carried around by its owner, thus implying yet again a rather more mundane reason for the deposition of such books.23 Thus far, I have examined codices with texts whose canonical status has not aroused further comment. But what about codices containing more obscure, even heretical texts? In 1886–1887, the French Archaeological Mission, headed by Eugene Grébaut, excavated a Christian tomb in cemetery A at Akhmim (Graeco-Roman Panopolis)24 and found a parchment codex 21

Greek accounts relating to the senate, the bath houses, and temples of Hermes and Aphrodite were found within the cartonnage, as well as the title of an official which, according to Bell, does not appear after 307. Nevertheless he also found several small scraps in literary uncials which appeared to date from the fifth century. He suggested that the latter were added later, rather than arguing that some portions of the cartonnage were nearly 100 years older than others. See Bell’s comments in Budge, Coptic Biblical Texts, xv–xvi. 22 Bell came to this conclusion on the basis of the cursive hand of the Apoc. El., which was then thought to be a colophon (Budge, Coptic Biblical Texts, lv–lvii). 23 Budge, Coptic Biblical Texts, x–xi. 24 Akhmim at this time was a place of frenetic activity for archaeologists and illicit dealers alike. In 1885–1886 Gaston Maspero directed the excavation of thousands of

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inscribed with Greek extracts of the Apocalypse of Peter and the Gospel of Peter along with 1 Enoch’s Book of the Watchers (preceded by a duplicate version of 19:3–9).25 A further leaf, from the Martyrdom of St. Julian of Anazarbus, was also found in the back of the codex. This book, now dubbed Codex Panopolitanus, is a minature codex consisting of 33 leaves of parchment with a cover encased in leather. Bouriant, its first editor, considered the codex to be a product of the eighth to twelfth centuries, a possibility that reconciles with the fact that the necropolis was used from the fifth to fifteenth century.26 Peter van Minnen’s suggestion that the inserted leaf from the Martyrdom of St. Julian is written in a seventh-century literary hand accords with a relatively late date for its subsequent burial.27 The significance of this codex for the present discussion is that it has been identified as a prime example of a Christian Book of the Dead. This interpretation emphasises the fact that its contents are of an apocalyptic burials in the late antique and early Islamic cemeteries (see Maspero, “Rapport à l’Institut Égyptien sur les fouilles et travaux executes en Egypt pendant l’hiver de 1885– 1886,” BIE 7 [1886]: 210–12). For a description of the site and the textiles found there, see Elisabeth O’Connell, “Representation and Self-Presentation in Late Antique Egypt: ‘Coptic’ Textiles in the British Museum,” in Textile Society of America Symponium Proceedings (University of Nebraska, 2008), n.p. [Cited 30 July 2015]. Online: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1121&context=tsaconf. 25 Codex Panopolitanus (TM59976), now in the Cairo Museum (CG10759). A description of the find is given by George H. Schodde, “The New Greek Enoch Fragments,” The Biblical World 1:5 (1893): 359–62. Recent descriptions include Thomas J. Kraus and Tobias Nicklas, Das Evangelium nach Petrus: Text, Kontexte, Intertexte (TUGAL; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 10–14. The editio princeps of 1 En. was published by Urbain Bouriant, “Fragments grecs du livre d’Énoch,” in Mémoires publiés par les membres de la Mission archéologique française au Caire sous la direction de M. U. Bouriant, tome neuvième (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1892), 91–147. 26 Kraus and Nicklas, Das Evangelium nach Petrus, 13. 27 The question of the dating of the codex is explored by Peter van Minnen, who notes the use of paleographical features in the Martyrdom, such as the roundels under the delta, that are not seen before the end of the sixth century. He also considers that the scribal hand of the Peter excerpts has its parallels in notarial documents of the late sixth century (“The Greek Apocalypse,” 20–21). Nickelsburg (“Two Enochic Manuscripts,” 252) favours a fifth to sixth-century date, citing Eric G. Turner, The Typology of the Early Codex (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1977), 185, who himself lists the codex as sixth century with the additional comment, “Hedley viii–xi. Is it not earlier?” Nickelsburg also cites T. J. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), 70, who in turn cites Grenfell and Hunt in support of a fifth or sixth-century date, but also echoes the words of Baillet when noting that the mathematical papyrus presumed to have been found with this codex is “from the Byzantine era, certainly from before the Arab invasion” (Milik, Books of Enoch, 70). However, as van Minnen points out (“The Greek Apocalypse,” 16–17), these earlier dates do not take into account the poineering work of Cavallo and Maehler in the study of sixth-century manuscripts.

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nature (e.g., Enoch’s tours of heaven and the underworld). Scholars in favour of this interpretation have also pointed to fact that the book appears to have been poorly constructed, with a quire bound upside down and a page left blank, perhaps indicating it was never actually read.28 However, the reasons suggested for the choice of contents in the Akmim codex can only be regarded as speculation; there is nothing in the book itself to indicate why these texts were selected or by whom. The fact that the codex was supposedly found alongside a mathematical work dated between the sixth and ninth centuries certainly gives weight to the hypothesis that this work had a more practical usage in everyday life.29 Van Minnen has noted that there is no certain evidence of the book’s usage before its deposition. However an additional leaf, taken from the Martyrdom of Julius of Anazarbus, was pasted onto the back cover. This may have been added at a later stage, perhaps to strengthen the book, and would suggest the book was not immediately deposited into a tomb. It is also possible, as van Minnen points out, that the blank page (first page of the second quire) was left for the insertion of an illumination, such as the one on the first page of the first quire.30 The story of the discovery and the possible find site is also problematic. Baillet, in his description of the mathematical papyrus, suggests that it came into the possession of Grébaut only in the winter following its discovery, and that its history before that remains unclear.31 If such uncertainty exists over both the find site and the actual discoverer of the mathematical papyrus, then the description of the discovery of Codex Panopolitanus

28

Nickelsburg, “Two Enochic Manuscripts,” 253–54, cited by Denzey Lewis and Blount, “Rethinking the Origins,” 413 n. 68, and Denzey Lewis, “Death on the Nile,” 161. 29 This was the view of Milik who, in his critique of E. Schürer, strongly asserted that this is the private library of the grave’s incumbent (Books of Enoch, 71). Nickelsburg speculates that the mathematical papyrus may have been linked to a study of the Astronomical book of Enoch (“Two Enochic Manuscripts,” 254 n. 14). That the manuscript was produced in a Christian environment is pointed out by Baillet who noted that, “L’auteur était certainement un chrétien, comme le prouvent les croix placées en tête ou à la suite de certains problèmes.” 30 van Minnen, “The Greek Apocalypse,” 21, 25. 31 Jules Baillet, “Le papyrus mathématique d’Akhmim,” in Mémoires publiés par les membres de la Mission archéologique française au Caire sous la direction de M. U. Bouriant, tome neuvième (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1892), 2: “Des fellahs l’avaient découvert ensemble: le partage du butin les mit aux prises. Le papyrus est un article fort demandé sur le marché des antiquités et les Arabes s’en exagèrent la valeur: chacun des auteurs de la trouvaille voulut se l’attribuer tout entière. Leur dispute les trahit, le moudir, ou gouverneur de la province, intervint; il les mit d’accord en confisquant l’objet de leur différend; l’hiver suivant il le remit au directeur général des antiquités en Egypte, M. Grébaut, à la gracieuse obligeance duquel j’en dois la communication.”

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should be treated with equal caution.32 Was it ever actually interred as a grave good, or was it merely hidden away for safekeeping in a place where few people ventured? It would be helpful to know more about the grave itself, the status of the deceased into whose grave the codex was allegedly deposited, and the true circumstances surrounding the discovery. But archaeological reports of the find spot have never been published, and it seems likely that they never existed. Only if further details emerge would it be possible to gain more insight into the circumstances of this codex’s presumed discovery in cemetery A at Akhmim.

Non-Funerary Book Burials That codices were found in graves is often thought to be plausible in a country where so many artefacts are indeed found in such a way, so much so that it has become a default explanation. Yet unless there is supporting evidence, which is rarely the case due to the illegal circumstances involved in the discovery of artefacts, this explanation ought to be challenged.33 In most cases, in fact, the circumstances surrounding book deposition in late antiquity are unknown. Codex Papyrus Berolinensis 8502, for example, was purchased in 1896 by Carl Rienhardt from an antiques dealer in Cairo. 34 Although Carl Schmidt, the first editor, speculated that it was found in a cemetery near Akhmim,35 the dealer himself claimed it had been discovered in a house, set in a wall niche and covered with feathers. Deposition in some form of recess is certainly not unknown, as the finds of Budge’s Coptic Psalter and the Edfu codices attest.36 According to the dealer’s story, were the feathers 32

See van Minnen’s comments on circumstances surrounding the discovery of the codex and the poor record keeping on the site (“The Greek Apocalypse,” 17–18). 33 A classic case in point is the discovery of Codex Tchacos. According to the most spectacular version of its discovery, it was one of four codices placed in a limestone box next to the skeleton of a wealthy man wrapped in a burial shroud. How the fellahin who found the corpse knew this man was wealthy is not explained. See Herbert Krosney, The Lost Gospel: The Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot (Washington, D.C.; National Geographic Society, 2006), 9–24. For a more critical account with references to additional scholarship on this issue see Peter Head, “The Gospel of Judas and the Qarara Codices,” TynBul 58.1 (2007): 3–11. 34 Now in the Berlin Neues Museum, Codex Berolinensis 8502 (TM107765); Walter C. Till and Hans-Martin Schenke, Die gnostischen Schriften des koptischen Papyrus Berolinensis 8502 (2nd ed.; TUGAL; Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1972). 35 Carl Schmidt, Die alten Petrusakten im Zusammenhang der apokryphen Apostellitteratur nebst einem neuentdeckten Fragment (TUGAL; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1903), 1–2. 36 The practice of keeping books in niches was commonplace; see Carl Wendel, “Der antike Bücherschrank,” in Kleine Schriften zum antiken Buch- und Bibliothekswesen

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the remnants of a disintegrated cushion? Or is this a mere cover story for illegal excavations? We cannot know; but the story reminds us that tales of origins need to be approached with caution lest speculation become fact. Sometimes it is possible to make inferences about provenance from internal evidence of the manuscripts themselves. The Hamouli collection is one example. Now in the Pierpont Morgan Library, it consists of nearly sixty codices dating mostly to the ninth century37 with several manuscripts of the Old and New Testament, apocryphal writings, encomiums, liturgical works, and martyrdoms. 38 Colophons found inscribed in many of these codices confirm that they were written for the Monastery of the Archangel Michael, or in some cases were transferred to it from another monastery. The colophons corroborate the story reported by Henri Hyvernat, that they were found in a stone vat during the spring of 1910 at the site of the monastery of Archangel Michael the Fayyûm, about three kilometers from the modern village of Hamouli.39 As in the case of later finds, including the Nag Hammadi Codices, the discoverers divided the manuscripts amongst themselves and sold them to dealers in Cairo. It was only through the efforts of Émile Chassinat and Hyvernat that the bulk of the manuscripts

(Köln: Greven Verlag, 1974), 64–92 and plate 3; C. C. Walters, Monastic Archaeology in Egypt (Modern Egyptology Series; Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1974), 106. Schmidt expressed doubts that the codex would have survived in a recess, but if it was wrapped and covered, as in the discovery of Budge’s Coptic Psalter, then there is no reason why it would not have survived. Budge in fact refers to “their wonderful state of preservation” (Earliest Known Coptic Psalter, viii). 37 Pierpont Morgan Sr. acquired fifty-six codices between 1911 and 1916, but it was rumoured that there were originally at least sixty discovered. See Henri Hyvernat, A Check List of the Coptic Manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library (New York: privately printed, 1919), xiii. As he notes (p. xiv), the dates which appear on twenty of the manuscripts range from 823–914 CE, thus indicating a timespan mainly within the ninth century. 38 Publications of this material can be found in a range of books and journals. See most notably, Henri Hyvernat, Bibliothecae Pierpont Morgan codices coptici photographice exressi (56 vols.; Rome: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1922); Leo Depuydt, Catalogue of Coptic Manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library (Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts 4, Leuven: Peeters, 1993); Depuydt, Encomiastica from the Pierpont Morgan Library (2 vols.; CSCO 544–545, Scriptores coptici 47–48; Louvain: Peeters, 1993); Karl H. Kuhn and John W. Tait, Thirteen Coptic Acrostic Hymns, from Manuscript M574 of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (Oxford: Griffiths Institute, 1996); Eve A. E. Reymond and J. W. B. Barns, Four Martyrdoms from the Pierpont Morgan Coptic Codices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). 39 Depuydt, Catalogue, xiii, lviii–lix.

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were subsequently reunited and then sent to Paris where they were eventually purchased by Pierpont Morgan.40 Many codices whose provenance is known were deposited in containers such as boxes and jars in order to preserve them from ruin. A good case in point is the collection of manuscripts found in February 1907 near Edfu in Upper Egypt. According to Robert de Rustafjaell, who purchased them, the find consisted of seven Coptic codices including works such as the Book of the Resurrection of Christ, attributed to the apostle Bartholomew, the Greek Miracle of Saints Cosmas and Damian, and Nubian leafs from the Miracle of Menas and the Canon of Nicea.41 These were discovered near the ruins of a monastery which is named in two of the manuscripts as St. Mercurius. According to the farmer who made the discovery, the find spot lay in ruins in the vicinity of a modern monastery known locally as the ‘New White Monastery,’ which was built within the ruins of an ancient monastic complex five miles west of Edfu. 42 Noticing some bricks, the farmer uncovered them and discovered the texts in “a crudely built receptacle.” The description of the storage container is very similar to that of the stone box containing the Coptic Psalter discovered by Budge.43 Deposition in an earthenware container, unrelated to a funerary context, also seems to have been the case with the Dishna papers found five kilo40

Depuydt, Catalogue, lx. A small proportion of these manuscripts also found their way into other collections around the world including the Coptic Museum in Cairo, Berlin, Michigan, Port Said and Strasbourg (Depuydt, Catalogue, lxviii). 41 Budge translated these manuscripts in several volumes, The Papyrus Codex 5001 in the British Museum (London: The British Museum, 1913); Coptic Biblical Texts in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London: The British Museum, 1912); Coptic Apocrypha in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London: The British Museum, 1913); Coptic Martyrdoms in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (2 vols.; London: The British Museum, 1914); and Miscellaneous Coptic Texts in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London: The British Museum, 1915). However, Budge displayed some scepticism concerning the origin of the Nubian manuscripts (Coptic Apocrypha, xvi). For translations of the Nubian texts see Francis Llewellyn Griffith, Nubian Texts of the Christian Period (Berlin: Verlag der Königl. akademie der wissenschaften, 1913). Also Gerald M. Browne, “Griffiths’s Nicene Canons,” BASP 20 (1983): 97–112. 42 Now known to be Hagr Edfu, 2.5 km west of the contemporaneous town of Tell Edfu. In modern times this has become the site of the monastery of St. Pachomius (Dayr Anba Bakhum). See Elisabeth O’Connell, “Sources for the Study of Late Antique and Early Medieval Hagr Edfu,” in Christianity and Monasticism in Aswan and Nubia (ed. Gawdat Gabra and Hany N. Takla; Cairo: American University in Cairo, 2013), 245–46. 43 Robert de Rustafjaell, The Light of Egypt from Recently Discovered Predynastic and Early Christian Records (London: Keegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1909), 3–9, plates I and XL–LI. Other materials from the same monastery rapidly surfaced in the years that followed, e.g. Codex BL Or. 7027, which was acquired from Maurice Nahman two years later in 1909. See Alin Suciu, “A British Library Fragment from a Homily on the Lament of Mary and the So-Called Gospel of Gamaliel,” Aethiopica 15 (2012): 53.

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meters east of the Pachomian monastery of Pbow (modern Faw al-Qibli).44 James Robinson’s investigation into the provenance of this impressive collection of manuscripts managed to unearth the names of the discoverers, Hasan Muhammad al-Samman and Muhammad Khalil al-Azzuzi. Their description is quite similar to the find story of the Nag Hammadi Codices: fellahin digging for sebakh uncovered a large, sealed, earthen jar containing books, some of which they burned and most of which were eventually sold to dealers for pitifully small sums of money.45 Whatever embellishments may have been added to this story, the discovery furnishes another example in which books were stored away in jars, with no connection to graves and funerary rites.46 A more recent example, and with a more secure provenance, is the material discovered in the monastery site of the Archangel Gabriel at Naqlun. Ongoing excavations conducted by the University of Warsaw since 1986 have unearthed the remnants of a library as well as material abandoned to rubbish heaps. The surviving material, dating from the monastery’s foun-

44

The phrase “Dishna Papers,” coined by James Robinson, refers to a collection of works that belong mostly to the Bodmer Library, but also to the Chester Beatty Library and other collections. There is some disagreement over the constitution of the collection, but it is not disputed that many of these manuscripts come from a single discovery. See James M. Robinson, The Story of the Bodmer Papyri: From the First Monastery’s Library in Upper Egypt to Geneva and Dublin (Eugene, Ore.: Cascade, 2011). 45 Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 6–11. 46 Similarly, the fourth-century CE site of Ismant el-Kharab in Kellis, house 3, yielded three ceramic vessels used to store significant quantities of papyri. See Colin A. Hope and Gillian E. Bowen, “The archaeological context,” in Coptic Documentary Texts from Kellis: Volume I (ed. Ian Gardner, Anthony Alcock, and Wolf-Peter Funk; Dakhleh Oasis Project, Monograph 9; Oxford: Oxbow Books, 1999), 105. Colin Roberts also notes Schmidt’s recollection that the Chester Beatty papyri were found in a pitcher, and additionally lists the find of a copy of the Gospel of John (BFBS Mss 137) in a jar at Qau elKebir by Petrie. Colin H. Roberts, Manuscript, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt (The Schweich Lectures of the British Academy, 1977; London: Oxford University Press, 1979), 7. According to Petrie, the Gospel of John (BFBS Mss 137) was found in a jar “in the neighbourhood of the Roman or early Coptic graves.” As the nearby ground was subsequently found to be the ruins of a church, Petrie assumed the manuscript was buried by the local clergy after it became worn out from use. See his foreword in Herbert Thompson, The Gospel of St. John according to the Earliest Coptic Manuscript (London, BASE: Bernard Quaritch, 1924), ix–x. In contrast to Petrie, who describes the manuscript as found “wrapped in rag, and tied with thread” (Gospel of John, ix), Denzey Lewis posits that it was found in a tomb “carefully deposited wrapped in a burial shroud,” (“Death on the Nile,” 165). The linen sack in which it was buried was subsequently rediscovered by the staff of the Cambridge University Library in 2010. See, Christian Askeland, John’s Gospel: The Coptic Translations of its Greek Text (ANTF 44; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 143.

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dation in the sixth century down to the thirteenth century, 47 gives some indication of the wide variety of texts that were held in monastic collections, including texts written in several Coptic dialects, Arabic, and Greek. 48 It is likely that the majority of Coptic literary texts have come from monastic libraries such as these rather than from funerary deposits. Unfortunately, such find sites are mostly unknown to scholars and therefore not open to further investigation. Another recent find of two papyrus codices and additional parchments was made at rubbish heap at Sheikh Abd el-Gurna during excavations of a hermitage by the Centrum Archeologii Śródziemnomorskiej im Kazimierza Michałowskiego UW. 49 The hermitage, built in a Middle Kingdom tomb (tomb 1152), was apparently abandoned in the seventh century.50 Yet why the books were also abandoned remains unknown. Whatever happened at this location, the situation is a reminder that the reasons for deposing codices in antiquity can be obscure. Far from funerary contexts, it is quite likely that many books were deliberately concealed due to censorship or to protect them from the ravages of raiders. Proscriptions of heretical books in Athanasius’ festal letter of 367, Theophilus’ festal letter of 401, and a letter from Dioscorus to Shenoute in the 440s would have prompted the disposal of illicit books.51 47

The publication of this material is an ongoing project. For an overview of sixth to eighth-century material see Tomasz Derda, “Polish Excavations at Deir El-Naqlun 1986– 1991: Interdependence of Archaeology and Papyrology,” Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Papyrologists, Copenhagen, 23–29 August, 1992 (ed. A. BülowJacobsen; Odense: AiO Tryk A-S, 1994), 124–30. For the Greek material see Derda, Deir El-Naqlun: The Greek Papyri (P. Naqlun vols. I & II) (Warsaw: Warsaw University, 1995, 2008). 48 Jacques van der Vliet, “Preliminary Remarks on the Coptic Texts from Seasons 1998 and 1999,” PAM 11 (2000): 143. The monastery went into decline from the fifteenth century onwards. See Otto F. A. Meinardus, Two Thousand Years of Coptic Christianity (Cairo: University of Cairo Press, 2002), 248. 49 The manuscripts contain a Coptic translation of Isaiah, the Code of Pseudo-Basil and the Life of St. Pistentios, whilst the wooden planks binding the books were strengthened with pages from the Martyrdom of St. Peter. For description and photographs see http://www.pcma.uw.edu.pl/en/pcma-newsletter/2006/late-roman-byzantine-andmedieval/sheikh-abd-el-gurna-papyrus-book-conservation-project-egypt/. 50 For a preliminary report with photographs and a plan of the hermitage see Tomasz Górecki, “Sheikh Abd El-Gurna (Hermitage in tomb 1152): Preliminary report, 2005,” with appendix by Wincenty Myszor, “Enkomion of St. Pisenthios from Sheikh Abd ElGurna,” PAM 17 (2007): 263–74. 51 For a discussion of these letters and the implications for the contents of monastic libraries see Hugo Lundhaug, “Shenoute’s Heresiological Polemics and its Context(s),” in Invention, Rewriting, Usurpation: Discursive Fights over Religious Traditions in Antiquity (ed. Jörg Ulrich, Anders-Christian Jacobsen, and David Brakke; Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity 2; Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2012), 239–61.

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Such a proscription may well have led to the concealment of the Nag Hammadi Codices too. 52 Moreover, Bedouin raids became increasingly frequent in the fifth and sixth centuries, leading to the eventual abandonment of vulnerable sites such as Nitria and Kellia. In the centuries following the Arab conquest, despite an initial period of peace, deliberate destruction of monasteries became a periodic event. Extensive destruction of churches and cells in Scetis occurred in 817, which in turn led to the building of walled compounds in place of scattered, unprotected cells. Centuries later, the Bahri Mamluks (r. 1260–1382) persecuted Christians and destroyed religious sites, in part as a reaction to the crusading fervour of European Christians.53 In addition to famine and plague, these persecutions inevitably led to the decline of monasteries. It is unsurprising that departing monks, unable to transport their treasured volumes, would have hidden them away for safekeeping in hopes of retrieving them in the future. In any event, the ensemble of evidence discussed above shows that books were frequently deposited in locations other than graves and for reasons unrelated to funerary rites.

The Book of the Dead Let us now turn to the topic of the Egyptian Book of the Dead in order to evaluate the hypothesis that the books discussed above may have been buried as Christian Books of the Dead. An initial point that needs to be stressed is that the Book of the Dead never really existed, at least not in ancient Egypt. The term ‘Book of the Dead’ was manufactured by Egyptologists to refer to the multitude of spells, hymns, prayers, myths, incantations, and threats towards the gods that were deemed necessary in order to

52 Denzey Lewis and Blount (“Rethinking the Origins,” 408 n. 46) cite David Brakke, “Canon Formation and Social Conflict in Fourth-Century Egypt: Athanasius of Alexandria’s Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter,” HTR 87:4 (1994): 395–419 in support of their argument that Athanasius’ letter was not aimed at “gnostic” writings. However, in a more recent article, Brakke, in response to criticism by Camplani, and in light of the discovery of a new fragment of the letter, agrees that his earlier article “did not recognize sufficiently the specifically anti-heretical dimension of his project. That is, Athanasius opposed not only general forms of spirituality and authority, but also specific heretical teachings, such as Marcion’s rejection of the Old Testament.” Brakke, “A New Fragment of Athanasius’s 39th Festal Letter: Heresy, Apocrypha, and the Canon,” HTR 103:1 (2010): 54. 53 Janet Timbie, “Egypt,” in Encyclopedia of Monasticism: A-L (ed. William M. Johnston; Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000), 434–35.

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permit the deceased to enter the afterlife.54 It is unfortunate that this nineteenth-century terminology remains in vogue; yet having gained a place in popular imagination, the scholarly community has long since been forced to come to terms with the inevitable misconceptions that result from its usage. Chronologically, these writings appear initially as inscriptions on pyramid walls, then graduate to coffin panels, canopic jars and amulets, and finally surface on scrolls of papyrus in the New Kingdom, where the scribes sometimes labelled them as the rw nw prt m hrw, “chapters for going forth by day.” 55 Egyptologists refer to three major recensions of the Book of the Dead – the Heliopolitan, the Theban, and the Saite – but the rationale for these labels is based on outmoded historical assumptions that preceded modern awareness of the complexities created by local variants. They do not take into account the sheer lack of information we have regarding the processes that led to the selection of material and its proliferation throughout Egypt.56 The later compositions, found on papyri, vary in size and in their selection from a range of over 190 chapters. How this selection was made is unknown, and one can speculate concerning issues such as the localised importance of certain deities, individual preference or scribal practice. However, little evidence survives concerning the manufacture of these texts.57 What is more certain is that their general order is con54

The term Totenbuch (Book of the Dead), was coined by Karl Richard Lepsius, Das Todtenbuch der Ägypter nach dem hieroglyphischen Papyrus in Turin (Leipzig: G. Wigand, 1842). 55 For an introduction to the development of the Book of the Dead and its use in a funerary context see Salima Ikram, Death and Burial in Ancient Egypt (Harlow: Longman, 2003). The first and extremely influential translation of the Book of the Dead into English was by E. A. Wallis Budge, The Book of the Dead: The Chapters of Coming Forth by Day (3 vols.; London: Keegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1898). For a modern translation see Raymond O. Faulkner and Carol Andrews, The Book of the Dead: A Collection of Spells (2 vols.; Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972). For German and French editions see Erik Hornung, Das Totenbuch der Ägypter (Bibliothek der alten Welt; Zürich: Artemis Verlag, 1979); Paul Barguet, Le livre des morts des anciens Égyptiens (Paris: Cerf, 1967). For a useful bibliography on this subject see Erik Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 165–68. 56 For a brief overview of the three main recensions see Margaret Bunson, The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt (New York: Facts on File, 1991), 341. Budge, Book of the Dead, xxiii–l, though dated, remains a highly relevant and thorough description of the Book of the Dead’s development. 57 It is notable that no two versions of the Book of the Dead carry exactly the same number of chapters or are written in the same order, but as no sources exist regarding the commissioning of these works it is impossible know why they exist in the form they do. On the variations of the coffin-text spells see Dieter Mueller, “An Early Egyptian Guide to the Hereafter,” JEA 58 (1972): 99–100. For the complexities involved in establishing links between variations of the Book of the Dead and regional identity see Toby A. H. Wilkinson, The Egyptian World (London: Routledge, 2007), 244–46.

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nected to the funeral rites of the deceased in which they played a major role through the performance of certain ritual actions and the recitation of spells and utterances laid down in the book. In the earliest form of the Book of the Dead, written on the walls of the pyramids, ascent into heaven is emphasized in its solar theology: You shall go up and shall go down: You will go down with Re, at dusk with the One Who is Cast Down. You shall go up and shall go down: You shall go up with Re on the great sky boat. You shall go up and shall go down with Nephthys, at dusk (?) with the night boat. You shall go up and shall go down; you shall go up with Isis, rising up on the day boat. You shall gain control over your body, without impediment. You are born (through) Horus and conceived (through) Seth.58

These are striking images, but they also need to be approached with caution in that they represent a theology that did not survive as a major theme in funerary literature beyond the beginning of the Middle Kingdom (2030– 1640 BC). In later texts it was Osiris who took central stage, residing in the underworld rather than the heavens.59 Thus, in the next and subsequent phases in the Book of the Dead’s development, as evidenced in the coffin texts and papyrus scrolls, the dead’s final destination shifted to the netherworld ruled by the deceased god Osiris with whom the deceased became identified. In the deceased’s identification with Osiris, he or she aspired to be transformed and transmigrate so as to be free to traverse the worlds of the dead and the living in various forms.60 The Theban recension of the Book of the Dead that appeared in the New Kingdom (ca. 1570–1070 BCE) can be somewhat deceptive as the beautiful appearance of the papyri belies the fact that numerous errors appear in the text itself. It is likely that the language used in these texts, dating from the Middle Kingdom and beyond, would have been somewhat unfamiliar to the scribes who copied it, and this may have led to frequent omissions, repetitions, and lack of correlation between the illuminations and the

58

Spell 222 in the burial chamber of Unas (trans. mine). For the development of Old Kingdom theology see Vincent Arieh Tobin, “Divine Conflict in the Pyramid Texts,” JARCE 30 (1993): 93–110. Rudolf Anthes, “Egyptian Theology in the Third Millennium BC,” JNES 18:3 (1959): 169–212. 60 The Egyptian understanding of the soul was complex and developed over time. In essence, it held that one’s personality consisted of a number of composite aspects which included the ka, an aspect of man which existed from birth, and the ba, which was able to move freely and leave the tomb by day. Following the journey through the afterworld the deceased gained a new existence as an akh, i.e., a transformed spirit. The deceased could also take on other, more obscure forms, such as the khaibit, “shade.” See James P. Allen, “Ba,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt (vol. 1; ed. Donald Redford; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 161–62, and Florence M. D. Friedman, “Akh,” in Redford, Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, 47–48. 59

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text.61 It is in this period that the ‘Opening of the Mouth’ ceremony becomes important in rituals for the burial of the dead. This is reflected in spell 23, which is not found in the preceding coffin texts of the Middle Kingdom, thus demonstrating the fluidity of these spells and the theology that lay behind their composition. The ceremony was necessary to allow the dead to utter words of defence during the weighing of the heart ceremony.62 How seriously Egyptians took this threat of judgement is hard to ascertain, but here magic could come to the rescue: the insertion of a heart scarab into the torso of the corpse bearing Spell 30b, which ordered the heart not to oppose the deceased in the tribunal, was considered an efficacious way to ensure one entered the afterlife no matter how ill-behaved one had been in life. The formula for the opening of the mouth is provided nicely in Spell 23: My mouth is freed by Ptah; the bonds on my mouth are unfettered by the god of my city. Thoth comes fully equipped with his words of power, and has loosened the things of Seth for me, the bonds on my mouth. My hands are moved by Atum, he puts them forward as the guard of my mouth. My mouth is opened; my mouth is parted by Ptah with that tool of iron, with which he has opened the mouth of the gods.63

The small cuts found on the bandages of several mummies attest to the fact that this was an actual ceremony, not merely a symbolic one, in which the encoffined corpse played a central role. Vignettes on the papyri and the walls of the tomb refer directly to the ceremonies surrounding the burial of 61

These could also be explained in part if these books were produced by a group of specialists who did not work in tandem. Certain orthographical and grammatical errors are to be found in nearly all Books of the Dead dating from this period: e.g. in the wellknown Papyrus of Ani (ca. 1250 BC), ch. 18 appears twice, written by the same scribe but with different vignettes and arrangement of text. Furthermore, in each case, the beginning of the chapter has been omitted, presumably due to an error in the template. On the difficulties faced by New Kingdom scribes working on the Book of the Dead see Ogden Goelet Jr., “Observations on Copying and the Hieroglyphic Tradition in The Production of the Book of the Dead,” in Offerings to the Discerning Eye, An Egyptological Medley in Honor of Jack A. Josephson (ed. Sue D’Auria; Leiden: Brill, 2009), 121–33. 62 In the ceremony of the Weighing of the Heart the heart testified on behalf of the deceased and was weighed against a feather. The feather symbolised Maat, goddess of truth and justice and, in order to enter the afterlife, the heart needed to be lighter than the feather. 63 Spell 23 (Papyrus of Amenhotep, TM133544, trans. mine). By far the most detailed work on this ritual is Eberhard Otto, Das Ägyptische Mundöffnungsritual (2 vols.; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1960). He had hoped to reconstruct the actual ritual but found it impossible in view of the somewhat cryptic descriptions given in the original source material (ibid., 2:ix). Otto concludes that this ceremony originated during the New Kingdom period as there is no evidence for its earlier performance (ibid., 2:10). A recent description of the Opening of the Mouth ceremony can be found in Jan Assmann, Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 310–24.

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the dead, giving us clues to the oral performance that took place. Utterances to be spoken by the dead are clearly marked with a rubric in red stating “words spoken.” 64 In an almost wholly illiterate society, an oral performance or recitation of the text would have been absolutely necessary in order to revivify the corpse. As Jan Assmann points out, the invocation “reintegrates the dead as part of his funeral, invoking his re-inhabitation of the body.”65 Without the performance of the revivification ceremonies outlined in the Book of the Dead, it would have been impossible for the ba of the deceased to go back and forth from the Duat, the gloomy underworld of Osiris, which had by this time achieved a predominant role in depictions of the realm of the dead.66 After the ceremonies to revivify the dead had been performed, the placement of the Book of the Dead into the tomb meant that it now took on a magical status, ensuring continued protection for the dead through its protective spells and equipping the akh with the rather enormous body of knowledge needed to successfully make its way on the complicated path to Osiris. Spells to be used after burial are also found painted on tomb walls, sarcophagi, statues, amulets and on many other artefacts that were placed in the tomb, thus ensuring that the deceased would have recourse to them in time of need. Whilst the netherworld was desirable for ancient Egyptians, it had physical links with the world of the living since the spiritual part of man, the ba, the part of the soul that was allowed to move freely to and from the spirit world, was considered to reside in the corpse.67 The dead would participate 64

The spell, in which the deceased describes how his/her mouth has been opened by the ceremony, dates only from the New Kingdom, but the ritual itself is recorded from the time of the building of the pyramids. For a translation of spell 23 see Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, Volume 2: The New Kingdom (Berkeley: California University Press, 1976), 120. A likely outline of the ritual can be found in Assmann, Death and Salvation, 312–17. Whilst it is impossible to state how exactly this ritual took place, better understanding of its performance has been gained through a re-examination of scenes in tombs such as that of Amenirdis I. See Miryam F. Ayad, “Towards a Better Understanding of the Opening of the Mouth Ritual,” in Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Egyptologists (ed. Christine Cardin and Jean-Claude Goyon; Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 106–19. 65 Assmann, Death and Salvation, 37. 66 For a description of the journey to the world of the dead at this period, as evidenced in the New Kingdom Amduat (Books of the Netherworld), see Hornung, Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife, 26–111. 67 As Louis Zabkar clarifies, Egyptians believed in transformation rather than transmigration. The spirit could assume a number of forms and had the freedom to travel in any sphere it wished. The corpse was in this way the physical vehicle of the spirit; see Zabkar, “Herodotus and the Egyptian Idea of Immortality,” JNES 22:1 (1963): 60–63. On the role of the ba, akh, and ka, see Mark Smith, Traversing Eternity: Texts for the Afterlife from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 4–6.

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in the life of the living, through interaction with their descendants and the offerings they received from them, and also through the elaborate depictions of life left in the tombs and the many expensive grave goods deposited there. In this society, the status of the deceased was directly linked to his or her life on earth, and thus the life of the deceased was directly patterned on life in this one.68 If one was to succeed in the afterlife, then provision had to be made in this life, including the provision of a mortuary foundation served by a priest and an obligation on the living to continue to provide offerings for the deceased.69 This obligation, however neglected in practice, continued the link between death and life as the dead remained physically and spiritually present in the world of the living. It would be simplistic to insist that each and every Egyptian believed in the concept of an afterlife, but the elaborate preparation of a tomb complex with the hope of a continued, prosperous existence after death remained a social norm, at least for elites who used the spells now called the ‘Book of the Dead.’ Demise of the Book of the Dead With the arrival of Ptolemaic rule, the Book of the Dead rapidly disappeared, having already fallen into demise earlier in the Persian period.70 Evidence shows that during the Hellenistic period the elite strata of native Egyptians came increasingly to embrace Greek culture and paideia. Indeed, self-identification and questions of ethnicity inevitably became more ambiguous as time passed. High-ranking native Egyptian officials at the Ptolemaic court (such as those given the honorific title συγγενής, ‘kinsman’ of the king)71 retained the traditions and language of their ancestors, carving their names in hieroglyphs on their statues, but simultaneously using these inscriptions to boast of their Greek status and learning. In popular culture and religion too, fluidity seems be inherent with the introduction of new or

68 Jan Assmann, “Death and Initiation in the Funerary Religion of Ancient Egypt,” in Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt (ed. James P. Allen; Yale Egyptological Studies 3; New Haven: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Yale University, 1989), 151–52. 69 Assmann, Death and Salvation, 10–14. 70 The last evidence for the Book of the Dead is from Akhmim, dated to the first century BCE on stylistic grounds. See Martin Andreas Stadler, “Funerary Religion,” in The Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt (ed. Christina Riggs; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 388. 71 Ian Moyer identified at least twenty-six native Egyptian individuals with this title who served at court in the late Ptolemaic period, totalling approximately twenty percent of serving courtiers of this rank. Moyer, “Court, Chora and Culture in Late Ptolemaic Egypt,” AJP 132 (2011): 20–22.

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transformed deities and spirits such as Harpocrates and Abraxas.72 These developments, which reflect the Egyptian population’s response to contemporary fluctuations in religious thought, demonstrate that Egyptians were as open to outside influence. It is hard to see how funerary texts and attendant practices could have remained immune from these changes. Rituals are conservative, but they are not immutable.73 The Permit for Breathing and Other Texts A whole array of new compositions, most prominently the Permit for Breathing (often erroneously entitled the Book of Breathing), but also titles such as the Book of Traversing Eternity, the Liturgy of the Decade of Djeme and the Ritual of Introducing the Multitude on the Last Day of Tekh, appeared early in the Ptolemaic period.74 Although the most popular chapters of the Book of the Dead continued to appear in this era, inscribed on mummy bandages and other funerary items, and sometimes used in the new Permit for Breathing, these spells were no longer an integral part of the texts into which they were incorporated. 75 The replacement of the 72

Harpocrates is a Greek form of the Egyptian Hor pa Khered, ‘Horus the child,’He was traditionally depicted holding a finger to his lips, an Egyptian convention for childhood. Believing this to be a sign for silence, later Greek and Romans made him into the god of secrecy and silence. The widespread popularity of such gods can be seen in their appearance in far flung parts of the Roman Empire: e.g. the figure of Abraxas is found on a Roman gem from the English city of Chichester, which was later set into the ring of a medieval bishop. See Martin Henig, “The Re-use and Copying of Ancient Intaglios Set in Medieval Personal Seals, Mainly Found in England: An aspect of the Renaissance of the 12th Century,” in Good Impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals (ed. Nöel Adams, John Cherry, and James Robinson; London: The British Museum, 2008), 21. 73 This point has been emphasised by Olaf Kaper, who points to Egyptian engagement with Hellenistic religion and philosophy as the catalyst leading to the radical reformulation of Ptolemaic funerary texts. Olaf Kaper, “Des dieux nouveaux et des conceptions nouvelles,” in Les Empereurs du Nil (ed. Harco Willems and Willy Clarysse; Louvain: Peters, 2000), 123–26. This contrasts with the arguments of Stadler, who stresses the continuity of Egyptian religious thought at this time (“Funerary Religion,” 391–92). Stadler’s argument is rather surprising given the evidence for change found in the literary texts. 74 Foy D. Scalf, “Passports to Eternity: Formulaic Demotic Funerary Texts and the Final Phase of Egyptian Funerary Literature in Roman Egypt” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2014), 14. 75 Scalf, “Passports to Eternity,” 10. The title given to the most popular genre, Permit for Breathing (Egyptian sai n snsn), is a generic one, used in the Ptolemaic period to cover a number of sub-genres. In essence these are official permission slips (the term sai is found in official documents of the period) that allow the deceased to enter the afterlife. E.g. the breathing permit known as the Permit of Hor is part of a subgenre known as the “Permit of Breathing made by Isis for her brother Osiris.” This particular permit has gained greater notoriety for its use by the founder of the Mormon religion, Joseph Smith,

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lengthy Book of the Dead with much shorter texts raises significant questions as to why the Book of the Dead genre was abandoned. It was not merely due to increased poverty at lower levels of Egyptian society, for these new works make their appearance in the richest of burials too. These texts do not emphasise a perilous journey through a terrifying and demonridden landscape, but rather the arrival of the deceased at the side of Osiris and the major deities. They demand that the dead person receive the breath of life in this land and thus take his or her place in the realm of the dead. It is therefore not the ascent itself that is central, but the welcome, revitalisation and promised new life offered to the ba.76 Thus the second permit for breathing states: May I go in to Osiris and may he listen to my words. May I emerge from the womb in his company. May he grant me greatness so that I might travel freely thanks to it, being the possessor of visages, with multiple forms. May I partake of offerings together with Atum. May I sit down to the oblations of Shu.77

As these texts still emphasise the survival of the physical corpse, instructions for their use were explicit. The Permit of Hor, for example, states that in order for the document to be effective it was to be placed below the mummy’s crossed arms and wrapped inside the bandages. 78 Texts have been found in various places, next to and on top of mummies and inserted in the folds of the bandages. The papyrus of Wahibre was placed inside his mummy on top of the lower part of the abdomen.79 P.Leiden 32, a Book of Traversing Eternity, states that it should be placed on the left side of the corpse next to the arm.80 Hieratic breathing texts were sometimes produced in pairs, one to be placed at the head of the mummy and the other at the

as the basis for the Book of Abraham. For more details on this identification see Klaus Baer, “The Breathing Permit of Hôr: A Translation of the Apparent Source of the Book of Abraham,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 8:3 (1968): 110–11 n. 11; Martin Andreas Stadler, “The Funerary Texts of Papyrus Turin N. 766: A Demotic Book of Breathing (Part II),” Enchoria 26 (2000): 114–16; Robert K. Ritner, “The ‘Breathing Permit of Hôr’: Thirty-four Years Later,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 33:4 2000): 101–2. 76 E.g. P.Louvre N 3166 2/1–18, which describes all the good things that shall occur and be given to the deceased (Smith, Traversing Eternity, 496–98). 77 P.Cairo 58018 (trans. Smith, Traversing Eternity, 520). 78 Ritner, “Breathing Permit of Hôr,” 102. 79 Kim Ryholt and Cary J. Martin, “Put my Funerary Papyrus in my Mummy, Please,” JEA 92 (2006): 273. 80 Smith, Traversing Eternity, 403. Another example of the same book, P.Louvre N 3284, states that it should be swathed in byssus and placed under the left arm of the deceased after the arms have been crossed over his chest. P.Louvre N 3291 states that it should be placed outside the wrappings so that it is not touching the mummy (ibid., 467).

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feet.81 The necessity of correctly placing the documents with the remains of the deceased reflects how entrance into the afterlife was still strongly linked to the physical body. The emphasis on a continued existence in the physical world remained a significant feature of native Egyptian religion and the reason for elaborate mummification procedures that survived in some parts of Egypt into late antiquity. However, whilst this aspect of ancient funerary tradition survived, it did not do so unchanged. A number of quite radical innovations in the burial of the dead took place at this period, such as the discontinuation of coffins, the more naturalistic depiction of the dead, and innovations in the mummification process.82 The Roman Period Following the demise of the last Ptolemaic rulers, Cleopatra VII and Ptolemy XV Caesar, even these newly formulated documents disappear.83 The abolishment of the vast temple estates by Augustus removed the powerful economic base of the temple priesthood and imposed serious limitations on an institution that had supported many of the most influential members of the native Egyptian elite. 84 While popular religion continued to flourish, 81 A number of examples of the placing of two texts in this manner are included from the Soter family tombs in F-R. Herbin, Le Livre de parcourir l’éternité (OLA; Leuven: Peeters, 1994). This also appears to have been the custom with the later, shorter Demotic permits (Giuseppe Botti, Testi Demotici 1 [Florence; Firenze, 1941], 32–35 and plate iv). The statement by Denzey Lewis and Blount that documents were left at the head of the mummy does not cover the whole spectrum of usage which was more complex (“Rethinking the Origins,” 413; cf. Denzey Lewis, “Death on the Nile,” 166 on the use of pairs of manuscripts). It is true that some papyri were meant to be laid under the head, or in pairs at the feet and the head (Smith, Traversing Eternity, 503), but there seems to have been no special preference other than that the papyrus should lie in physical contact with the body or even within it. 82 For a description of changes in mummification in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods see Arthur C. Aufderheide, The Scientific Study of Mummies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 248–50; Smith, Traversing Eternity, 30–46. 83 The last datable Permit of Breathing comes from the tomb of Soter, an archon from Thebes, and was found in Sheik abd el-Gurna. Soter’s tomb, a reused New Kingdom burial chamber with coffins of fourteen members of his family, was inscribed with inscriptions in Greek and hieroglyphs. References to specific events in the reigns of emperors Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius in the inscriptions suggest these burials date between 119–150 CE. See François René Herbin, Books of Breathing and Related Texts (Catalogue of the Books of the Dead and other religious texts in the British Museum 4; London: The British Museum, 2008), 103–17. For a description of the inhabitants of the tomb see Beatrix Gessler-Löhr, “Mummies and Mummification,” in Riggs, Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt, 672–73. 84 As Friederike Herklotz points out, few studies have been made concerning the social and economic position of the Egyptian priesthood in the Roman era, and although she professes some uncertainty regarding the scale of degradation suffered by the priest-

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and Egyptians retained their affection for local cults, 85 the larger temple centres suffered a spectacular decline. These changes may also be reflected in the catastrophic breakdown of written Egyptian language during this period. By the end of the second century CE Egyptian had practically disappeared as a medium for written communication. 86 The downgrading of the Egyptian language, due to its lack of official recognition under the Romans, must be seen as one reason for the fact that no lengthy funerary compositions are attested after 150 CE. 87 It is significant that no native Egyptian funerary compositions are found translated into Greek for the edification of the Greek-speaking literate classes. That this did not happen may hint at their lack of appeal for even the most curious Egyptophiles. Furthermore, the dissolution of native hood at this time, the economic changes in themselves must have severely restricted the role and personal circumstances of the priestly caste (“Aegypto Capta,” in Riggs, Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt, 16). Various emperors continued to expand or rebuild temples during this period, but did not return the vast temple estates to the native priesthood. The effect of this can be seen in the dwindling numbers of priests, including some temples that had no priests at all. See J. E. G. Whitehorne, “New Light on Temple and State in Roman Egypt,” JRH 11:2 (1980): 220–21. 85 Even in the early fourth century CE, the profitability of retaining a family-held priesthood in service of a local god could be viewed as worth the expense of a legal dispute, as in the case of Aurelius Petearbeschinis. The case of Petearbeschinis is used by Frankurter to bolster his argument for the retention of local beliefs and practices in the area of Panopolis (“‘Things Unbefitting Christians’: Violence and Christianization in Fifth-Century Panopolis,” JECS 8:2 [2000]: 273–95). However, whilst his study highlights the significance and importance of cultural memory in the retention of local customs and practices, his conclusions regarding the cause of the tensions are questionable. See Mark Smith, “Aspects of the Preservation and Transmission of Indigenous Religious Traditions in Akhmim and its Environs during the Graeco-Roman Period,” in Perspectives on Panopolis (ed. Brian Paul Muhs, Arno Egberts, and Jan van der Vliet; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 245–47. 86 E.g. a search in the Leuven Database of Ancient Books shows that 2584 Demotic papyri are recorded for the Ptolemaic period, while only 367 date from the Roman period. After 200 CE, only 33 Demotic papyri are recorded, many of which are no more than a mere sentence, scrawled as a receipt, rather than the large and complex legal documents of earlier years. There are of course far more unpublished Demotic inscriptions waiting to be added, many of which belong to the Ptolemaic period. Although the last Demotic graffiti dates to 452 CE (at Philae), the last dated text before that is from 290 CE, i.e. over 150 years earlier. Eugene Cruz Uribe suggests that the last writers of Demotic were actually Nubians who preserved the final remnants of Egyptian culture (“The Death of Demotic Redux: Pilgrimage, Nubia and the Preservation of Egyptian Culture,” in Honi soit qui mal y pense: Studien zum pharaonischen, griechisch-römischen und spätantiken Ägypten zu Ehren von Heinz-Josef Thissen [ed. Hermann Knuf, Christian Leitz, and Daniel von Recklinghausen; OLA 194; Leuven: Peeters, 2010], 499–506). 87 Naphtali Lewis, “The Demise of the Demotic Document: When and Why,” JEA 79 (1993): 279–80; Stadler, “Funerary Religion,” 386.

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Egyptian education in the temples led to losses of cultural memory, both of the traditions that inspired the texts and the purpose for the accompanying rituals. The rationale behind the production of religious works and their associated rituals likewise perished. 88 Thereafter only brief texts, a few sentences long, the so-called Letters of Breathing (characterised by the formula “May his/her Ba breathe forever”) were used for another generation or so before they too ceased.89 The textual material, once gone, could not have made a return, for the knowledge required to produce it simply no longer existed. It is therefore hardly surprising that, as Martin Stadler wrote, “funerary texts in Egyptian ceased to exist well before the demise of vernacular writing systems in Egypt in the mid-fifth century.” 90 Some evidence for the later survival of funerary literature comes from Thebes, which was at this time a distinctly provincial backwater, more than 120 km from the nome’s centre at Ptolemais, and the producer of art that retained many older features.91 Yet as Egyptian funerary texts disappeared far earlier in most other parts of Egypt, even by the beginning of the first century CE, spells for ensuring entrance to the afterlife may have been seen outdated by a society that no longer considered them effective or necessary. In her article “Death on the Nile,” Denzey Lewis notes that Egyptologists consider that this genre of mortuary texts disappeared by the end of the second century CE. Nevertheless, she suggests that the religious thought behind the texts persisted, so that some early Christian texts, those usually regarded by modern scholars as Gnostic, can be seen to follow “the spirit” of the Books of the Dead. Yet she also admits that there is nothing in these writings that points to direct connections with the Book of the Dead beyond commonalities in many belief systems regarding death and the afterlife.92 88

Although cultural memory is maintained through texts, rites, monuments, and institutional communication, it has a capacity to be reconstructed by each generation according to the contemporary frame of reference, so that each era gives its own relevance to a memory or ritualised event. See Jan Assmann, “Kollektives Gedächtnis und kulturelle Identität,” in Kultur und Gedächtnis (ed. Tonio Holscher and Jan Assmann; Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988), 9–19. 89 These short demotic texts are no longer than a few sentences in length. For an example of the type of texts produced in this period see P.Florence 3676, a work dated on palaeographical grounds to the second century CE (Smith, Traversing Eternity, 663–64). This is a mere three sentences long and was probably to be placed under the feet of the mummy. For similar examples see Smith, Traversing Eternity, 561–76, and my discussion of mummy labels above. 90 Stadler, “Funerary Religion,” 386. 91 Christina Riggs, The Beautiful Burial in Roman Egypt: Art, Identity, and Funerary Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 175–182. 92 Denzey Lewis, “Death on the Nile,” 167–68.

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Isolated elements of ancient Egyptian religion lived on, of course, such as a belief in the efficacy of the spoken word. These elements and concepts find their late antique outlet mostly in the so-called magical texts. The Old Coptic invocation at the opening of the Great Magical Papyrus of Paris for example calls on old powers and deities from within the wide selection of Egyptian, Jewish and Hellenic materials that are found there.93 Thus there is a reference to “Osiris, King of the underworld, lord of embalming, who is south of Thinis, who gives answer in Abydos, who is under the noubs tree in Meroe, whose glory is in Pashalom,” and who is invoked, along with several other powers, to “let the one who is in the underworld join the one who is in the air. Let them arise and give answer to me concerning the matter about which I ask them.”94 The illocutionary function of such texts is fully recognised, as is the role of Osiris as lord of the dead, but here his role is diminished as only one amongst many names that can be called upon for power. The revival of the Egyptian language, in the form of Old Coptic, did not bring with it the renewal of older religious texts, for they had long since disappeared from the cultural landscape. This, then, is the final legacy of the Book of the Dead, in faint traces of barely remembered ancient phrases and names retained in popular memory for use in magical invocations.

Christian Burials What then is the significance of book depositions in late antique graves? Despite the poor excavation techniques of the past, new archaeological evidence shows how the introduction of Christianity in Egypt impacted funerary practices in certain communities. A noteworthy feature of this period is that traditional religious practices survived well into the Christian 93

This papyrus codex was acquired in 1827 by Giovanni Anastasi. The provenance is unknown, although Hans Dieter Betz notes the possibility of a tomb or a temple origin. It forms part of a collection consisting of more than fifty texts, apparently obtained from a variety of sources and with a date range, according to Betz, from the first to the third centuries CE. Betz speculates that this may indicate the papyri formed a library belonging to a single owner that was buried with him in his tomb at Thebes. Betz, “Introduction to the Greek Magical Papyri,” in The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation (ed. Hans Dieter Betz; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), xlii–xlviii. See also Pieter Willem van der Horst, Jews and Christians in their Graeco-Roman Context: Selected Essays on Early Judaism, Samaritanism, Hellenism, and Christianity (WUNT; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 269–72, and, Korshi Dosoo, “A History of the Theban Magical Papyri,” BASP 53 (2016): 251-274. 94 Trans. Marvin W. Meyer and Richard Smith, Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 23.

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era, albeit the picture is complex and varies from region to region. However, the survival of ancient customs in and of themselves does not imply that the beliefs behind such practices continued unaltered. Earlier customs and symbols are commonly reinterpreted as societal values change, leading to new meanings amongst later generations. It would be anachronistic to understand the meaning of these gestures by merely referring to earlier beliefs and practices without taking seriously their new context. In the case of funerary practices, the reasons for placing grave goods in burials are ambiguous and easy to over-interpret. This is particularly the case when the goods in question do not necessarily have an overt function within the known religious context. Thus any interpretation of funerary practices and the role of grave goods within them must be cautious lest we assign significance to an artefact that was never intended by the donor. Pre-Christian Burials in the Roman Era Graves found during the early centuries of Roman rule in Egypt indicate that the burial of goods with the deceased remained common, as might be expected of a culture that continued to regard the physical body as the earthly dwelling place of the ba. Even humbler burials at this period make provision for the deceased. During Petrie’s excavations at Hawara, at the entrance to the Fayum Oasis, he discovered mummies in a large Roman cemetery dated between 100 and 250 CE, some of which sported the now famous Hawara mummy masks. The goods found with these corpses include pottery, cloth, toys trinkets, and papyri. Another significant discovery amongst these burials was a large papyrus roll placed under the head of a woman. Dated to the second century CE,95 the papyrus contains the first and second books of the Iliad. It is noteworthy not only because it was found with a woman, perhaps indicating she was literate, but also because it is a popular book with no overtly religious overtones or allusions to the afterlife. Its excerpt from the Iliad, describing Agamemnon’s preparations for the Trojan war,96 is hardly esoteric in meaning. The roll need not be 95 This is erroneously dated to the fifth century CE in Sayce’s original commentary (William Flinders Petrie, Hawara, Biahmu, and Arsinoe, with 30 plates [London: Field & Tuer, 1889], 24–28). Soon after its discovery, it was re-dated to the second century by Frederick Kenyon, The Palaeography of Greek Papyri (Oxford: Clarendon, 1899), 101–3. See http://www.trismegistos.org/ldab/text.php?quick=1695. For images: http://ipap.csad. ox.ac.uk/4DLink4/4DACTION/IPAPwebquery?vPub=Pack&vVol=&vNum=616. Denzey Lewis and Blount follow a fifth-century dating in their argument that its placement below the woman’s head reflects earlier burial practices (“Rethinking the Origins,” 412–13; Denzey Lewis, “Death on the Nile,” 165). 96 No translation of this manuscript is available, although Sayce (Hawara, 27b) commented on some of its major features and slight textual variations. He noted that the ir-

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interpreted as anything but a rather expensive grave good from a necropolis which, as Petrie noted, lies in proximity to the pyramid complex at Hawara and remained almost wholly pagan until its abandonment at the beginning of the sixth century.97 Continuity and Change As Christianity rose to prominence in Egypt, burials continued to take place within the necropoleis of the cities and the local pharaonic tombs. By the third century, however, the demise of the Egyptian priesthood led to the cessation of traditional burial rites in the necropoleis. And by the fourth century, overtly Christian imagery begins to replace Graeco-Roman mythological motifs in funerary sculpture and decoration. 98 At the same time, traditional practices lingered on, such as feasting at the tomb, but in a way that combined with Christian belief. Ceremonies that took place at the tomb sometimes included the Eucharist, for example. 99 The practice of mummification continued among some Christians too.100 These need not be interpreted as “intentionally archaizing burials” as Denzey Lewis has suggested, as if Egyptian Christians were deliberately trying to revive a bygone era. They are better understood as the persistence of traditional burial practices that have been assimilated and reused within a new, Christian, ideology.101 Although pagan ritual texts fell out of use in tombs, Christian

regular use of diacritical marks and careful preparation suggest that it may have been used for instruction. 97 Petrie, Hawara, 21. 98 Thelma K. Thomas, Late Antique Egyptian Funerary Sculpture: Images for This World and the Next (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 50–51. 99 See, e.g., Shenoute’s sermon We Will Speak in the Fear of God. 100 The Psenosiris papyrus attests to the existence of Christians who formed a minority group in the embalmers guild. Sophia Torallas Tovar, “Egyptian Burial Practices in Late Antiquity: The Case of Christian Mummy Labels,” in Cultures in Contact: Transfer of Knowledge in a Mediterranean Context (ed. Juan Pedro Monferrer Sala and Sofía Torallas Tovar; Córdoba: Oriens Academic, 2013), 18. 101 Denzey Lewis, “Death on the Nile,” 173–74. On the process of assimilation and reuse see, David Frankfurter, “Syncretism and the Holy Man in Late Antique Egypt,” JECS 11:3 (2993): 341–43. Note e.g. the burials at the Nekloni monastery (Deir Malak Gabrail) in the Fayum dating to the fifth and sixth centuries. In this village community the dead underwent extensive preparations for burial. They were clothed and then wrapped in specially made shrouds, stiffened with palm jarids or boards. A framework, also made of jarid palms, was constructed high over the head and shoulders and padded out with rags or bundles of fibres. The whole was then fastened into place with coloured tapes to form an elaborate net pattern. See Włodzimierz Godłewski, “Naqlun (Nekloni): The Hermitages, Cemetery and the Keep in the early 6th century,” in Graeco-Roman Fayum: Texts and Archaeology (ed. Maren Schentuleit and Sandra Luisa Lippert;

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prayers buried with the dead replaced them. 102 Likewise, mummy labels continued to be produced in the Christian era, but without their former allusions to the ritual texts and deities of ancient Egypt.103 The Nag Hammadi Codices The interpretation of the Nag Hammadi Codices as Christian Books of the Dead relies on two premises: first, that ascent literature read by early Christians would have served the deceased as performative literature for his or her own post-mortem ascent; and second, that the Nag Hammadi Codices were found in a grave. But what evidence is there that the Nag Hammadi Codices were in fact found in a grave? The idea was first put forward by Jean Doresse, who visited the site in a hurried, single-day visit to Hamra Dûm in 1950. Seeing a disturbed, pitted landscape, he concluded that the area was probably an old Graeco-Roman cemetery which served the nearby town of Chenoboskion and the larger city of Diospolis Parva (modern Hiw) situated on the other bank of the Nile.104 However, the pitting reported by Doresse is easier to explain as the result of farmers digging for sebakh, and perhaps further treasure-hunting in the area following the discovery of the codices.105 No evidence of a cemeWiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2008), 101; Godłewski, “In the shade of the Nekloni monastery (Deir Malak Gubrail, Fayum),” PAM 20 (2008): 468–72. 102 Arthur Hunt and Bernard Grenfell, Greek Papyri (Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire, 10001–10869; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903), nos. 10263, 10696. Evidence from recent excavations at Nekloni’s sixth-century cemetery C includes a corpse found with a papyrus placed against his left thigh (no. C.T.7); see Iwona Zych, “Cemetery C in Naqlun: Preliminary Report on the Excavation in 2006,” PAM 18 (2006): 239; Thomas, Late Antique Egyptian Funerary Sculpture, 119 n. 32. 103 These were continuously used from the pharaonic period onwards but the sentiments change to become wholly Christian with the adoption of the new religion until their usage disappears. See Tovar, “Egyptian Burial Practices in Late Antiquity,” 17–26. 104 Doresse, “Sur les traces des papyrus gnostiques: Recherches à Chénoboskion,” BAB.L (1950): 437 (quoted in Robinson, Nag Hammadi Story, 1:13): “C’est ici l’antique cimetière de Diospolis Parva et de Chénoboskion, vaste mais pauvre nécropole où les corps étaient déposés, dans leur vêtements et leurs linceuls, à même le sable.” Doresse’s connection of the site with Diospolis Parva is almost certainly erroneous, for a considerable number of Graeco-Roman cemeteries are dotted around that city, some of which had earlier been excavated by Petrie in 1901 (a fact of which Doresse was surely aware). There would have been little need for the people of Diospolis Parva to ferry their dead to the farther side of the Nile. See excavation notes by W. M. Flinders Petrie, Diospolis Parva: The Cemeteries of Abadiyeh and Hu, 1898–9 (London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1901), 54–57. 105 In his notebook Doresse writes of “un cimetière antique des plus humbles (de simples fosses) mais fort bouleversé soit par les chercheurs de cet engrais naturel qu’on appelle sebâkh, soit par les chercheurs d’antiquités” (quoted in James M. Robinson, The

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tery was revealed in two seasons of excavations conducted in 1975 by Philip Hammond and James Robinson in the area identified by Doresse and, later, by Mohammed Ali, the man who found the codices.106 When Robinson conducted interviews with those who had been involved in the discovery thirty years earlier, Mohammed Ali initially told him that he found the codices in the Old Kingdom tomb of Thauti (T73), sealed in a jar and next to a corpse. After smashing the jar, he said, he took the codices and reburied the corpse.107 The archaeological team cut excavation trenches in the tomb and the surrounding area; yet no evidence was unearthed of any burials, ancient or recent, in the tomb, nor were there any pot sherds found from the jar. Hammond also conducted a resistivity survey of the area surrounding the site. According to his report, “The survey produced negative evidence – i.e., no orderly patterning of detected sub-surface anomalies emerged which would suggest the presence of a necropolis.”108 On being confronted with the lack of evidence in tomb 73, Mohammed Ali changed his story about the find site and pointed to another area a few hundred metres away. The team excavated this site too, but again, no evidence was found of the jar or the corpse as described by Mohammed Ali.109 Evidence from other caves in the area suggest that Christian monks used the Old Kingdom tombs as hermitages. In cave T65, close to the tomb of Thauti (T73), large crosses were painted in red on the north and east wall, and similar crosses were found on the walls of T8 along with a Sahidic inscription. In this cave, forty-one Byzantine coins dating from 503–640 CE along with a thick stratum of animal bones covered in lime, a fire pit, and the partial remains of a human skeleton without significant artefacts all indicate some habitation of the cave. Although no artefacts suggest longterm habitation, the cave was probably used as a form of temporary hermitage by local monks.110 Nag Hammadi Story [2 vols.; NHMS 86; Leiden: Brill, 2014], 1:83). That this area was the site of illicit excavations see James M. Robinson, “The First Season of the Nag Hammadi Excavation: 27 November – 19 December 1975,” Göttinger Miszellen 22 (1976): 74. 106 Robinson, “First Season”; Bastiaan Van Elderen and James M. Robinson, “The Second Season of the Nag Hammadi Excavation: 22 November – 29 December 1976,” Göttinger Miszellen 23 (1977): 57–73. 107 Robinson, “First Season,” 72–75. 108 Hammond’s report is quoted by Robinson, “First Season,” 72 (emphasis original). 109 Robinson, “First Season,” 74. 110 Such as those obtained in the excavation of the hermitage at Sheikh Abd El-Gurna. Eliza Szpakowska and Tomasz Górecki, “Sheikh Abd El-Gurna: Archaeological Activities in the Hermitage in Tomb 1152,” PAM 18 (2006): 305–10. The skeletal remains are of course inconclusive as there is no indication of their period of burial.

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There is no doubt that the caves of the Old Kingdom tombs were also used for burials. Pachomian sources frequently refer to monks burying their dead in the nearby cliffs,111 and these stories seem corroborated by the find of bones and fragments of burial cloth C14-dated to the fifth century.112 But the surviving evidence is sparse and there is nothing to conclusively link it to the deposition of the Nag Hammadi Codices. The area where the codices were discovered had been used for burials in the Christian period, yes; but it was used for other purposes too. Thus without any firm evidence to link the Nag Hammadi Codices to a grave, the interpretation of them as funerary artefacts, grave goods, and Christian Books of the Dead, must remain unsupported speculation.113 As for the other premise – did the concept of a Book of the Dead for use by the deceased to aid heavenly ascent still exist in fourth- and fifthcentury Egypt? As I have demonstrated, all the books that have been proposed as such can be discounted on grounds of date, signs of actual usage (i.e., they were not made merely to be buried), and most importantly, by lack of secure provenance. The assemblage of such a disparate group of books without consideration of context and historiographical issues of time and space only makes the book-of-the-dead interpretation less plausible. The last use of a ritual text that could be associated with the ancient Book of the Dead dates to the second century CE, over two hundred years before the production of the Nag Hammadi Codices. And of the many Coptic codices that have been discovered, only two come from a funerary context, namely the al-Mudil psalter and Budge’s codex of Deuteronomy, Jonah and Acts (BL Or. 7594). As I discussed above, nothing about either of these works suggests they function as anything more than precious grave goods in a period when the placement of such items was still reasonably commonplace. The only other example of a book that could plausibly be interpreted as a guide to ascent for the deceased is Codex Panopolitanus, with its selections from the Gospel of Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter, and Enoch’s Book of the Watchers. However, this codex can hardly be regarded as deliberately archaising as it is written in Greek, not Coptic. And as I discussed above, the actual circumstances of its discovery in a grave are entirely unclear. There are of course some examples of ascent literature within the Nag Hammadi Codices; but to suggest that all the texts therein were collected 111 SBo 27, 82, 123, 130, 181, 198, 205, 207; G1 32, 103, 116, 117, 139, 146, 149; Paral. 6; Pr. 127, 128. 112 Robinson, “First Season,” 77. 113 If these codices came from individual graves, as Denzey Lewis and Blount suggest (“Rethinking the Origins,” 398), then it would be expected that some evidence of these multiple burials would exist in the area of their discovery.

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and buried to be used for the soul’s post-mortem ascent disregards the sheer variety and complexity that characterizes the collection, even within a single codex. Whatever reasons proposed for the use and deposition of these codices, the notion that they functioned as a Christian Books of the Dead is perhaps the most implausible.

Conclusion That a Book of the Dead to aid the deceased’s journey to the afterlife existed in late antique Egypt must be regarded with scepticism. The fact that such spells played a vital role in ensuring entrance to the afterlife in ancient Egyptian funerary practice may seem to add weight to the idea that texts from a much later era would be regarded with the same power. However, a study of the structure, function, and historical development of these spells, the so-called Book of the Dead, calls into question their relevance for understanding books and practices of a much later society, one that in many ways was transformed by the arrival of a foreign religion. As Julian Thomas points out, the meaning given to an artefact does not reside in the artefact itself but in the moment of reaction between it and the society in which it acquired significance.114 The use of an artefact in one era does not necessarily give us the key to its use in another. The cultural paradigm shifts that took place during the Ptolemaic period seem to have impacted Egyptian funerary literature in a way that led to the consequent demise of the Book of the Dead and may even have played a role in the eventual disappearance of its genre altogether. No doubt many Egyptian Christians maintained practices that can be traced to pre-Christian times. David Frankfurter, for example, notes how they wore amulets, believed in divination, took part in Nile festivals, sought out protection through magic, and had pagan neighbours and relatives.115 But he also emphasises that they were still Christians, and their interpretation of what they did and said would have been reflected through the prism of Christianity. Nothing suggests that Christians believed their books could ensure entrance to the afterlife. It is necessary to bear this in mind when attempting to understand the significance of book deposits in funerary contexts. 114 Julian Thomas, Time, Culture, and Identity: An Interpretative Archaeology (London: Routledge, 1996), 97. 115 David Frankfurter, “Onomastic Statistics and the Christianization of Egypt: A Response to Depauw and Clarysse,” VC 68 (2014): 286–87. More generally, Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).

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Jan Assmann, in his writings on cultural memory, proposed that memories are reconstructed in each era within a contemporary frame of reference so that their recall always relates to a present situation. The meaning of artefacts is thus put into each person’s own perspective and given their own relevance.116 Those who deposited their dead with mummy labels containing references to Christian prayers did so in a way that referenced their own cultural milieu, not that of a thousand years’ earlier. Christian books found in funerary contexts also need the same level of contextualisation. They were produced and read in a Christian milieu, no matter how unfamiliar the contents may appear to modern readers accustomed to the traditional Christian canon. That they sometimes show an interest in heavenly ascent does not suggest their use as ritual Books of the Dead. Insofar as one can identify them as grave goods, they are not Books of the Dead but books with the dead, treasured works presumably read by the deceased, who felt that they had some import in their lives. Bibliography Adams, Jim W. The Performative Nature and Function of Isaiah 40–55. London: T & T Clark, 2006. Allen, James P. “Ba.” Pages 161–62 in volume 1 of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Edited by Donald Redford. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Anthes, Rudolf. “Egyptian Theology in the Third Millennium B. C.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 18.3 (1959): 169–212. Askeland, Christian. John’s Gospel: The Coptic Translations of its Greek Text. Arbeiten zur neutestamentlichen Textforschung series 44. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012. Assmann, Jan. “Kollektives Gedächtnis und kulturelle Identität.” Pages 9–19 in Kultur und Gedächtnis. Edited by Tonio Holscher and Jan Assmann. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988. –. “Death and Initiation in the Funerary Religion of Ancient Egypt.” Pages 135–59 in Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt. Edited by James P. Allen. Yale Egyptological Studies 3. New Haven: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Yale University, 1989. –. The Search for God in Ancient Egypt. Translated by David Lorton. New York. Cornell University Press, 2001. –. Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. Assmann, Jan and John Czaplicka. “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity.” New German Critique 65 (1995): 125–33. Aufderheide, Arthur C. The Scientific Study of Mummies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Austin, Jeoffrey, L. How To Do Things with Words. Edited by J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisá. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962. 116 John Czaplicka and Jan Assmann, “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity,” New German Critique 65 (1995): 130.

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spectives on Panopolis, edited by Brian Paul Muhs, Arno Egberts, and Jan van der Vliet. Leiden: Brill, 2002. –. Traversing Eternity: Texts for the Afterlife from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Stadler, Martin Andreas. “The Funerary Texts of Papyrus Turin N. 766: A Demotic Book of Breathing (Part II).” Enchoria 26 (2000): 110–124. –. “Funerary Religion.” Pages 383–97 in The Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt. Edited by Christina Riggs. Oxford. Oxford University Press, 2012. Suciu, Alin. “A British Library Fragment from a Homily on the Lament of Mary and the So-Called Gospel of Gamaliel.” Aethiopica 15 (2012): 53–71. Szpakowska, Eliza, and Tomasz Górecki. “Sheikh Abd El-Gurna: Archaeological Activities in the Hermitage in Tomb 1152.” Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean 18 (2006): 305–10. Timbie, Janet. “Egypt.” Pages 432–36 in Encyclopedia of Monasticism: A-L. Edited by William M. Johnston. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000). Thomas, Julian. Time, Culture, and Identity: An Interpretative Archaeology. London: Routledge, 1996. Thomas, Thelma K. Late Antique Egyptian Funerary Sculpture: Images for This World and the Next. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Till, Walter C. and Hans-Martin Schenke. Die Gnostischen Schriften Des Koptischen Papyrus Berolinensis 8502. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1972. Thompson, Herbert. The Gospel of St. John according to the Earliest Coptic Manuscript. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1924. Tobin, Vincent Arieh. “Divine Conflict in the Pyramid Texts.” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 30 (1993): 93–110. Tovar, Sofía Torallas. “Egyptian Burial Practices in Late Antiquity: The Case of Christian Mummy Labels.” Pages 13–24 in Cultures in Contact: Transfer of Knowledge in a Mediterranean Context. Edited by Juan Pedro Monferrer Sala and Sofía Torallas Tovar. Córdoba: Oriens Academic, 2013. Turner, Eric. The Typology of the Early Codex. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1977. Uribe, Eugene Cruz. “The Death of Demotic Redux: Pilgrimage, Nubia and the Preservation of Egyptian Culture.” Pages 499–506 in Honi soit qui mal y pense: Studien zum pharaonischen, griechisch-römischen und spätantiken Ägypten zu Ehren von HeinzJosef Thissen. Edited by Hermann Knuf, Christian Leitz, and Daniel von Recklinghausen. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 194. Leuven: Peeters, 2010. Van Elderen, Bastiaan, and James Robinson. “The Second Season of the Nag Hammadi Excavation, 22 November – 29 December 1976.” Göttinger Miszellen 23 (1977): 57– 73. Vliet, Jacques van der. “Preliminary Remarks on the Coptic Texts from Seasons 1998 and 1999.” Polish Archaeology of the Mediterranean XI (2000): 143–44. Walters, C.C., Monastic Archaeology in Egypt. Modern Egyptology Series. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1974. Wendel,Carl, “Der antike Bücherschrank.” Pages 64–92 in Kleine Schriften zum antiken Buch- und Bibliothekswesen. Edited by Carl Wendel and Werner Krieg. Köln: Greven Verlag, 1974. Whitehorne, J. E. G. “New Light on Temple and State in Roman Egypt.” Journal of Religious History 11.2 (1980): 218–26. Wilkinson, Toby A. H. The Egyptian World. New York: Routledge, 2007.

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Zabkar, Louis V. “Herodotus and the Egyptian Idea of Immortality.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 22.1 (1963): 57–63. Zych, Iwona. “Cemetery C in Naqlun: Preliminary Report on the Excavation in 2006.” Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean 18 (2006): 230–246.

Part IV Scribes and Manuscripts

The Dishna Papers and the Nag Hammadi Codices: The Remains of a Single Monastic Library? HUGO LUNDHAUG1 Only a few years apart, in 1945 and 1952, two of the most significant early Christian manuscript discoveries were made in the vicinity of the cliffs bordering the Dishna Plain in Upper Egypt, where the Nile makes a sharp turn to the left avoiding the towering cliffs to the north, even flowing for a while towards the south-west before returning to its northerly course towards the Mediterranean. In the words of James Robinson, “It is from this area dominated by the cliff, as it arches back from the Nile in full view of the Basilica of St. Pachomius at Faw Qibli lying nearer the river, that there seem to have come both the Nag Hammadi codices at the western limit of the arc and at the eastern limit the Bodmer papyri.”2 Today the view across the Dishna plain to the cliffs where the Nag Hammadi Codices and the Bodmer Papyri3 were discovered, from the ruins of the basilica that was once part of the Pachomian monastery of Pbow, is obscured by the recent buildings of the expanding modern village of Faw Qibli, where the ruins are located in what is now a market square.4 Until very recently, however, 1

The research and writing of this article has been conducted under the aegis of the NEWCONT project (New Contexts for Old Texts: Unorthodox Texts and Monastic Manuscript Culture in Fourth- and Fifth-Century Egypt) at the University of Oslo, Faculty of Theology. The project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) / ERC Grant agreement no 283741. I am grateful to Lance Jenott, René Falkenberg, Brent Nongbri, and Paula Tutty for discussion and feedback. 2 James M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Story (2 vols.; NHMS 86; Leiden: Brill, 2014), 24. 3 For the remainder of the article I will refer to this manuscript discovery as the Dishna Papers rather than the Bodmer Papyri because not all its constituents are held in the Bodmer Library, and since the discovery also includes parchment manuscripts. The term “Papers” does not denote paper as a writing material, though, as the manuscripts are made of either papyrus or parchment. 4 I visited the site in May 2014 as a part of a group of scholars from the research projects MoPai and NEWCONT. I would like to thank Samuel Rubenson, director of the MoPai project at the University of Lund and our excellent local guide, Beshoy Amir, for

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and certainly in late antiquity, the discovery sites of both major discoveries, were indeed “in full view of the headquarters monastery of the Pachomian order,” as Robinson puts it.5 There were also several other Pachomian monasteries located nearby in addition to Pbow. Tabennesi, the first monastery founded by Pachomius, was situated only somewhat further upstream from Pbow, not far from the Jabal Abu Mana, where the Dishna Papers were found.6 Similarly, at approximately the same distance downstream from Pbow, and close to the cliff of the Jabal al-Tarif where the Nag Hammadi Codices were discovered, was the monastery of Sheneset (Chenoboskion), where today we find the village of al-Qasr.7 Some kilometers further to the west, on the other side of the Nile, lay the monastery of Tmoushons,8 and yet more Pachomian monasteries could be found both down the Nile from Tmoushons, or up the Nile from Tabennesi.9 Considering the closeness of the discovery sites of both the Nag Hammadi Codices and the Dishna Papers to these Pachomian monasteries, a Pachomian monastic provenance would seem to be a likely proposition for both of them.10 Yet such a connection remains disexpertly leading us on an extensive tour of Egypt’s monastic sites. For a photograph of the ruins of the basilica in Faw Qibli from this trip, see Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott, The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices (STAC 97; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 43. On the Location of Pbow, see Louis Théophile Lefort, “Les premiers monastères Pachômiens: Exploration topographique,” Mus 52 (1939): 387–93. 5 This is clear from photographs of the ruins taken in the 1950s and 1970s. The consequences are stated clearly by Bastiaan van Elderen, when he points out that this means that “three major indications of early Christianity are located in the vicinity of Nag Hammadi – the Gnostic codices, the Bodmer papyri, and the Pachomian monastic movement” (Bastiaan van Elderen, “The Nag Hammadi Excavation,” BA 42:4 [1979)]: 231). 6 Although the exact location of Tabennesi is unknown, it was located not far upstream from Pbow. See Lefort, “Les premiers monastères,” 393–97. Tabennesi also lent its name to the Pachomian monks, who were often referred to as Tabennesiots. 7 Lefort, “Les premiers monastères,” 383–87. 8 Lefort, “Les premiers monastères,” 399–401. 9 See Lefort, “Les premiers monastères,” and the map in Philip Rousseau, Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt (rev. ed.; Transformation of the Classical Heritage 6; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 56. 10 On the likelihood of a Pachomian provenance for the Nag Hammadi Codices, see esp. Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins. On the possible Pachomian provenance for the Dishna Papers, see, e.g., Robinson, The Story of the Bodmer Papyri: From the First Monastery’s Library in Upper Egypt to Geneva and Dublin (Eugene, Or.: Cascade, 2011), 130–84; Clemens Scholten, “Die Nag-Hammadi-Texte als Buchbesitz der Pachomianer,” JAC 31 (1988): 172; James E. Goehring, “Monastic Diversity and Ideological Boundaries in Fourth-Century Christian Egypt,” JECS 5.1 (1997): 78–80; Bastiaan Van Elderen, “Early Christian Libraries,” in The Bible as Book: The Manuscript Tradition (ed. John L. Sharpe and Kimberly van Kampen; London: The British Library, 1998), 51– 52; Christoph Joest, Die Pachom-Briefe: Übersetzung und Deutung (CSCO 655, Subsidia 133; Leuven: Peeters, 2014), 52.

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puted, and the likelihood and potential implications of a possible shared provenance have still not been thoroughly explored.

The Discovery and Contents of the Dishna Papers The Dishna Papers were found in 1952, only a few years after the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Codices.11 As is the case with the latter manuscripts, the circumstances and site of discovery, as well as the complicated history of their marketing and current locations, have been meticulously pieced together and described by Robinson,12 primarily on the basis of a series of interviews with various people involved in the discovery and trafficking of the manuscripts.13 Unlike the Nag Hammadi Codices, however, on which there is broad consensus regarding contents and discovery location,14 there is currently no consensus regarding the exact contents or discovery location of the Dishna Papers. On the latter issue, some have argued that the only thing we can be sure of is that the manuscripts were found somewhere in Upper Egypt.15 Sometimes the discovery location has 11 On the date of the discovery, see, e.g., James M. Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 151. 12 See James M. Robinson, “The Manuscript’s History and Codicology,” in The Crosby-Schøyen Codex MS 193 in the Schøyen Collection (ed. James E. Goehring; CSCO 521; CSCO.S 85; Leuven: Peeters, 1990), xvii–xlvii; idem, The Pachomian Monastic Library at the Chester Beatty Library and the Bibliothèque Bodmer (Occasional Papers 19; Claremont, Cal.: Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, 1990); idem, “The Pachomian Monastic Library: Postscript,” in The Role of the Book in the Civilizations of the Near East: Proceedings of the Conference held at the Royal Irish Academy and the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, 29 June – 1 July 1988 (ed. John Bartless, David James, and David Wasserstein; Manuscripts of the Middle East 5 [1990–1991]; Leiden: Ter Lugt Press, 1993), 36–40; idem, Story of the Bodmer Papyri. 13 See esp. Robinson, “History and Codicology,” xxiv n. 4, where he gives details of his sources and interviews in response to Rodolphe Kasser’s skeptical remarks in “Status quaestionis 1988 sulla presunta origine dei cosiddetti Papiri Bodmer,” Aegyptus 68:1/2 (1988): 193 n. 9. Cf. also Robinson, Nag Hammadi Story, 1:116–19. 14 Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 11–21. 15 Kasser states that the only thing that is known is that the collection was discovered somewhere in Upper Egypt, and that it was a private library (Rodolphe Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer III: Évangile de Jean et Genèse I-IV,2 en bohaïrique [2 vols.; CSCO 177–78, Scriptores Coptici 25–26; Leuven: Secrétariat du CorpusSCO, 1958], 1:iii). Cf. also Rodolphe Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer XVIII: Deutéronome I–X,7 en sahidique (ColognyGeneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1962), 7. Sometimes Kasser has been even more vague concerning the location of the discovery, stating that we simply do not know where these codices come from (Rodolphe Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer XXII et Mississippi Coptic Codex II: Jérémie XL,3–LII,34, Lamentations, Epître de Jérémie, Baruch I,1–V,5 en sahidique [Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1964], 7)

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been referred to vaguely as somewhere in the rather extensive area between Panopolis and Thebes,16 while at other times either Panopolis17 or Thebes18 have been singled out in particular. Robinson’s investigations,19 however, which included conversations with the alleged discoverer, led him to argue for a rather more specific location, namely the vicinity of the Jabal Abu Mana bordering the Dishna plain.20 According to Robinson, a jar containing the manuscripts was found “about 300 meters out from the foot of Jabal Abu Mana, at al-Qurnah, ‘the corner’ of the cliff.”21 A discovery location in this area, if not necessarily this exact spot, has also garnered support from others. Recently, the likelihood of such a provenance of at least some of the Dishna Papers has been strengthened by the

16 George D. Kilpatrick, “The Bodmer and Mississippi Collection of Biblical and Christian Texts,” GRBS 4.1 (1963): 34; Rodolphe Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer XVI: Exode IXV,21 en sahidique (Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1961), 7; cf. Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 23, 162, 173. 17 Rodolphe Kasser, Guglielmo Cavallo, and Joseph Van Haelst, “Nouvelle Description du Codex des Visions,” in Papyrus Bodmer XXXVIII: Erma: Il Pastore (Ia–IIIa visione) (ed. Antonio Carlini and Luigi Giaccone; Cologny-Genève: Fondation Martin Bodmer, 1991), 105–6 n. 5; Victor Martin, Papyrus Bodmer I: Iliade, chants 5 et 6 (; Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1954), 21; Roger S. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 103–4; Karolien Geens, Panopolis, a Nome Capital in Egypt in the Roman and Byzantine Period (ca. AD 200–600) (Trismegistos Online Publications 1; Leuven: Trismegistos, 2014; reprint of PhD diss., KU Leuven, 2007), 79–81; Eric. G. Turner, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 52–53, but see the comments in Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 25 n. 44. The main reason for connecting the manuscripts to Panopolis is the case of P.Bodmer I/L, containing documents from Panopolis on the recto (P.Bodmer L) and Homer’s Iliad on the verso (P.Bodmer I). See Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 75. 18 Michel Testuz, Papyrus Bodmer VII–IX: VII: L’Épitre de Jude; VIII: Les deux Épitres de Pierre; IX: Les Psaumes 33 et 34 (Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1959), 32, based on Kasser’s dialectal analysis of P.Bodmer VI in Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer VI: Livre des Proverbes (2 vols.; CSCO 194–95, Scriptores Coptici 27–28; Leuven: Secrétariat du CorpusSCO, 1960); Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer XVI, 7. The problem with the arguments for a Theban origin is that they are based on the dialect of some of the manuscripts. As Jean-Luc Fournet rightly points out, not only are there multiple dialects represented in the collection, but we simply cannot use such a linguistic argument to determine the provenance of the manuscripts (Fournet, “Anatomie d’une bibliothèque de l’Antiquité tardive: l’inventaire, le faciès et la provenance de la ‘Bibliothèque Bodmer’,” Adamantius 21 [2015]: 17). 19 Robinson has published his research on the Dishna Papers in several publications now conveniently collected and expanded in Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri. 20 Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 108–9; idem, “History and Codicology,” ix. 21 Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 108; idem, “History and Codicology,” xx.

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discovery of references in the cartonnage of P.Bodmer XXIII22 pointing to Τέντυρα (Dendera), located only a few kilometers to the east of Dishna.23 Jean-Luc Fournet, one of the editors of the cartonnage documents from P.Bodmer XXIII, thus concludes that although there are conflicting reports, various pieces of evidence intersect to indicate a likely provenance of the Dishna Papers close to the modern village of Dishna, or somewhere between Nag Hammadi and Dishna.24 Even Rodolphe Kasser, who was always skeptical of the results of Robinson’s interviews with the locals, and who for a long time expressed a preference for Thebes25 or simply somewhere in Upper Egypt,26 has later indicated that the site of discovery was probably somewhat to the east of Nag Hammadi, which indeed yields a location not far from the Jabal Abu Mana.27 While the exact location of the discovery may still be unclear, then, evidence points towards a major manuscript discovery, including at least a significant number of those manuscripts that have been included in various lists as parts of the Dishna Papers, close to the abovementioned Pachomian monasteries, and thus also not far from the Nag Hammadi Codices’ discovery location.28

22 P.Bodmer XXIII (containing Isaiah in Sahidic) has yielded several papyrus fragments, one of which contain a land registry and two containing tax registers, palaeographically assigned by their editors to the early fourth century, a date that also seems to be supported by the monetary values stated in the documents. See Jean-Luc Fournet and Jean Gascou, “Annexe 2: Édition de P.Bodm. LIV–LVI,” Adamantius 21 (2015): 25–40. On such internal grounds they place the documents between 307/308 and 340–350 (ibid., 25), thus providing an approximate terminus post quem for P.Bodmer XXIII. 23 The reference is to a Πτο(λεμαίου) Τριμώρου, a character who is also known from P.Ryl. IV 705 as coming from Τέντυρα (Dendera) (Fournet, “Anatomie,” 19). The cartonnage-fragments from P.Bodmer XXIII have been given the inventory numbers P.Bodmer LIII–LVI. The reference is found at P.Bodmer LVI.14. See Fournet and Gascou, “Édition de P.Bodm. LIV–LVI,” 34. Cf. also Paul Schubert, “Les papyrus Bodmer: contribution à une tentative de délimination,” Adamantius 21 (2015): 41–46, esp. 44–46. 24 Fournet, “Anatomie,” 19. 25 Papyrus Bodmer XVI, 7. 26 Papyrus Bodmer III, 1:iii. 27 Rodolphe Kasser and Guglielmo Cavallo, “Description et datation du Codex de Visions,” in Papyrus Bodmer XXIX: Vision de Dorothéos (ed. André Hurst, Olivier Reverdin, and Jean Rudhardt; Cologny-Genève: Fondation Martin Bodmer, 1984), 100 n.2; Rodolphe Kasser, “Bodmer Papyri,” in The Coptic Encyclopedia (8 vols.; ed. Aziz S. Atiya; New York: Macmillan, 1991), 8:49 (“either near Asyut or, more probably, in Debba, a few miles to the northeast of Nag Hammadi”); cf. Kasser, “Status quaestionis 1988.” As Robinson points out, while Debba itself would be an unlikely place for the discovery, as it is situated too close to the Nile for the manuscripts to have survived there, it would be the village with the railroad station closest to the Jabal Abu Mana (Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 178). 28 Cf. Kasser, “Bodmer Papyri,” 49.

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While all the Nag Hammadi Codices eventually ended up in the Coptic Museum in Cairo,29 the contents of the Dishna Papers discovery unfortunately became dispersed and distributed across many different collections around the world. The largest collection of manuscripts from the discovery was acquired by Martin Bodmer, which accounts for the common, if misleading, denomination of the entire discovery as the Bodmer Papyri.30 With the exception of some items later sold or donated to other collections,31 these manuscripts are currently housed in the Bodmer Library in Cologny just outside the city center of Geneva. Significant parts of the discovery ended up elsewhere, however, and currently reside in such collections as the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, the Vatican Library, the abbey of Montserrat in Barcelona, the Schøyen Collection outside Oslo, the Van Kampen collection in Orlando, and the Duke and Cologne University libraries.32 So not only is it misleading to refer to all these manuscripts together as the Bodmer Papyri, but the unfortunate dispersal of the manuscripts in different collections around the world has also led to some uncertainty regarding the full extent of the discovery itself.33 There have been both maximalist and minimalist suggestions. A minimal view of the discovery, most 29 The Nag Hammadi Codices are currently kept in the Coptic Museum, with the exception of half a leaf of Codex III, now housed at the Yale Beinecke Library in New Haven, and the cover and cartonnage of Codex I, which are housed in the collection of Martin Schøyen outside Oslo, a collection which also holds a bowl that was presumably used as the lid of the jar in which the codices were discovered. On how the Nag Hammadi Codices found their way to the Coptic Museum, see esp. Robinson, Nag Hammadi Story. 30 This is a misleading designation even for the manuscripts acquired by the Bodmer Library, since a significant number of parchment manuscripts was also among them. 31 The New Testament manuscripts P.Bodmer XIV–XV (ो75) and P.Bodmer VIII (itself a part of ो72) were donated to the Vatican Library. The designation P.Bodmer VIII refers to neither an entire codex nor a single text, but comprises the texts 1–2 Peter, which together with P.Bodmer VII (Jude) make up ो72, which again constitute a part of the codex often referred to as the Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex or the Bodmer Composite Codex. The folios containing 1–2 Peter are now in the Vatican Library, while those containing Jude remain in the Bodmer Library together with the rest of the codex. On the Miscellaneous Codex, see now esp. Brent Nongbri, “Recent Progress in Understanding the Construction of the Bodmer ‘Miscellaneous’ or ‘Composite’ Codex.” Adamantius 21 (2015): 171–72; idem, “The Construction of P.Bodmer VIII and the Bodmer ‘Composite’ or ‘Miscellaneous’ Codex.” NovT 58 (2016): 394–410; but see also Tommy Wasserman, “Papyrus 72 and the Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex,” NTS 51 (2005): 137–54. 32 Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri; Fournet, “Anatomie,” 9–11; idem, “Annexe 1: Inventaire de la ‘Bibliothèque Bodmer,’” Adamantius 21 (2015): 21–24. 33 The situation has not been helped by the rather confusing manner in which the manuscripts of the Bodmer Library have been designated and published, with P.Bodmer numbers sometimes referring to texts and sometimes to manuscripts (see, e.g., Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 10–14).

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prominently represented by Rodolphe Kasser, would include only nineteen codices, and no rolls,34 while a maximalist view, as represented by Robinson, would tentatively include as many as twenty-nine codices and seventeen rolls, according to his most recent list, including (the remains of) one codex and eight rolls containing Pachomian letters in both Greek and Coptic.35 The most extensive lists of its possible contents include both papyrus and parchment manuscripts, in both codex and roll format,36 written in 34 Kasser, “Bodmer Papyri,” 50. This list consists of P.Bodmer XLI (Acts of Paul in Coptic); P.Monts. Roca. Inv. No. 138–178, 292, 338 (Codex in Latin and Greek containing Cicero, In Catilinam, Hymn on the Virgin Mary, Alcestis, and a story about Hadrian, in Latin, and an anaphora and a word-list in Greek); Schøyen MS 193 (The “CrosbySchøyen codex,” containing Melito, Peri Pascha, 2 Macc. 5:27–7:41, 1 Peter, Jonah, and a hymn, all in Coptic); P.Bodmer XL (Song of Songs in Coptic); P.Bodmer XXVII+XLV+XLVI (Thucydides, History, Susanna, Daniel, in Greek); P.Bodmer V+X+XI+VII+XIII+XII+XX+IX+VIII (the Miscellaneous Codex, containing the Nativity of Mary, Apocryphal Correspondence between Paul and the Corinthians, Odes of Solomon 11, Jude, Melito’s Peri Pascha, a hymn, Apology of Phileas, Pss 33–34, and 1–2 Peter, in Greek); P.Bodmer XVIII (Deut in Coptic); P.Bodmer XXIII (Isa in Coptic); P.Bodmer XVI (Exod in Coptic); P.Bodmer XXII (Jer 40:3–52:34, Bar 1:1–5:5, Lam, Epistle of Jeremiah, in Coptic); P.Bodmer III (John, Gen 1:1–4:2, in Coptic); P.Bodmer II (John in Greek); P.Bodmer XXI/Chester Beatty Ac. 1389 (Josh, Tob, in Coptic); P.Bodmer XIV+XV (Luke and John in Greek); P.Bodmer XXV+IV+XXVI (Menander, Samian, Dyskolos, and Shield, in Greek); P.Bodmer XIX (Matt, Rom, in Coptic); P.Bodmer XXIV (Pss in Greek); P.Bodmer VI (Prov in Coptic); P.Bodmer XXIX– XXXVIII (the Visions Codex, including Herm. Vis., Vision of Dorotheos, and several shorter visionary texts). 35 Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 169–72. In addition to the materials listed by Kasser (see above), Robinson includes the nine manuscripts (eight rolls and one codex) containing Pachomian letters (see below for details) as well as the following manuscripts (nine rolls and nine codices): P.Bodmer I; P.Bodmer XXVIII; P.Bodmer XLVIII; P.Bodmer XLIX; Chester Beatty Ac. 1390; Chester Beatty Ac. 1493; Chester Beatty Ac. 1499; Chester Beatty Ac. 1501; Chester Beatty Ac. 2554; P.Rob. inv. 32+P.Colon. inv. 906; P.Rob. inv. 35+P.Colon. inv. 901; P.Rob. inv. 43+P.Colon. inv. 902; P.Rob. inv. 37+P.Colon. inv. 903; P.Palau Ribes 181–183. Jean-Luc Fournet (“Inventaire”) includes no less than 33 codices and 15 rolls on his list of possible, but by no means certain, candidates. It should be noted that although he includes them on the list “pour mémoire,” Fournet does not think that the nine Pachomian items (eight rolls and one codex) belong to the same discovery. In reality, then, his list of possible candidates thus comprises 32 codices and 7 rolls. The items he includes that are not listed by Robinson are Vat. Copt. 9; P.Mil. Vogl. Copt V; Codex Glazier; Codex Scheide. The latter two are also mentioned by Robinson as possible candidates (Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 104). Note that one item is mentioned twice on Fournet’s list (his nos. 5 and 16 are identical), so at first glance his list may seem even longer than it is. 36 These include both vertical and horizontal rolls (sometimes referred to as rotuli and scrolls respectively). On the specifically Christian use of the vertical roll for literary texts, see Marco Stroppa, “L’uso di rotuli per testi cristiani di carattere letterario,” APF 59:2 (2013): 347–58.

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Greek, Coptic, and even Latin, containing a highly diverse range of writings including biblical, patristic, monastic, and classical texts.37 Considering this diversity and the dispersal of the manuscripts, it is not surprising that the common provenance of some of them has at various times been disputed. Even if we stick to Kasser’s minimalist proposal we are looking at a highly diverse collection of manuscripts, not only when it comes to contents, but also material, format, and language.

The Monastic Provenance of the Dishna Papers With regard to the provenance of the Dishna Papers, there are several factors indicating a monastic community as the ultimate owners and users of these manuscripts in late antiquity.38 As already mentioned, the manuscripts were discovered in an area close to several Pachomian monasteries, which were active in the period when the manuscripts were most probably in use and, at least in the majority of cases, produced.39 Moreover, as mentioned above, a handful of manuscripts, in various formats, containing Pachomian letters may also have been part of the discovery.40 These are literary letters by Pachomius himself, as well as by his two most prominent successors Theodore and Horsiesios, copied on small papyrus and parchment rolls, and a papyrus codex from which the remains of two bifolia

37

See, e.g., Fournet, “Inventaire”; Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 169–72. The main proponent of this hypothesis has been James M. Robinson, as expressed in multiple publications. See esp. Robinson, “The Discovering and Marketing of Coptic Manuscripts: The Nag Hammadi Codices and the Bodmer Papyri,” in The Roots of Egyptian Christianity (ed. Birger A. Pearson and James E. Goehring; SAC; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 2–25; idem, “Introduction,” in The Nag Hammadi Library in English: Translated and Introduced by Members of the Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont, California (ed. James M. Robinson; 3rd rev. ed; San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), 1–26; idem, “Introduction: Ac. 1390,” in The Chester Beatty Codex Ac. 1390: Mathematical School Exercises in Greek and John 10:7–13:38 in Subachmimic (ed. William Brashear et al.; Chester Beatty Monographs 13; Leuven: Peeters, 1990), 3–32; idem, “History and Codicology”; idem, Pachomian Monastic Library; idem, “Pachomian Monastic Library: Postscript”; idem, “Fragments from the Cartonnage of 𝔓75,” HTR 101.2 (2008): 231–52; idem, Story of the Bodmer Papyri. As Robinson notes, a monastic provenance had already been suggested by Victor Martin, Papyrus Bodmer II: Evangile de Jean chap. 1–14 (Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1956), 10; and by Odile Bongard, Martin Bodmer’s personal secretary (see Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 134). 39 See below for the question of the date of the various Dishna manuscripts. 40 See the lists in Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 185–96; Fournet, “Inventaire,” 23–24. 38

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have been preserved.41 Thus, while a discovery location of the Dishna Papers close to the Jabal Abu Mana in itself suggests a connection of the manuscripts to the nearby Pachomian monasteries, including the Pachomian texts as parts of the find considerably strengthens the connection. Some scholars have, however, been skeptical of counting these Pachomian manuscripts among the Dishna Papers,42 but Robinson brings three persuasive arguments to the table in favor of including them. Firstly, he points out that these manuscripts are spread across three of the main col41

These are nine manuscripts altogether: three papyrus and six parchment manuscripts; two horizontal and six vertical rolls, and one codex; eight in Coptic and one in Greek. See Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 130–84. These manuscripts are now dispersed among the Chester Beatty Library, the University of Cologne, the Bodmer Library, and a private collector, as follows: Chester Beatty Ac. 2556 (Coptic papyrus codex); Chester Beatty Ac. 1486 (Theodore, Letter 2; Coptic parchment roll, vertical); Chester Beatty Ac. 1494 (Horsiesios, Letter 3; Coptic papyrus roll, horizontal); Chester Beatty Ac. 1495 (Horsiesios, Letter 4; Coptic papyrus roll, horizontal); Chester Beatty MS W. 145+P.Köln IV 174 (Pachomius, Letters 1–3, 7, 10, 11a; Greek parchment roll, vertical); P.Köln Kopt. 1 (Pachomius, Letters 10–11a; Coptic parchment roll, vertical); P.Köln Kopt. 2 (Pachomius, Letter 8; Coptic parchment roll, vertical); P.Bodmer XXXIX (Pachomius, Letter 11b; Coptic parchment roll, vertical); private collection (Theodore, Letter 2; Coptic parchment roll, vertical). See the lists in Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 172; and Fournet, “Inventaire,” 23–24. On the individual manuscripts, see P. Angelicus Kropp, “Pap. Colon. Copt. 1: Ein Märchen als Schreibübung,” in Demotische und Koptische Texte (Papyrologica Coloniensia 2; Westdeutscher Verlag, 1968), 69–81; Alfred Hermann, “Pap. Colon. Copt. 2: Homilie in sahidischem Dialekt,” in Demotische und Koptische Texte (Papyrologica Coloniensia 2; Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1968), 82–85; Hans Quecke, “Briefe Pachoms in koptischer Sprache: Neue deutsche Übersetzung,” in Zetesis: Album amicorum door vrienden en collega's aangeboden aan Prof. Dr. E. de Strycker ter gelegenheid van zijn 65e verjaardag (Antwerpen: De Neederlandsche Boekhandel, 1973), 655–63; idem, “Ein neues Fragment der Pachombriefe in koptischer Sprache,” Orientalia 43 (1974): 66–82; idem, “Ein Brief von einem Nachfolger Pachoms (Chester Beatty Library Ms. Ac. 1486),” Orientalia 44 (1975): 426–33; idem, Die Briefe Pachoms: Griechischer Text der Handschrift W. 145 der Chester Beatty Library (Textus Patristici et Liturgici 2; Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1975); Martin Krause, “Der Erlassbrief Theodors,” in Studies Presented to Hans Jakob Polotsky (ed. Dwight W. Young; Beacon Hill, Mass.: Pirtle & Polson, 1981), 220–38; Tito Orlandi and Adalbert de Vogüé, “Nuovi Testi Copti Pacomiani: Epitres inedites d’Horsiese et de Theodore,” in Commandements du Seigneur et libération évangélique: Études monastiques proposées et discutées à Saint-Anselme, 15–17 février 1976 (ed. Jean Gribomont; Studia Anselmiana 70; Roma: Editrice Anselmiana, 1977), 241–57; Tito Orlandi, “Due rotoli copti papiracei da Dublino (Lettere di Horsiesi),” in Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Congress of Papyrology: New York, 24–31 July 1980 (ed. Roger S. Bagnall et al.; American Studies in Papyrology 23; Chico, Cal.: Scholars Press, 1981), 499–508. 42 E.g., Kasser, “Bodmer Papyri,” 49; Fournet, “Anatomie,” 12; idem, “Inventaire,” 21; cf. Anne Boud’hors, “Quelques réflexions sur la cohérence de la composante copte des P.Bodmer,” Adamantius 21 (2015): 79.

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lections that also bought other manuscripts from the Dishna Papers discovery (the Bodmer, Chester Beatty, and Cologne collections). Secondly, he points to the curious coincidence that these Pachomian letters, which were previously only attested in Jerome’s Latin translation, should suddenly turn up in a handful of previously unattested Greek and Coptic versions, all at the same time, and through the same channels, as the other manuscripts from the Dishna Papers discovery.43 Thirdly, he relates that Riyad Girgis Fam, one of the middle-men who trafficked in the Dishna Papers, described a number of small rolls as being part of the discovery, a description that corresponds well to these Pachomian rolls, especially in light of the fact that Fam also stated that the antiquities dealer Phocion Tano later told him that these rolls were “letters.”44 While the argument for including the Pachomian letters together with the rest of the Dishna Papers is thus based primarily on the common distribution among manuscript collections and the statement of Riyad Girgis Fam, the arguments for a common Pachomian provenance of the Pachomian rolls themselves is even stronger, especially when we take into consideration the rarity of rolls among Coptic manuscripts.45 Moreover, considered in isolation, it is difficult to come up with a plausible alternative provenance for these Pachomian rolls than the nearby Pachomian monasteries. Thus, if they were indeed part of the Dish43

Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 153: “Only the Latin translation has survived, copied down through the centuries for the edification of European monks. The Coptic and Greek letters have not been seen since – until, at the same time, from the same dealer, and (with but one exception) at the same repositories as the Dishna Papers, they suddenly reappeared. The inference seems inescapable that they were part of the same discovery”; Robinson, Nag Hammadi Story, 1:116: “To postulate an independent discovery of the archival copies of letters from Abbots of the Pachomian Monastery Order, which then by pure coincidence passed through the same canals to reach the same European repositories as those which obtained Dishna Papers at about the same time, is of course theoretically possible, but hardly probable. After all, the Coptic and Greek Pachomian letters had been completely unattested for 1500 years.” Fournet, “Anatomie,” 12, argues that the reason why these manuscripts ended up in the same collections was simply because these were the collections that were buying the most manuscripts in the 1950s. He also holds that the different formats and the relatively late dates (fourth– seventh century) of the Pachomian materials in relation to the other Dishna Papers (second to fifth century, but with most manuscripts dated to the fourth century) indicate different provenances (on these arguments, see the discussion below). Fournet does not, however, engage with the information from Riyad Girgis Fam that a number of rolls, later said to be letters, were also part of the Dishna Papers discovery, or the likelihood that the Pachomian materials derive from a Pachomian monastery. 44 Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 135. 45 See, e.g., Paola Buzi and Stephen Emmel, “Coptic Codicology,” in Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies: An Introduction (ed. Alessandro Bausi et al.; Hamburg: COMSt, 2015), 140–41; Paul E. Kahle, Bala’izah: Coptic Texts from Deir el-Bala’izah in Upper Egypt (2 vols.; London: Oxford University Press, 1954), 1:275.

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na Papers discovery, they provide us with a rather strong indication of a Pachomian monastic provenance for the entire collection, that is, of the Pachomian rolls (and codex) and at least a significant number of those manuscripts that have regularly been associated with this discovery.46

Comparison of the Dishna Papers and Nag Hammadi Codices Now, since it is likely that both the Dishna Papers and the Nag Hammadi Codices derive from the Pachomian communities in the vicinity of their discovery, the question presents itself whether there may be a direct connection between the Dishna Papers and the Nag Hammadi Codices. Rodolphe Kasser is doubtlessly right that, “Although the place and time of these discoveries were more or less the same, it is impossible to group them together as one and the same discovery.”47 Nevertheless, while this conclusion is amply supported by Robinson’s investigations into the discoveries of both collections, this fact does not, however, preclude the possibility that both caches of manuscripts ultimately derive from the same lateantique community, and indeed from the same collection of books. Kasser’s point, that “not a single shred belonging to the Gnostic library has been found among the Bodmer papyri and vice versa,”48 i.e., that there is no codicological overlap between the two discoveries, only indicates that the two groups of manuscripts were buried individually and found individually at separate locations. It says nothing about the possibility that the two groups of manuscripts may ultimately derive from the same group of people in late antiquity. There are intriguing points of contact between the two collections, not least of which is the fact that they were both discovered close to several of the most prominent, and earliest, Pachomian monasteries, and the fact that arguments can also be made on other grounds to connect each of them, separately, to that same monastic organization. The scope for comparison between the manuscripts of the two discoveries is wide, but within the boundaries of the present article there is only space for a brief overview of various aspects and a handful of examples.

46 In addition to the rolls and codex containing the letters of Pachomius, Theodore, and Horsiesios, I would tend to accept Kasser’s minimal list as highly likely to belong to the same discovery, while the connection of many of the items on the expanded lists of Robinson and Fournet to the core group of manuscripts are looser. 47 Kasser, “Bodmer Papyri,” 49. 48 Kasser, “Bodmer Papyri,” 49.

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Codicology and Scribal Habits The Dishna Papers consist of both papyrus and parchment manuscripts, and it is in the former that we find most of the similarities with the papyrus codices of the Nag Hammadi discovery.49 With regard to sizes and dimensions, the closest parallels are to be found between the papyrus codices. Many of the Nag Hammadi Codices are quite tall and significantly taller than they are wide.50 Especially close to the Nag Hammadi Codices among the Dishna Papers in this regard are the Menander Codex, P.Bodmer XIV– XV (ो75: Gospels of Luke and John), P.Bodmer XXIV (Psalms), P. Chester Beatty Ac. 1390 (Mathematical exercises and the Gospel of John), P.Bodmer XLI (Acts of Paul), the “Visions Codex,” and P.Bodmer XLIII (Zostrianos), as well as, to a somewhat lesser extent, P.Bodmer XXIII (Isaiah), P.Bodmer XXI+Chester Beatty Ac. 1389 (Joshua, Tobit), and P.Bodmer III (John and Genesis).51 One may note, in particular, the especially close correspondence of size and format between Nag Hammadi Codex VII (from which we have dated cartonnage fragments giving it a terminus post quem of 348) and the Bodmer Visions Codex.52 With regard to their quire-construction, the Nag Hammadi Codices are, as a collection, far more uniform than the Dishna Papers. With the single exception of Codex I, which is made up of three quires of very different size, the Nag Hammadi Codices are single-quire codices.53 With the Dish49

The following codices from the Dishna Papers discovery are made of papyrus: The Menander Codex, P.Bodmer II (ो66), P.Bodmer XIV–XV (ो75), P.Bodmer XXIV, P.Bodmer XLV+XLVI+XXVII, Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex, the Visions Codex, P.Bodmer III, P.Bodmer XVIII, P.Bodmer XXI+Chester Beatty Ac. 1389, P.Bodmer XXIII, P.Bodmer XLI, P.Bodmer XLIII, Montserrat Miscellaneous Codex, Chester Beatty Ac. 1499, Chester Beatty Ac. 1390, Chester Beatty Ac. 1493, Chester Beatty Ac. 2556, Chester Beatty XIII, Chester Beatty XIV, Chester Beatty XV, Schøyen MS 193. 50 The relation between the height and the breadth of the codex is often close to 2:1. 51 Compare the tables in James M. Robinson, “The Construction of the Nag Hammadi Codices,” in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts: In Honour of Pahor Labib (ed. Martin Krause; NHS 6; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 185, and Fournet, “Anatomie,” 14 (but note that Fournet’s nos. 5 and 16 are actually one and the same codex). For the dimensions of P.Bodmer XLIII, see Rodolphe Kasser and Philippe Luisier, “P. Bodmer XLIII: Un feuillet de Zostrien,” Mus 120:3/4 (2007): 252. 52 Their dimensions are 29.2 x 17.5cm and 28.5 x 17.5cm respectively (see Robinson, “Construction,” 185 [using its largest measurements]; Fournet, “Anatomie,” 14). On the question of dating, see below. 53 Codex I is far from a well-developed and well-planned uniform multi-quire codex. As Stephen Emmel puts it, “codex I is more like three single-quire codices bound together into a single cover than it is like the usual multi-quired codices” (“The Nag Hammadi Codices Editing Project: A Final Report,” ARCE Newsletter 104 [1978]: 10–32.). It has a large first quire, which is supplemented by two significantly smaller quires that seem to have been added by necessity due to poor planning or inadequate knowledge of the size

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na Papers the situation is more diverse, but some are similar to the Nag Hammadi Codices also in this respect, as the collection does include a number of single-quire papyrus codices, namely the Menander Codex, P.Bodmer XIV–XV (ो75), P.Bodmer XXIV (Psalms), the “Visions Codex,” Schøyen MS 193, and the Montserrat Codex. Of these, the Menander Codex, the “Visions Codex,” and P.Bodmer XIV–XV (ो75), and P.Bodmer XXIV are tall codices of a similar format to the Nag Hammadi Codices, while the Montserrat Codex and Schøyen MS 193 are short and square, as are also many of the multiple-quire codices, including the Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex.54 All the Nag Hammadi Codices and most of the papyrus codices from the Dishna discovery use the single-column format,55 and many also share notable paratextual features including the use of paragraphus marks, titles and decoration styles, colophons, insertions and insertion marks.56 Compare for instance the superscript titles of the Gospel of John in P.Bodmer II with that of the Paraphrase of Shem at the beginning of NHC VII or that of the Apocalypse of Adam in NHC V;57 the flyleaf titles of P.Bodmer XXI (Joshua), P.Bodmer XXIII (Isaiah), and NHC III (Apocryphon of John);58 the insertions and insertion marks in P.Bodmer II (John), P.Bodmer XV (John), P.Bodmer XVI (Exodus), and NHC III (Apocryphon of John);59 the of the long final tractate (Tri. Trac.) of the codex by the codex’s main scribe when he or she started copying. Tri. Trac. spans all three quires of the codex. 54 Michel Testuz tellingly comments on the similarity between Schøyen MS 193 and the Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex, that they might come from the same scriptorium (Michel Testuz, Papyrus Bodmer XIII: Méliton de Sardes, Homélie sur la Pâque. Manuscrit du IIIe siècle [Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1960], 11). 55 The exception being Schøyen MS 193, where all but the last (unidentified) text are written in two columns. 56 Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 225–30 for illustrations and discussion. 57 Compare the facsimiles of P.Bodmer II (Victor Martin and J. W. B. Barns. Papyrus Bodmer II: Supplément: Evangile de Jean chap. 14–21: Nouvelle édition augmentée et corrigée avec reproduction photographique complète du manuscrit (chap. 1–21) [Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1962]; or the colorized reproductions in Jean Zumstein, L’Évangile selon Jean [Collection Sources; Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2008]) with that of NHC VII (The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex VII [Leiden: Brill, 1972]) and NHC V (The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex V [Leiden: Brill, 1975]). 58 Compare the facsimiles of P.Bodmer XXI (Rodolphe Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer XXI: Josué VI,16-25, VII,6-XI,23, XXII,1-2,19-XXIII,7,15-XXIV,23 en sahidique [ColognyGeneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1963]) and P.Bodmer XXIII (Rodolphe Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer XXIII: Esaïe XLVII,1-LXVI,24 en sahidique [Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1965]) with that of NHC III (The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex III [Leiden: Brill, 1976]). 59 Compare the facsimiles in Zumstein, L’Évangile selon Jean; Victor Martin and Rodolphe Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer XV: Evangile de Jean chap. 1–15 (Cologny-Geneva:

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colophons in P.Bodmer XX and NHC II;60 or the cruces ansatae in NHC I and the Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex (in P.Bodmer XX).61 Several manuscripts from both collections can also be described as “miscellaneous” or “composite” codices,62 containing multiple, often quite diverse texts, sometimes in different dialects (or with different dialectal traits or mixtures),63 or even in different languages as is the case with some of the Dishna Papers.64 Language There is a diversity of languages and dialects represented in these manuscripts. The Nag Hammadi Codices are certainly more uniform than the Dishna Papers in this respect, as they are all written in the Coptic language, albeit in different dialects, comprising texts copied in Sahidic and Lycopolitan (Subachmimic) in various states of mixture.65 The Dishna Papers, on the other hand, do not only contain Coptic manuscripts, but also include numerous manuscripts in Greek, including one codex with both Greek and Coptic texts together.66 There are no completely Latin codices represented among the Dishna Papers, but there are two bilingual codices Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1961); Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer XVI; and Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex III. 60 Compare the facsimiles in Victor Martin, Papyrus Bodmer XX: Apologie de Philéas évêque de Thmouis (Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1964); and The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex II (Leiden: Brill, 1974). 61 Compare the facsimiles in The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex I (Leiden: Brill, 1974); and Martin, Papyrus Bodmer XX. 62 On Greek miscellaneous codices, see Edoardo Crisci, “I più antichi codici miscellanei greci: Materiali per una riflessione,” Segno e testi 2 (2004): 109–44. On the terminological question, see Brice C. Jones, “The Bodmer ‘Miscellaneous’ Codex and the Crosby-Schøyen Codex Ms 193: A New Proposal.” Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism 8 (2011–12): 9–20. 63 Referring to this composite aspect of the Nag Hammadi Codices, Wolf-Peter Funk has described them as “strongly customized books.” See Funk, “The Linguistic Aspect of Classifying the Nag Hammadi Codices,” in Les textes de Nag Hammadi et le problème de leur classification: Actes du colloque tenu à Québec du 15 au 19 Septembre 1993 (ed. Louis Painchaud and Anne Pasquier; BCNH.É 3; Québec: les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1995), 146. The clearest example among the Nag Hammadi Codices of a codex with different dialects is NHC XI, which contains texts in either Lycopolitan (Subachmimic) or Sahidic. 64 This is the case with the Montserrat Codex, Chester Beatty Ac. 1499, and Chester Beatty Ac. 1390. 65 On the dialects of the Nag Hammadi Codices, see Funk, “Linguistic Aspect”; Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 214–16. 66 P.Chester Beatty Ac. 1390, containing mathematical exercises in Greek and John 10:7–13:38 in Lycopolitan (Subachmimic) Coptic. See Brashear et al., eds., Chester Beatty Codex Ac. 1390.

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containing both Greek and Latin texts, in a similar fashion to the bilingual Greek-Coptic codices.67 Finally, the range of Coptic dialects represented among the Dishna Papers is also wider, as it includes such unique items as the very early example of Bohairic represented by P.Bodmer III,68 and the so-called dialect P of P.Bodmer VI. 69 While this diversity of languages and language forms represented in the two discoveries might lead one to question their common origins, the linguistic variety actually makes sense in light of the socio-linguistic makeup of the early Pachomian monastic communities, which consisted of monks recruited not only from the immediate Upper-Egyptian environment, but from all over Egypt and beyond.70 In a community consisting of such a diverse group of people we should not expect linguistic uniformity. Scribal Collaboration When we consider the practices of manuscript production, we see a similar pattern of diversity across the two collections, but with some notable overlaps. First of all, it is worth noting that scribal collaboration is amply attested among both the Nag Hammadi Codices and the Dishna Papers. Nag Hammadi Codices I, II, and XI are all the work of more than one scribe, and there are cases where the same scribe worked on more than one codex, such as the second hand of Codex I, who also copied the first half 67

The Montserrat Miscellaneous Codex (Cicero, Catilines in Latin; Latin Hymn on the Virgin Mary; mythological drawing; Greek anaphora; Alcestis in Latin; story about Emperor Hadrian in Latin; and Greek word-list) and P.Chester Beatty Ac. 1499 (GrecoLatin word-list on the Pauline epistles and Greek Grammar). On the similarity between these codices, see Sofía Torallas Tovar and Klaas A. Worp, To the Origins of Greek Stenography (P.Monts.Roca I) (Orientalia Montserratensia 1; Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2006), 16 n. 6; Juan Gil and Sofía Torallas Tovar, Hadrianvs: P.Monts.Roca III (Orientalia Montserratensia 5; Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2010), 27, 29, 24 n. 13. 68 P.Bodmer III is by far the oldest Bohairic codex in existence. It has been edited by Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer III; with corrections in idem, “Le Papyrus Bodmer III réexaminé: Amélioration de sa transcription,” JCoptS 3 (2001): 81–112, plates 9–13; and more recently by Daniel B. Sharp, Papyrus Bodmer III: An Early Coptic Version of the Gospel of John and Genesis 1–4:2 (ANTF 48; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016). The latter edition is especially useful for its inclusion of high-quality color images of the entire manuscript. On the grammar of the Codex, see, e.g., Kasser, “Le système de préfixes verbaux et les graphies ⲙⲟ⸗ pour ⲙⲙⲟ⸗ (acc.) dans le Papyrus Bodmer III,” JCoptS 3 (2001): 153–67. 69 On P.Bodmer VI, see Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer VI; idem, “Le dialecte protosaïdique de Thèbes,” APF 28 (1982): 67–81; idem, “Dialect P (or Proto-Theban),” in The Coptic Encyclopedia (8 vols.; ed. Aziz S. Atiya; New York: Macmillan, 1991), 8:82–87. 70 Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 48–49, 94; SBo 91; André Hurst, Olivier Reverdin, Jean Rudhardt, eds. Papyrus Bodmer XXIX: Vision de Dorothéos (ColognyGenève: Fondation Martin Bodmer, 1984), 7.

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of Codex XI, and the second hand of Codex XI, who also copied the entire Codex VII. In addition, as Emmel has suggested, the primary hand of Codex II may well be the same as the hand that copied Codex XIII, and the second hand of Codex II may perhaps be identified with the scribe of Codex XII.71 We see a similar degree of collaboration among the Dishna Papers. No less than eight codices feature the work of more than one scribe.72 Among these there is a very interesting parallel to the puzzling case of the second scribe of Nag Hammadi Codex II, who for some reason copied only the first eight lines of page 47 of the manuscript.73 In P.Bodmer III, a Coptic papyrus codex containing the Gospel of John and the first chapters of Genesis (1:1–4:2), a second scribe copied a single page (p. 53 = f. 27v).74 Unlike the case with the second scribe of Nag Hammadi Codex I, who copied the entire fourth tractate (the Treatise on the Resurrection), and who evidently did this after the first scribe had continued (and perhaps even fin71 On the scribal hands of the Nag Hammadi Codices, see esp. Emmel, “A Final Report”; Michael A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 243; Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 209; Pasquale Orsini, “Le scritture dei codici di Nag Hammadi: Il punto di vista paleografico,” in Oltre la scrittura: Variazioni sul tema per Guglielmo Cavallo (ed. Daniele Bianconi and Lucio Del Corso; Dossiers Byzantins 8; Paris: Centre d’études byzantines, néo-hellénistiques et sud-est européennes, 2008), 95–121. While Orsini recognizes the scribal collaboration on codices I, VII, and XI and the great palaeographical similarity between NHC IV, V, VI, VIII, and IX, he claims that “Tutti gli altri codici, invece, fanno ciascuno storia a sé” (ibid., 119). However, Emmel’s suggestions regarding possible scribal overlaps between NHC II and XIII, and between NHC II and XII, must also be taken into consideration, as well as the codicological connection between NHC VI and XIII, the latter having been put into the covers of the former in late antiquity. On the possible rationale behind the inclusion of XIII in VI, see Michael A. Williams and Lance Jenott, “Inside the Covers of Codex VI,” in Coptica-GnosticaManichaica: Mélanges offerts à Wolf-Peter Funk (ed. Louis Painchaud and Paul-Hubert Poirier; BCNH.É 7; Québec: les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2006), 1025–52. On the scribe(s) of NHC II and XIII see now also Williams and Coblentz in the present volume. 72 These are P.Bodmer III; P.Bodmer XXI + Chester Beatty ac. 1389; P.Bodmer XLV–XLVII+XXVII; P.Bodmer V+X+XI+VII+XIII+XII+XX+IX+VIII; P.Bodmer XIX; P.Bodmer XXIV; P.Bodmer XXV+IV+XXVI; and P.Bodmer XXIX–XXXVIII. See Pasquale Orsini, “I papiri Bodmer: scritture e libri,” Adamantius 21 (2015): 62. 73 These lines contain parts of Gos. Thom. logia 78 and 79, starting in the middle of a word and ending in the middle of a sentence. See The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex II (Leiden: Brill, 1974), and Bentley Layton, ed., and Thomas O. Lambdin, trans., “The Gospel According to Thomas,” in Gospel According to Thomas, Gospel According to Philip, Hypostasis of the Archons, and Indexes (vol. 1 of Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7 Together with XIII,2*, Brit. Lib. Or.4926(1), and P. Oxy. 1, 654, 655; ed. Bentley Layton; NHS 20; Leiden: Brill, 1989), 82. 74 See the photograph of this manuscript page in Sharp, Papyrus Bodmer III, 144 (with transcription on page 145), and the discussion in ibid., 35–37.

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ished) his work on the codex by copying the fifth and final text (the Tripartite Tractate) and leaving several preceding pages blank,75 it is not entirely clear whether the second scribes of NHC II and P.Bodmer III did their work after the primary scribes had finished their work on the codices and left blank space for them, or whether they were simply filling in for a short period of time during that work. However, while it is theoretically possible that NHC II’s scribe A for some reason left exactly enough blank space for scribe B to fill in eight lines at the top of page 47 later, the fact that scribe B’s eight lines start in the middle of a word and end in the middle of a sentence render such a scenario unlikely. It is more probable that scribe B filled in for scribe A while the latter paused, the reason for which we can only speculate.76 In P.Bodmer III, scribe A left all of page 53 for scribe B, where the latter copied John 7:51–8:16 (minus 7:53–8:11).77 Rodolphe Kasser has observed that the writing of scribe B, which has palaeographical traits that he would place in the Middle Ages, makes it unlikely that this page was copied at the same time as the rest of the codex, since he regards the handwriting of scribe A to derive from as early as the fourth century.78 A scenario where page 53 were copied several centuries after the rest of the codex is highly unlikely, however, as page 53 is actually part of a bifolium where scribe A filled in the three other pages. There seems to be no good reason why scribe A would have left a page empty that ended up corresponding exactly to the space needed for the text copied by scribe B, which fits perfectly between the two adjacent pages copied by scribe A.79 And why would someone have left a page in this codex blank for several centuries, 75

See esp. the analysis of Michael A. Williams, “Interpreting the Nag Hammadi Library as ‘collection(s)’ in the History of ‘Gnosticism(s)’,” in Les textes de Nag Hammadi et le problème de leur classification: Actes du colloque tenu à Québec du 15 au 19 Septembre 1993 (ed. Louis Painchaud and Anne Pasquier; BCNH.É 3; Québec: les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1995), 11–13; idem, Rethinking “Gnosticism”, 249. The fact that the second scribe copied his text only after the first scribe continued copying the following text is suggested by the fact that more than half the page is left blank at the end of the text copied by the second scribe. 76 One possible reason that may conceivably have necessitated such a pause would be a situation where Gos. Thom. was being dictated to more than one scribe at the same time, and the scribe of NHC II had to take a short break. The second scribe filling in for him would in such a scenario have prevented the dictator and the other scribe(s) from having to stop and wait for him to resume. 77 With the exception of Codex Bezae, there is in fact no manuscript evidence of John 7:53–8:11 (the so-called Pericope Adulterae) until the eighth century. See Jennifer Knust and Tommy Wasserman, “Earth Accuses Earth: Tracing What Jesus Wrote on the Ground,” HTR 103:4 (2010): 424. 78 Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer III, 1:v. 79 See Sharp, Papyrus Bodmer III, 35–36.

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right in the middle of the Gospel of John, one of the most well-attested texts at the time when this codex was in use? It is far more likely, then, that as with the case of the second scribe of NHC II, scribe B of P.Bodmer III took over for a short while when scribe A paused for some unknown reason.80 This of course implies that the palaeographically based dating of both scribes of P.Bodmer III81 must be wrong.82 Kasser himself points to a grammatical feature found in scribe B’s work that is not attested in the Middle Ages, and highlights the uncertainty of palaeographical dating.83 As in the multiple-scribe codices NHC I and XI, the interventions of the secondary scribes in NHC II and P.Bodmer III show that the copying of these codices were collaborative ventures. Of particular note in this regard among the Dishna Papers, however, are the so-called Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex84 and the so-called Visions Codex.85 In the former, perhaps as many as six scribes collaborated on the copying of the ten texts contained in this multiple-quire codex, while in the latter we find six scribes sharing the work on one single-quire codex also containing ten texts.86 Pasquale Orsini, who dates the Visions Codex to the beginning of the fifth century, concludes that the form of collaboration between the scribes and the thematic coherence of the selected texts points to a religious com80

See Sharp, Papyrus Bodmer III, 35–36. Since the codex has not been completely preserved there may have been even more scribes who worked on it. Indeed, a fragment that may be part of the codex contains the writing of a third scribe on one side. See Sharp, Papyrus Bodmer III, 36–37. 82 In the view of Daniel Sharp, who also cites private communication with Hans Förster, the second hand should not be dated later than the first. See Sharp, Papyrus Bodmer III, 36. 83 Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer III, 1:vi. 84 P.Bodmer V+X+XI+VII+XIII+XII+XX+IX+VIII. See Michel Testuz, Papyrus Bodmer V: Nativité de Marie (Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1958); idem, Papyrus Bodmer X-XII: X: Correspondance apocryphe des Corinthiens et de l’apôtre Paul; XI: Onzième Ode de Salomon; XII: Fragment d’un Hymne liturgique. Manuscrit du IIIe siècle (Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1959); idem, Papyrus Bodmer VII–IX; idem, Papyrus Bodmer XIII; Martin, Papyrus Bodmer XX. 85 P.Bodmer XXXVIII+XXIX+XXX–XXXVII. See Antonio Carlini and Luigi Giaccone, eds., Papyrus Bodmer XXXVIII: Erma: Il Pastore (Ia–IIIa visione) (ColognyGenève: Fondation Martin Bodmer, 1991); Hurst, Reverdin, and Rudhardt, eds., Papyrus Bodmer XXIX; André Hurst, “Codex des Visions”: poèmes divers: Papyri Bodmer XXX– XXXVII [Munich: K. G. Saur, 1999]). 86 Codex Visionum is a papyrus codex written in Greek, consisting of the first three visions from the Shepherd of Hermas, the Vision of Dorotheos, and various shorter visionary texts. For descriptions of the codex, see Kasser and Cavallo, “Description et datation,” 99–120; and Kasser, Cavallo, and Van Haelst, “Nouvelle Description.” Regarding the sequence of the texts in the codex, two different arrangements have been suggested. Compare Kasser and Cavallo, “Description et datation,” 101, with Kasser, Cavallo, and Van Haelst, “Nouvelle Description,” 107. 81

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munity having produced the book for internal use,87 a description that fits the context of the type of book-production taking place in the nearby Pachomian monasteries exactly in the period to which Orsini dates the codex. Interestingly, Van Haelst, who assigns a somewhat earlier date to the codex, in the second half of the fourth century, detects Coptic influence in the handwriting, and sees it as the work of Coptic students trying to familiarize themselves with Greek texts.88 On this point the experts sharply disagree, however. Unlike Orsini and Van Haelst, Guglielmo Cavallo regards the hands as professionally trained and dates the manuscript, also on palaeographical grounds, to the beginning of the fifth century.89 In any case, the scribal collaboration, the Christian visionary contents, the likely intended readership internal to the community, and the possible Coptic palaeographical influence, are all features that are compatible with what we know about the early Pachomian communities. Palaeography Looking at the scribal hands there are also notable similarities that cut across the two collections.90 NHC III, for example, is remarkably close to P.Bodmer II,91 the handwriting of P.Bodmer XLI is close to NHC X,92 and close similarities can also be observed between the Bodmer Visions Codex and the Nag Hammadi Codices. Now, the Visions Codex was penned by multiple scribes, but while for instance the alphas of most of its scribes are certainly very different from those we find in the Nag Hammadi Codices, the palaeographical style of one of them, the scribe of P.Bodmer XXXII and XXXIII, on the other hand, is close to that of scribe A of Nag Hammadi Codex XI, who was also scribe B of Codex I.93 87

Orsini, “I papiri Bodmer,” 67. Kasser, Cavallo, and Van Haelst, “Nouvelle Description,” 124. 89 Kasser, Cavallo, and Van Haelst, “Nouvelle Description,” 123–24. 90 For palaeographical analyses of the two collections, see Orsini, “Le scritture dei codici di Nag Hammadi,” 95–121; idem, “I papiri Bodmer”; Schubert, “Les papyrus Bodmer”; Brent Nongbri, “The Limits of Palaeographic Dating of Literary Papyri: Some Observations on the Date and Provenance of P.Bodmer II (P66),” MH 71 (2014): 1–35; idem, “Reconsidering the Place of P.Bodmer XIV–XV (P75) in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament,” JBL 135:2 (2016): 405–37. 91 This similarity has also been observed by Brent Nongbri (private conversation). See also Nongbri, Excavating God’s Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming). 92 Compare the facsimile edition of P.Bodmer XLI (Kasser, Rodolphe, and Philippe Luisier. “Le Papyrus Bodmer XLI en édition princeps: L’épisode d’Éphèse des Acta Pauli en Copte et en traduction,” Mus 117 [2004]: 371–84) with that of NHC X (The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex IX and X [Leiden: Brill, 1977]). 93 Compare the facisimile edition of P.Bodmer XXXII and XXXIII (Hurst, “Codex des Visions”) with that of NHC XI (The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: 88

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There are also similarities between codices of both collections and the literary papyri reused as cartonnage in the covers of certain codices both from the Dishna Papers and the Nag Hammadi Codices, which strengthen the possibility that at least some of the reused materials were manufactured in the same milieu as some of the preserved codices themselves. P.Bodmer LI verso, for instance, which derives from the cartonnage of P.Bodmer XXIII, has been compared to P.Bodmer II.94 Then there are the fragments of a Genesis codex from the cartonnage of NHC VII. With the dimensions of its original folios estimated at 28–29 x 13–14 cm,95 this Genesis codex would have been almost exactly the same size as NHC XI, and falls into Eric Turner’s codicological type 8 together with Nag Hammadi Codices I, II, VI, X, XI, and XIII, as well as a number of Dishna codices, namely P.Bodmer XIV–XV (ो75), P.Bodmer XXIV, Chester Beatty Ac. 1390, and the “Bodmer Menander codex” (P.Bodmer XXV+P.Barc. 45+P.Bodmer IV+XXVI+P.Köln I 3+VIII 331).96 Because of the high quality of the handwriting and papyrus, Kasser concluded that it must have been a valuable manuscript, which was recycled only after it had become worn-out from use.97 More importantly, Kasser suggests that it could well have been made in the same scriptorium as the Nag Hammadi Codices and/or some of the Dishna manuscripts,98 which in turn suggests internal recycling of papyrus in the book-production taking place within the monastic community. Such internal recycling is also indicated by the monastic letters reused as cartonnage in the Nag Hammadi Codices.99 Finally it is worth noting that P.Bodmer XLIII, a single leaf of a codex containing Zostrianos (a text known from NHC VIII), that has been folded, probably for use as an amulet, also bears such a strong palaeographical and codicological resemblance to many of the Nag Hammadi Codices and

Codex XI, XII and XIII [Leiden: Brill, 1973], 6–50) and NHC I (The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex I [Leiden: Brill, 1977], 47–54). 94 Schubert, “Les papyrus Bodmer,” 45, although he has later suggested other manuscripts as even closer matches (Schubert, “P.Bodmer LI verso: restes d’un traité médical ou ethnographique?” MH 73 [2016]: 3). For the other side of this manuscript, P.Bodmer LI recto, see Anna Di Bitonto Kasser, “P. Bodmer LI recto: esercizio di divisione sillabica,” MH 55 (1998): 112–18. 95 Rodolphe Kasser, “Fragments du livre biblique de la Genèse cachés dans la reliure d’un codex gnostique,” Mus 85 (1972): 71. 96 Eric. G. Turner, The Typology of the Early Codex (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977), 20. 97 Kasser, “Fragments du livre biblique,” 68–69, 76. 98 Kasser, “Fragments du livre biblique,” 80. 99 Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 139–45. Compare, e.g., the palaeographical features of NHC VIII with letter C16 from the cartonnage of the same codex (I am grateful to Paula Tutty for pointing this out to me).

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Dishna Papers that it seems likely that it too may have been produced together with either group, and thus derives from the same community.100 A Single Collection? Could the Nag Hammadi Codices and the Dishna Papers all derive from the same monastic community? The dependence of a majority of the texts in the Nag Hammadi Codices upon Old and New Testament Scripture is evident in the Nag Hammadi texts themselves, many of which are constantly engaged in deep and thoroughgoing scriptural interpretation.101 From this perspective it is only to be expected that the community that produced and read the Nag Hammadi Codices would also own codices containing canonical Scripture. I would go so far as to say that the owners of the Nag Hammadi Codices are unlikely not to have possessed codices containing canonical biblical texts too. Moreover, considering the biblical reception on display in the Nag Hammadi Codices in light of the versions of the biblical texts that have been preserved as parts of the Dishna Papers discovery, may even give us additional insights into some aspects of this exegetical process. It is clear, for instance, from a reading of the Nag Hammadi Codices that the Gospel of John and the first chapters of Genesis constitute some of the most important Scriptural intertexts to many of the Nag Hammadi treatises that try to explain the deeper significance of these scriptures. It is thus easy to imagine the owners of the Nag Hammadi Codices also owning and reading P.Bodmer III, the fascinating codex containing the entire Gospel of John and Gen 1:1–4:2 in early Bohairic.102 In many ways P.Bodmer III could be seen as the perfect companion volume to the Nag Hammadi Codices.103 Moreover, when we look closer at the form of the text preserved in P.Bodmer III, it becomes even more apparent how well it fits together with the Nag Hammadi Codices. Several Nag Hammadi texts take for granted 100

On this item, see Kasser and Luisier, “P. Bodmer XLIII.” It is among the less secure items of the Dishna Papers cache, and was apparently incorporated into the Bodmer collection much later than the rest of the collection’s items from the Dishna Papers discovery (ibid., 251). It may thus have been discovered separately. 101 Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 83–84. Cf., e.g., Hugo Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth: Cognitive Poetics and Transformational Soteriology in the Gospel of Philip and the Exegesis on the Soul (NHMS 73; Leiden: Brill, 2010), for analysis of the biblical reception on display in Exeg. Soul and Gos. Phil. from NHC II. 102 On P.Bodmer III, the oldest Bohairic codex known to us, see Sharp, Papyrus Bodmer III, and the discussion above. 103 This has also been noted by Edouard Massaux, “Quelques variants importantes de P Bodmer III et leur accointance avec la gnose,” New Testament Studies 5:3 (1959): 212, who concludes, based on an analysis of variant readings of the Gospel of John in P.Bodmer III, that this codex was probably copied in a “Gnostic” milieu (ibid., 210–12).

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that the first human, whose creation is described in Gen 1:26–27, was an androgynous being.104 In the Exegesis on the Soul (NHC II,6), for example, the creation narrated in Gen 1:26–27 is understood to refer specifically to the creation of the soul. The original state of the soul, which is described as a woman throughout the Exegesis on the Soul, is said to have been “male-female (i.e. androgynous) in its likeness” (ⲟⲩϩⲟⲩⲧⲥϩⲓⲙⲉ ⲧⲉ ϩⲙ̄ⲡⲉⲥⲉⲓⲛⲉ).105 While the allusion to Gen 1:27 is clear even with the Septuagint wording, as preserved in Codex Alexandrinus, ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ ἐποίησεν αὐτούς (“male and female he created them”), it becomes even stronger in light of the wording of P.Bodmer III, ⲛϩⲱⲟⲩⲧⲥϩⲓⲙⲓ ⲁϥⲑⲁⲙⲓⲱⲟⲩ (“male-female he created them”). The latter reading makes for an even closer connection between the male and the female, and may thus be taken as an even stronger indication of primordial androgyny.106 Compare the reading of the later Bohairic text, ⲁϥⲑⲁⲙⲓⲟϥ ⲛ̇ⲟⲩϩⲱⲟⲩⲧ ⲛⲉⲙⲟⲩⲥϩⲓⲙⲓ (“he created him as a male and a female”),107 which does not create as close an intertext to the Exegesis on the Soul as does P.Bodmer III. The human being is created ϩⲟⲩⲧⲥϩⲓⲙⲉ (“male-female”) in P.Bodmer III’s version of Gen 1:27, and likewise the soul exists originally as ϩⲟⲩⲧⲥϩⲓⲙⲉ (“male-female”) in the Exegesis on the Soul.108 Contents Despite the fact that there is, as we have seen, good reasons to separately link both the Nag Hammadi Codices and the Dishna Papers to the Pachomian koinonia, there have nevertheless been signficant obstacles to considering the possibility of a common provenance, or even direct comparison between the two collections and their contents. Most importantly it has been argued that the contents of the Nag Hammadi Codices and the Dishna Papers are too dissimilar to allow for a common provenance. It is certainly true that the differences in contents are striking, and there is hardly any overlap between the two collections in terms of their respective treatises (the fragments of a Genesis codex from the cartonnage of NHC VII being an important exception, as well as the apocalypse of Zostrianos if P.Bodmer XLIII was part of the Dishna Papers

104 See Ap. John, Eugnostos, Soph. Jes. Chr., Hyp. Arch., Orig. World, Exeg. Soul., Apoc. Adam, Teach. Silv., Trim. Prot. 105 Exeg. Soul. 127.24–25 (Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 446). 106 Sharp, Papyrus Bodmer III, 332 (photo), 333 (transcription). 107 Paul de Lagarde, Der Pentateuch koptisch (Leipzig: Teubner, 1867), 3. 108 Further analysis of P.Bodmer III’s text of John and Genesis, and of other biblical texts from the Dishna Papers, in relation to Nag Hammadi texts remains a desideratum.

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discovery).109 It is less clear, however, what conclusions should be drawn from this fact. The fact that there is no overlap in terms of codicological units between the Dishna Papers and the Nag Hammadi Codices, i.e., that there is no manuscript that is distributed across the two collections, as is the case with some of the manuscripts from the Dishna Papers discovery which ended up divided between several collections,110 does not tell us anything about the possibility of a common provenance in late antiquity. What it does indicate, however, is that the two collections were buried and discovered separately from each other. Moreover, the minimal overlap between the two discoveries in terms of their textual contents, which might at first sight seem like a stronger argument against a common provenance, only indicates that the selection criteria for the two groups of manuscripts were different. They may simply have been selected for burial at different times and for different reasons. First of all, there is no reason to expect that either the Nag Hammadi Codices or the Dishna Papers by themselves constitute complete bookcollections or “libraries.” Both separately and together, the Nag Hammadi Codices and the Dishna Papers appear to be too random in their selection of texts, not least in their selection of canonical biblical texts, to be considered as the contents of a complete book collection or collections. There are simply too many texts missing that one would expect to have been part of such a complete collection. Where are the canonical letters of Paul for instance?111 If we instead regard them as two groups of manuscripts excerpted from a larger collection at different times using different selection criteria, the differences in the overall constitution of the contents of the respective jars become less puzzling. The heightening church-political tensions in Egypt in the fourth and fifth centuries may well have been a factor in this process. For while not all the Nag Hammadi texts would necessarily have been deemed heretical, the lack of any non-controversial codices, such as biblical codices like 109

See n. 100 above. E.g., 𝔓66, which ended up mostly in the Bodmer Library (P.Bodmer II), but also partly in the Chester Beatty Library (Chester Beatty Ac. 2555) and the Cologne University Library (P. Colon. inv. 4274/4298). 111 Apart from the beginning of Romans, included at the end of P.Bodmer XIX, and a part of 2 Corinthians in P.Bodmer XLII, the Pauline letters are absent from the Dishna Papers. However, the Greek-Latin word-list of the Pauline Epistles present in Chester Beatty Ac. 1499 (included in the Dishna Papers discovery by Robinson, but not by Kasser) certainly indicates that the Pauline Epistles were represented as parts of the same collection. On this codex, see Alfons Wouters, The Chester Beatty Codex Ac. 1499: A Graeco-Latin Lexicon on the Pauline Epistles and a Greek Grammar (Chester Beatty Monographs 12. Leuven: Peeters, 1988). 110

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P.Bodmer XIV–XV,112 among the contents of this jar, and the inclusion of potentially objectionable materials in all of the Nag Hammadi Codices suggest that they may have been buried as a result of a purge of heretical books from the monasteries in the area. Several such purges are wellattested: the Pachomian abbot Theodore made his monks translate into Coptic Athanasius’ anti-heretical list of canonical biblical books from the Festal Letter written in 367, giving it the status of a monastic rule;113 and in the late 440s, a purge of heretical books from Upper-Egyptian monasteries was ordered by archbishop Dioscorus in a letter to the powerful monastic leader Shenoute and three bishops.114 The Nag Hammadi Codices may simply have been selected for burial so as to avoid having them confiscated by monastic or ecclesiastical authorities. If monks, like Sansnos or Aphrodisios, whom we meet in the Nag Hammadi cartonnage documents,115 were copying, reading, editing, or even authoring some of the texts in the Nag Hammadi Codices, this may have been quite uncontroversial within the monastic community or network of communities in the earliest phases of Pachomian monasticism, as has been suggested.116 Nevertheless, if it were not problematic from the 112 Victor Martin and Rodolphe Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer XIV: Evangile de Luc chap. 3–24 (Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1961); Martin and Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer XV. 113 SBo 189. Cf. Louis Théophile Lefort, “Théodore de Tabennèsi et la lettre pascale de St-Athanase sur le canon de la bible,” Mus 29 (1910): 205–16. 114 On this letter, see Herbert Thompson, “Dioscorus and Shenoute,” in Recueil d’études égyptologiques dédiées à la mémoire de Jean-François Champollion (Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études 234; Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion, 1922), 367–76; Aloys Grillmeier, “La ‘Peste d’Origène’: Soucis du patriarche d’Alexandrie dus à l’apparition d’origénistes en Haute Egypte (444–451),” in Alexandrina: Hellénisme, judaïsme et christianisme à Alexandrie: Mélanges offerts au P. Claude Mondésert (Paris: Cerf, 1987), 221–37; Hugo Lundhaug, “Shenoute’s Heresiological Polemics and Its Context(s),” in Invention, Rewriting, Usurpation: Discursive Fights Over Religious Traditions in Antiquity (ed. Jörg Ulrich, Anders-Christian Jacobsen, and David Brakke; ECCA 11; Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2012), 239–61; idem, “Origenism in Fifth-Century Upper Egypt: Shenoute of Atripe and the Nag Hammadi Codices,” in Studia Patristica LXIV: Papers Presented at the Sixteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2011: Vol. 12: Ascetica; Litrugica; Orientalia; Critica et Philologica (ed. Markus Vinzent; Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 217–28; Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 36–38, 175–76. For the idea that the Nag Hammadi Codices constitute the result of a purge of heretical books from a larger collection, see also Alberto Camplani, “Per la cronologia di testi valentiniani: il Trattato Tripartito e la crisi Ariana,” Cassiodorus 1 (1995): 178; Dechow in the present volume. 115 Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 46–54. 116 Most notably by James E. Goehring, “New Frontiers in Pachomian Studies,” in The Roots of Egyptian Christianity (ed. Birger A. Pearson and James E. Goehring; SAC; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 236–57; idem, “Monastic Diversity.”

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very beginning to own, read, or produce such books in the monasteries, it would certainly not take long until it became so, and from that time the circulation of books like these may indeed have become an underground activity.117 Now the situation may of course have varied across the Pachomian monasteries, and it may have varied with time. Some monastic leaders may have been more lenient than others, and at certain times a liberal attitude towards reading and book-collection may have been more difficult to uphold than at other times. When Dioscorus demanded in the 440s that all monasteries and caves in Upper Egypt be searched, and that all heretical books be removed, sent to him, and condemned,118 a liberal stance towards the possession of texts like the Apocryphon of John is likely to have been problematic. Yet this text continued to circulate in monasteries long after Dioscorus’s time. One of the codices in which it is found, P.Berol. 8502, whose binding bears the owner’s mark of an abbot, was probably part of a monastic collection at least as late as the sixth century.119 But with time, many of the texts included in the Nag Hammadi Codices would become increasingly problematic as monastic reading matter. In the course of the late fourth and into the fifth century such texts would become increasingly suspect, and it is clear from several monastic writings that the circulation of doctrinally dangerous reading matter was regarded as a problem. In Shenoute’s monastic federation, for instance, a free flow of literature was unacceptable. In his Canon 5 he specifies that all books and letters entering the monastery would have to be cleared by the monastery’s leader, and that everyone who would like to bring written matter into the monastery should report to him.120 He also prescribes monthly inspections of the individual houses within his monasteries, specifying searches of the

117

See, e.g., Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 205. Dioscorus, Ep. Sin. XZ 73 (Henri Munier, Manuscrits coptes [Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire 9201–9304; Cairo: Imprimerie de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1916], 148–49); Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 176. 119 Myriam Krutzsch and Günter Poethke, “Der Einband des koptisch-gnostischen Kodex Papyrus Berolinensis 8502,” Forschungen und Berichte 24 (1984): 37–40; Myriam Krutzsch, “Beobachtungen zur Herstellungstechnik früher gnostischer Kodizes,” in Zugänge zur Gnosis: Akten zur Tagung der Patristischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft vom 02.– 05.01.2011 in Berlin-Spandau (ed. Christoph Markschies and Johannes van Oort; Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 285–93, 347–52; Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 163–64. Krutzsch and Poethke hold the production of the original cover, which was later reworked to be used as the cover of P.Berol. 8502, to have been made no earlier than the sixth century. 120 Shenoute, You, God the Eternal, XS 385–86 (Leipoldt, Sinuthii, 4:72). 118

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niches, where the books were kept, to ensure that no one had “taken anything into his cell against the established rule.”121 Even earlier, in the second half of the fourth century, and closer to where the Dishna Papers and the Nag Hammadi Codices were discovered, the Pachomian archimandrite Horsiesios described how monks would sometimes have illegal contents in their niches and quickly run out and bury it when the monastic superior came to inspect.122 Such an inspection may well have been what once prompted someone to put the Nag Hammadi Codices in a jar and bury them at the Jabal al-Tarif, within sight of their monastery (probably either Sheneset or Pbow). In that case, the criteria for the selection of these particular books would simply be their theologically problematic contents, while biblical and other literature in the monks’ possession that they were allowed to read would have remained in their niches for the time being. The Dishna Papers, on the other hand, can hardly have been hidden as a result of a theologically motivated purge of heretical books. Their contents are more diverse and much less controversial, comprising biblical and classical texts and only a small number of apocryphal writings.123 Moreover, they are also far more diverse in terms of their codicology, palaeography, language, and date. The Dishna Papers simply span a more diverse corpus of texts and codices, and probably a longer chronological range, than the Nag Hammadi Codices. Indeed, on the basis of the common dating of the Dishna manuscripts, many of these codices seem to have been in use for a significantly longer period of time before eventually being buried. It must be noted, however, that this factor needs to be reassessed in light of recent arguments to the effect that most, perhaps all, of the codices 121 Shenoute, You, God the Eternal, XS 336 (Johannes Leipoldt, Sinuthii Archimandritae: Vita et Opera Omnia [3 vols.; CSCO 41, 42, 73, Scriptores Coptici 1, 2, 5; Paris: Imprimérie nationale, 1906–1913], 4:58): “Twelve times a year the Elder shall go into all the houses of the congregation, once a month, and search all the cells within them and every niche (ϣⲟⲩϣⲧ) and every vessel that receives their share that is put into them, so that he may know whether they have more than the established limit or whether one has done an impious act, having taken anything into his cell against the established rule.” 122 Horsiesios, Instr. 7.10: “They have filled their niches with every transgression. The word of the prophet has been fulfilled by them: ‘Death has arisen in your niches’ (Jer 9:21). And sometimes, moreover, it is made known that the superior is coming in to search the niches, and the abominations of Israel (cf. Ezek 8:1–18) are in them. They run hastily and bring them out from the niches to bury them in the ground or to throw them away” (Coptic text in Louis Théophile Lefort, ed., Œuvres de S. Pachôme et de ses disciples [CSCO 159, Scriptores Coptici 23; Leuven: L. Durbecq, 1956], 78–79). 123 The included apocryphal texts are the Acts of Paul (P.Bodmer XLI), the Nativity of Mary (P.Bodmer V), the Aporyphal Correspondence between Paul and the Corinthians (P.Bodmer X), the Apocalypse of Elijah (Chester Beatty Ac. 1493), and possibly Zostrianos (P.Bodmer XLIII).

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most securely associated with the Dishna discovery might simply be products of the fourth and fifth centuries.124 Nevertheless, evidence of wear and repairs made to several of the Dishna codices indicate that they were in use for a longer period of time than the Nag Hammadi Codices.125 So what was the reason behind the eventual burial of the Dishna Papers, if it was not on account of their contents? Robinson has suggested that it may have been due to the church-political conflicts of the sixth or seventh centuries,126 but it could also simply have been prompted by a raid on the monastery, and not necessarily motivated by doctrinal conflict. Dates The sixth or seventh centuries are often referred to as the time when the Dishna Papers were buried, but on what evidence is this based? When making this assumption, Robinson seems to have been chiefly motivated by the fact that the presumably latest manuscripts of the Dishna Papers, some of the Pachomian rolls, have been assigned dates in the sixth and seventh centuries. However, as these datings are less secure than commonly acknowledged, I would caution against placing too much weight on them. It is not entirely clear why most of the Pachomian rolls, which have been palaeographically dated to the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries (except for the Greek roll which has been assigned to the fourth century) should be dated later than all the codices of the Dishna Papers discovery. There is no doubt that the notable differences in the dating of the manuscripts of the Dishna Papers discovery and the Nag Hammadi Codices have proved to be a hindrance to direct comparison and assessments of their possible common monastic provenance. Indeed, not only the late dating of the Pachomian rolls, but also the very early dates that have been assigned to many of the most important biblical Dishna manuscripts, which place their production significantly earlier than the foundation of the Pachomian federation, have made it a priori impossible that they were not only used, but also produced by this monastic community. As Eldon Epp puts it, commenting on Robinson’s theory of a Pachomian provenance, “these Bodmer papyri clearly originated elsewhere, for they all antedate the early fourth-century founding of the monastic order, leaving us in the dark about their earlier or original provenance.”127 124

See Nongbri, Excavating God’s Library. On the evidence of repair, see Paola Buzi, “Qualche riflessione sugli aspetti codicologici e titologici dei papiri Bodmer con particolare riguardo ai codici copti,” Adamantius 21 (2015): 58–59. 126 E.g., Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 157. 127 Eldon Jay Epp, “The Papyrus Manuscripts of the New Testament,” in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis (ed. 125

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On the face of it, then, it is impossible for such early manuscripts as the New Testament codices P.Bodmer II (𝔓66) and P.Bodmer XIV–XV (𝔓75), both commonly assigned by scholars to the second or third centuries,128 to have been manufactured in a monastery. In order to account for their eventual inclusion in a monastic library it has thus been suggested that some of the Dishna codices, such as P.Bodmer II (𝔓66) and P.Bodmer XIV–XV (𝔓75), must have been manufactured elsewhere and then brought to the Pachomian monastery at some later point in time. Thus Robinson, who has argued that the whole collection was once part of a Pachomian monastic library, proposes that P.Bodmer II (ो66) and P.Bodmer XIV–XV (𝔓75) may have been brought to Upper Egypt by Athanasius when he had to flee Alexandria and go into hiding among the Pachomians.129 Bart D. Ehrman and Michael W. Holmes; Sprachen und Kulturen des christlichen Orients 6; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 9 n. 27. Elsewhere he states concerning the entire discovery that the Dishna Papers “were part of the nearby Pachomian monastic library until they were buried in a large earthen jar,” but adds concerning the seemingly earliest manuscripts that “the Bodmer New Testament papyri clearly originated at another uncertain place or places, for they all antedate the founding of the monastic order” (Eldon Jay Epp, “The Oxyrchynchus New Testament Papyri: ‘Not Without Honor Except in Their Hometown?’” JBL 123.1 [2004]: 13). 128 On the dating of P.Bodmer II (ो66), see e.g., Herbert Hunger, “Zur Datierung des Papyrus Bodmer II (P 66),” Anzeiger Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse 4 (1960): 12–23; but see now esp. Nongbri, “Limits of Palaeographic Dating.” On the dating of P.Bodmer XIV–XV (𝔓75), see esp. Nongbri, “Reconsidering the Place of P. Bodmer XIV–XV.” 129 Robinson, “Fragments from the Cartonnage of 𝔓75,” 236. Some scholars have nevertheless held the contradictory, and indeed impossible, position that these codices were manufactured in a monastery, even though they are to be dated to the second or third centuries. A monastic provenance for P.Bodmer II (ो66) was already suggested by Martin, Papyrus Bodmer II, 10, and Karl Jaroš has suggested that P.Bodmer XIV–XV (𝔓75) may have been produced by monks even though he dates the codex very early, in fact as early as the second half of the second century (Jaros, Das Neue Testament nach den ältesten griechischen Handschriften, 2199, 2201). Even James Goehring has suggested that P.Bodmer II (ो66), which he describes as a third-century text, might have been copied in the same scriptorium as the Crosby-Schøyen Codex; he suggests that a scriptorium might have been located in the nearby Pachomian monastic community, despite the fact that such a provenance can hardly be reconciled with the suggested third century date of P.Bodmer II (ो66) (Goehring, “The Manuscript’s Language and Orthography,” in The Crosby-Schøyen Codex MS 193 in the Schøyen Collection [ed. James E. Goehring; CSCO 521, Subsidia 85; Leuven: Peeters, 1990], li). On the establishment of the Pachomian koinonia in the early fourth century, see, e.g., Christoph Joest, Die Mönchsregeln der Pachomianer (CSCO 660, Subsidia 134; Leuven: Peeters, 2016), 1–6. On the basis of the common second- to third-century dating of P.Bodmer XIV and XV, Kim Haines-Eitzen has recently characterized this codex as “probably our best example of a local Alexandrian text” of the New Testament, but crucially notes that it “shows little influence from other forms of the text elsewhere in the empire, making it both decidedly uncosmopolitan

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On the other hand, if these codices have in fact been dated too early in previous scholarship, and were actually produced as late as the fourth century, as has recently been proposed,130 this chronological obstacle to a theory of their original monastic provenance disappears. It is thus important to take into consideration the method by which these manuscripts have been dated, and reevaluate the probability of their assigned dates. In the overwhelming majority of cases the Dishna Papers have been dated on palaeographical grounds alone. But how reliable is palaeography as a dating tool, especially when applied to early literary manuscripts?131 In order to facilitate a sensible comparison between the Dishna Papers and the Nag Hammadi Codices, and any proper discussion of a possible common provenance, this elephant in the room needs to be acknowledged and confronted, as changes to the dates assigned to the manuscripts have wideranging consequences for the historical reconstruction of their production and use. Although palaeography is the most commonly used method of dating ancient literary manuscripts, it is unfortunately much less accurate and secure than editors have tended to acknowledge. The methodological problems are many. Literary hands tend to be more resistant to change than informal, documentary hands, older styles could remain in use for extended periods of time, making stylistically based analysis hazardous.132 There is also a distinct lack of secure anchor-points constituted by securely dated manuscripts on which palaeography needs to be based if it is to function as a dating tool with any scientific validity. The absence of dated colophons in Greek and Coptic manuscripts prior to the eighth and ninth centuries respectively,133 and the existence of only a very small number of explicitly dated documentary fragments discovered in the cartonnage of the covers of certain codices, tend to leave us with very few and local” (Haines-Eitzen, “Imagining the Alexandrian Library and a ‘Bookish’ Christianity,” in Reading New Testament Papyri in Context [ed. Claire Clivaz and Jean Zumstein; BETL 242; Leuven: Peeters, 2011], 216–17). Of course, the characterization of the codex as “uncosmopolitan and local” would seem to fit better a possible Upper Egyptian Pachomian provenance than an Alexandrian one. 130 Nongbri, “Limits of Palaeographic Dating”; idem, “Reconsidering the Place of P.Bodmer XIV–XV.” 131 By “early” I mean all manuscripts produced before scribes started to date the production of codices in colophons, a practice that for Greek and Coptic manuscripts did not start until the eighth and ninth centuries, and then only for some codices (see below). 132 See, e.g., Turner, Greek Manuscripts, 23; Pasquale Orsini and Willy Clarysse, “Early New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates: A Critique of Theological Palaeography,” ETL 88.4 (2012): 443–74. 133 On Greek manuscripts, see Orsini and Clarysse, “Early New Testament Manuscripts,” 443 n. 2; for the earliest dated Coptic colophon, see Depuydt, Catalogue, 1:317, 320: M579 in the Pierpont Morgan Library, a hagiographic miscellany donated to the Monastery of the Archangel Michael at Phantoou in the Fayum in 823 CE.

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secure points of reference.134 For Coptic in particular the uncertainty also extends to documentary hands, since there does not exist any explicitly dated Coptic documentary papyri prior to the sixth century (a single fragment dated to 535/536), and only a handful prior to the eighth century.135 We thus have to rely on a comparison with Greek palaeography in order to date Coptic hands. The state of Coptic palaeography has indeed often been lamented, and it has been common to admit that palaeographical dating of Coptic manuscripts is highly uncertain. Bentley Layton, for example, who labels “any attempt to establish a dated typology of Coptic hands” as “hopelessly premature,” has sensibly questioned “whether a dated series of literary hands could ever provide exact grounds for assignment of date.”136 As it stands, it is difficult to disagree with Christian Askeland’s observation that “the most intimidating and crucial desideratum for Coptic literature is the development of an objective science of Coptic manuscript dating.”137 134 With regard to NHC VII, we are lucky to have three dated papyrus fragments (dated to 341, 346, and 348 CE) were discovered reused as cartonnage in its cover, thus providing a terminus post quem of 348 CE for the production of this codex. See Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 9–11, 48. As Pasquale Orsini and Willy Clarysse have recently highlighted, “Literary papyri are notoriously difficult to date because they bear no accurate date, and only few of them can be dated thanks to circumstantial evidence (archaeological or historical context) or because they belong to a dated archive,” or in cases where a literary manuscript has been reused, with a documentary text written on the other side, or when literary texts are written on reused documentary texts (Orsini and Clarysse, “Early New Testament Manuscripts,” 443). 135 Leslie S. B. MacCoull, “Dated and Datable Coptic Documentary Hands Before A.D. 700,” Mus 110 (1997): 349–66. 136 Bentley Layton, “Towards a New Coptic Palaeography,” in Acts of the Second International Congress of Coptic Studies: Roma, 22–26 September 1980 (ed. Tito Orlandi and Frederik Wisse; Rome: C.I.M., 1985), 152. Layton cites with approval the great Coptologist W. E. Crum’s refusal to date Coptic manuscripts due to the inherently speculative nature of such assignments (ibid., 152). 137 Christian Askeland, “The Coptic Versions of the New Testament,” in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis (2nd ed.; ed. Bart D. Ehrman and Michael W. Holmes; New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents 42; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 219. See also Askeland’s chapter in the present volume. For earlier reports on the state of Coptic palaeography, see, e.g., Layton, “Towards a New Coptic Palaeography”; Rodolphe Kasser, “Paleography,” in The Coptic Encyclopedia (8 vols.; ed. Aziz S. Atiya; New York: Macmillan, 1991), 8:175–84; Stephen Emmel, “The Coptic Gnostic Texts as Witnesses to the Production and Transmission of Gnostic (and Other) Traditions,” in Das Thomasevangelium: Entstehung – Rezeption – Theologie (ed. Jörg Frey, Enno Edzard Popkes, and Jens Schröter; BZNW 157; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 38–39. Palaeographical tools, such as Henri Hyvernat, Album de paleographie copte (Paris: Leroux, 1888); Victor Stegemann, Koptische Paläographie: 25 Tafeln zur Veranschaulichung der Schreibstile koptischer Schriftdenkmäler auf Papyrus, Pergament und Papier für die Zeit des III.–XIV.

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While it is widely acknowledged that it is impossible to securely date Coptic manuscripts by means of palaeographical analysis, it has less frequently been pointed out that it is also problematic to date Greek manuscripts using this method. One often gets the impression from scholarly literature that palaeographical dating of Greek manuscripts is a relatively unproblematic procedure by which one can assign dates with a reasonable degree of certainty even down to the nearest decade, thus making it by far the most accurate dating tool in the absence of dated colophons.138 Yet there are also reasons to doubt the dating of a significant number of Greek manuscripts that are commonly regarded as having been securely dated on palaeographical grounds. That palaeography “is badly in need of revision” as a dating method is quite clear.139 One major problem is the fact that it tends to be based primarily on the discernment of the individual scholar, based on a relative classification of manuscript evidence that is often based on uncertain, unstated, and in many cases dubious criteria. The respected and trusted experts of Greek palaeography may certainly be highly experienced and skilled in the application of the method, but if the method itself is flawed the dates thus assigned cannot be trusted. In other words, as long as we do not have sufficiently secure anchor points by which we may validate the method, we cannot trust the results of such analyses regardless of the skill with which the method is applied. As Orsini and Clarysse emphasize, “Palaeographical comparison may lead to chronological results when an undated manuscript is compared to an explicitly dated or to a datable one,”140 but when such comparative material does not exist, which is most often the case, palaeography cannot be trusted to provide us with secure dates for the production of manuscripts. Simply put, palaeographical dating relies on the discernment of the individual scholar practicing it, and even the most highly experienced expert Jahrhunderts. Mit einem Versuch einer Stilgeschichte der koptischen Schrift (2 vols.; Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Altertums und des Mittelalters C.1; Heidelberg: F. Bilabel, 1936); and Maria Cramer, Koptische Paläographie (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1964) cannot be relied upon for dating purposes. Layton characterizes the latter publication as “useless for any purpose whatsoever” (“Towards a New Coptic Palaeography,” 152). See also Paola Buzi, “Coptic Palaeography,” in Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies: An Introduction (ed. Alessandro Bausi et al.; Hamburg: COMSt, 2015), 283–86; Pasquale Orsini, “La maiuscola biblica copta.” Segno e testo 6 (2008): 121–50. 138 Indeed, one is sometimes presented with the view that radiocarbon analysis of Greek manuscripts is pointless, since it is much less accurate than palaeography. 139 Peter van Minnen, “The Future of Papyrology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology (ed. Roger S. Bagnall; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 649. 140 Orsini and Clarysse, “Early New Testament Manuscripts,” 448.

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may be wrong.141 Frederic Kenyon, for example, dated Chester Beatty Biblical Codex IX (Esther) to the late third century, and Chester Beatty Biblical Codex X (Daniel) to the early third century, which might have been fine had it not been for the fact that they were later discovered to belong to the same manuscript.142 Another telling example is provided by Schøyen MS 193, the so-called Crosby-Schøyen Codex, regarded by a majority of scholars as having been discovered among the Dishna Papers. It is a single-quire papyrus codex copied by one scribe, and contains Melito of Sardis’ On the Passover, a part of 2 Maccabees, 1 Peter, Jonah, and a concluding hymn that has so far not been identified, but which has recently been proposed to be a Pachomian Easter-sermon.143 The codex is quite small, with a square format (15.2 x 14.6 cm), and with the exception of the concluding sermon or hymn, the texts have been copied in two columns. The difficulty of assigning a date to the codex is illustrated by the fact that it has been dated by a long list of well-respected experts to the entire chronological spectrum ranging from the second to the sixth century.144 Clearly palaeographical dating of codices such as this is not clear-cut. Similar cases could easily be added. As mentioned above, we have also seen the improbability of Kasser’s different dating of the two hands of P.Bodmer III. In the absence of an improved method of manuscript dating, 141 Indeed the problems of palaeographical manuscript dating have been well described by no less an authority on early Greek manuscripts than Eric Turner, who points out regarding the use of palaeographical “styles” for dating purposes that “there is the risk of deceiving oneself about the characteristics of a ‘style.’ Subjective illusion can be guarded against by basing classification on considerations which can be apprehended objectively. The whole classificatory process may then be thought too mechanical. The dilemma is a real one. It arises because palaeography is neither a science nor an art, but works through a continual interaction of the methods appropriate to both approaches. And in the last resort a judgement has to be made – and judgement is fallible” (Turner, Greek Manuscripts, 24). 142 Turner, Typology, 3. 143 For an edition of the codex, see James E. Goehring, ed., The Crosby-Schøyen Codex MS 193 in the Schøyen Collection (CSCO 521, Subsidia 85; Leuven: Peeters, 1990), supplemented by Albert Pietersma and Susan Comstock, “Two More Pages of CrosbySchøyen Codex MS 193: A Pachomian Easter Lectionary?” BASP 48 (2011): 27–46. 144 These assessments are summarized in Robinson, “History and Codicology,” xxxiii: late second or early third century (Colin H. Roberts); third century or second half of the second century (William H. Willis); third century (Christopher de Hamel); around 300 (Allen Cabaniss); third or fourth century (Eric G. Turner); probably ca. 400 (Barbara Aland); fifth or sixth century (Tito Orlandi). Recent 14C analysis indicates a most likely date in the early fourth or late third centuries, but due to the fluctuating level of carbon 14 in the atmosphere from the second to the fifth centuries, even the results of radiocarbon dating are highly uncertain. See Hugo Lundhaug, “The Date of MS 193 in the Schøyen Collection: New Radiocarbon Evidence” (forthcoming).

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however, I would argue that we simply need to be less confident regarding any palaeographically assigned date. Instead we need to operate with wider date-ranges than has been common practice. This is important, since insecurely dated manuscripts have often served as stable reference points in the dating of other manuscripts, and as important pieces of chronological evidence in both textual criticism and historical studies. For the present discussion, highlighting these methodological problems is relevant since it reminds us of the fact that the dates assigned by scholars to some important individual constituents of the Dishna Papers discovery are far from certain, and this fact is again important when we want to consider the Dishna Papers and the Nag Hammadi Codices together.145 Turning to the Nag Hammadi Codices, the dated documentary papyri from the cartonnage of Codex VII (341, 346, and 348 CE)146 provide a far more secure basis of dating than is the case with any of the Dishna Papers. When we compare the two corpora it is therefore important to remember that the dates commonly assigned to the various manuscripts from the Dishna Papers are not set in stone. If for instance P.Bodmer II (ो66) and P.Bodmer XIV–XV (ो75), which share a number of codicological and scribal features with the Nag Hammadi Codices, should not in fact be dated to the second or third centuries, but rather as late as the fourth century, as has been persuasively argued by Brent Nongbri,147 the possibility that these two important New Testament manuscripts were not only owned by a Pachomian monastery, but may even have been produced there, becomes plausible. If the codicologically similar NHC II and P.Bodmer XIV–XV (ो75), or the palaeographically similar NHC III and P.Bodmer II (ो66) were not only discovered in the same area, but were also produced at the same time, there is little to prevent them from having been produced in the same place, and in the same community too. The fact that P.Bodmer II (ो66) and P.Bodmer XIV–XV (ो75) are in Greek and Nag Hammadi Codices II and III are in Coptic certainly does not prevent them from having been produced in the same monastic community or federation, as there

145

There are, as we have seen, good reasons to be skeptical of the palaeographically assigned dates of several of the most important early Christian manuscripts, including the Greek New Testament papyrus manuscripts from the Dishna Papers discovery. See Brent Nongbri, “The Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel,” HTR 98:1 (2005): 23–48; idem, “Limits of Palaeographic Dating”; idem, “Reconsidering the Place of P. Bodmer XIV–XV”; Orsini and Clarysse, “Early New Testament Manuscripts.” 146 See Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 9. 147 On P.Bodmer II (ो66), see Nongbri, “Limits of Palaeographic Dating.” On P.Bodmer XIV–XV (ो75), Nongbri, “Reconsidering the Place of P. Bodmer XIV–XV.”

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were both Greek and Coptic speakers, and monks of different degrees of bilinguality, among the Pachomian monks.148 While those Dishna manuscripts that have been regarded as significantly earlier than the Nag Hammadi Codices can thus be brought into the same timeframe as the latter, we find at the other end of the Dishna Papers’ timeline the manuscripts containing Pachomian letters, which have been dated significantly later than most of the other Dishna Papers. Indeed, the late dating of some of these manuscripts has sometimes been taken as an indication that they were not discovered together with the rest of the Dishna Papers.149 When assessing this question, however, we must also take into consideration the grounds on which they have been dated. As usual, they have been dated on palaeographical grounds, but unfortunately with little in the way of actual arguments or comparative examples, and sometimes with contradictory results. While T. C. Skeat has dated the Greek roll in the Chester Beatty Library (W.145) to the fourth century,150 the Coptic manuscripts have, as is usually the case, been assigned later dates, starting in the fifth century. Hans Quecke dates the Coptic rolls in the Cologne collection (Inv. Nr. 3286 and 3287) to the fifth century,151 and the Chester Beatty Coptic papyrus codex (Ac. 2556) to the sixth.152 Further he assigns the Coptic Chester Beatty roll containing Theodore’s Letter 2 (Ac. 1486) to the sixth century.153 The highly similar roll from a private collection containing the same text, however, has been dated by Martin Krause to the fifth century,154 while the two horizontal Coptic papyrus rolls in the Ches148 See SBo 91; Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 48–49, 94; Arietta Papaconstantinou, “Egyptians and ‘Hellenists’: Linguistic Diversity in the Early Pachomian Monasteries,” in Le myrte et la rose: Mélanges offerts à Françoise Dunand par ses élèves, collègues et amis (2 vols.; ed. Gaëlle Tallet and Christiane Zivie-Coche; Cahiers de l’ENiM 9; Montpellier: CNRS, 2014), 1:15–21; Sofía Torallas Tovar, “La situación lingüística en los monasterios egipcios en los siglos IV–V,” Collectanea Christiana Orientalia 1 (2003): 233–45. Moreover, the bilinguality of several of the Dishna Papers indicate a bi- or multilingual monastic context for these manuscripts. See, e.g., Hurst, Reverdin, and Rudhardt, eds. Papyrus Bodmer XXIX, 7. On multilingualism in lateantique Egypt, see Jean-Luc Fournet, “The Multilingual Environment of Late Antique Egypt: Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Persian Documentation,” in The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology (ed. Roger S. Bagnall; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 418–51; Sofía Torallas Tovar, “Linguistic Identity in Graeco-Roman Egypt,” in The Multilingual Experience in Egypt, from the Ptolemies to the Abbasids (ed. Arietta Papaconstantinou; Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 17–43. The same argument naturally also applies to the Greek and Coptic codices among the Dishna Papers. 149 E.g., Fournet, “Anatomie,” 12. 150 Quecke, Die Briefe Pachoms, 77–78. 151 Quecke, Die Briefe Pachoms, 41. 152 Quecke, “Ein neues Fragment,” 67; idem, Die Briefe Pachoms, 42. 153 Quecke, “Ein Brief von einem Nachfolger,” 427. 154 Krause, “Der Erlaßbrief Theodors,” 221.

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ter Beatty Library containing letters of Horsiesios (Ac. 1494 and 1495) have been dated by Guglielmo Cavallo to as late as the seventh century.155 All these dates have been assigned on the basis of palaeographical analysis, and it is worth noting that in several cases the dates have been given with major caveats pointing to their preliminary or uncertain nature. Cavallo’s dating of the two Horsiesios rolls are reported by Orlandi to be only the preliminary result of an initial examination,156 while Krause dates the privately owned letter of Theodore “mit allem Vorbehalt.”157 That such “Vorbehalt” is called for is clearly demonstrated by the fact that Krause’s dating of this roll differs by a century from Quecke’s dating of the almost identical Chester Beatty Ac. 1486, and the fact that there are also notable palaeographical similarities between the latter and Chester Beatty Ac. 1495 dated by Cavallo to a century later. Unfortunately no further analysis of these manuscripts for the purpose of dating has been undertaken, and lacking such analysis these assigned dates should be taken with a pinch of salt. Surely the very close similarities in terms of palaeography, layout, dimensions, and materiality between the two rolls containing Theodore’s Letter 2 are such that it would seem highly unlikely that they were produced in different centuries. The most economical explanation must be that these two rolls were also produced in the same milieu at practically the same time (at least within the same generation), and that this milieu was a monastic one. There also seems to be little reason to date the Pachomian rolls significantly later than the bulk of the Dishna Papers. Indeed, Krause assigned the privately owned roll containing Theodore’s second Letter to the fifth century, and the possibility of a similar dating of the other Pachomian rolls can hardly be ruled out. We should thus be open to the possibility that they may be roughly contemporary with the main bulk of the Dishna Papers, rather than significantly later. Doctrine With regard to the above-mentioned differences in contents, some added nuance is called for. It needs to be mentioned that canonical Scripture is not completely absent from the Nag Hammadi Codices. When we consider the Nag Hammadi Codices as material artifacts it is important not to exclude the fragments reused as cartonnage in the bindings of the codices, especially considering the likelihood of internal recycling of papyrus. The fragments of a papyrus codex containing Genesis in Sahidic which were 155

Reported by Orlandi in Orlandi and de Vogüé, “Nuovi testi copti pacomiani,” 241– 42. According to Orlandi, Cavallo regarded Ac. 1495 to be “un pò più antica” than Ac. 1494 (ibid., 242). 156 Orlandi and de Vogüé, “Nuovi testi copti pacomiani,” 241–42. 157 Krause, “Der Erlaßbrief Theodors,” 221.

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found in the cover of NHC VII thus indicates the ownership not only of codices containing what we might regard as heterodox texts, but also of scriptural codices by those who manufactured the Nag Hammadi Codices. The fact that these fragments derive from a codex that was palaeographically and codicologically similar to several of the Nag Hammadi Codices, renders it likely that the former codex was produced and used by the same community that produced the latter. Rodolphe Kasser indicates this when he states that he expected the text of Genesis to have been redacted according to “Gnostic” theology, since the fragments were found in the covers of a Nag Hammadi codex, although he ultimately found that it did not differ significantly from other Sahidic copies of Genesis.158 Nothing strange or heretical could be detected about the remains of this Genesis codex, which had likely been in use by the same community that produced NHC VII. Yet Kasser still felt that what he regarded as the elitist and heretical nature of the Nag Hammadi texts meant that they had likely not been entrusted to “orthodox” scribes or book-binders, but rather to their Gnostic counterparts.159 The common classification of the Nag Hammadi Codices as “Gnostic” has created a distance between the Nag Hammadi Codices and the Dishna Papers that has hindered comparison, especially since the Dishna Papers include such important Greek New Testament manuscripts as P.Bodmer II (ो66), P.Bodmer XIV–XV (ो75), and P.Bodmer VII+VIII (ो72).160 Thus Michel Testuz makes sure to emphasize that while the makers of the Bodmer Mischellaneous Codex were probably Upper Egyptian Copts, they certainly “n’étaient pas des gnostiques, mais qu’ils appartenaient sans doute à la grande Eglise: la teneur de certains textes transcrits ici, violemment antignostiques, nous permet cette affirmation.”161 Likewise seeing an inherent incompatibility between the “Gnostic” Nag Hammadi Codices and the Dishna Papers, Bastiaan Van Elderen, in an article on early Christian libraries, concludes that while the Dishna Papers surely come from the Pachomian monastery at Pbow, the Nag Hammadi Codices do not.162 Indeed he argues that the close connection between the Dishna Papers and Pachomian monasticism in fact distances the Nag Hammadi Codices from the Pachomians, since the contents of the Dishna Papers belong “in the orthodox tradition,” whereas the Nag Hammadi Codices are “Gnostic,” and 158

Kasser, “Fragments du livre biblique,” 66. Kasser, “Fragments du livre biblique,” 67. 160 See above. 161 Testuz, Papyrus Bodmer VII–IX, 10. 162 Bastiaan Van Elderen, “Early Christian Libraries,” in The Bible as Book: The Manuscript Tradition (ed. John L. Sharpe and Kimberly van Kampen; London: The British Library, 1998), 51–52. 159

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could therefore not have been owned and read by the same people.163 Taking this conclusion for granted, but realizing that the Nag Hammadi Codices are not dissimilar to other early Christian manuscripts in style and scribal habits, Cornelia Römer surmises that the reason for their similarity must be that Christians and “Gnostics” probably hired the same scribes.164 The very category of “Gnosticism,” however, or even the juxtaposition of orthodoxy and heresy, is a red herring in discussions of the provenance of these manuscripts. Not only is there no evidence that there were any “Gnostic” groups active in Upper Egypt at the time when the Dishna Papers or the Nag Hammadi Codices were used,165 but “Gnosticism” itself is so problematic as an analytical category, being thoroughly entangled in stereotype and self-contradiction, that it is practically useless in discussions of the makers and readers of late-antique books in any case.166 Similarly, the fact that we find canonical Scripture among the Dishna Papers, while the Nag Hammadi Codices contain non-canonical texts, is not a valid argument against a common provenance, not least in light of the evidence of later monastic book-collections in Egypt that in fact contained both biblical and apocryphal materials.167 163

Van Elderen, “Early Christian Libraries,” 56. Cornelia Eva Römer, “Manichaeism and Gnosticism in the Papyri,” in The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology (ed. Roger S. Bagnall; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 632. In Römer’s view, only the use of professional scribes working for several communities could explain the fact that “Christians and heretics shared common features in their books,” as she puts it (ibid.). A more economical explanation would be that what she calls “Christians and heretics” were not in fact separate communities in the first place. 165 Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 56–73. On the dating of the Dishna Papers, see below. 166 Michael A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”; idem, “Was There a Gnostic Religion? Strategies for a Clearer Analysis,” in Was There a Gnostic Religion? (ed. Antti Marjanen; Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society 87; Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society, 2005), 55–79; idem, “A Life Full of Meaning and Purpose: Demiurgical Myths and Social Implications,” in Beyond the Gnostic Gospels: Studies Building on the Work of Elaine Pagels (ed. Eduard Iricinschi et al.; STAC 82; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 19–59; Karen L. King, What is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003); eadem, “The Origins of Gnosticism and the Identity of Christianity,” in Was There a Gnostic Religion? (ed. Antti Marjanen; Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society 87; Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society, 2005), 103–20; eadem, “Toward a Discussion of the Category ‘Gnosis / Gnosticism’: The Case of the Epistle of Peter to Philip,” in Jesus in apokryphen Evangelienüberlieferungen: Beiträge zu außerkanonischen Jesusüberlieferungen aus verschiedenen Sprach- und Kulturtraditionen (ed. Jörg Frey and Jens Schröter; WUNT I 254; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 445–65; Michel R. Desjardins, “Rethinking the Study of Gnosticism,” R&T 12:3/4 (2005): 370–84. On the unfortunate consequences of the use of the category in discussions of the provenance of the Nag Hammadi Codices, see Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, esp. 263–68. 167 Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 146–77. 164

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A Comparative Case: The Bala’izah Manuscripts When trying to imagine a monastic manuscript collection that includes both the Dishna Papers and the Nag Hammadi Codices, it is instructive to consider another manuscript discovery that contains a comparably broad variety of literature, namely the large cache of fragments deriving from Bala’izah south of Asyut. This discovery has a secure monastic provenance, as it was discovered in the ruins of the monastery of Apa Apollo, situated in an old Roman quarry in the cliff at the edge of the western desert,168 a rather large community active in the seventh and eighth centuries that may have been comprised of as many as a thousand monks.169 The Monastery of Apa Apollo was excavated by W. M. Flinders Petrie in the early twentieth century as a minor part of a larger archaeological campaign focused primarily on the much earlier Pharaonic materials in the area.170 During these excavations, over three thousand fragments of literary and documentary texts were discovered in the ruins of the monastery. The texts were mainly in Coptic (85%), but also in Greek (9%) and Arabic (6%), and with regard to the Coptic texts there are several dialects represented, including Fayumic and Bohairic in addition to the Sahidic texts that constitute the main bulk of the discovery. From these fragments, Paul Kahle published 312 documentary fragments and fragments of 63 literary texts in a monumental two-volume edition. Both the literary and documen168 On the manuscripts, see esp. Kahle, Bala’izah, but also James E. Goehring, “The Monastery of Apollo at Bala’iza and Its Literary Texts,” in Christianity and Monasticism in Middle Egypt: Al-Minya and Asyut (ed. Gawdat Gabra and Hany N. Takla; Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2015), 41–56. On the monastic site, see also W. M. Flinders Petrie, Gizeh and Rifeh (British School of Archaeology in Egypt and Egyptian Research Account Thirteenth Year, 1907; London: School of Archaeology in Egypt, 1907); Peter Grossmann, “Die Unterkunftsbauten des Koinobitenklosters ‘Dair alBalāyza’ im Vergleich mit den Eremitagen der Mönche von Kellia,” in Le site monastique copte des Kellia: Sources historiques et explorations archéologiques: Actes du Colloque de Genève 13 au 15 août 1984 (ed. Philippe Bridel; Geneva: Mission suisse d’archéologie copte de l’Université de Genève, 1986), 33–40; idem, “Dayr al-Bala’yzah: Architecture,” in The Coptic Encyclopedia (8 vols; ed. Aziz S. Atiya; New York: Macmillan, 1991), 3:787; idem, “Ruinen des Klosters Dair al-Balaizā in Oberägypten: Eine Surveyaufnahme,” JAC 36 (1993): 171–205. For a high-quality color photograph of the ruins, see Ewa Wipszycka, Moines et communautés monastiques en Égypte (IVe-VIIIe siècles) (JJPSup 11; Warsaw: Taubenschlag, 2009), 159. 169 Goehring, “Monastery of Apollo,” 44; Grossmann, “Ruinen des Klosters Dair alBalaizā,” 202. 170 Petrie, Gizeh and Rifeh; Walter Ewing Crum, “The Coptic Manuscripts,” in W. M. Flinders Petrie, Gizeh and Rifeh (British School of Archaeology in Egypt and Egyptian Research Account Thirteenth Year, 1907; London: School of Archaeology in Egypt, 1907), 39–43.

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tary texts are interesting to compare to the Nag Hammadi and Dishna discoveries. As is the case with the Nag Hammadi cartonnage papyri, the documentary papyri from Bala’izah show a monastic community very much engaged, economically and otherwise, with the outside world,171 and as for the literary texts, they span much of the spectrum represented by the Nag Hammadi Codices and the Dishna Papers taken together, and more. Here we find patristic, ascetic, martyrological, and liturgical texts, homilies, monastic rules, and even a horoscope and fragments of “magical” amulets, in addition to canonical Scripture. The collection even includes a text that has been labeled an “apocryphal gospel,”172 and the remains of three parchment leaves of what has been described as a “Gnostic treatise.”173 It is evident that the monks of the monastery of Apollo had wideranging literary tastes and were interested in what could be regarded as apocryphal texts as well as canonical Scripture and more mainstream patristic literature, including treatises by Athanasius, which may remind us of James Goehring’s suggestion that it may not have been impossible for

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Goehring, “Monastery of Apollo,” 45–47. Kahle, Bala’izah, 1:403–4 (frg. 27). This unidentified text contains a part of a speech by Christ (or possibly God) to his angels, to whom he has revealed “all my mysteries from the beginning of creation until now,” explaining that the fall of the Devil was due to his arrogance. Cf. also frg. 47 (Kahle, Bala’izah, 1:462–65), another text concerning the Devil’s fall. Both of these fragments have much in common with other texts dealing with the angels and the fall of the Devil preserved in later Coptic monastic manuscripts, such as the Investiture of Michael the Archangel (attested in two manuscripts from the Monastery of the Archangel Michael at Phantoou in the Fayyum, and in the remains of a manuscript from the White Monastery) or the Investiture of Abbaton the Angel of Death (preserved in a manuscript from the Monastery of Mercurius at Edfu). See, e.g., C. Detlef G. Müller, Die Engellehre der koptischen Kirche: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der christlichen Frömmigkeit in Ägypten (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1959). 173 Kahle, Bala’izah, 1:473–77 (frg. 52). The fragments that have been preserved of this text consist of a dialogue between Christ and John, who is also the narrator, concerning such topics as Silence, a sealing with five powers, Adam, the five trees of Paradise, Cain and Abel, Noah’s ark, and Melchizedek, topics that are also discussed in several Nag Hammadi texts. For an image, see Kahle, Bala’izah, plate I.1, and for an English translation, see Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 162 n. 80. The fragment was first published by Walter E. Crum, “A Gnostic Fragment,” JTS 44 (1943): 176–79. Due to the setting, where Jesus explains Genesis to John, and the reference to five seals the text has been compared to Ap. John and was included as an appendix in Michael Waldstein and Frederik Wisse, The Apocryphon of John: Synopsis of Nag Hammadi Codices II,1; III,1; and IV,1 with BG 8502,2 (NHMS 33; Leiden: Brill, 1995), 195. Apart from its similarities with Ap. John, it also has much in common with the texts mentioned in n. 172 above, a genre of Coptic texts that has recently been labeled as “apostolic memoirs.” See Alin Suciu, The Berlin-Strasbourg Apocryphon: A Coptic Apostolic Memoir (WUNT 370; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 70–138. 172

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monks to have read the Nag Hammadi Codices while at the same time supporting Athanasius.174 It is also worth noting that the handwriting of Bala’izah frg. 7, two fragments of a leaf containing 2 Kings, closely resemble the second of the two hands that copied the Askew Codex,175 a manuscript that contains the apocryphal text commonly known as the Pistis Sophia, which bears numerous similarities with many of the texts in the Nag Hammadi Codices and has often been classified as “Gnostic.”176 Again, the methods and practices of manuscript dating create some confusion. The monastery of Apollo was active in the seventh and eighth centuries, and while some of the literary manuscripts may certainly be older than this period, it stretches credibility to date some of them as early as the fourth century, as suggested by Kahle and Crum.177 Although the stated method of dating is that of palaeography, one cannot help thinking that in some cases the contents of the manuscripts may have influenced the dates assigned to them. The Askew Codex should probably be dated later than the fourth century,178 and this may consequently also be the case with the highly similar 2 Kings manuscript from Bala’izah, which has been assigned a fourth-century date.179 There is little to preclude the possibility that the Bala’izah 2 Kings manuscript and the Askew Codex may have been produced and used in the same monastic milieu. Thus, when compared to the diversity of manuscripts and documentary papyri from the Monastery of Apa Apollo at Bala’izah, the Dishna Papers and the Nag Hammadi Codices taken together, including their cartonnage documents, no longer appear quite as unique when considered as the diverse remains of a single monastic library.

Alternative Hypotheses Alternative hypotheses to that of a monastic provenance for the Dishna Papers have nevertheless been proposed, primarily by scholars who reject the inclusion of the Pachomian rolls as part of the discovery. Contrary to the 174

Goehring, “New Frontiers,” 247. Kahle, Bala’izah, 1:322; 1:7. 176 See Carl Schmidt, ed., and Violet Macdermot, trans., Pistis Sophia (NHS 9; Leiden: Brill, 1978). 177 Kahle, Bala’izah, 1:15–16; Crum, “A Gnostic Fragment,” 176; Goehring, “Monastery of Apollo,” 49, 52–54. 178 It is certainly codicologically very different from such Coptic manuscripts as Schøyen MS 193, BL Or. 7594, the Qau Codex, or the Nag Hammadi Codices, that are unlikely to have been produced later than the fourth or fifth centuries. 179 Kahle, Bala’izah, 1:322. 175

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hypothesis of a Pachomian provenance, these alternative proposals of either a private collection, a school, or a confraternity of Christian intellectuals, lack concrete basis in available external evidence, but are primarily based on analyses of the diversity of the contents of the Dishna manuscripts themselves, the inclusion among them of non-Christian classical texts, and deliberations of the degree of diversity that could or could not be expected – or even contemplated – in a monastic, and especially Pachomian, milieu. Some of these proposals should nevertheless be mentioned. A Private Collection In his edition of P.Bodmer VII–IX, which constitute the two psalms (Pss 33 and 34) and the three New Testament Texts (Jude and 1–2 Peter) of the so-called Miscellaneous Codex, Michel Testuz argues that the varied contents of this codex indicate that it was produced by Egyptian Christians for inclusion in the private library of a rich member of their community, and that the small format of the codex indicates that it was meant for “private,” rather than communal or liturgical use.180 But there are problems with this line of reasoning, for while Testuz is clearly correct in stating that the contents of the Miscellaneous Codex indicate Christian ownership, there is no way in which its contents can indicate the supposed non-monastic nature of its owner(s) or user(s). This argument rests upon a notion of the literary practices and book culture of early Egyptian monasteries that have no basis in the sources. Testuz’s argument excludes the possibility that monks could have produced and owned smaller codices than what he regards as books that could be meant for liturgical use. Not only do we not know the size of the codices commonly used for such purposes in the early Pachomian monasteries, but it is also worth asking why monks could not also have produced smaller books intended for their own “private” use within the monastery, or for circulation among the monks for “private” or other kinds of non-liturgical communal reading? Clearly the nature of our early evidence does not allow us to apply the “private” vs. “monastic” or “ecclesiastical” distinction to books from this period, whether on the basis of contents, size, or format. A School Another alternative to a monastic provenance, and a variant of the abovementioned “private” collection hypothesis, is that of a school setting. Again the argument has been that some of the texts and codices included among the Dishna Papers would not have been present in a monastic library. Among these are the Greek-Coptic Chester Beatty codex Ac. 1390, 180

Testuz, Papyrus Bodmer VII–IX, 9–10.

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which contains mathematical exercises in Greek and an excerpt of the Gospel of John (10:7–13:38) in Coptic. The argument has been that this codex “better fits a school context” than a monastic one,181 but with little argument as to why this would be the case. No evidence has been produced to show that monks could not have copied mathematical exercises, and it is not difficult to surmise that a working knowledge of mathematics would have been helpful in the running of the kind of complex community constituted by a monastery, or indeed by the federation of monasteries that made up the Pachomian koinonia. Another codex that has not met scholars expectations of what a monastic book should look like is the so-called “Visions Codex.” While the original editors of this codex in fact did regard it as a monastic product,182 Kasser, Cavallo, and Van Haelst later argued that the high number of scribes involved in its production, the low quality of the papyrus, and the mistakes in the texts, indicate that it is rather the product of a school where student-scribes produced it for training purposes, with texts constituting a florilegium useful for their school-activities.183 Similarly, Raffaella Cribiore interprets the many scribal errors in the Bodmer Menander codex as the work of students, and takes the presence of the texts of Menander and the “rhetorical exercises” of the “Visions Codex” to indicate that the Dishna Papers “did not belong to a monastic library.”184 Cribiore is not the only scholar to regard the very copying and use of classical texts such as those of the Bodmer Menander codex as evidence of a school rather than a monastery.185 Roger Bagnall takes the mixture of classical and Christian texts in the Dishna Papers as a whole to indicate that the Dishna Papers may derive from “a school where both classical and Christian authors were read,”186 and Jean-Luc Fournet has argued that some of the contents of the “Visions Codex,” whose contents are 181

Geens, Panopolis, 80. On this codex, see further William Brashear et al., eds., The Chester Beatty Codex Ac. 1390: Mathematical School Exercises in Greek and John 10:7– 13:38 in Subachmimic (Chester Beatty Monographs 13; Leuven: Peeters, 1990). 182 Hurst, Reverdin, and Rudhardt, eds., Papyrus Bodmer XXIX, 7. 183 Kasser, Cavallo, and Van Haelst, “Nouvelle Description,” 118–19. 184 Raffaella Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 200. The Menander Codex has been published in three volumes: Victor Martin, Papyrus Bodmer IV: Ménandre: Le Dyscolos (Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1958); Rodolphe Kasser and Colin Austin, Papyrus Bodmer XXV: Ménandre: La Samienne (Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1969); Kasser and Austin, Papyrus Bodmer XXVI: Ménandre: Le Bouclier: En appendice: compléments au Papyrus Bodmer IV: Ménandre: Le Dyscolos (ColognyGeneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1969). 185 See, e.g., Alain Blanchard, “Sur le milieu d’origine du papyrus Bodmer de Ménandre,” ChrEg 66 (1991): 211–20. 186 Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, 104.

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clearly Christian, are simply classical rhetorical exercises adapted to a Christian context. He thus concludes that the provenance of this codex is a Christian school which taught its own version of classical paideia.187 Robinson, for his part, explained the presence of classical texts in the collection as probable gifts to the monastery brought from the outside, perhaps by new well-to-do recruits.188 Yet the sharp distinction between school and monastery presupposed by these arguments now seem difficult to uphold in light of recent scholarship highlighting the place of paideia in early monasticism itself.189 One may thus legitimately question whether there are compelling reasons to discount the inclusion of classical texts and mathematical exercises in an ear187

Jean-Luc Fournet, “Une éthopée de Caïn dans le Codex des Visions de la Fondation Bodmer,” ZPE 92 (1992): 253–66. A similar argument has been brought by Gianfranco Agosti, who concludes that the poems of the Visions Codex may have been composed in the same “quasi-monastic” (non-Pachomian) milieu that owned the other Dishna Papers (“Poesia greca nella (e della?) Biblioteca Bodmer,” Adamantius 21 [2015]: 86–97). Other suggestions have also been forthcoming, such as Cristiano Berolli’s proposal that the poems of the Visions Codex derive from the Syriac “Sons and daughters of the Covenant” (“Tracce di ascetismo in ὁ δεσπό[τ]ης πρὸς τοὺς πά[σχο]ντας,” Adamantius 21 [2015]: 136–43). 188 Robinson, Story of the Bodmer Papyri, 155. 189 See especially the publications from members of Samuel Rubenson’s Monastic Paideia project at Lund University, including Samuel Rubenson, ed., Early Monasticism and Classical Paideia (vol. 3 of Studia Patristica LV: Papers Presented at the Sixteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held at Oxford 2011 [ed. Markus Vinzent; Leuven: Peeters, 2013]); idem, “Monasticism and the Philosophical Heritage,” in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (ed. Scott Johnson; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 487–512; idem, “Apologetics of Asceticism: The Life of Antony and Its Political Context,” in Ascetic Culture: Essays in Honor of Philip Rousseau (ed. Blake Leyerle and Robin Darling Young; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), 75–96; idem, Det tidiga klosterväsendet och den antika bildningen: Slutrapport från ett forskningsprogram (RJ:s skriftserie 9; Gothenburg: Makadam förlag, 2016); Lillian Larsen, “The Apophtegmata Patrum and the Classical Rhetorical Tradition” in Studia Patristica XXXIX: Papers Presented at the Fourteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2003: Historica, Biblica, Ascetica et Hagiographica (ed. F. Young, M. Edwards, and P. Parvis; StPatr 39; Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 409–15; eadem, “On Learning a New Alphabet: The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and the Monostichs of Menander,” in Early Monasticism and Classical Paideia (ed. Samuel Rubenson; vol. 3 of Studia Patristica LV: Papers Presented at the Sixteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held at Oxford 2011 [ed. Markus Vinzent; StPatr 55:3; Leuven: Peeters, 2013]), 59–77; eadem, “Early Monasticism and the Rhetorical Tradition: Sayings and Stories as School Texts,” in Education and Religion in Late Antique Christianity: Reflections, Social Contexts and Genres (ed. Peter Gemeinhardt, Lieve Van Hoof, and Peter Van Nuffelen; London: Routledge, 2016), 13–33; eadem, “Monastic Paideia: Textual Fluidity in the Classroom,” in Snapshots of Evolving Traditions: Jewish and Christian Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New Philology (ed. Liv Ingeborg Lied and Hugo Lundhaug; TUGAL 175; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017), 146–77.

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ly monastic library, and consequently whether any of the arguments that have been brought forward to argue in favor of a school-setting can actually be used simultaneously as arguments against a monastic provenance. The explicitly Christian character of many of these codices, such as Chester Beatty Ac. 1390, the Montserrat Codex, and the Bodmer Visions Codex certainly place them in a Christian milieu, and it seems only prejudice may cause us to discount the possibility of monastic ownership. Poorly based assumptions about the kind of codices one might expect to find in early monastic libraries also underlie the arguments that are based on the quality of the codices. Karolien Geens, for instance, observes that “the Bodmer papyri are neither scholarly, nor luxury editions,” and “contain mistakes and corruptions of every kind,” which in turn leads her to the conclusion that they are more likely to be produced by and/or for students in a school, and not by and/or for monks in a monastery.190 Similarly, as we have seen, low scribal quality has also been brought as an argument for a school-setting for the Visions Codex.191 But why should we expect higher quality manuscripts from the early Pachomian monasteries? There is in fact no basis on which to make such an assumption, and therefore we cannot use arguments based on the quality of production as arguments either for or against a monastic provenance. Thus, the presence of classical and mathematical texts, the collaboration of multiple scribes, the presence of mistakes, and the often non-standard nature of the codices hardly exclude the production and use in a milieu like the early Pachomian monasteries. It seems, then, that idealized visions of early monastic purity have been allowed to influence scholars’ assessments to a surprising degree and caused the dismissal of the possible monastic provenance of the Dishna Papers on the basis of questionable criteria. Philoponoi Recently, while admitting that a monastic provenance is possible, Alberto Camplani has suggested a group of Christian philoponoi as owners of the manuscripts.192 Following Ewa Wipszycka,193 Camplani describes the phi190

Geens, Panopolis, 80. Kasser, Cavallo, and Van Haelst, “Nouvelle Description,” 118–19. 192 Alberto Camplani, “Per un profilo storico-religioso degli ambienti di produzione e fruizione dei Papyri Bodmer: contaminazione dei linguaggi e dialettica delle idee nel contest del dibattito su dualism e origenismo,” Adamantius 21 (2015): 98–135. On the philoponoi in particular, see Camplani, “The Transmission of Early Christian Memories in Late Antiquity: The Editorial Activity of Laymen and Philoponoi,” in Between Personal and Institutional Religion: Self, Doctrine, and Practice in Late Antique Eastern Christianity (ed. Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Lorenzo Perrone; Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 15; Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 129–53. 191

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loponoi as a confraternity of intellectual Christians, situated half-way between the clergy and the laity, and suggests that they would be just the kind of group that would have been interested in a collection such as the Dishna Papers, or even the Nag Hammadi Codices.194 On the basis of our present knowledge it is impossible to exclude the possibility of Camplani’s suggestion, but there is also very little evidence from which to reconstruct the actual nature, organization, and even existence of philoponoi as special, clearly delineated confraternities active in Upper Egypt as early as the fourth or fifth centuries,195 and even less evidence of what literary habits such groups may have had. In sum, while the nature of the evidence makes it difficult to completely rule out the possibility of ownership among a group of philoponoi or similar “confraternities,”196 there is also no concrete evidence to connect the production or use of book-collections like the Dishna Papers or the Nag Hammadi Codices with such groups. What we do have evidence of, is the presence of several Pachomian monasteries in this area, active at the time when these books were produced and used, and we also have some knowledge of the literary practices of the Pachomians.197 We even have concrete evidence that may link both the Nag Ham193 Ewa Wipszycka, “Les confréries dans la vie religieuse de l’Égypte chrétienne,” in Études sur le christianisme dans l’Égypte de l’Antiquité tardive (SEAug 52; Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1996), 257–78; eadem, The Alexandrian Church: People and Institutions (JJPSup 25; Warsaw: Taubenschlag, 2015), 266–67; eadem, “Confraternity,” in The Coptic Encyclopedia (8 vols.; ed. Aziz S. Atiya; New York: Macmillan, 1991), 2:586–88; Christopher Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 238–40. 194 Camplani, “Per un profilo”; On philoponoi as possible owners of the Dishna Papers, see also Agosti, “Poesia”; Berolli, “Tracce.” 195 There is in fact no evidence at all of such groups being present in the countryside or villages in the Dishna Plain area. 196 Camplani also refers to so-called spoudaioi (“Per un profilo,” 134). 197 See Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, esp. 165–69, 246–62; William A. Graham, “God’s Word in the Desert: Pachomian Scriptural Practice,” in Islamic and Comparative Religious Studies: Selected Writings (ACTR; Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 263–84; P. Corbinian Gindele, “Die Schriftlesung im Pachomiuskloster,” Erbe und Auftrag 41 (1965): 114–22; Hugo Lundhaug, “Memory and Early Monastic Literary Practices: A Cognitive Perspective,” JCH 1:1 (2014): 98–120; Janet A. Timbie, “The Interpretation of the Solomonic Books in Coptic Monastic Texts: ‘Reading’ Community,” in Christianity in Egypt: Literary Production and Intellectual Trends: Studies in Honor of Tito Orlandi (ed. Paola Buzi and Alberto Camplani; SEAug 125; Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2011), 501–12; eadem, “Writing Rules and Quoting Scripture in Early Coptic Monastic Texts,” in Ascetic Culture: Essays in Honor of Philip Rousseau (ed. Blake Leyerle and Robin Darling Young; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), 29–49; eadem, “The Education of Shenoute and Other Cenobitic Leaders: Inside and Outside of the Monastery,” in Education and Religion in Late Antique Christianity: Reflections, Social Contexts and Genres (ed. Peter Gemeinhardt,

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madi Codices and the Dishna Papers to this monastic organization, especially when we take the Nag Hammadi cartonnage documents and the Pachomian rolls into consideration as evidence of the community or communities where the manuscripts were produced.198

The Remains of a Single Monastic Library? While the major obstacle to the scholarly acceptance of the Nag Hammadi Codices as monastic books has been the perception of their texts as “Gnostic,” and therefore heretical, and thus difficult to reconcile with the traditional perception of the early Pachomian koinonia as an altogether orthodox community,199 most discussions concerning the possible monastic provenance of the Dishna Papers have centered around the question of what degree of diversity, both in terms of codicology, language, and textual contents, the individual scholar has been willing to contemplate in such a monastic community. For those who regard the diversity within the Dishna Papers themselves as already too great to fit their picture of early Pachomian monasticism, the possible addition of the Nag Hammadi Codices to the same book collection makes it even harder to contemplate. However, if one remains open to the simultaneous existence within a monastery of a variety of techniques and standards of book-production, and of different palaeographical styles and proficiencies, this kind of material diversity should not be unthinkable. On the contrary I would argue that this is what one should expect within a young community comprised of a large percentage of recruits from all over Egypt and beyond, moving together within a short period of time. Moreover, evidence from the Pachomian and other early monastic writings indicating that monks read more widely than many ecclesiastical and monastic authorities would like them to, coupled with evidence of later monastic book-collections such as the Bala’izah find, should make us expect diversity rather than conformity. The kind of diversity of contents and form constituted by the Nag Hammadi Codices and the Dishna Papers together would not be an unlikely snapshot of a part of such a monastic library. Lieve Van Hoof, and Peter Van Nuffelen; London: Routledge, 2016), 34–46; Edward Watts, “Teaching the New Classics: Bible and Biography in a Pachomian Monastery,” in Education and Religion in Late Antique Christianity: Reflections, Social Contexts and Genres (ed. Peter Gemeinhardt, Lieve Van Hoof, and Peter Van Nuffelen; London: Routledge, 2016), 47–58. 198 On the Nag Hammadi cartonnage documents, see Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 46–55, 104–45. On the Pachomian rolls, see above. 199 Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, esp. 263–68.

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As for the diversity of ideas or doctrinal contents constituted by such a collection, it should be remembered that there is no reason to expect anyone, not even a monastic community, to agree with the contents of all the books they own.200 The presence of contradictory theological contents within and between books does therefore not necessarily imply different ownership. At the same time there is also no need to exaggerate the contradictions between the Nag Hammadi texts and the biblical texts of the Dishna Papers. Although it has been suggested that the Nag Hammadi Codices should be regarded as anti-biblical books,201 it is quite clear that the Nag Hammadi texts are in fact interpreting, not contradicting, biblical texts.202 There is thus no good reason to suppose that the users of the Nag Hammadi Codices did not also own and read canonical Scripture. It is reasonable to expect that the book collection of the owners of the Nag Hammadi Codices, of which these codices likely constituted only a part, also included biblical books, and it is not unreasonable to suspect that it also held other kinds of literature. By extension, there is no reason to suppose that the Nag Hammadi Codices and the Dishna Papers – whether one’s view of the latter collection is maximalist (à la Robinson) or minimalist (à la Kasser) – could not also have been owned by the same group of people. As we have seen, the main differences between the two manuscript discoveries may simply be due to the differences in the rationale for their removal and burial. There is reason to believe that the Nag Hammadi Codices were specially selected for removal and burial, likely for theological reasons, most probably in the fifth century, while the Dishna Papers were probably buried later and for non-theological reasons. What is important, however, is to reflect on the significance of a likely common monastic – probably Pachomian – provenance for the Nag Hammadi Codices and at least a significant number of those codices and rolls that have come to be associated with the Dishna Papers discovery. We may gain much in terms of our understanding of the literary practices and motivations of the early Egyptian monastics when we take these manuscript discoveries fully into consideration as parts of monastic book collections, and we risk skewing the evidence and creating convenient caricatures of the early monks and their literary practices if we do not. There is no compelling reason to suppose that the Nag Hammadi Codices and the Dishna Papers could not have been manufactured, owned, and read by the same community or network of communities. Based on the site 200

Cf. Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, 266–67. See, esp. Alexandr Khosroyev, Die Bibliothek von Nag Hammadi: Einige Probleme des Christentums in Ägypten während der ersten Jahrhunderte (Arbeiten zum spätantiken und koptischen Ägypten 7; Altenberge: Oros Verlag, 1995). 202 Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic Origins, esp. 78–89. 201

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of their discoveries, the presence of Pachomian monastic letters among the Dishna Papers, the monastic letters among the Nag Hammadi cartonnage documents,203 including a letter of a monastic authority named Pachome, which may well be the famous Pachomius himself,204 the monastic features of the Nag Hammadi colophons,205 and a number of shared codicological and scribal features that strongly suggest a shared scribal culture,206 the most likely candidate for such a community is the local Pachomian monastic federation close to where the bulk of these manuscripts seems to have been produced, used, buried, and eventually rediscovered.207 While much remains to be done in terms of in-depth analysis and comparison between the two collections, one may hope that such studies may be performed without prejudicing any of the manuscripts discovered in this area purely on the basis of their contents and while keeping an open mind regarding the extent of early monastic diversity in Upper Egypt. Bibliography Agosti, Gianfranco. “Poesia greca nella (e della?) Biblioteca Bodmer.” Adamantius 21 (2015): 86–97. Askeland, Christian. “The Coptic Versions of the New Testament.” Pages 201–29 in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis. Second edition. Edited by Bart D. Ehrman and Michael W. Holmes. New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents 42. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Bagnall, Roger S. Egypt in Late Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Berolli, Cristiano. “Tracce di ascetismo in῾ο δεσπό[τ]ης πρὸς τοὺς πά[σχο]ντας.” Adamantius 21 (2015): 136–43. Blanchard, Alain. “Sur le milieu d’origine du papyrus Bodmer de Ménandre: L’apport du P. Chester Beatty scolaire et du P. Bouriant 1.” Chronique d’Egypte 66 (1991): 211–20. Boud’hors, Anne. “Quelques réflexions sur la cohérence de la composante copte des P. Bodmer.” Adamantius 21 (2015): 79–85. Brashear, William, Wolf-Peter Funk, James M. Robinson, and Richard Smith, eds. The Chester Beatty Codex Ac. 1390: Mathematical School Exercises in Greek and John 10:7– 13:38 in Subachmimic. Chester Beatty Monographs 13. Leuven: Peeters, 1990. Buzi, Paola. “Qualche riflessione sugli aspetti codicologici e titologici dei papiri Bodmer con particolare riguardo ai codici copti.” Adamantius 21 (2015): 47–59. –. “Coptic Palaeography.” Pages 283–86 in Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies: An Introduction. Edited by Alessandro Bausi et al. Hamburg: COMSt, 2015.

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Petrie, W. M. Flinders. Gizeh and Rifeh. British School of Archaeology in Egypt and Egyptian Research Account Thirteenth Year, 1907. London: School of Archaeology in Egypt, 1907. Pietersma, Albert, and Susan Comstock. “Two More Pages of Crosby-Schøyen Codex MS 193: A Pachomian Easter Lectionary?” Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 48 (2011): 27-46. Quecke, Hans. “Briefe Pachoms in koptischer Sprache: Neue deutsche Übersetzung.” Pages 655–63 in Zetesis: Album amicorum door vrienden en collega's aangeboden aan Prof. Dr. E. de Strycker ter gelegenheid van zijn 65e verjaardag. Antwerpen: De Neederlandsche Boekhandel, 1973. –. “Ein neues Fragment der Pachombriefe in koptischer Sprache.” Orientalia 43 (1974): 66– 82. –. “Ein Brief von einem Nachfolger Pachoms (Chester Beatty Library Ms. Ac. 1486).” Orientalia 44 (1975): 426–33. –. Die Briefe Pachoms: Griechischer Text der Handschrift W. 145 der Chester Beatty Library. Textus Patristici et Liturgici 2. Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1975. Robinson, James M. “The Construction of the Nag Hammadi Codices.” Pages 170–90 in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts: In Honour of Pahor Labib. Edited by Martin Krause. Nag Hammadi Studies 6. Leiden: Brill, 1975. –. “The Discovering and Marketing of Coptic Manuscripts: The Nag Hammadi Codices and the Bodmer Papyri.” Pages 2–25 in The Roots of Egyptian Christianity. Edited by Birger A. Pearson and James E. Goehring. Studies in Antiquity and Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986. –. “Introduction.” Pages 1–26 in The Nag Hammadi Library in English: Translated and Introduced by Members of the Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont, California. Edited by James M. Robinson. 3rd rev. ed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990. –. “Introduction: Ac. 1390.” Pages 3–32 in The Chester Beatty Codex Ac. 1390: Mathematical School Exercises in Greek and John 10:7–13:38 in Subachmimic. Edited by William Brashear, Wolf-Peter Funk, James M. Robinson, and Richard Smith. Chester Beatty Monographs 13. Leuven: Peeters, 1990. –. “The Manuscript’s History and Codicology.” Pages xvii–xlvii in The Crosby-Schøyen Codex MS 193 in the Schøyen Collection. Edited by James E. Goehring. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 521, Subsidia 85. Leuven: Peeters, 1990. –. The Pachomian Monastic Library at the Chester Beatty Library and the Bibliothèque Bodmer. Occasional Papers 19. Claremont, Cal.: Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, 1990. –. “The Pachomian Monastic Library: Postscript.” Pages 36–40 in The Role of the Book in the Civilizations of the Near East: Proceedings of the Conference held at the Royal Irish Academy and the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, 29 June – 1 July 1988. Edited by John Bartless, David James, and David Wasserstein. Manuscripts of the Middle East 5 (1990– 1991). Leiden: Ter Lugt Press, 1993. –. “Fragments from the Cartonnage of 𝔓75.” Harvard Theological Review 101.2 (2008): 231– 52. –. The Story of the Bodmer Papyri: From the First Monastery’s Library in Upper Egypt to Geneva and Dublin. Eugene, Or.: Cascade, 2011. –. The Nag Hammadi Story. 2 Vols. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 86. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

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Römer, Cornelia Eva. “Manichaeism and Gnosticism in the Papyri.” Pages 623–43 in The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology. Edited by Roger S. Bagnall. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Rousseau, Philip. Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt. Revised Edition. Transformation of the Classical Heritage 6. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Rubenson, Samuel. “Monasticism and the Philosophical Heritage.” Pages 487–512 in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity. Edited by Scott Johnson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. –. “Apologetics of Asceticism: The Life of Antony and Its Political Context.” Pages 75–96 in Ascetic Culture: Essays in Honor of Philip Rousseau. Edited by Blake Leyerle and Robin Darling Young. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. –. ed. Early Monasticism and Classical Paideia. Vol. 3 of Studia Patristica LV: Papers Presented at the Sixteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held at Oxford 2011. Edited by Markus Vinzent. Leuven: Peeters, 2013. –. Det tidiga klosterväsendet och den antika bildningen: Slutrapport från ett forskningsprogram. RJ:s skriftserie 9. Gothenburg: Makadam förlag, 2016. Schmidt, Carl, ed., and Violet Macdermot, trans. Pistis Sophia. Nag Hammadi Studies 9. Leiden: Brill, 1978. Scholten, Clemens. “Die Nag-Hammadi-Texte als Buchbesitz der Pachomianer.” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 31 (1988): 144–72. Schubert, Paul. “Les papyrus Bodmer: contribution à une tentative de délimination.” Adamantius 21 (2015): 41–46. –. “P.Bodmer LI verso: restes d’un traité médical ou ethnographique?” Museum Helveticum 73 (2016): 1–10. Sharp, Daniel B. Papyrus Bodmer III: An Early Coptic Version of the Gospel of John and Genesis 1–4:2. Arbeiten zur neutestamentlichen Textforschung 48. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016. Stegemann, Victor. Koptische Paläographie: 25 Tafeln zur Veranschaulichung der Schreibstile koptischer Schriftdenkmäler auf Papyrus, Pergament und Papier für die Zeit des III.–XIV. Jahrhunderts. Mit einem Versuch einer Stilgeschichte der koptischen Schrift. 2 Vols. Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Altertums und des Mittelalters C.1. Heidelberg: F. Bilabel, 1936. Stroppa, Marco. “L’uso di rotuli per testi cristiani di carattere letterario.” Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete 59:2 (2013): 347–58. Testuz, Michel. Papyrus Bodmer V: Nativité de Marie. Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1958. –. Papyrus Bodmer VII-IX: VII: L’Épitre de Jude; VIII: Les deux Épitres de Pierre; IX: Les Psaumes 33 et 34. Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1959. –. Papyrus Bodmer X-XII: X: Correspondance apocryphe des Corinthiens et de l’apôtre Paul; XI: Onzième Ode de Salomon; XII: Fragment d’un Hymne liturgique. Manuscrit du IIIe siècle. Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1959. –. Papyrus Bodmer XIII: Méliton de Sardes, Homélie sur la Pâque. Manuscrit du IIIe siècle. Cologny-Geneva: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1960. Thompson, Herbert. “Dioscorus and Shenoute.” Pages 367–76 in Recueil d’études égyptologiques dédiées à la mémoire de Jean-François Champollion. Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études 234. Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion, 1922. Timbie, Janet A. “The Interpretation of the Solomonic Books in Coptic Monastic Texts: ‘Reading’ Community.” Pages 501–12 in Christianity in Egypt: Literary Production and Intellectual Trends: Studies in Honor of Tito Orlandi. Edited by Paola Buzi and Alberto

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Camplani. Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 125. Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2011. –. “Writing Rules and Quoting Scripture in Early Coptic Monastic Texts.” Pages 29–49 in Ascetic Culture: Essays in Honor of Philip Rousseau. Edited by Blake Leyerle and Robin Darling Young. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. –. “The Education of Shenoute and Other Cenobitic Leaders: Inside and Outside of the Monastery.” Pages 34–46 in Education and Religion in Late Antique Christianity: Reflections, Social Contexts and Genres. Edited by Peter Gemeinhardt, Lieve Van Hoof, and Peter Van Nuffelen. London: Routledge, 2016. Torallas Tovar, Sofía. “La situación lingüística en los monasterios egipcios en los siglos IV– V.” Collectanea Christiana Orientalia 1 (2003): 233–45. –. “Linguistic Identity in Graeco-Roman Egypt.” Pages 17–43 in The Multilingual Experience in Egypt, from the Ptolemies to the Abbasids. Edited by Arietta Papaconstantinou. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Torallas Tovar, Sofía, and Klaas A. Worp. To the Origins of Greek Stenography (P.Monts.Roca I). Orientalia Montserratensia 1. Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2006. Van Elderen, Bastiaan. “The Nag Hammadi Excavation,” Biblical Archaeologist 42:4 (1979): 225–31. –. “Early Christian Libraries.” Pages 45–59 in The Bible as Book: The Manuscript Tradition. Edited by John L. Sharpe and Kimberly van Kampen. London: The British Library, 1998. Wasserman, Tommy. “Papyrus 72 and the Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex.” New Testament Studies 51 (2005): 137–54. Watts, Edward. “Teaching the New Classics: Bible and Biography in a Pachomian Monastery.” Pages 47–58 in Education and Religion in Late Antique Christianity: Reflections, Social Contexts and Genres. Edited by Peter Gemeinhardt, Lieve Van Hoof, and Peter Van Nuffelen. London: Routledge, 2016. Williams, Michael A. “Interpreting the Nag Hammadi Library as ‘collection(s)’ in the History of ‘Gnosticism(s)’.” Pages 3–50 in Les textes de Nag Hammadi et le problème de leur classification: Actes du colloque tenu à Québec du 15 au 19 Septembre 1993. Edited by Louis Painchaud and Anne Pasquier. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi: Section “Études” 3. Québec: les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1995. –. Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. –. “Was There a Gnostic Religion? Strategies for a Clearer Analysis.” Pages 55–79 in Was There a Gnostic Religion? Edited by Antti Marjanen. Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society 87. Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society, 2005. –. “A Life Full of Meaning and Purpose: Demiurgical Myths and Social Implications.” Pages 19–59 in Beyond the Gnostic Gospels: Studies Building on the Work of Elaine Pagels. Edited by Eduard Iricinschi, Lance Jenott, Nicola Denzey Lewis and Philippa Townsend. Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 82. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013. Williams, Michael A., and Lance Jenott. “Inside the Covers of Codex VI.” Pages 1025–52 in Coptica-Gnostica-Manichaica: Mélanges offerts à Wolf-Peter Funk. Edited by Louis Painchaud and Paul-Hubert Poirier. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi: Section “Études” 7. Québec: les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2006. Wipszycka, Ewa. “Confraternity.” Pages 2:586–88 in The Coptic Encyclopedia. 8 Vols. Edited by Aziz S. Atiya. New York: Macmillan, 1991. –. “Les confréries dans la vie religieuse de l’Égypte chrétienne.” Pages 257–78 in Études sur le christianisme dans l’Égypte de l’Antiquité tardive. Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 52. Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1996.

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–. Moines et communautés monastiques en Égypte (IVe-VIIIe siècles). Journal of Juristic Papyrology Supplements 11. Warsaw: Taubenschlag, 2009. –. The Alexandrian Church: People and Institutions. The Journal of Juristic Papyrology Supplement Series 25. Warsaw: Taubenschlag, 2015. Wouters, Alfons. The Chester Beatty Codex Ac. 1499: A Graeco-Latin Lexicon on the Pauline Epistles and a Greek Grammar. Chester Beatty Monographs 12. Leuven: Peeters, 1988. Zumstein, Jean. L’Évangile selon Jean. Collection Sources. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2008.

The Production and Destination of the Nag Hammadi Codices LOUIS PAINCHAUD1 The description of the collection of codices found near Nag Hammadi as a “library” appeared very soon after their discovery,2 and they were so described in the introduction to the facsimile edition inserted in the volume dedicated to Codex VI, published in 1972.3 Although they were not referred to as a “library” in the introduction to the facsimile edition published in 1984,4 this designation remained popular in scholarly circles, being adopted for the American publication series The Coptic Gnostic Library, the English translation of the texts under the title The Nag Hammadi Library in English, and the French language Canadian edition of the texts, the Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi series, to cite only a few examples. The image of a library is a striking and evocative one, and one that

1

I would like to thank Wolf-Peter Funk, Michael Williams, Paul-Huber Poirier, Victor Ghica and Alin Suciu for their various useful comments and suggestions, as well as Michael Kaler for his comments and his input with regard to the English translation of this article. This contribution was made possible through the generous financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Fonds Québécois de Recherche – Société et Culture. 2 Jean Doresse, “Une bibliothèque gnostique copte découverte en Haute Égypte,” Académie royale de Belgique, Bulletin de la classe des Lettres et des Sciences morales et politiques 5e série, tome 35 (1949): 435–49; Henri-Charles Puech, “Découverte d’une bibliothèque gnostique en Haute-Égypte,” in Philosophie, Religion (vol. 19 of Encyclopédie française; Paris : Société nouvelle de l'Encyclopédie française, 1957), 42; James M. Robinson, “The Coptic Gnostic Library Today,” NovT 12 (1967–1968): 356– 401; Torgny Säve-Södebergh, “Holy Scripture or Apologetic Documentation? The Sitz im Leben of the Nag Hammadi Library,” in Les textes de Nag Hammadi (ed. Jacques Édouard Ménard; NHS 7; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 3–14; James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977), now on the Web (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library). 3 James M. Robinson, “Introduction,” in Codex VI: The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices (Leiden: Brill, 1972), passim. 4 James M. Robinson, Introduction: The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices (Leiden: Brill, 1984).

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has surely affected both the popular and the scholarly perceptions of these works. Although powerful, the image is also, unfortunately, somewhat misleading. It became apparent very early on that this collection was itself a “secondary” collection made up of several sub-collections,5 and that the socalled “library” might only have been assembled shortly before being buried and lost to history. As early as 1978, Frederik Wisse argued that “the codices do not form a library at all, but rather are a heterogeneous collection of books which were produced and used by different individuals.”6 Nevertheless, subsequent discussions about the nature of the Nag Hammadi collection tended to overlook this aspect.7 Now, it should be noted that Wisse spoke not of texts, but rather of books, and that he distinguished between the producers and the users of these books. These important distinctions have all too often been ignored in subsequent research, but in my view they ought to form the basis for the work that is being carried out in Oslo in the NEWCONT project. May what follows be taken as a modest contribution to this ongoing project. In my response to the question “who produced and used the Nag Hammadi Codices?”8 I will focus not on the distinction between their producers and actual users, the latter being out of our reach, but rather on the distinction between their production and destination, insofar as these can be approached through an examination of the clues left behind in the process of the codices’ production. Specifically, my conclusions will be derived from 5 James M. Robinson, Introduction, 86. This view was already adopted by Wolf-Peter Funk, review of The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex IV and The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex III, OLZ 77 (1982): 134; and in Funk, review of The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex VIII and The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex IX and X, OLZ 78 (1983): 558. 6 Frederik Wisse, “Gnosticism and Early Monasticism in Egypt,” in Gnosis: Festschrift für Hans Jonas (ed. Barbara Aland; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978), 435. In fact, such a description does not exclude the possibility that these books, despite having been produced and used by different individuals, might have eventually form or be part of a library. 7 For example, one could consider the discussion by Clemens Scholten, in which he does not make any distinction between the production and the destination of theses codices; Scholten, “Die Nag-Hammadi-Texte als Buchbesitz der Pachominianer,” JAC 31 (1988): 144–72. 8 This is the very first question raised by the project “New Contexts for Old Texts: Unorthodox Texts and Monastic Manuscript Culture in Fourth- and Fifth-Century Egypt” (NEWCONT): www.tf.uio.no/english/research/projects/newcont. My attempt to partly answer this question is in line with the approach suggested by Siegfried G. Richter, “Manichaeism and Gnosticism in the Panopolitan Region between Lykopolis and Nag Hammadi,” in Christianity and Monasticism in Upper Egypt, Vol. 1: Akhmim and Sohag (ed. Gawdat Gabra and Hany N. Takla; Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2008), 123.

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an analysis of the duplicate versions of the same texts, as well as consideration of the writing styles of the various scribes who produced the codices, the bindings of the codices, the cartonnage used to stiffen their covers, the linguistic aspects of the sub-collections, and the colophons, notes and prayer-like formulas likely left by the scribes themselves. These examinations will show that the Nag Hammadi corpus is made up of at least four groups of codices that were neither produced in the same milieu nor intended for the same recipients. These four groups consist of Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX; Codices II and XIII; Codices I, VII and XI; and finally Codex III. The analysis will further show that two of these four groups – the one made up of Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX and the one made of Codices I, VII and XI – stand out as strongly contrasted not only at the level of their material fabrication, their scribes, and their dialectal homogeneity or heterogeneity, but also with regard to the presence or absence of scribal notes and the nature of the recycled papyrus used for the cartonnage of their covers. The sharp-eyed reader will note that this leaves two codices, X and XII. Neither of these will be discussed in what follows. Codex XII will be left aside due to its very poor state of conservation.9 In the case of Codex X, whose handwriting cannot be associated with any other Nag Hammadi codex despite its superficial similarity with the first hand of Codex I, its contents do not link it to any other codices since it contains only one, unique text, Marsanes.10 It has the same dialectal form as Codices I and XIa.11

The Duplicates: Their Number and Nature As is well known, the Nag Hammadi corpus includes seven sets of duplicates, that is, two or more copies of the same text.12 These are: the Apocryphon of John (NH II.1; NH III.1; NH IV.1; and perhaps XIII.[1]); the Sacred Book of the Great Invisible Spirit (Gos. Eg. NH III.2; NH IV.2); the writing without title On the Origin of the World (NH II.5; NH XIII.2);

9

See Frederik Wisse, “Introduction to Codex XII” in Nag Hammadi Codices XI, XII and XIII (ed. Charles W. Hedrick, Nag Hammadi Studies 28; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990): 289–93. 10 See the codicological and paleographic description by Birger A. Pearson, “Introduction to Codex X,” in Nag Hammadi Codices IX and X (ed. Birger A. Pearson; NHS 15; Leiden: Brill, 1981), 211–22. 11 Pearson, “Introduction to Codex X,” 223–27; Wolf-Peter Funk, Concordance des textes de Nag Hammadi. Les codices X et XIA (BCNH.C 6; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2000), v. 12 Excluding duplicates found in BG 8502 and Codex Tchacos.

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Eugnostos (NH III.3; NH V.1); and the Gospel of Truth (NH I.3; NH XII.2). While the existence of these duplicates is well known, until now there has been a tendency to overlook the fact that they fall into two distinct categories. Some of these duplicates are nearly identical copies of the same text, and we can reasonably assume that these sets of duplicates were copied from the same exemplar. This is almost certainly the case with the two copies of the tractate without title On the Origin of the World completely preserved in Codex II and partially preserved in Codex XIII,13 it may also be the case with the two copies of the same version of the long recension of the Apocryphon of John found in Codices II and IV.14 There are also sets of duplicates that derive from different recensions of their source, coming from different Coptic or even Greek Vorlage. These include for example, the versions of Eugnostos contained in Codices III and V, the versions of the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit in Codices III and IV, or the copy of the short recension of the Apocryphon of John contained in Codex III, which differs from the copies of the long recension contained in Codices II and IV, to say nothing of its differences from the copy contained in the Berolinensis Gnosticus 8502. With regard to their context of production, duplicates of the first sort suggest links between the codices in which they appear, at least some proximity at the level of their copy, because their scribes may well have been drawing on a common exemplar, or one on the other. By contrast, when we turn to speak in terms of their destination, these duplicates suggest that the codices in which they are found ought to be separated, as it is 13

The copy of Orig. World contained in Codex XIII “being probably just another copy of the same exemplar as II,5,” as argued by Wolf-Peter Funk, “The Linguistic Aspect of Classifying the Nag Hammadi Codices,” in Les textes de Nag Hammadi et le problème de leur classification: Actes du colloque tenu à Québec du 15 au 19 septembre 1993 (ed. Louis Painchaud and Anne Pasquier; BCNH.É 3; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1995), 136. Robinson (Introduction, 86) rightly puts Codices II and XIII in the same sub-group on the basis of their material characteristics, but his assessment is not accurate when he says that the sub-groups which he has identified on the basis of material features contain no duplicates, since Codices II and XIII contain two almost identical copies of Orig. World. This problem can be resolved by distinguishing between the production and the destinations of the codices in this sub-group. In this case, the presence of identical duplicates copied by the same scribe points towards one and the same milieu of production, but most likely two different destinations. 14 Michael Waldstein and Frederik Wisse, The Apocryphon of John: Synopsis of Nag Hammadi Codices II,1; III,1; and IV,1 with BG 8502,2 (NHMS 33; Leiden: Brill), 5; Waldstein, “Das Apokryphon des Johannes (NHC II,1; III,1; IV,1 und BG 2),” in Nag Hammadi Deutsch, 1. Band: NHC I,1–V,1 (ed. Hans-Martin Schenke, Hans-Gebhard Bethge, and Ursula Ulrike Kaiser; Koptisch-Gnostische Schriften II. GCSNF 8; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001), 96.

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extremely unlikely that anyone would have created two copies of the same text for the same recipient. With regard to duplicates of the second sort, we can say, for instance, that the short version of the Apocryphon of John found in Codex III is to be distinguished from the versions in Codices II and IV not only with regard to its destination, but probably also with regard to its production. It is unlikely – although admittedly just barely possible – that scribes in a given milieu would have copied different versions of the same text from different exemplars. The same can be said of the non-identical duplicates of the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit in Codices III and IV, of the versions of Eugnostos in Codices III and V, and of the versions of the Gospel of Truth in Codices I and XII. In all of these cases, the non-identical duplicates suggest that the codices were both produced in different contexts, and most likely intended for different recipients. This being the case, the presence of identical duplicates in Codices II and XIII (two copies of On the Origin of the World by the same scribe or by two scribes trained in the same school, from the same exemplar) and the presence in Codices II and IV of two almost identical copies of the Apocryphon of John copied by two different scribes (plausibly from the same exemplar) suggest that Codices II and XIII had a common provenance, but different destinations, and that the production of II and IV is related in some way. Among these codices, II stands out as the most ornately bound of all the Nag Hammadi Codices and the largest one with its 145 pages.15 Codex XIII has not been completely preserved: only eight folios are extant, which were tucked inside the cover of Codex VI in antiquity, before the codex’s modern rediscovery.16 These folios contain the whole of Tri15

It is comparable in this regard only with Codex I and its 144 pages. James M. Robinson, “Inside the Front Cover of Codex VI,” in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts in Honour of Alexander Böhlig (ed. Martin Krause; NHS 3; Leiden: Brill, 1972), 74–87; Paul-Hubert Poirier, La Pensée Première à la triple forme (NH XIII, 1) (BCNH.T 32; Québec : Les Presses de l’Université Laval , 2006), 2–4; see also Michael A. Williams and Lance Jenott, “Inside the Covers of Codex VI,” in Coptica – Gnostica – Manichaica: Mélanges offerts à Wolf-Peter Funk (ed. Louis Painchaud and Paul-Hubert Poirier; BCNH.É 7; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2006), 1048–49. Suggestions as to why the folios now known as Codex XIII were placed inside the front cover of Codex VI are highly speculative, since we have no information concerning the context of this placement. For example, Williams and Jenott take this inclusion as an indication that Codex VI would follow a “careful design” (p. 1048), but it seems to me that this might be misleading since there is no evidence that this placement has anything to do with the arrangement of the contents of the codex itself. It is more likely that this insertion was made by a later owner or user of both Codex VI and XIII or part of Codex XIII. This later owner might have found that Codex VI was a fitting place for the Trim. Prot. either for material reasons as suggested by Robinson, or for reasons of contents as suggested by Williams and Jenott (“Inside the Covers,” 1048–52). Be that as 16

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morphic Protennoia, as well as the first eleven lines of On the Origin of the World. However, analysis of the remains indicates that the codex originally contained 80 pages; thus a great part of the codex is simply lost. 17 Finally, Codex IV, with 81 pages, has only two works: a version of the long recension of the Apocryphon of John, followed by the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit. These two codices, IV and XIII, are thus considerably more modest in size and in the number of works that they contain than Codex II, nevertheless all three codices are linked in terms of their production by their identical or almost duplicated texts. Thus we can reasonably assume that the difference in quality and quantity of their contents has to do not with the context of their production, but with their different destinations. Identical and Non-identical Duplicates Identical duplicates

Non-identical duplicates

II

XIII

IV

III

V

I

XII

145 pp.

80 pp.

80 pp.

149 pp.

85 pp.

144 pp.

?

Ap. John (long)

[Ap.John] (long)?

Ap. John (long)

Ap. John (short)

Eugnostos

Pr. Paul

Sent. Sextus

Gos. Thom.

Tri. Prot.

Gos. Eg.

Gos. Eg.

Apoc. Paul

Ap. Jas

Gos. Truth

Gos. Phil.

Orig. World

Eugnostos

1 Apoc. Jas

Gos. Truth

Fragments

Hyp. Arch.

Soph. Jes. Chr.

2 Apoc. Jas

Treat. Res.

Orig. World

Dial. Sav.

Apoc. Adam

Tri. Trac.

Exeg. Soul Thom. Cont. Colophon

it may, in my view, this insertion tells us nothing about the planning of the contents of Codex VI. 17 On the basis of this estimate, Yvonne Janssens has argued that the Trim. Prot. was originally preceded by a copy of the long recension of the Ap. John. If she was right, then Codex XIII would have begun like Codices II and IV to which its production is linked; see Janssens, “Le codex XIII de Nag Hammadi,” Mus 87 (1974): 342; Janssens, La Prôtennoia trimorphe (NH XIII, 1) (BCNH.T 4; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1978), 2; Paul-Hubert Poirier, La Pensée Première à la triple forme (BCNH.T 32; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2006), 11.

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As they are related through their scribe(s) and through the exemplar from which On the Origin of the World was copied, Codices II and XIII were certainly produced in the same context, but for two different destinations. If the copies of Apocryphon of John contained in Codices II and IV were copied from the same exemplar, but by different scribes, then the production of Codices II and XIII would be related to the larger group made of Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX (see below). Even if the Apocryphon of John contained in Codex IV was copied from Codex II (or from a now lost copy contained in Codex XIII?) it would nevertheless relate the production of this larger group of codices to the production of Codices II and XIII – in this case we might even ask whether Codex II (or XIII) might have been produced for the milieu which is likely responsible for the production of Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX. Be all this as it may, these considerations exclude a single milieu for both the production and the destination of all these codices. With regard to Codex III, since it contains three versions of texts differing from their duplicates in II, IV, and V (the Apocryphon of John, the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, and Eugnostos), it was probably produced in a different milieu. Finally, the presence of non-identical versions of the Gospel of Truth in Codices I and XII would dissociate the production of these codices from each other, but not necessarily from the other codices.18

The Scribes and Their Handwriting Since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Codices, there have been many analyses of the handwriting of their various scribes.19 In what follows, I 18

At the level of the compilation made by the scribes, the existence of different selections or arrangements of texts made by the same scribe (Codices II and XIII), or possibly by different scribes working in the same context (Codices II and IV), suggests that the rationale for a given compilation was probably dictated by the destination of the codices. 19 Jean Doresse distinguished eight or nine different “hands”; Doresse, Les livres secrets des gnostiques d’Égypte, Vol 1: Introduction aux écrits gnostiques coptes découverts à Khénoboskion (Paris: Plon, 1958), 164–67 = The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics (London: Hollis and Carter, 1960), 141–45; also Martin Krause, “Zum koptischen Handschriftenfund bei Nag Hammadi,” MDAI Abteilung Kairo 19 (1963): 106–13, quoted by James M. Robinson, “On the Codicology of the Nag Hammadi Codices,” in Les textes de Nag Hammadi. Colloque du Centre d’Histoire des Religions (Strasbourg, 23–25 octobre 1974) (ed. Jacques Édouard Ménard; NHS 7; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 17–18. For a recent discussion of the paleography of the Nag Hammadi Codices, see Pasquale Orsini, “Le scrittura dei codici di Nag Hammadi,” in Oltre la scrittura. Variazione sul tema per Guglielmo Cavallo (ed. Daniele Bianconi and Lucio Del Corso; Dossiers byzantins 8; Centre d’études byzantines, néo-helléniques et sud-est asiatiques;

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will restrict myself to drawing on conclusions that seem to have gained general assent from scholars. While it was originally thought that Codices IV, V, VI, VIII, IX were produced by a single scribe,20 Wolf-Peter Funk has argued instead that they were the product of scribes belonging to one school,21 and Michael Williams has distinguished five scribes as having been involved in the copy of these codices, IV and VIII showing a distinct use of the backstroke.22 But in spite of the features which separate the handwriting styles of these five codices they share important similarities. According to Williams, “these similarities are extensive and important, and together they constitute an array of shared scribal habits that surely indicate that our five scribes were closely related in training.”23

École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales; Paris: Diffusion de Brocard, 2008), 95– 121. Orsini provides a description of the different hands, distinguishing four paleographical types: hands attributable to the Alexandrine uncial (Codices III, IV, V, VI, VIII and IX); hands attributable to the Biblical uncial (Codices I [first hand], II [both hands], X and XII); mixed hands (VII and XI [second hand]), and finally a fourth type (generica scrittura formale ad asse inclinato: Codices I [second hand] and XI [first hand]). 20 “Hand 2” in Doresse, Les livres secrets, 164; see also Krause, “Zum koptischen Handschriftenfund bei Nag Hammadi,” 110–11, and Jean-Pierre Mahé, Hermès en Haute-Égypte. Tome II : Le fragment du Discours parfait et les définitions hermétiques arméniennes (NH VI, 8.8) (BCNH.T 7; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1982), 468 (Codices VI, IV, V, VIII, and IX). 21 Wolf-Peter Funk, review of The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex IV and The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex III, OLZ 77 (1982): 134, and review of The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codice: Codex VIII and The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex IX and X, OLZ 78 (1983): 558; see also Robinson, Introduction, 86 n. 63. 22 Michael A. Williams, “The Scribes of Nag Hammadi Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX,” in Actes du IVe Congrès Copte: Louvain-la-Neuve, 5–10 septembre 1988; II: De la linguistique au gnosticisme (ed. Marguerite Rassart-Debergh and Julien Ries; PIOL 41; Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut Orientaliste, 1992), 334–42. For a survey of the contributions by Doresse, Puech, and Manfredi to this question, see 334–35. 23 Williams, “The Scribes,” 336–37. As for Codex VI, noting some differences in the handwriting, Pierre Cherix suggested that the last tractate as well as the scribal note was either written later by the same scribe or by a different scribe; Cherix, “Les variantes coptes non sahidiques classiques attestées dans le Codex Cairensis Gnosticus VI: essai de typologie” (PhD diss., Université de Lausanne, 1994), 122 n. 355. The first possibility appears more likely; see Wolf-Peter Funk, “L’orthographe du manuscrit,” in Paul-Hubert Poirier, Le Tonnerre, intellect parfait (NH VI, 2), avec deux contributions de W.-P. Funk (BCNH.T 22; Québec : Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1995), 13 n. 78, and Victor Ghica, Les Actes de Pierre et des douze apôtres (NH VI,1) (BCNH.T 37; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, forthcoming) who retains the first possibility. In any case, even if Codex VI was produced by two different scribes, they were certainly trained in the same school and thus we would not need to modify the present argument concerning

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The handwriting in Codices II and XIII24 is clearly different from the group made of Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX.25 One aspect of this difference is the use of the superlinear stroke.26 This handwriting is so similar that these codices ought to be attributed either to the same scribe,27 or to two scribes of the same “school”, possibly to a student and his instructor.28 On the other hand, Codices I, VII and XI are also linked through their scribes, but in a much closer and more intricate fashion. Codex I was produced by two scribes, hereafter A and B, and scribe B also copied the first half of Codex XI, while the second half of Codex XI was produced by a third scribe, hereafter scribe C, who also produced the entirety of Codex VII. The range of the handwriting found in these codices is much wider than that found in the group made of Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX. The handwriting in these latter codices is relatively similar both with regard to quality and style. In Codices I, XI and VII, however, the handwriting varies a great deal, from the clumsy writing of scribe A to the graceful, rounded letters of scribe C. Thus our survey of the groups of the handwriting enables us to identify four groups of codices with different contexts of origin, two of which produced very homogeneously written texts, while another one produced diversely written ones. As before, Codex III is distinct from either group.29

the grouping of Codex VI with IV, V, VIII, and IX based on the handwriting styles found therein. 24 See the contribution by Michael A. Williams and David Coblenz in the present volume: “A Reexamination of the Articulation Marks in Nag Hammadi Codices II and XIII.” 25 Williams and Coblenz, “A Reexamination”; Orsini, “Le scrittura,” 103–4. 26 Wolf-Peter Funk, “L’orthographe et la langue du traité,” in L’Écrit sans titre. Traité sur l’origine du monde (NH II, 5 et XIII, 2 et Brit. Lib, Or 4926[1]), avec deux contributions de Wolf-Peter Funk (ed. Louis Painchaud; BCNH.T 21; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1995), 30–34. 27 Bentley Layton, “The Hypostasis of the Archons,” HTR 69 (1976): 84; Linda K. Ogden, “The Binding of Codex II,” in Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7 together with XIII,2*, Brit. Lib. Or. 4926(1) and P. Oxy. I, 654, 655 (ed. Bentley Layton; 2 vols.; NHS 20–21; Leiden: Brill, 1989), 1:24. 28 John D. Turner, “Introduction to Codex XIII,” in Nag Hammadi Codices XI, XII, XIII (ed. Charles W. Hedrick; NHS 28; Leiden: Brill, 1990), 362. 29 Codicological and paleographic descriptions of Codex III can be found in Alexander Böhlig, Frederik Wisse, and Pahor Labib, eds., Nag Hammadi Codices III,2 and IV,2: The Gospel of the Egyptians (The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit) (NHS 4; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 1–7; and Stephen Emmel, ed., Nag Hammadi Codex III, 5: The Dialogue of the Savior ( NHS 26; Leiden: Brill, 1984): 19–36.

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The Scribes and Handwriting Same school, different scribes sub-group

subgroup

IV

VI

VIII

IX

Same scribe or school

V

II

XIII

Different schools, related scribes Scribe A I,1,2, 3,5

Scribe B I,4; XI,1–2

Scribe C XI,3–4; VII

Unrelated scribe

III

The quality and similarity of the writing style in this first group points strongly toward a common milieu of production for Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX – and this observation applies as well to Codices II and XIII. Similarly, the codices in the third group – I, XI, and VII – are shown to be associated through the collaboration in Codex XI of the scribes who were responsible for the copy of Codex I,4 (scribe B) and Codex VII (scribe C). Thus they too most likely come from the same milieu, or from closely related milieus. With regard to the destinations of Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX, as well as II and XIII, the handwriting tells us nothing, but the absence of identical duplicates within the first group might point toward one single destination or, at least, does not suggest different destinations, while the presence of at least one identical duplicate in Codices II and XIII does suggest that their destinations varied, even if their context of origin was the same. With regard to Codices I, VII and XI, several factors – including the absence of duplicates and the differing quality and style of the handwriting within the codices, as well as the dialectal heterogeneity of Codex XI suggest that these codices were intended for use within the milieu that produced them. This hypothesis is also supported by the designs on page B of Codex I.30 These three codices, then, would have been copied in or for a milieu in which there was a range of scribes available, whose capabilities varied from better (scribe C) to worse (scribe A).

Papyrus, Bindings, and Extant Covers James Robinson’s analysis of different material characteristics of the codices led him to argue that there were at least four different sub-groups within the Nag Hammadi Codices. The first was made up of Codices IV, V and VIII; the second included Codices II, VI, IX, X and XIII; a third comprised

30 Einar Thomassen and Louis Painchaud, Le Traité tripartite (NH I, 5) (BCNH.T 19; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1989), 3.

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Codices I, VII and XI; and finally, a fourth group made up of only Codex III alone. 31 Aspects of the construction of Codices IV, V and VIII, as well as the quality of the papyrus used in them, were interpreted by Robinson as being the result of “a relatively primitive technique.” However, he argued that this “primitive” character was to be explained by “a relatively backward tradition, rather than an appreciably earlier date”; in contrast, he argued that Codices II, VI, IX and X made up “a more advanced sub-group.”32 As for Codices I, VII and XI, their size sets them apart: their covers are larger and taller than the ones of the other codices, with the exception of Codex III. Dimensions and features of the bindings and quality of the papyrus More primitive covers

More advanced covers33

Papyrus relatively coarse35

Finer papyrus36

IV

V

VIII

VI

IX

II

[XIII]

Tend towards primitiveness34

I

VII

XI

III

The material differences between the Codices IV, V and VIII on the one hand and VI and IX on the other, might be read as suggesting that they form two subgroups produced in different contexts, either spatial or temporal, as is proposed by James Robinson. However the similarity of the handwriting in these two subgroups makes this unlikely, and hence I would prefer to speak of these subgroups in terms of their having higher and lower levels of quality. The first subgroup’s covers and papyrus are of rela31 Robinson, Introduction, 85–86. Unfortunately, the existence of such sub-collections, which appear to me as a very important element which must be taken into account in any discussion about the production and destination of the Nag Hammadi Codices, is neglected in the recent contribution by Eduard Iricinschi, “‛Souvenez-vous aussi de moi dans vos prières.’ Scribes et codex dans l’Égypte du IVe siècle,” in Le savoir des religions: fragments d'historiographie religieuse (ed. Daniel Barbu et al.; Gollion: Infolio, 2014), 169–203. 32 Robinson, Introduction, 83–84: “the quality of the papyrus sheets in codex V is among the poorest in the library”; see also Douglas M. Parrott, “Introduction,” in Nag Hammadi Codices V, 2–5 and VI with Papyrus Berolinensis 8502, 1 and 4 (ed. Douglas M. Parrott; NHS 11; Leiden: Brill, 1979), 4. 33 Except for Codex XIII, of which only four folios are extant and whose cover is not preserved. 34 Robinson, Introduction, 86. 35 Robinson, Introduction, 82–83. 36 Robinson, Introduction, 85: “In the case of all five codices (i.e. II, VI, IX, X and XIII) the papyrus is much finer than that of the first sub-group (i.e. IV, V and VIII).” This observation applies also to Codex X.

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tively low quality, which would likely have made these codices more affordable than those belonging to the second subgroup. If we accept the hypothesis that the copies of the Apocryphon of John found in Codices II and IV were made from the same exemplar and possibly in the same milieu, then Codices II and XIII would belong to a relatively “higher quality subgroup”, with Codex II as a “deluxe” edition, to judge by its cover’s ornamentation, its length, and the number of texts it contains.37 Thus this group would present us, so to speak, with three levels of codex quality: economy (IV, V, and VIII), superior (VI, IX, and XIII), and deluxe (II). This explanation of the differences between the codices enables us at one stroke to account for the differences both in the quality of papyrus used and in the fabrication of the covers. Such a hypothesis also incorporates the length of Codex II and the ornamentation of its cover. The differences between these codices, accordingly, would have to do not with their context of production, but rather with their destination – that is, with the budgets and desires of the people for whom they were produced.38 This hypothesis would, then, suggest that although they were produced in the same milieu, these codices were intended for different recipients.39 As for the subgroup made up of Codices I, VII and XI, the codices are homogeneous, at least with regard to their dimensions. This could be another hint that these codices were produced in the same milieu.

The Cartonnage Eleven leather covers of Nag Hammadi Codices have survived, the only two codices without covers being the fragmentary XII and XIII of which only eight folios are preserved.40 Amongst these eleven, the covers of Codices I, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX and XI were stiffened with fragments of papyri of various provenances as cartonnage, while Codices II, III and X

37

See Ogden, “The Binding of Codex II,” 19–25. In this respect, the observation by Paola Buzi to the effect that the activity of the scribes of the Nag Hammadi Codices was conditioned by the wealth of the commissioner would apply not only to the choice and the number of the texts copied, but also to the material quality of the codex, i.e. the quality of the papyrus and bindings; Buzi, Titoli e autori nella tradizione copta: studio storico e tipologico (Biblioteca degli Studi di Egittologia e di Papirologia 2; Pisa: Giardini, 2005), 83. 39 It is also possible that they came from different workshops, as suggested by Ewa Wipszycka, but this seems less likely considering the handwriting similarity; Wipszycka, “The Nag Hammadi Library and the Monks,” JJP 30 (2000): 187. 40 See supra n. 19. 38

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contain no cartonnage.41 Cohering with what we have already discussed, there is a clear difference in the nature and most likely the provenance of the fragments found in the covers of the codices forming the group A, i.e. Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX on the one hand, and I, VII, and XI on the other hand. The 26 tiny fragments in the binding of Codex IV have writings in Greek on them, and seem to have derived from official records, to judge by the amounts of goods mentioned.42 They might well have been written and/or kept in some governmental office.43 With regard to the fragments from Codex V, they also seem to come from official records, and could have derived from an important administrative centre whose jurisdiction covered the Thebaid as a whole.44 The fragments found in Codex VI, mainly lists of names, may have come, according to Shelton, from the same source as those found in the covers of Codices IV and V.45 As for the fragments used in the covers of Codex IX, insofar as they are readable, they also consist mainly of lists of names, and seem to be the remains of financial or fiscal documents. One of these fragments, according to Shelton, is written in a hand “very similar to, and perhaps identical with” a fragment (44/45) found in the cover of Codex VI: the two fragments may have the same provenance.46 It seems likely then, that according to the nature and similarity of the fragments used in their covers, Codices IV, V, VI and IX share the same provenance, a regional administrative center of some importance. Finally, several fragments from Codex VIII derive from official decrees that may have been “aimed at an area larger than any one of the Egyptian provinces.”47 As for the place name περὶ Χην[οβόσκια] reconstructed in fragment 31 in Codex V,48 it seems to indicate the place from where one Κλαύδιος came; the absence of context gives little support for Shelton’s suggestion that this would indicate that Codex V was bound in the same area as Codices I, VII, and XI.49

41 John W. B. Barns, G. M. Browne, and John C. Shelton, eds., Nag Hammadi Codices: Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Cartonnage of the Covers (NHS 16; Leiden: Brill, 1981), xiii. 42 Barns, Browne, Shelton, Cartonnage, 23. 43 Barns, Browne, Shelton, Cartonnage, 3. 44 Barns, Browne, Shelton, Cartonnage, 3, 25. 45 Barns, Browne, Shelton, Cartonnage, 4. 46 Barns, Browne, Shelton, Cartonnage, 103 and 11. 47 Barns, Browne, Shelton, Cartonnage, 88. 48 Barns, Browne, Shelton, Cartonnage, 36 and 11. 49 Barns, Browne, Shelton, Cartonnage, 11.

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The few fragments preserved in the cover of Codex I, on the other hand, come from private letters, one of which is written by a resident of Chenoboskion,50 and two contracts, one of which deals with Diospolis Parva.51 The cover of Codex VII contained the most extensive cartonnage, and this material came from a diverse array of documents, including: religious literature, contracts and private letters in Greek and Coptic, which might come from many sources, some of which were business letters written by or addressed to a priest or monk called Sansnos, one of them mentioning the Diospolitan nome.52 Finally and most importantly, fragments 64 and 65 inside the cover of Codex VII include dates corresponding to 346 and 348 CE, which provide a terminus post quem for the production of this codex and thus also for, Codices I and XI which are related to VII through the interaction of their scribes.53 In his introduction to the edition of Codex VII, published in 1996 but written much earlier, Frederik Wisse stated that the fragments in the cartonnage came from a Pachomian monastery.54 The worldly concerns expressed in many of the letters, however, led others to reject this and to suggest instead that the fragments derived from secular communities in the region, Meletian monasteries or other Christian fellowships.55 In any case, the place names found in the cartonnage – Chenoboskion in Codex I, fr. 1 (Διὸς πόλ περὶ Χηνοβ),56 and the Diospolitan Nome and the village of Techty in Codex VII (fr. 64)57 – indicate that these two codices, and probably also Codex XI, to which they are related, were bound in the area where they were discovered in 1945. Finally, Codex XI contains fragments of what seems to be a private letter.58 To sum up, it seems clear that the fragments found in the covers of the codices fall into two distinct categories: official documents of various sorts 50

Barns, Browne, Shelton, Cartonnage, 11. Barns, Browne, Shelton, Cartonnage, 2–3, 15. 52 P. Nag. Hamm. 64, Barns, Browne, Shelton, Cartonnage, 56. 53 Barns, Browne, Shelton, Cartonnage, 56–57. 54 Frederik Wisse, “Introduction,” in Nag Hammadi Codex VII (ed. Birger A. Pearson; NHMS 30; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 1. In the preface to the volume (p. xi), Pearson notes that Wisse’s introduction to the codex is the final revision of an earlier work. In this precise case, Wisse’s opinion reflects a view that was generally accepted during the 1970s with regard to the origins of the papyri contained in the cartonnage of the covers, a view that was corrected by J. C. Shelton in the 1981 edition; see esp. Barns, Browne, Shelton, Cartonnage, 1–2, 6–11; Bentley Layton, review of Barns, Browne, Shelton, Nag Hammadi Codices: Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Cartonnage of the Covers, JAOS 102 (1982): 397–98. 55 Barns, Browne, Shelton, Cartonnage, 6–7, esp. n. 12. 56 Barns, Browne, Shelton, Cartonnage, 15–16. 57 Barns, Browne, Shelton, Cartonnage, 56. 58 Barns, Browne, Shelton, Cartonnage, 105. 51

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The Production and Destination of the Nag Hammadi Codices

in Codices IV, V, VI, VIII, and IX on the one hand, and private documents in Codices I, VII, and XI on the other hand. These two distinct categories coincide with and thus tend to confirm the distinction already made on different grounds between Codices IV, V, VI, VIII, and IX on the one hand, and I, VII, and XI on the other hand. Moreover, while the documents found in the first group seem to come from an administrative office of some importance where similar documents might have been available in great quantity, the documents found in the second group, very different in nature, are mainly private, which suggests a milieu in which waste papyri were less numerous, or at least where one would not find many waste official or administrative papyri.59 The “waste paper trader” hypothesis60 might possibly account for the gathering of so many different types of recycled papyri, but it cannot account for the association of Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX and their dissociation from Codices I, VII and XI on the basis both of their cartonnage and their handwritings. The hypothesis of two different milieus of production provides a more probable explanation of the distinction of the two groupings on the basis of both the cartonnage and the handwritings. Finally, the absence of cartonnage within the cover of Codices II and III would dissociate them from both groups. Official or administrative documents, all Greek. IV

V

VI

VIII

Private documents, Greek and Coptic IX

I

VII

XI

No cartonnage II

III

The Dialects61 Wolf-Peter Funk argues that “strictly speaking, there can be no ‘linguistic classification of the Nag Hammadi codices,’ apart from stating that a certain number of them contain texts superficially edited in some kind of approximative ‘Sahidic’, [S*]62 whereas two others are edited in more or less 59 With regard to the papyri found in the covers of Codex VII, Shelton observes that “It is hard to think of satisfactory single source for such a variety of documents except a town rubbish heap . . .” (Cartonnage, 11). 60 Wipszycka, “The Nag Hammadi Library and the Monks,” 188–89. 61 For a synthetic overview of the dialectal problem in the Nag Hammadi corpus, see Pierre Cherix, “Les variantes coptes,” 19–24, and Wolf-Peter Funk, “Toward a Linguistic Classification of the ‘Sahidic’ Nag Hammadi Texts,” in Acts of the Fifth International Congress of Coptic Studies: Washsington, 12–15 August 1992 (ed. Tito Orlandi and D. W. Johnson; Rome: C. I. M., 1993), 163–77, and Funk, “The Linguistic Aspect,” 107–47. 62 We adopt the hypothesis that the origin of the dialectal variations found in any given Nag Hammadi codex is altogether the product of some sort of more or less systematic

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distinct varieties of dialect L6 [I and X],63 and one is mixed [XI].”64 He notes as well that, among the approximately Sahidic codices, Codex III stands out by its homogeneity, its proximity to standard Sahidic, and the Middle-Egyptian origins of its dialectal traits.65 We should note as well that Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX, as well as II and XIII show evidence of having been dialectally standardized in their use of Sahidic, whereas the I, VII and XI are quite diverse in this regard: Codex VII shows various kinds of approximative Sahidic, Codex I is in L6, and Codex XI has two texts in L6 (copied by the second scribe of Codex I) and two in Sahidic (copied by the scribe of Codex VII). As we have come to expect, Codex III is distinct from either of these two groups.66 Superficially edited in approximative “Sahidic” (S*) II

XIII

IV

VI

67

VIII

IX

Dialectal diversity

V

S

L6

L6/S*

S*

I

XIa/XIb

VII

III

Although the two copies of On the Origin of the World in Codices II and XIII appear to have been created from the same exemplar and by the same scribe, or two scribes of the same school, they show dialectal differences. If only one scribe is involved, these differences can be easily explained if we imagine that the scribe himself was responsible for transposing a subAchmimic (L6) exemplar into Sahidic,68 and that he was neither completeediting, and of the translation of the Greek originals and the subsequent inter-dialectal transposition of these translations in the course of their transmission upstream the Nile Valley. Nonetheless, dialectal variants displayed by the various texts likely bear traces of their transmission along the Nile from north to south and their successive transcriptions according to different dialect standards; see Bentley Layton, “Gnosticisme,” RB 83 (1976): 458–69, and Funk, “The Linguistic Aspect,” 143–46. 63 For the language of Codex X, see Pearson, “Introduction to Codex X,” 223–27. On the language of Codex X and XI (the first handwriting is close to the fragments of the Writing without Title preserved in the dialect L6 (Brit. Lib. Or. 4926[1]), see Funk, Concordance des textes de Nag Hammadi: Les Codices X et XIA, v. 64 Funk, “The Linguistic Aspect,” 125. 65 Funk, “The Linguistic Aspect,” 136–37. 66 Funk, “The Linguistic Aspect,” 136–37: “Codex III stands out from the rest of the Nag Hammadi library not only for its distinct scribe (even a distinct ‘style of writing’) – though certainly not the most careful one – but also for its linguistic properties: it is the one codex that contains a certain number of tractates edited in a variety of Coptic that is very close to (or almost identical with) standard Sahidic.” 67 On the linguistic aspect of Codex VI, see Funk, “L’orthographe du manuscrit,” 13– 53, and Ghica, Les Actes de Pierre et des douze apôtres. 68 This L6 version would not be the same as the fragmentary version preserved in the British Library; see Christian Oeyen, “Fragmente einer subachmimischen Version der gnostischen ‘Schrift ohne Titel,’” in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts: In Honour of Pahor Labib (ed. Martin Krause; NHS 6; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 125–44; Bentley Layton,

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ly uniform nor completely rigorous in this work, thus leaving the same dialectal forms in the two copies, but altering different words, which might appear as “variations libres,”69 but are more likely traces of a somewhat inconsistent process of interdialectal transposition from a L6 exemplar into Sahidic. If we look instead at the two copies of the same version of the Apocryphon of John in Codices II and IV, we note first of all that the copy in IV gives “virtually the same text of the Apocryphon of John that is found in a less standardized copy in Codex II.”70 However, there are differences between the two copies that appear to have been created not as a result of redaction or deliberate revision, but simply in the process of copying. “In the case of variant spelling, IV has almost invariably the standard Sahidic form where II has Subachmimicisms.”71 Two hypotheses are possible: either both copies were made on the same exemplar, or one copy was made from the other. In either case, there would be some kind of link between group A (Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX) on the one hand, and Codices II and XIII on the other. Waldstein and Wisse have argued that what we have here is actually an ongoing process of Sahidic standardization, in which Codex II represents an earlier stage, and Codex IV a later one.72 In my view, these differences could also be explained by the hypothesis that both copies were made from the same exemplar, and that the scribe responsible for the copy of Codex II, and for the transposition of its content into an approximative Sahidic, was less rigorous than the scribe responsible for Codex IV, a lack of rigor which is also illustrated by the dialectal inconsistencies brought to light in comparing the two copies of On the Origin of the World in Codices II and XIII.

“The British Library Fragments” in Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7 together with XIII,2*, Brit. Lib. Or. 4926(1) and P. Oxy. I, 654, 655 (ed. Bentley Layton; 2 vols.; NHS 20–21; Leiden: Brill, 1989), 2:95–134; Wolf-Peter Funk, “Les fragments Brit. Lib. Or. 4926 (1),” in Painchaud, L’Écrit sans titre, 529–64, 66–67. 69 As suggested by Gérard Roquet, “Variation libre, tendance, durée. De quelques traits de langue dans les Nag Hammadi Codices,” in Écritures et traditions dans la littérature copte. Journée d’études coptes, Strasbourg, 28 mai 1982 (Cahiers de la bibliothèque copte 1; Louvain: Peeters, 1983), 28–36; see also Helmut Satzinger, “On the Origin of the Sahidic Dialect,” Acts of the second Congress of Coptic Studies, Roma, 22– 26 septembre 1980 (ed. Tito Orlandi and Frederik Wisse; Rome: C. I. M., 1985), 307–12; Pierre Cherix, “Les variantes coptes non sahidiques classiques attestées dans le Codex Cairensis Gnosticus VI: essai de typologie” (PhD diss., Université de Lausanne, 1994), 24. 70 Funk, “The Linguistic Aspect,” 127. 71 Waldstein and Wisse, The Apocryphon of John, 5. 72 Waldstein and Wisse, The Apocryphon of John, 6, in response to Layton (“Introduction,” 7) who believed that the transposition into Sahidic was an attempt to make the work seem more orthodox.

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Colophons, Scribal Notes, and Formulas of Devotion A full, detailed discussion of the colophons, scribal notes and formulas of devotion written down by the actual scribes of the Nag Hammadi Codices or their predecessors is both long overdue, and also far beyond the limits of the present paper. However it is necessary to consider these aspects of the writings in the present context insofar as they might shed some light on either the production or the destination of the codices. Such scribal insertions are found in codices belonging to all the groups that we have been discussing – in Codex II, in VI and VIII, in I and VII, and in III, but they are very different in nature, tone, and contents: I B.10:

Formula of devotion placed between the Prayer of the Apostle Paul and the Apocryphon of James

II 145.20–23:

Colophon placed at the end of the codex

III 69.6–17

Colophon to the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit73

VI 65.8–14:

Scribal note placed between the Prayer of Thanksgiving and the Perfect Discourse (Asclepius)

VII 118.8–9:

Formula of devotion placed between the Teachings of Silvanus and the Three Steles of Seth

VII 127.28–32:

Colophon placed at the end of the codex

VIII 132.6–9:

Cryptogram placed at the end of Zostrianos

Because of the formulaic nature of many of these notes, as well as the mingling of Greek and Coptic in them, Jean-Pierre Mahé has argued that they were already present in the exemplars from which the Nag Hammadi copies were made,74 with the exception of the note in Codex VI, to which we will return below. However, this argument, it seems to me, does not take sufficiently into account the transmission history of the texts: it is quite likely that many stages lay between their translation from Greek into Coptic and their eventual incorporation into the Nag Hammadi Codices, in the course of which they would have been integrated in different groupings and in different orders. It is very unlikely that the notes at the end of Codi73 It might have been absent in the copy of the same text in Codex IV, of which the end is not preserved; see Böhlig and Wisse, Nag Hammadi Codices III,2 and IV,2, 206; also Paulinus Bellet, “The Colophon of the Gospel of the Egyptians: Concessus and Macarius of Nag Hammadi,” in Nag Hammadi and Gnosis: Papers read at the First International Congress of Coptology (Cairo, December 1976) (ed. Robert McL. Wilson; NHS 14; Leiden: Brill, 1978), 44–65; see the comments of Wolf-Peter Funk on this article (“The Linguistic Aspect,” 137 n. 24). This scribal note would require a thorough examination which goes far beyond the scope of the present study. 74 Mahé, Hermès en Haute-Égypte. Tome II, 460–68, esp. 463–64.

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ces II and VII would have been put there by chance; it is also unlikely that the scribes of these codices would have put the Book of Thomas and the Three Steles of Seth at the end of their respective codices simply because they were attached to these notes. As for the mingling of Greek and Coptic, Wisse has observed that “particularly in colophons, Greek phrases remained in use long after the Greek influence on the Coptic Church had ceased”.75 We should, then, consider these notes, like the note in Codex VI, as being more likely the work of the scribes who copied these codices. With regard to the colophon that accompanies the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit in Codex III, the fact that it contains the name “Eugnostos” links it to the text that immediately follows, namely Eugnostos. It is possible that the scribe added this name to the note in copying it, but it seems more likely – given the dialectal homogeneity of the first four texts in Codex III – that these versions of the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit and Eugnostos had already circulated together, along with the rest of the content of this codex, when they were copied by the scribe of Codex III.76 However, the production and destination of Codex III, which constitutes a sub-collection by itself, will be discussed in a later contribution to the topic of the production and destination of the Nag Hammadi Codices. Let us turn now to the scribal notes found in Codices I and VII. In Codex I, there are several words in Greek immediately following the title of the Prayer of the Apostle Paul: ⲉⲛ ⲉⲓⲣⲏⲛⲏ ⲟ ⳩ ⲁⲅⲓⲟⲥ (B,9–10), including the chi rho, accompanied by a crux ansata and latin crosses. In his discussion of the Prayer of the Apostle Paul, Mueller assumes that this short note derives from the original Greek version of the text;77 Einar Thomassen seems to attribute it and its ornaments to the scribe of the codex him- or herself78; and neither Williams,79 nor Painchaud and Kaler, nor Kaler80 address this issue. As for Codex VII, the note, also in Greek, including the Christian 75 Wisse, “Language Mysticism in the Nag Hammadi Texts and in Early Coptic Monasticism I: Cryptography,” Enchoria 9 (1979): 104. 76 Funk, “The Linguistic Aspect,” 136–39. 77 Dieter Mueller, “Prayer of the Apotle Paul: I,1: A.1–B.10,” in Nag Hammadi Codex I (The Jung Codex): Introductions, Texts, Translations, Indices (ed. Harold W. Attridge; NHS 22; Leiden: Brill, 1985), 6. 78 Thomassen and Painchaud, Le Traité Tripartite, 3. 79 Michael A. Williams, “Interpreting the Nag Hammadi Library as ‘Collection(s)’ in the History of ‘Gnosticism(s),’” in Les textes de Nag Hammadi et le problème de leur classification (ed. Louis Painchaud and Anne Pasquier; BCNH.É 3; Québec: les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1995), 3–50. 80 Louis Painchaud and Michael Kaler, “From the Prayer of the Apostle Paul to the Three Steles of Seth: Codices I, XI and VII from Nag Hammadi Viewed as a Collection,” VC 61 (2007): 445–69; Michael Kaler, “The Prayer of the Apostle Paul in the Context of Nag Hammadi Codex I,” JECS 16 (2008): 319–39.

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Greek acronym ⲓ̈ⲭⲑⲩⲥ,81 that separates the Teachings of Silvanus from the Three Steles of Seth, is not usually seen as attached to the Teachings of Silvanus per se, and is more generally attributed to a scribe, but not necessarily to the scribe of Codex VII himself.82 ⲫⲫ ⲫ

ⲓ̈ⲭⲑⲩⲥ ⲑⲁⲩⲙⲁ ⲏⲏⲏ ⲁⲙⲏⲭⲁⲛⲟⲛ ⟀ ⲧ ⲩ

The presence of Greek words or formulas in these notes does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that they predate the copy of the codices in which they appear.83 It could just as easily be argued that Greek might have been seen as elegant, a “classier” or more sophisticated thing to add as a note – just as someone in a religious context might append a few words in Latin or Greek to an English or French letter. Finally, at the end of Codex VII we find a pious note following the title of the Three Steles of Seth (127.28–32): ⲡⲉⲓ̈ϫⲱⲱⲙⲉ ⲡⲁϯⲙⲛ︦ⲧⲉⲓ̈ⲱⲧ ⲡⲉ ⲡϣⲏⲣⲉ ⲡⲉⲛⲧⲁϥⲥⲁϩϥ̄ ⲥⲙⲟⲩ ⲉⲣⲟⲓ̈ ⲡⲓⲱⲧ ϯⲥⲙⲟⲩ ⲉⲣⲟⲕ ⲡⲓⲱⲧ ϩⲛ︦ⲟⲩⲉⲓⲣⲏⲛⲏ ϩⲁⲙⲏⲛ

81

This book belongs to the fatherhood, It is the son who wrote it. Bless me, O father, I bless you, Father, in peace. Amen

Concerning the origin of the ICHTYS, see Tuomas Rasimus, “Revisiting the ICHTYS: A Suggestion Concerning the origins of Christological Fish Symbolism,” in Mystery and Secrecy in the Nag Hammadi Collection and Other Ancient Literature: Ideas and Practices: Studies for Einar Thomassen at Sixty (ed. Christian H. Bull, Liv Ingeborg Lied, and John D. Turner; NHMS 76; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 327–48. 82 See Williams, “Interpreting the Nag Hammadi Library as ‘Collection(s),’” 18–19 for an analysis of this scribal note, which he attributes to the scribe of Codex VII. It is attributed to “a scribe” by Malcolm L. Peel and Jan Zandee, “The Teachings of Silvanus from the Library of Nag Hammadi,” NovT 14 (1972): 296–97; also Peel, “Introduction to VII,4: The Teachings of Silvanus,” in Nag Hammadi Codex VII (ed. Birger A. Pearson; NHMS 30; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 250; either to the author of the Teach. Silv. or to a scribe by Yvonne Janssens, Les Leçons de Silvanos (NH VII, 4) (BCNH.T 13; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1983), 142. Hans-Martin Schenke and Wolf-Peter Funk consider that this note is not necessarily related to Teach. Silv, but might have been copied by the scribe of Codex VII from a codex containing many Christian books where it was placed at the end as a sort of conclusion for the whole codex; Schenke and Funk, “Die Lehren des Silvanus (NHC VII,4),” in Nag Hammadi Deutsch 2. Band: NHC V,2– XIII,1, BG 1 und 4 (ed. Hans-Martin Schenke, Hans-Gebhard Bethge, and Ursula Ulrike Kaiser; Koptisch-Gnostische Schriften III. GCSNF 12; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003), 604. 83 See n. 75 above.

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Michel Tardieu and James M. Robinson both argue that this colophon refers to the codex as a whole,84 while Paul Claude, Bentley Layton and James E. Goehring do not take a position on this,85 and Konrad Wekel and Hans-Martin Schenke view it as applying solely to the Three Steles of Seth.86 Placed as it is at the end of the codex, it seems more likely that author of this note is the scribe himself, and that it applies to the book, i.e. the codex.87 The relevance of this note in relation with the production and destination of Codex VII rests mainly on the interpretation of the expression ϯⲙⲛ̄ⲧⲉⲓ̈ⲱⲧ. It has been suggested that this abstract noun, which means “fatherhood,” might allude to a community for which the codex was intended.88 However, the abstract word ϯⲙⲛ̄ⲧⲉⲓ̈ⲱⲧ constructed with the posses84

Michel Tardieu, “Les Trois Stèles de Seth. Un écrit gnostique retrouvé à Nag Hammadi,” RSPT 57 (1973): 549; Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library in English, 363. 85 Paul Claude, Les Trois Stèles de Seth. Hymne gnostique à la triade (NH VII, 5) (BCNH.T 8; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1983), 116: “Ce colophon peut être considéré comme la clôture du Codex VII lui-même ou des 3 StSeth.” While Bentley Layton translates these lines as parts of the text of Steles Seth and gives them the subtitle “Dositheus’ concluding benediction,” he writes as follows about his translation of the Coptic word ϫⲱⲱⲙⲉ as “text”: “Or ‘this manuscript,’ in which case the concluding words are a note by the copyist or a predecessor, and not part of the original text”; Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures. A New Translation with Annotations and Introductions (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987), 158. See also Goehring’s note to 127,29–32 (James M. Robinson and James E. Goehring, “NHC VII, 5: The Three Steles of Seth: Text and Translation,” in Nag Hammadi Codex VII [ed. Birger A. Pearson; NHMS 30; Leiden: Brill, 1996], 421), but note that he is not accurate concerning the position he attributes to both Claude and Layton. 86 Konrad Wekel, “Die drei Stelen des Seth (NHC VII, 5). Text-ÜbersetzungKommentar” (PhD. diss., Humboldt-Üniversität, 1977), quoted in Robinson and Goehring, “The Three Steles of Seth,” 421, note to 127,29–32; Hans-Martin Schenke interprets the “son” in this note as Seth, son of Adam, on the background of the Jewish legends about the two steles written down by the sons of Adam (Josephus, Ant. 1,69–71) which implicitely relates this note to the Steles Seth themselves; Schenke, “Die Drei Stelen des Seth (NH VII,5),” in Nag Hammadi Deutsch 2. Band: NHC V,2–XIII,1, BG 1 und 4 (ed. Hans-Martin Schenke, Hans-Gebhard Bethge, and Ursula Ulrike Kaiser; Koptisch-Gnostische Schriften III. GCSNF 12; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003), 627. 87 The word ϫⲱⲱⲙⲉ, “book,” used here may refer either to a single writing or to the codex as a whole, as is pointed out by Layton (see n. 70 supra). But it is worth noting that in order to express his hesitation concerning which text he should copy, the scribe of Codex VI uses instead the word ⲗⲟⲅⲟⲥ and not ϫⲱⲱⲙⲉ. 88 Thus Claude, Les Trois Stèles de Seth, 116. It is translated by Layton (The Gnostic Scriptures, 158) as “kinship,” and explained as “the gnostic church” in a footnote; as “Geschlecht” by Schenke (“Die drei Stelen des Seth,” 632) in the context of his interpretation of the “son” as referring to Seth; as “Vaterschaft” by Konrad Wekel, “Die drei Stelen des Seth; die fünfte Schrift aus Nag-Hammadi-Codex VII: Eingeleitet und übersetzt vom Berliner Arbeitskreis für koptisch-gnostische Schriften,” TLZ 100 (1975):

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sive article is well attested in Sahidic non-literary papyri, such as letters, where a son addresses his father using the expression “your fatherhood” in the vocative, as an equivalent of “father.”89 The only difference here is the absence of the possessive article, but the context of the note, a “son” addressing his “father,” points toward the same kind of situation. The absence of the abstract ⲙⲛ̄ⲧⲉⲓ̈ⲱⲧ in the comprehensive survey provided by Bentley Layton of the broad range of the usage of ⲉⲓⲱⲧ and ⲉⲓⲟⲧⲉ in Shenoute’s canons90 suggests that this usage was restricted to the vocative in a direct address to a person, epistolary or otherwise, such as our colophon. If this note was not copied from the exemplar, but rather was the product of the scribe himself, then, it would show a quite close relation between the scribe who produced this codex and the man for whom it was produced, a relation–most likely hierarchical– for which the father/son relationship provided an adequate metaphoric expression. At least, such is the impression given by the note as a whole. On the other hand, one should note the total absence of any plural form which would suggest that the book was executed for a group. It seems more likely then, that the copying of this book was not the result of a commercial/professional transaction, but more likely was a private matter, involving a “son” and his “father.” Is it possible to go further in the interpretation of the use of the word ⲙⲛⲧⲓⲱⲧ here? At the very least, I would like to bring into the discussion

571–80; as “fatherhood,” with no comment, by Robinson and Goehring, “NHC VII, 5: The Three Steles of Seth,” 420. 89 Piotr V. Ernstedt, Les textes coptes du musée de l’Ermitage (Moscou-Léningrad: Éditions de l’Académie des sciences d’USSR, 1959), 41,1–2; A. Arthur Schiller, Ten Coptic Legal Texts (New York: The Metopolitan Museum of Art, 1932), no. 4, lines 5, 11, and 23 (pp. 38–40), and no. 5 lines 93 and 94 (p. 48); Herbert E. Winlock, Walter E. Crum and Hugh G. Evelyn-White, The Monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes: Part II (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Egyptian Expedition, 1926), no. 172 line 5 (p. 49); Walter E. Crum, Coptic Ostraca from the Collections of the Egypt Exploration Fund, the Cairo Museum and Others (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1902), no. 29 line 5 (to a bishop); P. Kellis Copt. 122 line 5–6 (ed. Iain Gardner, Anthony Alcock and Wolf-Peter Funk, Coptic Documentary Papyri from Kellis, Vol. 2: P. Kellis VII [Dakhleh Oasis Project Monograph 16; Oxford: Oxbow, 2014], 266). For a similar use of ⲙⲛⲧⲥⲱⲛⲉ to refer to brothers, see Anne Boud’hors and Chantal Heurtel, Les ostraca coptes de la TT 29. Autour du moine Frangé (Études d’archéologie thébaine 3; Bruxelles, 2010). Thanks to Wolf-Peter Funk for drawing these references to my attention. There are no occurrences of these formulas in the colophons collected by Arnold van Lantschoot, Recueil des colophons des manuscrits chrétiens d’Égypte. Tome I : Les colophons coptes des manuscrits sahidiques 1. Textes, 2. Notes (Louvain: J.-B. Istas, 1929). 90 Bentley Layton, “Some Observations on Shenoute’s Sources: Who are our Fathers?” Journal of Coptic Studies 11 (2009): 45–59.

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one significant occurrence of this word in Shenute’s Catechesis against Origenists (§376):91 Those who think this are worse than those who are ignorant of God. Even though true believers would not be scandalized by them because they are clearly atheists, yet even so, many are scandalized by this kind of men, because they trust that they ‘know’ (ⲥⲉⲥⲟⲟⲩⲛ). Truly such ‘fatherhoods’ and ‘greatnesses’ (Orlandi: delle paternità di tal genere e delle gerarchie di tal genere) can greatly defile the hearts of many congregations in many establishments of Christ (ⲟⲛⲧⲱⲥ ⲟⲩⲛϭⲟⲙ ⲛϩⲉⲛⲙⲛⲧⲓⲱⲧ ⲛⲧⲓⲙⲓⲛⲉ ⲏ ϩⲉⲛ ⲙⲛⲧⲛⲟϭ ⲉϫⲱϩⲙ ⲛⲛϩⲏⲧ ⲛϩⲁϩ ⲛⲗⲁⲟⲥ ⲉⲙⲁⲧⲉ ϩⲛ ϩⲁϩ ⲛⲧⲟⲡⲟⲥ ⲙⲡⲉⲭⲣⲓⲥⲧⲟⲥ).

To judge by this text, it seems that the word “fatherhood” (ⲙⲛⲧⲓⲱⲧ), as well as the word “greatness” (ⲙⲛⲧⲛⲟϭ), was in use in the middle of the fifth century as a designation of persons in authority among Shenute’s adversaries. Thus, if it is the case that the notes in Codices I and VII were produced by the scribes who copied these books, as seems to be the view of the majority of researchers, then the pious language found in the notes at the beginning of Codex I and between the Teachings of Silvanus and the Three Steles of Seth in Codex VII seem to fit better in codices that were produced in a private context and intended to be used in the milieu where they were produced. As for the note at the end of Codex VII, the presence of the word “fatherhood” (ⲙⲛ︦ⲧⲉⲓ̈ⲱⲧ) plausibly points toward a context in which there would have been a close relation between the scribe and the recipient of the codex. Turning now to Codex II (145,21–24), the colophon which merges Greek and Coptic, seems more likely to apply to the codex as a whole and not only to the Book of Thomas:92 ⲁⲣⲓⲡⲁⲙⲉⲉⲩⲉ ϩⲱ ⲛⲁⲥⲛⲏⲩ ϩ̣[ⲛ̄]ⲛⲉⲧⲛ̄ⲡⲣⲟⲥⲉⲩⲭⲏ’ ⲉ[ⲓ]ⲣⲏⲛⲏ ⲧⲟⲓⲥ ⲁⲅⲓⲟⲓⲥ ⲙⲛ︥ⲛⲓⲡⲛⲉⲩⲙⲁⲧⲓⲕⲟⲥ

91

Remember me also, my brothers, in your prayers. Peace to the saints and to the spiritual ones.

Tito Orlandi, Shenute Contra Origenistas. Testo con introduzione e traduzione (Unione Academicas Internazionale; Corpus dei Manoscriti Copti Letterari; Rome: C. I. M., 1985), 11–12 for the attribution to Shenute, and 36–37 for Coptic text and Italian trans.; for English trans., Orlandi, “A Catechesis against Apocryphal Texts by Shenute and the Gnostic Texts of Nag Hammadi,” HTR 75 (1982): 89. 92 See note to lines 20–23 by John D. Turner, “The Book of Thomas the Contender writing to the Perfect. Introduction,” in Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7 together with XIII,2*, Brit. Lib. Or. 4926(1) and P. Oxy. I, 654, 655 (ed. Bentley Layton; 2 vols.; NHS 20–21; Leiden: Brill, 1989), 2:204. For a divergent opinion, see Mahé, Hermès en HauteÉgypte II, 461. Raymond Kuntzmann believes that this colophon has no links with Thom. Cont., but that it is nevertheless attached to this tractate; Kuntzmann, Le livre de Thomas (NH II,7) (BCNH.T 16; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1986), 176–77.

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Formulas such as “remember me also in your prayers” and similar are very commonly found in colophons;93 this is also the case for the “Pax” formula at the end, ⲉⲓⲣⲏⲛⲏ ⲧⲟⲓⲥ ⲁⲅⲓⲟⲓⲥ, which is reminiscent of the formula found in Codex I, ⲉⲛ ⲉⲓⲣⲏⲛⲏ ⲟ ⳩ ⲁⲅⲓⲟⲥ.94 Assuming that the Codex II colophon is to be attributed to the scribe of that codex, it is difficult to draw from it any conclusions about the nature or the proximity of the links prevailing between him and his patrons. We can say that the term “brothers” in the plural contrasts with the addressee of the note in Codex VII inasmuch as it refers to a group, not an individual. It also points toward some sort of proximity between the scribe and the people for whom he was producing the codex.95 As for the Greek article and the use of the dative found in the expression ⲧⲟⲓⲥ ⲁⲅⲓⲟⲓⲥ, it might be an indication that this note goes back to a Greek Vorlage, but to me it seems more plausible that this clumsy formula, part Greek and part Coptic, is a cliché which would not require the knowledge of Greek, used to conclude a “deluxe” codex might be intended by the scribe as a sort of elegant ending to this lavish work. As for the note in Codex VI (65,8–14), it reads as follow: ⲡⲓⲟⲩⲁ ⲙⲉⲛ ⲗⲟⲅⲟⲥ ⲛ̄ⲧⲁⲉⲓⲥⲁϩϥ̄ ⲛ̄ⲧⲁϥ ⲁϩⲁϩ ⲅⲁⲣ ⲧⲟⲛⲱ ⲛ̄ⲧⲁϥⲉⲓ̄ ⲉⲧⲟⲟⲧ ⲙ̄ⲡⲓ ⲥⲁϩⲟⲩ ⲉⲓ̈ⲙⲉⲉⲩⲉ ϫⲉ ⲁⲩⲉⲓ ⲉⲧⲛ̄ⲧⲏⲛⲉ· ⲕⲁⲓ ⲅⲁⲣ ϯⲇⲓⲥⲧⲁⲍⲉ ⲉⲓ̈ⲥϩⲁⲓ̈ ⲛ̄ⲛⲁⲓ̈ ⲛⲏ ⲧⲛ̄ ϫⲉ ⲙⲉϣⲁⲕ ⲁⲩⲉⲓ ⲉⲧⲛ̄ⲧⲏⲛⲉ ⲛ̄ⲧⲉ ⲡϩⲱⲃ ⲣ̄ϩ̄ⲓ̄ⲥⲉ ⲛⲏⲧⲛ̄· ⲉⲡⲓ ⲛⲁϣⲱⲟⲩ ⲅⲁⲣ ⲛ̄ϭⲓ ⲛ̄ⲗⲟⲅⲟⲥ ⲉⲧⲁⲩⲉⲓ ⲉⲧⲟⲟⲧ ⲛ̄ⲧⲉ ⲡⲏ̣ I have copied this discourse of his. Indeed, very many have come to me. I have not copied them because I thought that they have come to you (pl.). Also, I hesitate to copy these for you (pl.) because, perhaps, they have already come to you (pl.) and the matter may burden you (pl.), since numerous are the discourses of that one, which have come to me.

Two questions relating to this scribal note have aroused discussion: first, whether its author was the scribe who copied Codex VI or whether the scribal note was already found in the exemplar from which that scribe

93

See the Coptic index under ⲙⲉⲉⲩⲉ in Lantschoot, Recueil des colophons. Again, the formula is often found in the colophons, especially as a conclusion; see Lantschoot, Recueil des colophons, Greek index s.v. εἰρήνη. 95 In the colophons collected and published by Lantschoot, Recueil des colophons (which are, save for a few exceptions, much later, but usually from monastic scriptoria) the addressees are generally designated as “Father” in the singular or in the plural with the possessive article (ⲡⲁⲓⲱⲧ, ⲛⲁⲓⲟⲧⲉ). 94

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worked,96 and second, whether the word ⲗⲟⲅⲟⲥ referred to the previous tractate, the Discourse on the Eight and the Ninth or the following one, the Prayer of Thanksgiving.97 Concerning the first question: as Pierre Cherix has noted, the slight differences in the handwriting of the previous tractates copied in the codex on the one hand and this note and the last tractate on the other hand might be a subtle indication that the hesitation that the scribe expresses in this note was accompanied by an interruption of his work.98 What has often escaped discussion when speaking of this note is the role that it might play in reconstructing the relationship between the context of production and the destination of the codex.99 With regard to this, several important observations can be made. First of all, this note – like the note found in Codex II, and unlike the note in Codex VII – uses the second person plural, indicating that it is addressed not to one but to several readers. Secondly, the note clearly indicates that those for whom the codex was produced were distant enough from the scribe that he did not know exactly which texts they already possessed. Compounding the difficulty in selecting material, the note shows that its scribe was located in a milieu where a large number of Hermetic tractates had been gathered from elsewhere and were available to him to copy; furthermore, the note also shows that the codex was intended for people who, as the scribe knew or thought, were in a context in which such literature was available. More significantly for the present discussion, the scribe does not express any personal interest either in this Hermetic material, or in the collectors of this material: the collectors are addressed neither as “fathers” nor as “brothers” and there is no religious color to this note, which contains neither benedictions nor prayers. As far as can be told, the note is strictly the expression of concerns 96

Douglas M. Parrott, “The Scribal Note: VI,7a: 65,8–14,” in Nag Hammadi Codices V, 2–5 and VI with Papyrus Berolinensis 8502, 1 and 4 (ed. Douglas M. Parrott; NHS 11; Leiden: Brill, 1979), 389–93. Jean-Pierre Mahé (Hermès en Haute-Égypte II, 460–66) has, in my view, clearly demonstrated that this note was written by the scribe of Codex VI, contra the earlier opinion by Frederik Wisse in his review of Martin Krause and Pahor Labib, Gnostische und hermetische Schriften aus Codex II und VI (Glückstadt: J.J. Augustin, 1971) in ZDMG 127 (1977): 98. 97 For a survey of arguments and a thorough discussion of the issue, see Williams and Jenott, “Inside the Covers of Codex VI,” 1035–43. 98 See supra n. 25. A much more complicated and less likely explanation for this note is proposed by Alexandr Khosroyev, Die Bibliothek von Nag Hammadi: Einige Probleme des Christentums in Ägypten während der ersten Jahrhunderte (Arbeiten zum spätantiken und koptischen Ägypten 7; Altenberge: Oros, 1995), 12; see the discussion by Williams and Jenott, “Inside the Covers of Codex VI,” 1036–37. 99 Wisse (review of Krause and Labib, 98 [see n. 96]) is right that “die uns wenig oder gar nichts über die Besitzer der Bibliothek aussagt.” But it does provide information about the context of production of Codex VI.

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related to what should be copied based on the scribe’s lack of knowledge of what was already in the hands of the people for whom the codex was produced. Another interesting aspect of this note is that it suggests that the scribe was aware that other Coptic translations were already in circulation at this time, which means that he was not personally responsible for the translation of the texts he was copying from Greek into Coptic.100 Codex VIII, which belongs to the same group as Codex VI, contains a cryptogram placed after the Sethian, Platonizing apocalypse called Zostrianos. This cryptogram, the oldest preserved in Coptic, was first briefly discussed by Jean Doresse,101 and then examined in detail by Frederik Wisse.102 The cryptogram is made up of twenty-four Greek letters, the Coptic letter ϥⲁⲓ, which is a deformed version of the Greek koppa,103 and a sampi (ⲩⲣ).104 To decipher this cryptogram, one must divide the Greek alphabet into three groups, two made up of eight letters and one made up of nine. One must then invert the orders of the letters in each of these three groups such that, for example, in the first group alpha would correspond to theta, beta to eta, and so on.105 According to Gardthausen, this was one of the most frequently used number codes.106 Here is the cryptogram and its solution:107 ⲟⲗ︦ⲍⲗ︤ϥⲑⲟ︦ⲃ︦ⲁ︦ⲉ︦ϥ︦[ⲑ]ⲱ̣︦ⲅ︦ⲥ︦︤︥ⲱ︦̄︤ ϯ︦ ⲩⲣϥ︦ⲑⲛ︦ⲗ︦ⲭⲁ︦ⲉ︦ⲗ︦︥ⲱ̣ⲑ︦ⲟ︦ⲃ︦ⲁ︦ⲉ︦ϥ˙ ⲑ︤ⲱ ⲟ︤ⲗ︦ⲍ︦ⲗ︦ϥⲅⲥⲩⲣⲗⲑ︦ⲱ︦ⲯ︦ⲩⲣ[ⲗ︤ⲭ] ⲗⲟⲅⲟⲓ ⲁⲗⲏⲑⲉⲓ[ⲁⲥ] ⲍⲱⲥⲧ ⲣⲓⲁⲛⲟⲩ ⲑⲉⲟⲥ ⲁⲗⲏⲑⲉⲓ ⲁⲥ ⲗⲟⲅⲟⲓ ⲍⲱⲣⲟⲁⲥⲧⲣ[ⲟⲩ]

100

Mahé, Hermès en Haute-Égypte II, 467. Jean Doresse, “Les apocalypses de Zoroastre, de Zostrien, de Nicothée . . . (Porphyre, Vie de Plotin, §16),” in Coptic Studies in Honor of Walter Ewing Crum (ed. M. Malinine; Boston: Byzantine Institute of America, 1950), 255–63. 102 Wisse, “Language Mysticism,” 101–20. 103 Doresse, “Les apocalypses de Zoroastre, de Zostrien, de Nicothée,” 260. 104 As Frederik Wisse notes, the form of this sampi is unusual, and Doresse’s transcription of ⲩⲣ, which is used here for lack of an alternative, is not perfect; Wisse, “Language Mysticism,” 105. For the form of the sampi, see Victor Gardthausen, Griechische Paleographie, Zweiter Band: Die Schrift, Unterschriften und Chronologie im Altertum und im byzantinischen Mittelalter (Leipzig: Veit & Co., 1913), 368–69. 105 Catherine Barry, Wolf-Peter Funk, Paul-Hubert Poirier, John D. Turner, Zostrien (NH VIII, 1) (BCNH.T 24; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2000), 661. 106 Gardthausen, Griechische Paleographie, 311. 107 Barry et al., Zostrien, 480–81. 101

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Accepting the contemporary scholarly consensus that the Nag Hammadi Codices had been produced in a Pachomian monastic context,108 Wisse argued that this cryptogram had been added to the text late in the course of its transmission, giving as evidence the lack of errors in copying and the fact that the copyist would have been able to decipher the code, as shown by the way the lines written over letters follow the division of Greek words in the cryptogram.109 It is true that there are many examples of the use of this graphic code in Coptic monastic contexts, whether in colophons or in graffiti.110 However, the absence of errors notwithstanding, this colophon could well be more ancient than Wisse suggested. As Porphyry notes, around 260 CE, members of Plotinus’ circle at Rome read apocalypses of Zoroaster, Zostrianos, and Nicotheus (Porphyry, Life of Plotinus §16).111 We cannot say for certain whether Porphyry’s mention reflects the double attribution of the Nag Hammadi Zostrianos to Zoroaster and Zostrianos, or whether two independent apocalypses existed . However, it is reasonable to think, with Doresse, that the apparently two apocalypses mentioned by Porphyry actually refer to a single work, a Coptic version of which was preserved in Nag Hammadi Codex VIII.112 If this is indeed the case, it is quite possible that a colophon associating Zostrianos and Zoroaster might have already accompanied the Greek version of this text that circulated in Rome ca. 260 CE. Although we cannot be certain, I would argue that while the Greek colophon may not have been associated with Zostrianos since the work’s composition, the two might well have circulated together before the crea108 Wisse, “Language Mysticism,” 102: “More recently it has become clear that in spite of the predominantly gnostic content of the Nag Hammadi codices, they were written and owned . . . by monks in the Pachomian monasteries near Nag Hammadi.” Wisse relied on the article by John Barns, “Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Covers of the Nag Hammadi Codices,” in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts in Honour of Pahor Labib (ed. Martin Krause; NHS 6; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 9–18. Subsequent scholarship has not retained this view of the Pachomian origin of the Nag Hammadi Codices, one reason for this being the nature of the documents used as cartonnage to stiffen the covers of many of the codices. Cf. Layton, review of Barns et al., Nag Hammadi Codices: Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Cartonnage. 109 Wisse, “Language Mysticism,” 105. 110 See the examples provided by Doresse, “Les apocalypses de Zoroastre, de Zostrien, de Nicothée,” 260, and Wisse, “Language Mysticism,” 106. 111 See Paul-Hubert Poirier and Thomas Schmidt, “Chrétiens, hérétiques et gnostiques chez Porphyre. Quelques précisions sur la Vie de Plotin 16,1–9,” CRAI 2010.2 (AprilJune): 913–42. 112 Doresse, “Les apocalypses de Zoroastre, de Zostrien, de Nicothée,” 261. With regard to Zostrianos and Zoroaster, see John Turner’s commentary in Barry et al., Zostrien (NH VIII, 1), 483–84. A book of Zoroaster is also mentioned in the long recension of Ap. John (II 19,8–10).

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tion of Codex VIII, and perhaps even before the translation of Zostrianos into Coptic.113 If this were the case, the scribe of Codex VIII would simply have copied it as it was. Thus while the colophon would, certainly, be a witness to an earlier stage of the transmission of Zostrianos, it would not reveal anything about the production or destination of this codex, which contains only two texts: one, Zostrianos, without Christian references, followed by the colophon, and then the Letter of Peter to Philip, an explicitly Christian text that tells of Jesus and the disciples. This survey enables us to make several observations about these scribal notes and colophons. The pious notes found in Codices I and VII seem to point toward some private context for the production and destination of these codices, and presumably for Codex XI as well, with the note at the end of Codex VII being addressed to an individual portrayed as a “paternity” without any allusion to a group. On the other hand, the colophon found at the end of Codex II and the note in Codex VI, are addressed to more than one person. The colophon at the end of Codex II has a religious overtone and seem to imply some sort of proximity between the scribe and the addressees, whereas the note inserted in Codex VI between two tractates supports the argument of a distance between them and does not show any religious color. Finally, the note in Codex III, as well as the colophon at the end of Zostrianos in Codex VIII, might well belong to an earlier stage in the transmission of the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit and Eugnostos.114

Conclusion To sum up, our investigation leads to conclude that the codices found in the area of Nag Hammadi in the middle of the twentieth century were originally neither produced in, nor intended for, the same people or milieus.115 If we leave aside Codices X and XII, the collection can be divided into four groups which were almost certainly produced in different locations and intended for various destinations. Group A includes Codices IV, V, 113

The cryptogram could have been produced in a milieu similar to the one in which Zosimus worked, as his Commentary on the letter Omega tells us of such works; see Doresse, “Les apocalypses de Zoroastre, de Zostrien, de Nicothée,” 257. 114 See n. 61. 115 This was implied by Tito Orlandi (“A Catechesis against Apocryphal Texts,” 93) even before the identification of sub-groups was proposed by Funk and adopted by Robinson: “After documents that appeared to come from one such monastery (Pachomian) were found inside some of the leather covers of the Nag Hammadi MSS, scholars began to take for granted that all the codices had one and the same provenance, it was only their actual use inside a monastic library that was still a matter of question.”

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VI, VIII, and IX, to which group B, made of Codices II and XIII, would be related in some way; group C contains Codices I, VII, and XI; and group D has only Codex III. Subgroups of the Nag Hammadi Codices (excluding Codices X and XII) GROUP A CODICES DUPLICATES

IV, V, VI, VIII, IX

GROUP B II, XIII

Identical duplicate (II/IV);

Identical duplicates (II/XIII, II/ IV);

non-identical duplicate (IV/III; V/III).

non-identical duplicate. (II/III)

GROUP C I, VII, XI

GROUP D III

Non identical duplicate (I/XII)

Three nonidentical duplicates with groups A and B One scribe

SCRIBES

Five different One or two scribes, same school scribes, same school116

Three related scribes, different schools

MATERIAL

Varying quality

Higher quality

Lower quality

LINGUISTIC Approximative Sahidic

Approximative Sahidic

Approximative Sahidic and L6

Sahidic

CARTON-

No preserved cartonnage

ASPECT

ASPECT

Official or administrative documents; Greek, few Coptic.

No cartonnage

NAGE

Personal documents; Greek and Coptic. Coptic Biblical fr.

SCRIBAL NOTES,

Business-like note in VI.

Some kind of personal involvement in II.

Dedication of VII Colophon to a father by his to Gos. Eg. son.

Cryptogram in Codex VIII.

Religious overtone.

Pious formulas in I and VII.

Religious (II)

Personal and religious (VII)

COLOPHONS AND PIOUS FORMULAS

No pious formulas LINKS

Professional (VI)

BETWEEN SCRIBES AND INTENDED RECIPIENT(S)

116

A third one copied p. 47, 1–8 in Codex II.

?

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Codices IV, V, VI, VIII, and IX, forming group A, were produced by five similarly-trained scribes, presumably working in the same milieu. Group B is the product of one or two closely related scribes representing a school different from group A, who copied Codices II and XIII. It is related to Codex IV in group A, by an identical version of the Apocryphon of John probably copied in the same exemplar and likely intended for different recipients.117 The production of two copies of the same exemplar of On the Origin of the World in Codices II and XIII by the same scribe or two related scribes, indicates that these two codices produced in the same context were also intended for different recipients. We can infer from this survey, and especially from the scribal note found in Codex VI, that this codex, and presumably the other codices forming group A, were produced in a milieu where a large number of texts were gathered, already translated into Coptic, and were intended for recipients with whom these scribes were not closely related. Moreover, the absence of any expression of personal interest in this note as well of the absence of any religious or pious formula suggests a professional context devoid of any personal involvement of this scribe.118 The absence of pious formulas in the other codices forming group A suggests that the situation was the same for the whole group. Since there are no duplicates within Codices IV, V, VI, VIII, and IX, they might have been all intended for the same recipient, or group of recipients; if so, this would presumably be the group to which the scribal note found in Codex VI is addressed. However, since these codices, all produced by scribes of the same school, seem to have been produced in the same milieu, the differences in the material quality of their covers and of the papyrus used for their fabrication might possibly have more to do with the tastes or financial means of their intended recipients than with the more or less advanced technical expertise available in the milieu where they

117

Michael Williams brought to my attention a puzzling element with regard to the relation between the two copies of the same version of Ap. John in Codices II and IV: we find the same correction, ⲉⲃⲟⲗ ϩⲓⲧⲛ ⲡⲉ`ⲩ´ⲡⲗⲏⲣⲱⲙⲁ, in the same passage in both copies (II 14,6 and IV 22,9), bringing them into line with the version in III 21,7–8 (ⲉⲃⲟⲗ ϩⲙ ⲡⲉⲩ[ⲡ]ⲗⲏⲣⲱⲙⲁ, where BG 47,3 by contrast has ⲉⲃⲟⲗ ϩⲙⲡϫⲱⲕ). It might be pure coincidence; it might also be a clue to some connection between these two copies and the version contained in Codex III, whether that connection arose at the time of their production or later in the course of their transmission. A full investigation of this would require a close examination of scribal corrections both in Codex II and IV. 118 Iricinschi, “Scribes et codex,” 201: “Plus important, on peut inférer de la Note scribale et de son usage constant du pluriel qu’il existait une relation commerciale entre le scribe et ses lecteurs.”

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were produced, be it the case, it would suggest different intended destinations for these codices. From the presence of different dialectal variations found in the two copies of the Apocryphon of John copied from the same exemplar in Codices II and IV, and in the two copies of On the Origin of the World made apparently by the same scribe on the same exemplar, it appears most likely that many of these texts were in dialect L6 and that they were transposed into a more or less standardized Sahidic by the scribes themselves. As for the scribe of Codex II (and XIII), Wolf-Peter Funk observes a phenomenon of hyper- or over- “Sahidicisation” which shows that this scribe had the desire to produce a Sahidic text, but that he was not quite certain of the “true” Sahidic norm,119 a phenomenon which might indicate that this process did not take place in a Sahidic dialectal environment. What kind of location could have been the backdrop for what seems to be a large-scale program of collection, dialectal transposition, and dissemination of gnostic, hermetic and apocryphal writings, one involving a number of scribes trained in the same school? We must look to an urban center of some importance, such as Lycopolis, Hermopolis, or Panopolis, where a large number of manuscripts would have been available, as well as welltrained scribes to copy them, and perhaps too where it would be easy to find large quantities of the kind of waste papyri that was used in the cartonnage of Codices IV, V, VI, VIII, and IX.120 119

Funk, “L’orthographe et la langue du traité,” 64–65. As perhaps a more likely location, I would like to suggest Panopolis, an important intellectual center “of considerable literary activity in the indigenous languages” in the third to fifth centuries; see Jacques van der Vliet, “Preface” in Perspectives on Panopolis: An Egyptian Town from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest: Acts From an International Symposium Held in Leiden on 16, 17 and 18 December 1998 (ed. A. Egberts, B. P. Muhs and J. van der Vliet; Leiden: Brill, 2002), ix, in relation to which is twice attested, once in the alchemical corpus and once in Shenute, the very peculiar expression, the “kingless generation” which is found in various forms in Codex II (Hyp. Arch. 97.4–5; Orig. World 125.5–6), Codex V (Eugnostos 5.3–4; Apoc. Adam 82.19–20), Codex III (Eugnostos 75.17–18; SJC 99.17–19), in BG 8502 (Soph. Jes. Chr. 2.4–7), Codex Tchacos (Gos. Judas 53.22–24), and in Hippolytus, Refutatio V,8,2–3. On this expression, see Francis T. Fallon, “The Gnostics: The Undominated Race,” NovT 21 (1979): 271–88; Roland Bergmeir, “‘Königlosigkeit’ als nachvalentinianisch Heilsprädikat,” NovT 24 (1989): 316–39; Louis Painchaud and Timothy Janz, “The ‘Kingless Generation’ and the Polemical Rewriting of Certain Nag Hammadi Texts,” in The Nag Hammadi Library after 50 Years: Papers from the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, Nov. 17–22, 1995 (ed. John D. Turner and Anne McGuire; NHMS 44; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 439–60. As a matter of fact, this expression is attested in two sources related to Panopolis at different times and in different ways. The first one, the Book of Sophè the Egyptian (or the Mystical Book of Zozimus the Theban, ΖΩΖΙΜΟΥ ΘΗΒΑΙΟΥ ΜΥΣΤΙΚΗ ΒΙΒΛΩΣ), is alchemical; the second one is a homily by Shenoute against adversaries in Panopolis. 120

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In the third subgroup (C), made up of Codices I, VII and XI, the scribal styles and the quality of the handwriting are diverse and much more uneven than in group A, but the clear interactions of their scribes show that the codices were certainly linked in terms of their production, which took place in the same milieu and more or less at the same time. The place names and dates found in the cartonnage of Codices I and XI indicate that they were produced later than 348 AD in the area of Chenoboskeion where they were discovered in the middle of the twentieth century. It is thus most likely that they were intended for the milieu in which they were produced, and thus were created, used, lost and rediscovered all in the same area. Unlike the author of the note found in Codex VI, and presumably the other scribes within group A, both the first scribe of Codex I and the scribe of Codex VII and of the second half of Codex XI seem to have had a personal In the Book of the Egyptian Sophè, one reads: “La science et la sagesse des meilleurs dominent les uns et les autres; elles viennent des siècles anciens. Leur génération est dépourvue de roi, autonome . . .” (ἀβασίλευτος γὰρ αὐτῶν ἡ γενεά καὶ αὐτόνομος). See Marcellin Berthelot and Charles-Émile Ruelle, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (Paris: Georges Steinheil, 1888), 2:213, line 13 (Greek), 2:321 (French trans.). Although the attribution of the two fragments of this book to Zozimus is uncertain (see Michèle Mertens, Les alchimistes grecs IV. Zozime de Panopolis. Mémoires authentiques [Collection des Universités de France; Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1995], lxv–lxix), it is an indication that the expression “kingless generation” was not unknown in the alchemical tradition, and likely not in Panopolis itself where it seems that some claimed to be “kingless” or “undominated” in the middle of the fifth century among Shenoute’s “heretical” Christian opponents (ⲏ ⲉⲩⲛⲁϫⲟⲟⲥ ϩⲉⲛⲛⲉⲓ ⲛⲛⲓⲣⲱⲙⲉ ⲉⲧϫⲏⲕ ⲉⲃⲟⲗ ⲛⲕⲣⲟϥ ⲛⲓⲙ ϩⲓⲕⲁⲕⲓⲁ ⲛⲓⲙ ϫⲉ ⲛⲉϩⲉⲛⲁⲧⲣⲣⲟ ⲛⲉ); Johannes Leipoldt, Sinuthii Archimandritae vita et opera omnia III (CSCO 42, Scriptores Coptici 2; Louvain: Secrétariat du CSCO, 1955), 88,20, which might be the same as those “with false knowledge” (I am Amazed 604=DQ 77; cf. Orlandi, “Shenute Contra Origenistas,” 56; Hugo Lundhaug, “Mystery and Authority in the Writings of Shenoute,” in Mystery and Secrecy in the Nag Hammadi Collection and Other Ancient Literature: Ideas and Practices: Studies for Einar Thomassen at Sixty [ed. Christian H. Bull, Liv Ingeborg Lied, and John D. Turner; NHMS 76; Leiden: Brill, 2012], 266). Thus, it seems to me that it would be worth exploring a possible “Panopolitan connection” in relation with the compilation of the texts contained in the codices forming group A, and in the production of these codices. On alchemical elements in the Nag Hammadi corpus, see Régine Charron and Louis Painchaud, “God is a Dyer: The Background and Significance of a Puzzling Motif in The Coptic Gospel According to Philip (CG II,3),” Mus 114 (2001) 41–50; Régine Charron, “The Apocryphon of John (NHC II,1) and the Graeco-Egyptian Alchemical Literature,” VC 59 (2005) 438–56; Dylan Burns, “Alchemical Metaphor in the Paraphrase of Shem (NHC VII,1),” Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15 (2015): 79–106. On Panopolis, see also Michèle Mertens, “Alchemy, Hermetism and Gnosticism at Panopolis c. 300 AD: The Evidence of Zosimus,” in Perspectives on Panopolis: An Egyptian Town from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest: Acts From an International Symposium Held in Leiden on 16, 17 and 18 December 1998 (ed. A. Egberts, B. P. Muhs and J. van der Vliet; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 165–76.

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and devout connection to their scribal work, and the latter at least also had a personal link with the intended recipient of Codex VII. As for Codex III, its codicological, paleographical and linguistic characteristics, set it apart. Its duplicates, too, place it in a different group since it contains non-identical duplicates of works found in Codices II and IV (Apocryphon of John), and V (Eugnostos), which most likely suggest that it was not produced in the same milieu as either group A or group B. 121 Leaving to one side Codex III, and for the moment passing over group B (Codices II and XIII), whatever its link to group A may have been, we are left with two quite contrasting groups of codices: group A, apparently produced in a lay context and containing Codices IV, V, VI, VIII, and IX, and group C, apparently produced in a religiously committed context and containing Codices I, VII, and XI. Group A on the one hand was likely produced in an urban setting by well-trained scribes of similar style having access to a large number of writings. As far as we can tell, these scribes had no personal interest, religious or otherwise, in the texts they were copying: they expressed neither personal engagement in their scribal work nor personal links with their intended, apparently distant, recipients. The codices forming group C, on the other hand, were produced in the area where they were found in 1945, by scribes of uneven skills and different styles, who were personally and devoutly interested in the texts they were copying. We also know that at least the scribe of Codex VII, had a personal relationship with the intended recipient of his work, and expressed in the colophon of Codex VII a personal engagement in that scribal work.122 What were the channels of transmission through which the codices forming group A made their way to the area where the codices forming group C were produced, what were the personal or social networks involved in this transmission, the present study of the production and the destination of the Nag Hammadi Codices cannot answer this question. I

121 It will not be out of place here to remember that Codex III did not find its way to the Coptic Museum together with the other Nag Hammadi Codices: see James M. Robinson, The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex III (Leiden: Brill, 1976), vii–ix. Notwithstanding Stephen Emmel’s affirmation that Codex III was “discovered together with the rest of the Nag Hammadi codices” (Nag Hammadi Codices III, 5: The Dialogue of the Saviour [NHS 26; Leiden: Brill, 1984], 19) its provenance remains uncertain; see Wolf-Peter Funk “The Linguistic Aspect,” 137 n. 23. 122 This strong contrast between at least groups A and B seems hard to reconcile with Eduard Iricinschi’s conclusion that “les scribes des codices de Nag Hammadi participaient, par des lectures communes, des pratiques communes et des cadres rituels communs, d’une koinonia scribale, un véritable réseau professionnel dans l’Égypte septentrionale du IVe siècle” (Iricinschi, “Scribes et codex,” 202; septentrionale here stands for méridionale).

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hope nevertheless that the present contribution sheds some light on the question, “who produced and used the Nag Hammadi Codices?” Bibliography Barns, John. “Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Covers of the Nag Hammadi Codices.” Pages 9–18 in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts in Honour of Pahor Labib. Edited by Martin Krause. Nag Hammadi Studies 6. Leiden: Brill, 1975. Barns, John W. B., G. M. Browne, and John C. Shelton, eds. Nag Hammadi Codices. Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Cartonnage of the Covers. Nag Hammadi Studies 16. Leiden: Brill, 1981. Barry, Catherine, Wolf-Peter Funk, Paul-Hubert Poirier, and John D. Turner, eds. Zostrien (NH VIII, 1). Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi section “Textes” 24. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2000. Bellet, Paulinus. “The Colophon of the Gospel of the Egyptians: Concessus and Macarius of Nag Hammadi.” Pages 44–65 in Nag Hammadi and Gnosis: Papers read at the First International Congress of Coptology (Cairo, December 1976). Edited by Robert McL. Wilson. Nag Hammadi Studies 14. Leiden: Brill, 1978. Bergmeir, Roland. “‘Königlosigkeit’ als nachvalentinianisch Heilsprädikat.” Novum Testamentum 24 (1989): 316–39. Berthelot, Marcellin, and Charles-Émile Ruelle. Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs. Vol. 2. Paris: Georges Steinheil, 1888. Böhlig, Alexander, and Frederik Wisse, eds. Nag Hammadi Codices III, 2 and IV, 2: The Gospel of the Egyptians (The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit). Nag Hammadi Studies 4. Leiden: Brill, 1975. Boud’hors, Anne, and Chantal Heurtel. Les ostraca coptes de la TT 29. Autour du moine Frangé. Études d’archéologie thébaine 3. Bruxelles, 2010. Burns, Dylan, “Alchemical Metaphor in the Paraphrase of Shem (NHC VII,1).” Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15 (2015): 79–106. Buzi, Paola, Titoli e autori nella tradizione copta: studio storico e tipologico. Biblioteca degli Studi di Egittologia e di Papirologia 2. Pisa: Giardini, 2005. Charron, Régine. “The Apocryphon of John (NHC II,1) and the Graeco-Egyptian Alchemical Literature.” Vigiliae Christianae 59 (2005): 438–56. Charron, Régine, and Louis Painchaud. “God is a Dyer. The Background and Significance of a Puzzling Motif in The Coptic Gospel According to Philip (CG II,3).” Le Muséon 114 (2001): 41–50. Cherix, Pierre, “Les variantes coptes non sahidiques classiques attestées dans le Codex Cairensis Gnosticus VI: essai de typologie.” PhD dissertation, Université de Lausanne, 1994. Claude, Paul, Les Trois Stèles de Seth. Hymne gnostique à la triade (NH VII, 5). Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Textes” 8. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1983. Crum, Walter E. Coptic Ostraca: From the Collections of the Egypt Exploration Fund, the Cairo Museum and Others. London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1902. Doresse, Jean “Une bibliothèque gnostique copte découverte en Haute Égypte.” Académie royale de Belgique, Bulletin de la classe des Lettres et des Sciences morales et politiques, 5e série, tome 35 (1949): 435–49.

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–. “Les apocalypses de Zoroastre, de Zostrien, de Nicothée . . . (Porphyre, Vie de Plotin, § 16).” Pages 255–63 in Coptic Studies in Honor of Walter Ewing Crum. Edited by M. Malinine. Boston: Byzantine Institute of America, 1950. –. Les livres secrets des gnostiques d’Égypte, volume 1: Introduction aux écrits gnostiques coptes découverts à Khénoboskion (Paris: Plon, 1958). ET (with some changes): The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics. London: Hollis and Carter, 1960. Emmel, Stephen, ed. Nag Hammadi Codices III, 5: The Dialogue of the Saviour. Nag Hammadi Studies 26. Leiden: Brill, 1984. Ernstedt, Piotr V. Les textes coptes du musée de l’Ermitage. Moscou-Léningrad: Éditions de l’Académie des sciences d’USSR, 1959. Fallon, Francis T., “The Gnostics: the Undominated Race.” Novum Testamentum 21 (1979): 271–88. Funk, Wolf-Peter. “Toward a Linguistic Classification of the ‘Sahidic’ Nag Hammadi Texts.” Pages 163–77 in Acts of the Fifth International Congress of Coptic Studies: Washsington, 12-15 August 1992. Edited by Tito Orlandi and D.W. Johnson. Rome: C.I.M., 1993. –. “L’orthographe du manuscrit.” Pages 13–53 in Le Tonnerre, intellect parfait (NH VI, 2), avec deux contributions de W.-P. Funk. Edited by Paul-Hubert Poirier. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Textes” 22. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1995. –. “L’orthographe et la langue du traité.” Pages 29–68 in Painchaud, L’Écrit sans titre. –. “Les fragments Brit. Lib. Or. 4926 (1).” Pages 529–64 in Painchaud, L’Écrit sans titre. –. “The Linguistic Aspect of Classifying the Nag Hammadi Codices.” Pages 107–47 in Painchaud and Pasquier, Les textes de Nag Hammadi. –. Concordance des textes de Nag Hammadi. Les codices X et XIA. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Concordances” 6. Québec:: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2000. –. Review of The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex IV (Leiden: Brill, 1975) and of The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex III (Leiden: Brill, 1976) in Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 77 (1982): 132–35. –. Review of The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex VIII (Leiden: Brill, 1976) and of The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex IX and X (Leiden: Brill, 1977) in Orientalistische Literaturzeitung78 (1983): 555–58. Gardner, Iain, Anthony Alcock and Wolf-Peter Funk. Coptic Documentary Papyri from Kellis. Volume 2. Dakhleh Oasis Project Monograph 16. Oxford: Oxbow, 2014. Gardthausen, Victor, Griechische Paleographie. Zweiter Band: Die Schrift, Unterschriften und Chronologie im Altertum und im byzantinischen Mittelalter. Leipzig: Veit & Comp., 1913. Ghica, Victor, Les Actes de Pierre et des douze apôtres (NH VI,1). Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Textes” 37. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, forthcoming. Iricinschi, Eduard, “‘Souvenez-vous aussi de moi dans vos prières.’ Scribes et codex dans l’Égypte du IVe siècle.” Pages 169–203 in Le savoir des religions: fragments d'historiographie religieuse. Edited by Daniel Barbu, Philippe Borgeaud, Mélanie Lozat, Nicolas Meylan, Anne-Caroline Rendu Loisel, and Francesco Massa. Gollion: Infolio, 2014. Janssens, Yvonne. “Le codex XIII de Nag Hammadi.” Le Muséon 87 (1974): 341–413. –. Les Leçons de Silvanos (NH VII, 4). Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Textes” 13. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1983.

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–. La Prôtennoia trimorphe (NH XIII, 1). Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Textes” 4. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1978. Kaler, Michael. “The Prayer of the Apostle Paul in the Context of Nag Hammadi Codex I.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 16 (2008): 319–39. Khosroyev, Alexandr. Die Bibliothek von Nag Hammadi. Einige Probleme des Christentums in Ägypten während der ersten Jahrhunderte. Arbeiten zum spätantiken und koptischen Ägypten 7. Altenberge: Oros, 1995. Krause, Martin. “Zum koptischen Handschriftenfund bei Nag Hammadi.” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Abteilung Kairo 19 (1963): 106–13. Kuntzmann, Raymond. Le livre de Thomas (NH II,7). Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Textes” 16. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1986. Layton, Bentley. “Gnosticisme.” Revue Biblique 83 (1976): 458–69. –. “The Hypostasis of the Archons.” Harvard Theological Review 69 (1976): 31–101. –. Review of J. W. B. Barns, G. M. Browne and J. C. Shelton, Nag Hammadi Codices. Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Cartonnage of the Covers (Leiden: Brill, 1981) in Journal of the American Oriental Society 102.2 (1982): 397–98. –. The Gnostic Scriptures. A New Translation with Annotations and Introductions. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987. –. “The British Library Fragments.” Pages 2:95–134 in Nag Hammadi Codex II,2-7 together with XIII,2*, Brit. Lib. Or. 4926(1) and P. Oxy. I, 654, 655. Edited by Bentley Layton. 2 Vols. Nag Hammadi Studies 20–21. Leiden: Brill, 1989. –. “Some Observations on Shenoute’s Sources: Who are our Fathers?” Journal of Coptic Studies 11 (2009): 45–59. Leipoldt, Johannes. Sinuthii Archimandritae vita et opera omnia III. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 42, Scriptores Coptici 2. Louvain: Secrétariat du CSCO, 1955. Lundhaug, Hugo. “Mystery and Authority in the Writings of Shenoute.” Pages 259–85 in Mystery and Secrecy in the Nag Hammadi Collection and Other Ancient Literature: Ideas and Practices. Studies for Einar Thomassen at Sixty. Edited by Christian Bull, Liv Ingeborg Lied, and John D. Turner. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 76. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Mahé, Jean-Pierre. Hermès en Haute-Égypte. Tome II. Le fragment du Discours parfait et les définitions hermétiques arméniennes (NH VI, 8.8). Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Textes” 7. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1982. Mertens, Michèle. Les alchimistes grecs IV. Zozime de Panopolis. Mémoires authentiques. Collection des Universités de France. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1995. –. “Alchemy, Hermetism and Gnosticism at Panopolis c. 300 A.D.: The Evidence of Zosimus.” Pages 165–76 in Perspectives on Panopolis. An Egyptian Town from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest. Acts From an International Symposium Held in Leiden on 16, 17 and 18 December 1998. Edited by A. Egberts, B. P. Muhs, and J. van der Vliet. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Mueller, Dieter. “Prayer of the Apostle Paul: I,1: A.1-B.10.” Pages 5–11 in Nag Hammadi Codex I (The Jung Codex): Introductions, Texts, Translations, Indices. Edited by Harold W. Attridge. Nag Hammadi Studies 22. Leiden: Brill, 1985. Oeyen, Christian. “Fragmente einer subachmimischen Version der gnostischen ‘Schrift ohne Titel.’” Pages 125–44 in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts in Honour of Pahor Labib. Edited by Martin Krause. Nag Hammadi Studies 6. Leiden: Brill, 1975. Ogden, Linda K. “The Binding of Codex II.” Pages 1:19–25 in Nag Hammadi Codex II,2-7 together with XIII,2*, Brit. Lib. Or. 4926(1) and P. Oxy. I, 654, 655. Edited by Bentley Layton. 2 Vols. Nag Hammadi Studies 20–21. Leiden: Brill, 1989.

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Orlandi, Tito. “A Catechesis against Apocryphal Texts by Shenoute and the Gnostic texts of Nag Hammadi.” Harvard Theological Review 75 (1982): 85–95. –. Shenute Contra Origenistas. Testo con introduzione e traduzione. Unione Academicas Internazionale, Corpus dei Manoscriti Copti Letterari. Rome: C.I.M., 1985. Orsini, Pasquale. “Le scrittura dei codici di Nag Hammadi.” Pages 95–121 in Oltre la scrittura. Variazione sul tema per Guglielmo Cavallo. Edited by Daniele Bianconi and Lucio Del Corso. Dossiers byzantins 8. Centre d’études byzantines, néo-helléniques et sud-est asiatiques. École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Paris: Diffusion de Brocard, 2008. Painchaud, Louis. L’Écrit sans titre: Traité sur l’origine du monde. (NH II,5 et XIII,2 et Brit. Lib. Or. 4926[1]), avec deux contributions de W.-P. Funk. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Textes” 21. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1995. Painchaud, Louis, and Anne Pasquier, eds. Les textes de Nag Hammadi et le problème de leur classification: Actes du colloque tenu à Québec du 15 au 19 septembre 1993. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Études” 3. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1995. Painchaud, Louis, and Michael Kaler. “From the Prayer of the Apostle Paul to the Three Steles of Seth: Codices I, XI and VII from Nag Hammadi viewed as a collection.” Vigiliae Christianae 61 (2007): 445–69. Painchaud, Louis, and Timothy Janz. “The ‘Kingless Generation’ and the Polemical Rewriting of Certain Nag Hammadi Texts.” Pages 439–60 in The Nag Hammadi Library after Fifty Years: Papers from the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, Nov. 17–22, 1995. Edited by John D. Turner and Anne McGuire. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 44. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Parrott, Douglas M. “The Scribal Note: VI, 7a: 65, 8-14.” Pages 389–93 in Nag Hammadi Codices V, 2-5 and VI with Papyrus Berolinensis 8502, 1 and 4. Edited by Douglas M. Parrott. Nag Hammadi Studies 11. Leiden: Brill, 1979. –. “Introduction.” Pages 1–8 in Nag Hammadi Codices V, 2-5 and VI with Papyrus Berolinensis 8502, 1 and 4. Edited by Douglas M. Parrott. Nag Hammadi Studies 11. Leiden: Brill, 1979. Pearson, Birger A. “Introduction to Codex X.” Pages 211–28 in Nag Hammadi Codices IX and X. Edited by Birger A. Pearson. Nag Hammadi Studies 15. Leiden: Brill, 1981. Peel, Malcolm L. “Introduction to VII,4: The Teachings of Silvanus.” Pages 249–76 in Nag Hammadi Codex VII. Edited by Birger A. Pearson. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 30. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Peel, Malcolm L., and Jan Zandee. “The Teachings of Silvanus” from the Library of Nag Hammadi.” Novum Testamentum 14 (1972): 296–97. Poirier, Paul-Hubert. La Pensée Première à la triple forme. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Textes” 32. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2006. Poirier, Paul-Hubert, and Thomas Schmidt. “Chrétiens, hérétiques et gnostiques chez Porphyre. Quelques précisions sur la Vie de Plotin 16,1-9.” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 2010, no. 2 (2010): 913–42. Puech, Henri-Charles. “Découverte d’une bibliothèque gnostique en Haute-Égypte.” Pages 42.4–13 in Philosophie, Religion. Vol. 19 of Encyclopédie française. Paris : Société nouvelle de l'Encyclopédie française, 1957.. Rasimus, Tuomas. “Revisiting the ICHTYS: A Suggestion Concerning the origins of Christological Fish Symbolism.” Pages 327–48 in Mystery and Secrecy in the Nag Hammadi Collection and Other Ancient Literature: Ideas and Practices. Studies for

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Einar Thomassen at Sixty. Edited by Christian Bull, Liv Ingeborg Lied, and John D. Turner. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 76. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Richter, Siegfried G. “Manichaeism and Gnosticism in the Panopolitan Region between Lykopolos and Nag Hammadi.” Pages 121–29 in Christianity and Monasticism in Upper Egypt, Volume 1: Akhmim and Sohag. Edited by Gawdat Gabra and Hany N. Takla. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2008. Robinson, James M., “The Coptic Gnostic Library Today.” Novum Testamentum 12 (1967-1968): 356–401. –. “Introduction.” The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex VI. Edited by James M. Robinson. Leiden: Brill, 1972. –. “Inside the Front Cover of Codex VI.” Pages 74-87 in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts in Honour of Alexander Böhlig. Edited by Martin Krause. Nag Hammadi Studies 3. Leiden: Brill, 1972. –. “On the Codicology of the Nag Hammadi Codices.” Pages 15–31 in Les textes de Nag Hammadi. Colloque du Centre d’Histoire des Religions (Strasbourg, 23-25 octobre 1974). Edited by Jacques Édouard Ménard. Nag Hammadi Studies 7. Leiden: Brill, 1975. –. The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex III. Leiden: Brill, 1976. –. ed. The Nag Hammadi Library in English. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977. –. The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Introduction. Leiden: Brill, 1984. Robinson, James M., and James E. Goehring. “NHC VII, 5: The Three Steles of Seth: Text and Translation.” Pages 386–422 in Nag Hammadi Codex VII. Edited by Birger A. Pearson. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 30. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Roquet, Gérard. “Variation libre, tendance, durée. De quelques traits de langue dans les Nag Hammadi Codices.” Pages 28–36 in Écritures et traditions dans la littérature copte. Journée d’études coptes, Strasbourg, 28 mai 1982. Cahiers de la bibliothèque copte 1. Louvain: Peeters, 1983. Satzinger, Helmut. “On the Origin of the Sahidic Dialect.” 307–12. Acts of the Second Congress of Coptic Studies, Roma, 22–26 septembre 1980. Edited by Tito Orlandi and Frederik Wisse. Rome: C.I.M., 1985. Säve-Södebergh, Torgny. “Holy Scripture or Apologetic Documentation? The Sitz im Leben of the Nag Hammadi Library.” Pages 3–14 in Les textes de Nag Hammadi. Edited Jacques Édouard Ménard. Nag Hammadi Studies 7. Leiden: Brill, 1975. Schenke, Hans-Martin. “Die drei Stelen des Seth (NHC VII,5).” Pages 625–32 in Nag Hammadi Deutsch 2. Band: NHC V,2-XIII,1, BG 1 und 4. Edited by Hans-Martin Schenke, Hans-Gebhard Bethge, and Ursula Ulrike Kaiser. Koptisch-Gnostische Schriften III. Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte, Neue Folge 12. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003. Schenke, Hans-Martin, and Wolf-Peter Funk. “Die Lehren des Silvanus (NHC VII,4).” Pages 601–24 in Nag Hammadi Deutsch 2. Band: NHC V,2-XIII,1, BG 1 und 4. Edited by Hans-Martin Schenke, Hans-Gebhard Bethge, and Ursula Ulrike Kaiser. KoptischGnostische Schriften III. Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte, Neue Folge 12. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003. Schiller, A. Arthur. Ten Coptic Legal Texts. New York: The Metopolitan Museum of Art, 1932. Scholten, Clemens. “Die Nag-Hammadi-Texte als Buchbesitz der Pachominianer.” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 31 (1988): 144–72. Tardieu, Michel. “Les Trois Stèles de Seth. Un écrit gnostique retrouvé à Nag Hammadi.” Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques 57 (1973): 545–75.

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Thomassen, Einar and Louis Painchaud. Le Traité tripartite (NH I, 5). Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Textes” 19. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1989. Turner, John D. “The Book of Thomas the Contender Writing to the Perfect: Introduction.” Pages 2:171-205 in Nag Hammadi Codex II,2-7 together with XIII,2*, Brit. Lib. Or. 4926(1) and P. Oxy. I, 654, 655. Edited by Bentley Layton. 2 Vols. Nag Hammadi Studies 20–21. Leiden: Brill, 1989. –. “Introduction to Codex XIII.” Pages 359–69 in Nag Hammadi Codices XI, XII, XIII. Edited by Charles W. Hedrick. Nag Hammadi Studies 28. Leiden: Brill, 1990. Vliet, Jacques van der. “Preface.” Pages vii–xii in Perspectives on Panopolis. An Egyptian Town from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest. Acts From an International Symposium Held in Leiden on 16, 17 ad 18 December 1998. Edited by A. Egberts, B. P. Muhs and J. van der Vliet. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Lantschoot, Arnold van. Recueil des colophons des manuscrits chrétiens d’Égypte. Tome I. Les colophons coptes des manuscrits sahidiques 1. Textes, 2. Notes. Louvain, J.-B. Istas, 1929. Waldstein, Michael. “Das Apokryphon des Johannes (NHC II,1; III,1; IV,1 und BG 2).” Pages 95–150 in Nag Hammadi Deutsch 1. Band: NHC I,1-V,1. Edited by HansMartin Schenke, Hans-Gebhard Bethge, and Ursula Ulrike Kaiser. KoptischGnostische Schriften II. Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte, Neue Folge 8; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001. Waldstein, Michael, and Frederik Wisse, eds. The Apocryphon of John: Synopsis of Nag Hammadi Codices II, 1; III, 1; and IV, 1 with BG 8502, 2. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 33. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Wekel, Konrad. “Die drei Stelen des Seth; die fünfte Schrift aus Nag-Hammadi-Codex VII: Eingeleitet und übersetzt vom Berliner Arbeitskreis für koptisch-gnostische Schriften.” Theologische Literaturzeitung 100 (1975): 571–80. –. “Die drei Stelen des Seth (NHC VII, 5). Text-Übersetzung-Kommentar.” PhD dissertation, Humboldt-Üniversität, 1977. Williams, Michael A. “The Scribes of Nag Hammadi Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX.” Pages 334–42 in Actes du IVe Congrès Copte: Louvain-la-Neuve, 5-10 septembre 1988; II: De la linguistique au gnosticisme. Edited by Marguerite Rassart-Debergh and Julien Ries. Publications de l’Institut Orientaliste de Louvain 41. Louvain-laNeuve: Institut Orientaliste, 1992. –. “Interpreting the Nag Hammadi Library as ‘Collection(s)’ in the History of ‘Gnosticism(s).’” Pages 3–50 in Painchaud and Pasquier, Les textes de Nag Hammadi. Williams, Michael A., and Lance Jenott, “Inside the Covers of Codex VI.” Pages 1035– 49 in Coptica – Gnostica – Manichaica. Mélanges offerts à Wolf-Peter Funk. Edited by Louis Painchaud and Paul-Hubert Poirier. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Études” 7. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2006. Winlock, Herbert E., Walter E. Crum, and Hugh G. Evelyn-White, eds. The Monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes: Part II. New York, 1926. Wipszycka, Ewa. “The Nag Hammadi Library and the Monks.” Journal of Juristic Papyrology 30 (2000): 179–91. Wisse, Frederik. Review of Martin Krause and Pahor Labib, Gnostische und hermetische Schriften aus Codex II und VI (Glückstadt, 1971) in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 127 (1977): 95–98. –. “Gnosticism and Early Monasticism in Egypt,” Pages 431–40 in Gnosis: Festschrift für Hans Jonas. Edited by Barbara Aland. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978.

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–. “Language Mysticism in the Nag Hammadi Texts and in Early Coptic Monasticism I: Cryptography.” Enchoria 9 (1979): 101–20. –. “Introduction to Codex XII.” Pages 289–93 in Nag Hammadi Codices XI, XII and XIII. Edited by Charles W. Hedrick. Nag Hammadi Studies 28. Leiden: Brill, 1990. –. “Introduction,” Pages 1–13 in Nag Hammadi Codex VII. Edited by Birger A. Pearson. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 30. Leiden: Brill, 1996.

A Reexamination of the Articulation Marks in Nag Hammadi Codices II and XIII MICHAEL A. WILLIAMS AND DAVID COBLENTZ For some time it has been well known by specialists that among orthographic features in Nag Hammadi Codices II and XIII is the periodic use of articulation marks in a spectrum of shapes from apostrophes or “hooks,” to straighter slants, to dots. Though articulation marking is found in some ancient Greek and many Coptic manuscripts, including other codices in the Nag Hammadi group, the markings in II and XIII have some distinctive features. In this study we build on some of the previous work on these features, but we also offer some important correction based on a statistical analysis of the markings. A lingering question regarding these two codices has been the number of scribes involved in their production – i.e., in particular, whether the hand of II,7 is different from the majority hand in II and whether the hand in XIII is the same as either, or is instead the work of still another scribe with similar training. While our results here do not provide an absolutely definitive resolution of this issue, they do advance the relevant research in important respects. What we can now demonstrate is that the scribal “habit” of articulation manifest in II,7 is so different from that in the rest of the codex that statistically it is quite improbable that the difference is a matter of the majority scribe of II,1–6 unintentionally merely shifting “habits” in II,7. Instead, the far more plausible conclusion is that the differences result from something intentional. In early work on this article we had leaned toward the opinion that these decisive statistical differences heavily favored the hypothesis of a different scribe for II,7. However, somewhat to our surprise the totality of our research eventually brought us to a different conclusion: We think it more likely that the varying “habits” in articulation marking in Codex II stem from underlying exemplars. If this is true then the layers in this somewhat more complex situation open an interesting window into the scribal culture in which Codices II and XIII were produced, and raise questions that we had not anticipated about the production and use of these books.

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General Background In 1973 Bentley Layton published an extensive analysis of textual and orthographic properties of one tractate in Nag Hammadi Codex II, the Hypostasis of the Archons (NHC II,4).1 Among these orthographic features is a pattern of division marks or “apostrophes,” marks not noted in the only edition that had been published previously. 2 Layton cautioned that his analysis and conclusions were based on a thorough study of only this one tractate among the seven in Codex II, and that future study of the entire codex “might shed still more light on the problems considered here,”3 and in what follows we have attempted to supply that more complete analysis. It will be seen that Layton’s important preliminary observations do require adjustments and that the corrections clarify the interpretation of these division marks. Lending additional importance to this task is the increasing attention in recent decades to what might be called the social history of codices, beyond the earlier history of individual texts within them. There has been an expanding discussion across a variety of specialties on the nature of ancient books, rationales behind their composition, their function within communities, and so forth.4 Nag Hammadi Codices have been included in 1

Bentley Layton, “The Text and Orthography of the Coptic Hypostasis of the Archons (CG II,4 Kr.),” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 11 (1973): 173–200. For the facsimile edition of this codex see: James M. Robinson, et al., ed., The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Codex II: Published under the Auspices of the Department of Antiquities of the Arab Republic of Egypt in conjunction with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations (Leiden: Brill, 1974). 2 Roger Aubrey Bullard, ed., The Hypostasis of the Archons: The Coptic text with translation and commentary: With a contribution by Martin Krause (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1970). 3 Layton, “Text and Orthography,” 189, n. 12. 4 The literature on the book as cultural phenomenon is by now too vast to allow or require extensive documentation here. To cite only a few relatively recent examples: Kim Haines-Eitzen, The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); M. B. Parkes, Their Hands Before Our Eyes: A Closer Look at Scribes (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); William E. Klingshirn and Linda Safran, eds., The Early Christian Book (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007); Megan Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Tommy Wasserman, “Papyrus 72 and the Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex,” New Testament Studies 51 (2005): 137–54; Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel, ed., The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); Harry Y Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). On Nag Hammadi Codices in particular, see Michael A. Williams, “Interpreting the Nag Hammadi Library as ‘Collection(s)’ in the History of ‘Gnosticism(s)’,” in Les textes de

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these discussions, and a 2009 Princeton Ph.D. dissertation by Eduard Iricinschi focused specifically on Nag Hammadi Codex II.5 Technical data such as distinctions among scribal hands, patterns in the use of papyrus space, or habits of marking a given text, may in some cases offer evidence for rationales behind the composition of a codex and clues as to its use. We often have virtually no other tangible information or hints about the creators and owners of codices. In the case of Nag Hammadi Codices II and XIII, details discussed below bring into new relief one of the more basic questions in understanding these books’ history – namely, how many scribes participated in producing these manuscripts? A number of scholars have concluded that almost all of Codex II was the work of one hand (Scribe A), with one small exception: The first eight lines of page 47 of the manuscript are written in a notably different script that today is usually guessed to be the hand of a second scribe (Scribe B),6 even though it remains uncertain why a second scribe would have contributed only these eight lines.7 Notwithstanding this mystery, we are inclined to the view that II 47,1–8 most likely represents a second hand. Nag Hammadi et le problème de leur classification: Actes du colloque tenu à Québec du 15 au 19 septembre 1993 (ed. Louis Painchaud and Anne Pasquier; Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 1995), 3–50; Michael Allen Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Michael A. Williams and Lance Jenott, “Inside the Covers of Codex VI,” in Coptica, Gnostica, Manichaica: Mélanges offerts à Wolf-Peter Funk (ed. Louis Painchaud and Paul-Hubert Poirier; Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 2006), 1025–52; Louis Painchaud and Michael Kaler, “From the Prayer of the Apostle Paul to the Three Steles of Seth: Codices I, XI, and VII from Nag Hammadi Viewed as a Collection,” Vigiliae Christianae 61 (2007): 445–69. 5 Eduard Iricinschi, “Scribes and Readers of Nag Hammadi Codex II: Book Production and Monastic Paideia in Fourth-Century Egypt” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2009). 6 This was not always the case; for example, see the assignment of scribal hands by: Jean Doresse, The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics: An Introduction to the Gnostic Coptic Manuscripts Discovered at Chenoboskion (trans. P. Mairet; New York: Viking Press, 1958; ET 1960), 141–45; Jean Doresse, “Les reliures des manuscrits gnostiques coptes découverts à Khénoboskion,” Revue d’Égyptologie 13 (1961): 27–49; Martin Krause, “Zum koptischen Handschriftenfund bei Nag Hammadi,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo 19 (1963): 106–13, especially 110–11. Both Doresse and Krause at the time treated what is today numbered Codex II as the work of a single scribe. 7 Bentley Layton, ed., Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7 (NHS 20–21; 2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1989), 1:4–5, speculated that Scribe A might have had a Scribe B fill in lines that were defective in the former’s exemplar. Iricinschi, “Scribes and Readers of Nag Hammadi Codex II,” 159, thinks such a second scribe might have been a student of Scribe A, and that these eight lines were a practice exercise.

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However, although it has apparently become conventional wisdom that Scribe A was responsible for all the rest of Codex II, there are some notably divergent features in the script of the last tractate, The Book of Thomas (NHC II,7). The most obvious of these is the smaller size of the letters throughout this last tractate as compared with that in II,1–6. A common (and still plausible) explanation for this is that Scribe A calculated that the amount of space remaining after NHC II,6 would require smaller writing to accommodate the final tractate. However, there is another anomalous element in the script of NHC II,7 that is not accounted for quite so easily: Beginning with this last tractate there are suddenly some puzzling changes in the deployment of articulation marks. Some twenty-five years ago HansMartin Schenke briefly mentioned one of these changes,8 though he did not remark on others and a complete treatment of the phenomenon was not among his goals at the time. As we hope to demonstrate in this study, a statistical analysis can bring to light dimensions of the anomalous character of scribal habit in II,7 that have not been fully appreciated in previous research. One of us (Michael Williams) began work on this issue in 1987 as part of a larger project investigating scribal hands in the Nag Hammadi collection as a whole.9 This research then benefited enormously from the opportunity Williams had to be involved in discussions in the autumn of 1991 with scholars in the seminar for the Projet Nag Hammadi, at l’Université Laval, Québec. With respect to the topic of this present article, the suggestions and insights shared by Dr. Wolf-Peter Funk were of particular help, and in fact he very kindly referred in a later publication to Williams’s unpublished work on this topic (see below). 8 Hans-Martin Schenke, ed., Das Thomas-Buch (Nag Hammadi-Codex II,7) (TUGAL 138; Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989), 3. The one change noted by Schenke was the much more frequent use in II,7 of divisions marks following the letter sigma (see below). This was a feature (along with the consistently smaller size in lettering) that left Schenke wondering whether there might not be a different scribe at work. But he did not execute an actual statistical analysis. 9 Funded by a grant from the American Research Center in Egypt, Williams was able to spend three months in Cairo examining the manuscripts. See the original preliminary report on that project: Michael A. Williams, “The Scribes of the Nag Hammadi Codices,” Newsletter of the American Research Center in Egypt 139 (1987): 1–7; and a more extensive analysis of features in the hands of one subset, in Michael A. Williams, “The Scribes of the Nag Hammadi Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX,” in Actes du IVe Congrès Copte, Louvain-la-neuve, 5–10 Septembre, 1988, vol. 2: De la linguistique au gnosticisme (ed. Marguerite Rassart-Debergh and Julien Ries; Louvain-la-Neuve: Université Catholique de Louvain, Institut Orientaliste, 1992), 334–42. The general results and their larger implications for the compositional rationale of various codices were explored in: Williams, “Interpreting the Nag Hammadi Library as ‘Collection(s)’,” and Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”, chapter 11.

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But it was concluded in 1991 that a proper assessment of the significance of the anomalous data for division marks in II,7 would require the application of a genuine and rigorous statistical analysis. Until recently a variety of factors have prevented the realization of such an analysis. But now circumstances have finally made it possible, and this study represents the results.10

Adjustments to Layton’s Original Analysis Layton’s 1973 study was the earliest treatment of these division marks and other scholars subsequently have mentioned his results.11 In Layton’s 1989 Introduction to the Brill edition of tractates 2–7 in Codex II he summarized some of the conclusions reached in his original analysis of II,4, but now expanded the application of those conclusions to include the entire codex.12 We are aware of only one extensive discussion of Layton’s conclusions in the literature, in Wolf-Peter Funk’s 1995 Introduction to the orthography and linguistic features of the fifth tractate in Codex II, referred to by some scholars as the “Untitled Tractate” and by others as “On the Origin of the World.”13 Commenting on the use in division marks throughout the whole of Codex II, Funk called attention to some necessary revisions to Layton’s conclusions.

10 [MW: Among the factors preventing me from completing this project previously was my lack of expertise in statistics. While I was in Québec in 1991, Wolf-Peter Funk was gracious enough to execute a few preliminary statistical analyses on a portion of the data and these seemed very promising. But only the recent interest of Mr. David Coblentz in the project has finally afforded the added expertise necessary to perform a proper study. He holds graduate degrees in both biostatistics and comparative religion, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Ancient History at the University of Washington. Moreover, Coptic is among the ancient languages he has studied. I have therefore been most fortunate now to have him as an indispensable collaborator in this project.] 11 E.g., Alexander Böhlig and Frederik Wisse, eds., Nag Hammadi Codices III,2 and IV,2: The Gospel of the Egyptians (The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit) (NHS 4; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 234 (“The articulation marks in Codex III are similar to the ones in Codex II, though somewhat less developed”); Jean-Pierre Mahé, Hermès en HauteÉgypte. Tome I: Les textes hermétiques de Nag Hammadi et leurs parallèles grecs et latins (Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 1978), 10–11; Birger A. Pearson, ed., Nag Hammadi Codices IX and X (NHS 15; Leiden: Brill, 1981), 10. 12 Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 1:14–18. 13 See Louis Painchaud and Wolf-Peter Funk, eds., L’écrit sans titre: Traité sur l’origine du monde (NH II,5 et XIII,2 et Brit. Lib. Or. 4926[1]) (BCNH.T 21; Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 1995).

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Before turning to the decidedly different “habit” found in II,7, we summarize some overall observations about all of Codex II emerging from Layton’s earlier work and the revisions by Funk: (1) From the beginning it was recognized that these division marks tend to appear in three basic shapes: “hooked” apostrophe, slanted straight line apostrophe, and raised point, though in practice these shapes often “shade off into one another.”14 (2) The use of these shapes to mark divisions reflects the influence of similar signs in Greek manuscripts,15 even though there are new applications specific to the Coptic context. (3) Codex II also contains frequent horizontal supralinear strokes over sonorants such as ⲙ, ⲛ, or ⲣ, a practice familiar from other Coptic manuscripts. However, in Codex II these strokes are used sometimes but then in other instances often omitted, in the case of the very same forms. Therefore, like its division marks, the pattern in usage of supralinear strokes in Codex II has been properly characterized as more of a scribal “habit” than a rigid “system.”16 Moreover, even though enough difference exists to render valid some distinction between the uses of division marks and supralinear strokes, there is a certain amount of overlap. For example, a division mark can appear after a form in one place where a supralinear stroke is used over the same form in another.17 (4) It is rather clear that the function of the division marks is to mark syllable division, almost certainly as an aid to reading.18 These divisions of syllables do most often also coincide with the marking of the end of a word or other morpheme. However, to speak of them simply as “morpheme dividers” is misleading given the fact that the marks also frequently occur within words or morphs. The latter possibility was mentioned by Layton in 1989 as only a “subsidiary (rare) function” of the marks, and he was referring even then only to the separation of double consonants within a word (such as AG’GELOS, SAB’BATON, etc.). Beyond that he added only that there are also “a certain number of cases where the mark appears to be used irregularly,” 19 though he listed no examples of what he viewed as possible irregularities. In fact, once one recognizes that the articulation marks are (optional) syllable dividers and not morpheme dividers, any need for a vague category of “irregular” cases essentially vanishes. Moreover, a number of features not actually examined by Layton are more easi14

Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 1:15. Moritz Reil, “Zur Akzentuation griechischer Handschriften,” ByzZ 19 (1910): 476– 529, especially section 13; already cited by Layton, “Text and Orthography,” 191. 16 Layton, “Text and Orthography,” 193; Painchaud and Funk, L’écrit sans titre, 31. 17 See examples in Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 1:15. 18 Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7; Painchaud and Funk, L’écrit sans titre, 31. 19 Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 1:15. 15

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ly accounted for. For example, as Funk pointed out,20 Layton did not give sufficient attention to whether a mark occurs at the end of a line. Numerous division marks occur at the ends of lines and divide morphs in ways that are otherwise not as typical. Also, Funk notes that syllable division better explains the division marks that in this manuscript sometimes separate – within morphs – a nasal from an homorganic occlusive, as in the conjugation base ⲉⲙ⳿ⲡⲁⲧ(ⲉ)⸗ or the relative form ⲉⲛ⳿ⲧⲁ⸗.21 One may go one small step further to note that “syllable” division in the usage of articulation marks in Codex II does not always mean syllables within words as conventionally listed in a lexicon. Most fundamentally it involves phoneme segmentation as would presumably be pronounced in oral reading. For example, there are numerous instances where an articulation mark appears after the definite article ⲧ so that the mark essentially joins the ⲧ to the preceding letter(s) as a separate phoneme.22 (5) Finally, it is certainly the case that these division marks tend to appear more commonly after some letters than they do after others. In 1989 Layton provided a version of a chart he had created for his 1973 article, comparing actual occurrences of the division mark after consonants in II,4 to a count of the total instances where it could have been used in that one tractate. He also now added a new table containing a column for each of tractates II,2–7, but in this case tabulating only the absolute number of instances in each tractate in which 16 consonants are marked. 23 Layton recognized that this latter table of absolute values was only a first step and 20

Painchaud and Funk, L’écrit sans titre, 33–34, and examples he provides there. Painchaud and Funk, L’écrit sans titre; for ⲉⲙ⳿ⲡⲁⲧ(ⲉ)″: NHC II 50.10; 64.11; 76.32; 77.28, etc.; but without division mark in several other places such as 36.18 or 63.2. For ⲉⲛ⳿ⲧⲁ″: NHC II 6.2; 12.10; 57.7; 58.24; 61.15–16; 64.27, etc.; but elsewhere usually without a mark. To the examples Funk points out one might compare instances within Greek terms such as: ⲁⲇⲁⲙⲁⲛ⳿ⲧⲓⲛⲏ (88.14); ⲥⲩⲛ⳿ⲧⲉⲗⲉⲓⲁ (103.25; 110.13; 114.24; etc.), ⲛⲩⲙ⳿ⲫⲱⲛ (67.30; 69.72; etc.). 22 E.g., NHC II 18.16 (ⲓ̈ⲱ︤ⲕ︦ⲱ︥ ⲡⲉ ⲡⲁⲧ⳿ⲉⲡⲓⲑⲩⲙⲉⲓⲁ): 23.4 (ⲁϥⲛⲁⲩ ⲁⲧ⳿ⲥϩⲓⲙⲉ); 32.21 (ⲉⲓⲥϩⲏⲏⲧⲉ ⲉⲧ⳿ⲙⲛ̅ⲧⲉⲣⲟ); 114.10 (ⲁⲛⲟⲕ⳿ ⲧⲉ ⲧ⳿ⲥⲟⲉⲓⲛ); 142.16 (ϩⲛ ⲧ⳿ⲧⲁⲡⲣⲟ); etc. There is even one instance in a correction inserted between the lines, above 12.18 (ⲧⲙⲉϩϣⲟⲙⲧⲉ ⲇⲉ ⲧⲉ ⲧ⳿ⲙⲛⲧⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ). Of the two dozen or so instances that we count in Codex II of marking after the definite article ⲧ, a few occur at the ends of lines, but most (ca. 70%) do not. Of the dozen or so occurrences after the definite article ⲡ, almost all are at the ends of lines. On other hand, we notice only a couple of instances of a mark after the plural definite article and neither occurs at the end of a line: 11.26 (ϯ ⲇⲉ ⲛⲉ ⲛ⳿ⲥⲱⲙⲁ ⲛ̅ⲛ̅ⲣⲓⲛ); 84.16 (ⲛ̅ⲧⲟⲟⲩ ⲛⲉ ⲛ⳿ϫⲱⲱⲣⲉ). 23 Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 1:17–18. The reason that calculations for the Apocryphon of John II,1 were not also included as a column in the table for II,2–7 was presumably that this tractate appears in a different volume in the Brill edition. A few general trends (e.g., which consonants tend most frequently to be marked) can certainly be seen from this table even without the figures from II,1. However, an adequate analysis naturally requires the inclusion of data from the entire codex. 21

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that, as he had done for II,4, one would need the calculations of relative frequency (actual vs. possible occurrences) for the other tractates in Codex II.24 In our statistical section we have now produced these further calculations of relative frequency, and we also take account of other data that were given little or no mention in Layton’s treatment. Above all, this involves articulation marks placed after vowels, an aspect of overall scribal “habit” in Codex II whose significance Layton did yet not notice.25 Funk’s later discussion did provide brief attention to the use of marks after vowels, though he considered these cases “rather exceptional.”26 It is true that overall the marking of vowels in Codex II is less frequent than the marking of consonants. However, as will be seen in data presented below, marks after vowels are frequent enough to be of importance, and in our analysis marks after some vowels turn out to be statistically significant. This is especially true in relation to the issue of most concern in this present study: differences between II,7 and the other tractates. Before going further we should insert here one more word of clarification: When we speak of “habit” in the use of articulation marks in our manuscripts we do not mean eccentricity entirely disengaged from any conventional usage. To some extent one can discern certain patterns governing where articulation marks were typically employed, if and when a scribe chose to employ them. And the usages in Codex II and Codex XIII are similar in certain aspects to scribal practices in other Nag Hammadi Codices and elsewhere. A complete treatment of this topic is not possible here nor is it critical for our particular argument, but a couple of examples will illustrate the point: While tau is one of the most commonly marked letters in the articulation in various manuscripts, its marking or nonmarking often follows certain phonetic rules.27 Thus, a tau in the relative 24

Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 1:16. Layton, “Text and Orthography,” commented that in II,4 articulation marks “virtually do not occur after vowels or semi-vowels, a fact which sets it apart from other Coptic mss. in which similar marks or used.” By his count, there were only 12 instances of division marks after vowels in II,4, compared to 240 after consonants. Our count for that one tractate is slightly different (20:253) but does not increase the proportion in II,4 by very much. The real importance of taking vowels into account concerns the question of differences in II,7, as we demonstrate below. In Layton’s edition of II,2–7 there was also discussion and data only for the marking of consonants; see Tables 1 and 2 in Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 1:17–18. 26 See Painchaud and Funk, L’écrit sans titre, 64. 27 On the following, cf. the important discussion by Wolf-Peter Funk in Paul-Hubert Poirier, ed., Le tonnerre, intellect parfait (NH VI,2) (Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi “Textes” 22; Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 1995), 14–20; and Williams, “Scribes of Nag Hammadi Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX.” 25

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conversion before a future prefix (-ⲉⲧⲛⲁ-)28 is almost never marked in the paleographically related group of Nag Hammadi Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX, and the same is true in II and XIII.29 On the other hand, sometimes there is a rather predictable pattern in the IV–V–VI–VIII–IX group that contrasts with unpredictable usage in II and XIII. For example, although in the former group a tau in the relative converter ⲉⲧ- before non-nasal consonants is virtually always marked, this is unpredictable in II and XIII, where in the same situations the tau is sometimes marked and sometimes not. 30 But II and XIII can manifest a predictable pattern of “habit” that contrasts with a quite different, though still somewhat predictable usage in the IV–V–VI–VIII–IX group. For example, in the latter group the very common abstraction prefix ⲙ︤ⲛ︦ⲧ︥- appears numerous times, sometimes marked after the tau and sometimes not, but this variation can be broken down into some general phonetic rules.31 However, in II and XIII, out of about 150 occurrences of this prefix, only four or five are marked.32 So it is obvious that to some extent there are phonetic conventions behind some of the articulation decisions in II and XIII. However, as will be seen below, we have not tried to create programs to compare and contrast all such possible situations across all the tractates in these two codices. As explained later, the statistical data have instead been confined to letters at the ends of words (inclusive of suffixes), and we regard this as methodologically sufficient for the question at hand. Moreover, the data counts for cross-tractate analysis of phenomena such as just mentioned are usually too small to allow testing for statistical significance.

28 I.e., before a nasal in an unaccented syllable; see Funk in Poirier, Le tonnerre, 19, for comments on situations specifically in Codex VI involving the relative -ⲉⲧ- before the nasals ⲛ and ⲙ. 29 Out of numerous occurrences of the form in the IV–V–VI–VIII–IX group, we note only two exceptions (-ⲉⲧ⳿ⲛⲁ- in VI 47.14 and 62.25; and in the latter the articulation falls at the end of a line). Out of dozens of occurrences II and XIII, we count only three exceptions (-ⲉⲧ⳿ⲛⲁ- in II 36.24; 78.35; 111.13), all at the ends of lines, and II 78.35 also at the end of a page. 30 To cite only one case: In the IV–V–VI–VIII–IX group the tau in ⲉⲧ⳿ϣⲟⲟⲡ is always marked (over 100 occurrences), while it is marked in 15 of the 48 cases in II and only 2 out of 20 times in XIII. 31 See Funk’s analysis of this characteristic in Codex VI in Poirier, Le tonnerre, 18. 32 ⲙⲛ̅ⲧ⳿- in II 87.1.11 (end of line); 126.19 (end of line); and XIII 37.12 (XIII 40.23 is uncertain). Ten of the 150 or so instances of the unmarked ⲙ︤ⲛ︦ⲧ︥- in II and XIII fall at the ends of lines.

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Tractate II,7 as Anomalous A statistical analysis of differences in the usage of division marks in II,7 from the rest of the codex shows that they are stranger than has been appreciated. As we have mentioned, there would appear to be a general consensus that the use/non-use of division marks and supralinear strokes in this codex should be considered the result of scribal “habit,” rather than an entirely consistent system. But while one can predict the kinds of instances in which a mark is virtually never going to be used (e.g., in the middle of a phonetic group), it is less possible to predict when a mark will be used. By analogy, in English grammar two typical places for apostrophes are in certain possessives and contractions, yet someone today writing a personal email might follow those rules only inconsistently, expecting the recipient to be able to read the message anyway. However, there are certain remarkable and sudden changes in “habit” in II,7, as we demonstrate in our statistical analysis in the next section. And the changes go well beyond merely the greater frequency in articulation marks after the letter ⲥ that has been often noted by scholars in the past. For example, there is also a statistically significant greater frequency in the marking of the letters ⲛ and ⲉ. But the changes beginning in II,7 involve not only certain increases in marking, there are also decreases. In the case of at least the ⲕ there is a statistically significant lesser frequency in the use of articulation marks than II,1–6. After the following survey of statistical results, we consider possible explanations and implications.

Statistical Methodology As Layton noted in 1989, to compare the frequencies of divisions marks between tractates it is necessary to compute not only the number of places where division marks occur but also the number of places in each tractate where they potentially could occur. With this goal in mind, we have written a library of computer programs, using the freely available statistical software package R,33 to calculate the number of times that letters at the end of words34 in Codices II and XIII could have been marked for each 33 Available from the R Foundation for Statistical Computing (Vienna): http://www.rproject.org/ 34 For computational ease we are using as the basic unit of our analysis forms that generally are printed as separate “words” in a major edition such as the Brill series. Articulation marks are sometimes found in other locations, as we have already mentioned above. These have some importance for an overall understanding of scribal habit, and we have commented on some such examples in this essay. However, while an analysis draw-

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tractate (or combination of tractates) as well as the number of times they actually were so marked. Using the results of these calculations, it is possible to do statistical hypothesis testing to investigate how well differences in division mark use between tractates can be explained by random chance. We focused most of our analysis on those division marks located at end of words for two reasons: (1) these divisions are comparatively straightforward to identify and directly compare; and (2) most (approx. 80%) of the division marks in Codices II and XIII are in fact located at the end of words. The version of Codex II and XIII used to generate the results presented here is a Roman letter transcription based primarily on the online edition of The Coptic Gnostic Library.35 Our Roman letter transcription differs in several ways from the Brill original. We omitted all words from our analysis that required any reconstruction due to the presence of lacunae. The primary reason that we made this decision was that it is impossible to reliably reconstruct the presence or absence of division marks for words that are partially or completely obscured. We elected to expand our omission to all words that are partially obscured by lacunae – even those words that are largely visible – in the interest of computational simplicity. Any impact on the analysis presented here should be minimal as the total number of words obscured by lacunae comprises only a small percentage of the total number of words in the texts being considered, and because there is no reason to believe that words obscured by lacunae were more or less likely to have been marked than words that were not so obscured. While our electronic Roman character transcription includes all tractates in Codices II and XIII, it was necessary to omit XIII,2 from our analysis. The small amount of text remaining from this tractate is not sufficient to allow for statistically meaningful comparisons. In addition, though it has been hypothesized that there are multiple shapes of division marks (hooks, slanted marks, dots, etc.), we treated all division marks as though they were the same. We did this because, as has been observed, they are frequently difficult or impossible to distinguish from one another.36 However, as we sought to focus our study on division marks, we did omit other grammatical markings – circumflexes over omegas and diereses – that are consistently distinguishable from division marks both in appearance and function. ing on a database of absolutely every articulation mark would be interesting for certain purposes, it is not necessary to address the questions we have considered in this essay. 35 James M. Robinson, The Coptic Gnostic Library a Complete Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices (Leiden: Brill, 2012); available from http://referenceworks.brill online.com/browse/coptic-gnostic-library. 36 Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 1:15.

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The division marks in our transcription differ slightly from those in the Brill critical edition. One of us, Michael Williams, spent time in Cairo with the Coptic manuscripts and examined them to confirm the division markings. In the small percentage of cases where the critical edition differed from his observations, we most often elected to rely on his observations, as we believe that they are more likely to be correct given that he focused specifically on verifying the division marks. However, even if he were wholly in error about all differences he observed between the critical edition and the original manuscripts, these differences represent only a small percentage of cases and would be unlikely to affect the conclusions presented here. We conducted all statistical comparisons of tractates using either ChiSquared or Fisher’s Exact tests. 37 These hypothesis tests are useful for comparing categorical data (e.g. marked vs. unmarked) in two (or more) samples (e.g. tractates). The null hypothesis – the default – of both of these tests is that variables in the data, sorted by one of the variables being examined, are independent of one another. In the case of marked and unmarked final letters in the tractates of Nag Hammadi II and XIII, the null hypothesis is that the proportions of marked and unmarked letters do not provide any information about the tractate in which they occur; i.e. that the true probability – that the ancient scribe(s) would choose to write a division mark – did not change with tractate. It is important to recognize that, even if the underlying final-letter marking habit of the scribe did not change at all from one tractate to the next, considerable variation in the percentages of marked final letters would probably still exist across tractates. The question is, for which letters and which tractates is the observed variation too much for random chance to be a likely explanation? The results of hypothesis tests are expressed as “p-values” – i.e., the probability, assuming that the null hypothesis is true, of observing data by random chance that are more extreme (in this case, appear less independent) than the extant data (the divisions marks in II,1–7 and XIII,1). By convention, the null hypothesis is typically rejected if the p-value is less than 0.05 (5%); this is often referred to in statistical parlance as a 95% “significance” or “confidence” level.38 37 These hypothesis tests are standard methods used to compare count data and are described in their two-sample forms in most introductory statistics texts. Their extension to more than two samples, which is the case in much of the analysis presented in this paper, may be present only in more advanced texts, but is also standard practice. One excellent resource is: Gregory W. Corder and Dale I. Foreman Nonparametric Statistics for NonStatisticians: A Step-by-Step Approach (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2009). See also Alan Agresti, Categorical Data Analysis (New York: Wiley, 2002). 38 There is nothing special per se about 0.05 – this usual choice across many fields is conceptually arbitrary. What matters is that the standards for deciding whether or not to

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In cases such as our examination of Codices II and XIII, where many hypothesis tests are conducted as different methods of approaching a single overarching question – in our case, whether there is a difference among the tractates in the scribal division marking habit at the ends of words – it is necessary to reduce the threshold for rejection in each individual test from 0.05 to some lower probability since each individual test is merely a single way of approaching a larger question which is not being tested directly. Consequently, various mathematical methods, the results of which differ only slightly in most situations, are used to adjust the significance level of the individual hypothesis tests so that the false positive rate for the entire family of tests remains approximately 5%.39 There are a number of methods that are commonly used to control the false positive error rate when many hypothesis tests are conducted. We have chosen to use a common and well-established method – Bonferroni-Holm.40

Statistical Analysis Our decision to focus our analysis on letters appearing at the ends of words is supported by a chi-squared test comparing the fraction of marks found at the ends of words across tractates to the ratio found elsewhere. In tractates II,1–7 and XIII,1, 83.7%, 81.4%, 80.2%, 78.5%, 80.0%, 85.9%, 84.5%, and 84.1% of the total number of division marks occur at the end of words. The p-value associated with this test (in this case, appropriately unadjusted by Bonferroni-Holm) is 0.988, suggesting that we have no evidence that, if the scribe(s) chose to write a division mark, that tractate had any influence on whether they were more or less likely to do so at the end of a word. call a result “too extreme” be chosen before the data are examined, which is a primary reason why a convention has developed – if everyone uses 0.05, then no one has to contend with suspicion that they chose their significance level retroactively based on the results of their hypothesis testing. 39 For example, if we assume that the null hypothesis is true for twenty imagined hypothesis tests, the probability that at least one of the p-values will be less than 0.05 as a result of random chance is 1-(0.95)20 = 0.64. In other words, if we do twenty hypothesis tests, we would have a nearly two-thirds chance of rejecting the null hypothesis in at least one case (and concluding that there was evidence for a difference in the overarching question – in our case, whether division markings differ among tractates) even if the null hypothesis was true in all cases. We must correct for this. 40 Sture Holm, “A Simple Sequentially Rejective Multiple Test Procedure,” Scandinavian Journal of Statistics 6 (1979): 65–70. In other words, if there were in fact no difference in scribal habit across tractates, we have used Bonferroni-Holm to alter the individual p-values so that there would be an approximately 95% chance that none of the individual hypothesis tests would indicate statistical significance.

440

Michael A. Williams and David Coblentz

We did make one important exception to our decision to focus our analysis on division marks at the ends of words. To address Wolf-Peter Funk’s concern that Layton did not pay sufficient attention to how marks differed at the end of lines,41 we also conducted a chi-squared test comparing the ratios of marked to possibly marked line ends across tractates – 12.83% for II,1; 16.38% for II,2; 15.50% for II,3; 16.95% for II,4; 15.54% for II,5, 14.41% for II,6; 21.83% for II,7; and 7.07% for XIII,1. The p-value associated with an overall test, 1.352e-05, is statistically significant. Additional chi-squared testing, with p-values adjusted using Bonferroni-Holm, indicates that a statistically significant difference exists between XIII,1 and II,2–7. We believe this difference to be a reflection of the reduced use of division marks in codex XIII as compared to codex II. A statistically significant difference also existed between II,1 and II,7, providing evidence that, for this pair of tractates, the ratios of marked to unmarked line ends is poorly explained by chance alone. With the exception of six letters which never (or almost never)42 appear at the ends of words in the tractates under consideration – gamma, delta, zeta, phi, chi, and psi – we calculated the number of times that letters in Nag Hammadi II,1–7 and XIII,1 occurred at the end of words. The counts produced are given in Table 1 and the results of the hypothesis testing are given in Table 2.43 The hypothesis testing provides support for a difference in scribal habit – there is a statistically significant difference between the ratios of marked to possible letters for epsilon, kappa, mu, nu, pi, sigma, and fai. The relative ratios of marked to possible letters (and their corresponding p-values) is sometimes quite striking. For example, the final sigmas which attracted the notice of Hans-Martin Schenke and Bentley Layton were marked in 25.8% of possible locations in II,7 but were marked in no more than 2.4% of possible locations in any other tractate – in two texts, II,2 and XIII,1, no final sigmas were marked at all. The results for Epsilon were nearly as striking, being marked in 13.4% of possible locations in II,7 but no more than 2% of possible locations elsewhere. 41

Painchaud and Funk, L’écrit sans titre, 33–34. These letters appear at the end of words free of lacunae less than five times throughout the tractates under consideration. 43 The chi-squared approximation was poor for some of these tests, necessitating an r x c Fisher’s exact test, which was used for all hypothesis tests in this group for consistency. To increase efficiency, p-values were estimated in R using 2,000,000 iteration Monte Carlo simulations; W. M. Patefield, “Algorithm AS159. An efficient method of generating r x c tables with given row and column totals,” Applied Statistics 30 (1981): 91–97; Cyrus R. Mehta and Nitin R. Patel, “Algorithm 643. FEXACT: A Fortran subroutine for Fisher’s exact test on unordered r*c contingency tables,” ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software 12 (1986): 154–61. See R help for fisher.test() for more details. 42

13 12 20 8 9 6 50 26 70 34 10 0 74 45 6 85 12 4 5 151 5 7 0 0

297 31 1012 88 23 416 80 172 228 596 13 133 95 151 360 105 339 355 33 250 78 10 17 36

Possible

Ap. John

Marked

3 5 7 2 0 5 54 20 19 27 2 0 34 12 0 92 8 1 2 104 0 9 0 0

166 10 899 49 0 191 65 105 106 388 4 79 36 59 330 106 259 160 21 192 73 11 15 23

Possible

Gos. Thom.

Marked

8 19 16 2 0 15 59 39 61 103 5 6 108 31 12 102 22 5 7 159 3 10 0 0

400 56 1187 103 4 352 65 166 193 717 15 137 119 105 490 124 440 178 36 226 97 16 16 39

Possible

Gos. Phil. Marked

2 5 6 4 3 2 19 9 30 21 0 1 17 10 1 29 2 1 2 50 2 2 0 0

143 12 407 39 8 112 22 66 91 242 4 48 25 36 144 34 128 99 11 86 40 4 17 3

Possible

Hyp. Arch. Marked

Table 1: Final Letters in Tractates II.1-7 and XIII.1: Possible and Marked

Alpha Beta Epsilon Eta Theta Iota Kappa Lamda Mu Nu Xi Omicron Pi Rho Sigma Tau Upsilon Omega Shai Fai Hore Djanje Tshima Ti

Final Letter

15 3 14 11 6 9 34 25 61 55 5 2 77 21 11 67 14 0 4 184 5 4 0 0 372 23 1100 119 17 288 44 187 224 604 7 119 82 102 501 83 423 173 22 271 151 4 26 32

Possible

Orig. World Marked

6 3 3 3 0 3 20 10 16 16 2 1 29 6 3 60 2 2 0 27 0 1 0 0 143 7 354 54 0 170 21 48 74 183 5 38 35 40 190 72 96 79 18 54 27 2 7 6

Possible

Exeg. Soul Marked

7 0 56 4 0 3 29 11 17 51 4 3 21 13 34 51 8 2 1 52 2 1 1 0

69 16 418 43 0 124 44 66 50 242 5 39 22 59 132 54 127 98 21 82 60 3 10 7

Possible

Thom. Cont. Marked Possible

69 6 433 52 2 221 69 99 89 273 0 28 81 29 129 79 211 166 8 151 30 1 6 31 5 1 3 0 0 1 24 5 11 7 0 0 42 3 0 52 2 0 0 61 0 0 0 0

Trim. Prot. Marked

Articulation Marks in Nag Hammadi Codices II and XIII

441

5.7%

76.9%

Nu

Xi

1.7%

Sigma

5.1%

No

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

NA

NA

* These p-values are not directly interpretable, beyond indicating statistical significance, due to their adjustment by the Bonferroni-Holm method to control for multiple testing. This upward adjustment is why so many p-values equal 1.

Table 2: Final Letters in Tractates II.1-7 and XIII.1: Percent Marked, P-Values, and Statistical Significance

0.0%

No

0.0%

0.0%

Ti 0.0%

No 1.00E+00 0.0% 10.0% 0.0% 0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

Tshima

No

1.00E+00 1.00E+00

0.0% 0.0%

3.3% 33.3%

0.0% 50.0%

3.3% 100.0%

5.0% 50.0%

3.1% 62.5%

0.0% 81.8%

6.4%

70.0%

3.60E-06 40.4% 63.4% 50.0%

67.9%

58.1%

70.4%

54.2%

60.4%

Fai

Djanje

No Yes

1.00E+00 0.0% 4.8% 0.0%

9.5%

Hore

No

1.00E+00 0.0% 2.0% 2.5%

0.0% 18.2%

1.0% 18.2%

2.8% 19.4%

0.6%

0.9% 6.3%

1.1%

No No

9.61E-02 1.00E+00

65.8%

94.4%

2.1%

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

Yes

Yes

83.3%

1.20E-06

1.00E+00

1.20E-06

6.24E-01

1.00E+00

1.20E-06

3.84E-02

1.18E-01

3.3%

0.0%

10.3%

51.9%

0.0%

NA

2.6%

12.4%

80.7%

25.8%

22.0%

95.5%

7.7%

80.0%

21.1%

34.0%

16.7%

1.6%

1.6%

15.0%

82.9%

2.6%

40.0%

8.7%

21.6%

20.8%

85.3%

2.2%

20.6%

93.9%

1.7%

71.4%

9.1%

27.2%

13.4%

5.0%

0.7%

27.8%

68.0%

2.1%

0.0%

8.7%

33.0%

13.6%

82.3%

2.4%

29.5%

90.8%

4.4%

33.3%

14.4%

31.6%

23.5%

15.2%

Omega

3.1%

86.8%

0.0%

20.3%

94.4%

0.0%

50.0%

7.0%

17.9%

Shai

3.5%

Upsilon

81.0%

29.8%

Rho

Tau

77.9%

Pi

0.0%

30.7%

Mu

Omicron

15.1%

Lambda 19.0%

No Yes

1.20E-06

34.8%

65.9%

95.2%

77.3%

86.4%

90.8%

83.1%

62.5%

Kappa

No

1.00E+00

0.5%

1.00E+00

2.4%

0.0%

1.8%

No

1.00E+00

0.0%

3.1%

NA

1.8%

9.3%

4.3%

NA

2.6%

35.3%

1.4%

37.5%

Iota

5.6%

9.2%

10.3%

0.0%

NA

No Yes

1.20E-06

0.7%

9.1%

No

2.65E-01

16.7%

39.1%

1.9%

13.4%

0.0%

Significant

2.99E-01

P-Value*

7.2%

XIII.1

Theta

4.1%

II.7 10.1%

Eta

0.8%

42.9%

1.3%

13.0%

4.2%

II.6

1.5%

41.7%

4.0%

II.5

1.3%

33.9%

1.4%

II.4

0.8%

50.0%

2.0%

II.3

2.0%

38.7%

Beta

1.8%

II.2

Epsilon

4.4%

II.1

Alpha

442 Michael A. Williams and David Coblentz

Articulation Marks in Nag Hammadi Codices II and XIII

443

To tease out which individual texts differ from one another, we conducted additional hypothesis testing for each of the letters44 – epsilon, kappa, mu, nu, pi, sigma, and fai – for which random chance was a poor explanation for the difference in the ratio of marked to possible final letters across tractates. Some of these results were striking. As might be expected from the much higher rate at which they were marked in II,7, the scribal willingness to mark final epsilons and sigmas differed in a statistically significant manner between II,7 and every other text considered. For all other combinations of texts, random chance is a reasonable explanation for the between-text variation in final sigma and epsilon markings. This suggests that the differences in final markings are not simply the result of more or less frequent use of division markings overall. While sigma and epsilon are marked much more frequently in II,7 than in the other tractates, the rates at which most letters are marked in II,7 are not distinguishable statistically from those of the other tractates. Indeed, some letters – e.g. beta, kappa, and djanje – are actually marked less often in II,7 than in the other tractates of codex II. The picture which emerged for division mark use after the letter nu was more complex. Again, the difference between II,7 and the other tractates was striking. The difference was statistically significant in all cases except between II,3 (14.4%) and II,7 (21.1%), suggesting that chance is a poor explanation for the observed differences in division marking habit between II,7 and the remainder of the codex. However, unlike for sigma and epsilon, other groups of texts also exhibit differences in their respective ratios of marked final nus that are not well explained by chance alone. In particular, division mark use after nu in II,3, while not statistically distinguishable from II,7, did differ in a statistically significant way from II,1 (5.7%), II,2 (7.0%), and XIII,1 (2.6%). Likewise, XIII,1 differed from several other texts – in addition to II,3, the rate that final nus were marked was also distinct from II,5 (9.1%) and II,7. This suggests that the differences in scribal habit may be more complex than simply differences between II,1–6, II,7, and XIII,1. While exploring the implications of this additional complexity is beyond the scope of this study, such complexity is compatible with our conclusions.

44

This set of hypothesis tests were standard Fisher’s exact tests done on 2x2 tables. The p-values for these tests are omitted from this paper for the sake of space – only significance is discussed below. The p-values for each hypothesis test can be reproduced easily from the count data in Table 1 in Excel or any statistical software package. Adjusting the p-values using Bonferroni-Holm to control for multiple testing is also straightforward but requires the use of a statistical software package. In R, the function p.adjust() can be used to apply Bonferroni-Holm and other commonly used methods to adjust for multiple testing.

444

Michael A. Williams and David Coblentz

As expected due to the less frequent use of division marks overall in Codex XIII, tractate XIII,1 exhibited broad evidence for differences in scribal habit from tractates in Codex II. In addition to the difference in nu presented above, evidence exists that fai was marked at different rates in XIII,1 (40.4%) and II,1,3,5,7 (60.4%, 70.4%, 67.9%, and 63.4%). Similarly, the variation in the marked to possible ratio for pi was poorly explained by chance between XIII,1 (51.9%) and II,1–3, 5–7 (77.9%, 94.4%, 90.8%, 93.9%, 82.9%, and 95.5%). The marked to possible ratio for mu also differed in a statistically significant way between XIII,1 (12.4%) and II,1,3,4 (30.7%, 31.6%, and 33.0%). The rate at which kappa was marked also differs between XIII,1 (34.8%) and most other tractates – II,1–6 (62.5%, 83.1%, 90.8%, 86.4%, 77.3%, 95.2%). In addition to the trends indicating changes in scribal habit for II,7 and XIII,1, some statistically significant differences were identifiable between II,3 and the other tractates. In addition to the results presented above for final nus, II,3 (90.8%) and II,1 (62.5%) were distinct for kappa and II,3 (70.4%) and II,2 (54.2%) were distinct for fai. To answer past questions in the literature45 about possible differences between II,1–6 and II,7, we also grouped II,1–6 together and compared this grouping directly to II,7.46 The counts, percentages, and hypothesis testing results for II,1–6 combined and II,7 are given in Table 3. Overall, this analysis confirmed what might be expected from our tests of individual tractates: there is a statistically significant difference between II,1–6 and II,7 in the final marking habit for sigma, epsilon, and nu. While hypothesis testing is an excellent tool for demonstrating that differences between tractates are unlikely to have occurred by chance and for quantifying the improbability of such differences, the sensitivity of hypothesis testing is dependent on the size of the samples (here, texts) being considered. It is entirely possible, and we suspect very likely, that many more actual differences in scribal habit exist for final letter marking that our testing is not sensitive enough to detect given the size of the texts being compared.

45

E.g., Schenke, Das Thomas-Buch, 2–4; Painchaud and Funk, L’écrit sans titre, 33. We should note that, in addition to the six letters omitted in the primary analysis, theta was also omitted from this comparison of II,1–6 and II,7. Except for the double theta in ⲙⲁⲑ⳿ | ⲑⲁⲓⲟⲥ in II 34.34–35.1 (where the mark occurs at the end of a page as well as the end of a line), all of the marked thetas in II,1–6 are the at the ends of the proper names: Athoth, Ialdabaoth/Ialtabaoth, Sabaoth, and Seth. In II,7 there are no marked thetas at all, so a comparison for this letter is not possible. 46

Marked 47 47 66 30 40 236 129 257 256 24 10 339 125 33 435 60 13 20 675 15 33 0 0

II, 1-6 Possible 1521 139 4959 452 1529 297 744 916 2730 48 554 392 493 2015 524 1685 1044 141 1079 466 47 98 139 % Marked 3.09% 33.81% 1.33% 6.64% 2.62% 79.46% 17.34% 28.06% 9.38% 50.00% 1.81% 86.48% 25.35% 1.64% 83.02% 3.56% 1.25% 14.18% 62.56% 3.22% 70.21% 0.00% 0.00%

II, 7: Thom. Cont. Possible % Marked 7 69 10.14% 0 16 0.00% 56 418 13.40% 4 43 9.30% 3 124 2.42% 29 44 65.91% 11 66 16.67% 17 50 34.00% 51 242 21.07% 4 5 80.00% 3 39 7.69% 21 22 95.45% 13 59 22.03% 34 132 25.76% 51 54 94.44% 6.30% 127 8 2.04% 98 2 4.76% 21 1 63.41% 82 52 2 60 3.33% 33.33% 3 1 1 10 10.00% 0.00% 7 0

Marked

Fisher’s Exact Test P-value* Significant 1.776E-1 No 7.403E-2 No 1.312E-29 Yes 1.00E+00 No 1.00E+00 No 1.00E+00 No 1.00E+00 No 1.00E+00 No 5.138E-6 Yes 1.00E+00 No 1.00E+00 No 1.00E+00 No 1.00E+00 No 5.943E-24 Yes 7.218E-1 No 1.00E+00 No 1.00E+00 No 1.00E+00 No 1.00E+00 No 1.00E+00 No 1.00E+00 No 1.00E+00 No 1.00E+00 No

* These p-values are not directly interpretable, beyond indicating statistical significance, due to their adjustment by the Bonferroni-Holm method to control for multiple testing. This upward adjustment is why so many p-values equal 1.

Table 3: Final Letters in II.1-6 and II.7 Compared: Possible and Marked

Final Letter Alpha Beta Epsilon Eta Iota Kappa Lambda Mu Nu Xi Omicron Pi Rho Sigma Tau Upsilon Omega Shai Fai Hore Djanje Tshima Ti

Articulation Marks in Nag Hammadi Codices II and XIII

445

446

Michael A. Williams and David Coblentz

Interpretation and Conclusions The preceding results strongly suggest that the changes in articulation marks beginning in II,7 are too unusual to be explained as a single scribe’s inadvertent and sudden shift in scribal “habit.” So what choices are left for understanding the situation? 1. One possible scenario is that II,7 was copied by a different scribe with detectable divergences in articulation habits. If so, then the overall resemblance to the majority hand in II,1–6 would indicate that this different scribe was someone with very similar training, and perhaps even someone who was laboring in the same scriptorium as the majority scribe for Codex II. The size of the hand in II,7 is notably smaller than in II,1–6, resulting in more letters per line and more lines per page on average. The smaller hand was one of the factors that tempted Hans-Martin Schenke toward the theory of a different scribe for the last tractate, 47 but even Schenke expressed his views on this with some caution. And as we have mentioned, there is a plausible explanation for the smaller writing even if this is the same scribe as the majority hand – namely, that this scribe saw that the length of the final tractate required reducing the size of the lettering. 2. However, if II,7 was not inscribed by a different individual, then what our analysis has now demonstrated is that the changes in articulation practice require a better explanation than has been offered in the past. At first one might be tempted to theorize that the more crowded lettering required to accommodate the last tractate prompted an intentionally more frequent use of marks in order to make divisions clearer to a reader. To our knowledge, no one has actually presented that argument, and our statistical analysis now reveals that such a theory would not have accounted very well for important data – namely, that only certain letters are in fact marked much more frequently, while others are marked at about the same rate, and some others are actually marked with less frequency. 3. In any event, there is still a third scenario, also involving a single scribe for II,1–7 (again, possibly excepting II 47.1–8): We may be looking at similar but detectably different articulation habits of scribes in underlying exemplars rather than a single scribe’s very odd shifts in habit sudden-

47

Schenke, Das Thomas-Buch, 2, commenting on the alternative theory that a single scribe was reducing the size of script in order to accommodate the lines of II,7 in the remaining pages of the codex: “Aber ich weiß nicht, ob ein professioneller Buchschreiber seine Schreibweise so einfach ändern (nach Belieben oder Notwendigkeit kleiner oder auch flüssiger gestalten) konnte.”

Articulation Marks in Nag Hammadi Codices II and XIII

447

ly manifesting in II,7.48 It is possible that supporting evidence for this inference is to be found in a couple of dittographies in this codex. In II 23.17–20 there are almost four lines of dittography, and the choices for inclusion/omission of articulation marks are repeated exactly over those four lines.49 The sample is of course too small to allow a statistical argument. Yet it is worth noting that the exact duplication here is not merely a matter of marks that would all have been readily predictable from “habits” elsewhere in II.50 A slightly shorter dittography with a similar imitation of articulation occurs in II 124.15–18, though here the duplication is not quite exact since one articulation mark is added in the dittography.51 This ditto-

48 Cf. Williams, “Scribes of the Nag Hammadi Codices,” 4, where at the time Williams considered an explanation involving the imitation of different exemplars as only a theoretical, but less likely possibility. But opportunity for the statistical and other analysis in this study has now provided specific evidence for why the influence of different exemplars would be the more plausible explanation. 49 Though the manuscript of Codex IV is very poorly preserved just at this point, there does not seem to be room for the dittography to have existed there as well. Therefore, either the scribe of II 23.13–20 first introduced the dittography (the most economical assumption), or else it existed already in an exemplar that differed in that respect from the text in Codex IV. 50 Four articulation marks occur, after ⲛϥ̄ⲧⲟϭϥ⳿, ⲛⲁϥ⳿, ⲥⲁⲣⲝ⳿, and ⲟⲩⲱⲧ⳿. Admittedly, the form ⲟⲩⲱⲧ is almost always marked in II; ⲛⲁϥ is marked in the codex about twothirds of the time; and the verb-suffix combination -ⲧⲟϭ-ϥ is marked in the only other place where it occurs in II (73.14). And of course, the letters -ⲧ and -ϥ are among the most frequently marked letters in this codex (see statistical section above). On the other hand, ⲥⲁⲣⲝ is marked only about half the time in the codex and is left unmarked in II 133.3 where the same phrase from Gen 2:24 occurs (. . . ⲥⲁⲣⲝ ⲟⲩⲱⲧ⳿). Moreover, the term ⲉⲓⲱⲧ is left unmarked both in II 23.13–16 and in the dittography in 23.17–20, whereas in about 75% of instances in II it is marked – including in 23.12–13, in a phrase (ⲡⲉϥⲉⲓⲱⲧ⳿ ⲙⲛ̄ ⲧⲉϥ⳿ⲙⲁⲁⲩ) parallel to the one in which it is left unmarked in the following text and dittography. So our point is that the marking/non-marking in II 23.17–20 cannot be dismissed out of hand as exactly what one would have expected on the basis of habit elsewhere in II. 51 All three of the markings in II 124.12–14 are repeated in the dittography: ⲁⲅ⳿ⲅⲉⲗⲟⲥ, ⲟⲩⲁⲧϭⲟⲙ⳿, and ⲉⲓⲱⲧ⳿. The term ⲉⲃⲟⲗ⳿ is an additional mark in the dittography. As in the previous instance, the less predictable these markings are merely from frequency in the rest of the codex, the more their repetition in the dittography might suggest imitation of an exemplar. ϭⲟⲙ is marked in II only about half the time; while the double ⲅ in ⲁⲅⲅⲉⲗⲟⲥ is marked in only just over one third of the instances. On the other hand, the term ⲉⲓⲱⲧ is marked about 75% of the time in the codex, so it could be considered more predictable. Most of the time (85%) the term ⲉⲃⲟⲗ it is not marked in this codex. If that percentage reflects an overall tendency in exemplar(s), then the marking of ⲉⲃⲟⲗ in the dittography weakens the inference that the dittography in II 128.15–18 is an imitation even of the articulation in an exemplar (though theoretically the marked ⲉⲃⲟⲗ⳿ could have been in the exemplar, but missed the first time these lines were copied).

448

Michael A. Williams and David Coblentz

graphic evidence is by no means conclusive.52 However, overall it might offer limited support to the hypothesis that a scribe is imitating articulation in exemplars. Now and then there could have been a deviation from an articulation detail in the exemplar, intentionally or accidentally. But overall, the most economical explanation is that the copyist was copying. This conclusion draws further support from a different but related quarter. Wolf-Peter Funk has hypothesized that a single scribe in Codex II (except for the first lines of page 47) was following certain orthographic conventions in an underlying exemplar for all of II,2–6, where these conventions are fairly consistent, but followed different conventions in II,1 and II,7, imitating exemplars for those tractates. That is, the scribe “must have been more reluctant than most scribes to impose his own standards of spelling on his work – otherwise this divergence could hardly be explained.” 53 At least for II,7 we believe that our statistical results and Funk’s analysis of orthographic patterns mutually support the same theory: one scribe, but rather slavishly following different exemplars, not only in orthography but also in articulation.54

Codex XIII Syllable divisions are marked far less often in Codex XIII than in Codex II. Therefore, not surprisingly there results a statistical difference that is poorly accounted for by mere chance (e.g., a scribe having finished the copying of II begins copying XIII but changes articulation rate unintentionally). So why the difference in XIII? It has sometimes been argued that the hand in XIII is the majority scribe of II writing more rapidly, perhaps

52

In addition to the two dittographies just mentioned there is another smaller one in II 6.30–32. What is visible from the lacunose text shows the close, though not exact duplication of the articulation in 6.29–30. In 6.30 there is a clear marking of [ϫ]ⲏⲕ⳿, and possible marking of ⲡⲣⲟ̣[ⲛⲟⲓ]ⲁ̣⳿. Both of these terms are marked in the dittography, but there is the additional marking of [ⲉ]ⲧⲟⲩⲁⲁⲃ⳿, which is only marked about 17% of the time in Codex II. 53 Wolf-Peter Funk, “The Linguistic Aspect of Classifying the Nag Hammadi Codices,” in Les textes de Nag Hammadi et le problème de leur classification: Actes du colloque tenu à Québec du 15 au 19 septembre 1993 (ed. Louis Painchaud and Anne Pasquier; Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 1995), 133. 54 Our statistics do not happen to support – but also cannot disconfirm – the suggestion of a different exemplar also in II,1. In fact, if we were judging simply by our statistical analysis, the articulation in II,3 rather than in II,1 is more different from the other tractates in II. But that evidence is much less strong than for II,7.

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simply more in a hurry. 55 However, from the beginning there has been room for doubt.56 In addition to the much less frequent articulation and the differences in formation of certain letters, one other undeniable divergence in XIII from II remains to be mentioned. What is conventionally called Codex XIII consists of only some pages removed in antiquity from a complete codex, containing one tractate and the first ten lines of another. The only complete copy of the latter is II,5 (today often entitled On the Origin of the World), so we can compare articulation in the corresponding lines of these two copies.57 For these lines the two copies actually have only two articulation marks in common, both on the final ⲡ in ϣⲟⲟⲡ⳿,58 and a final ⲡ is one of the more common places for articulation in either codex (see statistical section above). From what is visible with any certainty outside lacunae in each manuscript, at least four places here in II contain articulation that is absent in the parallels in XIII,59 and at least three instances of differences

55

E.g., Bentley Layton, “The Hypostasis of the Archons (conclusion),” Harvard Theological Review 69 (1976): 84; Stephen Emmel, “The Nag Hammadi Codices Editing Project: A Final Report,” American Research Center Newsletter 104 (1978): 27–28; Williams, “Scribes of the Nag Hammadi Codices,” 4 (Williams held that opinion at the time, but now leans in a different direction); and Paul-Hubert Poirier, ed., La Pensée première à la triple forme: (NH XIII, 1) (BCNH.T 32; Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 2006), 5, citing scholars such as those just mentioned. 56 E.g., Doresse, Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics, 141; and more recently, John Turner in Charles W. Hedrick, ed., Nag Hammadi Codices XI, XII, XIII (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 362: “. . . there appear to be enough differences so as to allow that the two hands belong to a student and instructor.” Gesine Schenke, ed., Die dreigestaltige Protennoia (Nag-Hammadi-Codex XIII) (TUGAL 132; Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1984), notes features in the more cursive hand in XIII (p. 8) but allows that the similarities between the hands in the two codices could possibly mean work by the same scribe (p. 7 n. 5). Among the differences in handwriting that have always allowed room for doubt: (a) the mu in II is always a blockish form while in XIII it is regularly looped with curved “legs”; the omega and shai in II are always formed with a separate first stroke and no looped center, whereas in XIII they almost always are formed with a single, looped stroke – though there are instances where they look just like those in II (e.g., XIII 38.27–30 and 39.8–21). But would not even a scribe “in a hurry” occasionally fall back to the “stiffer” form of the mu? And why do certain other letters, such as the nu, not also have the same “hurried” appearance, with more loops and or curved “legs”? Explaining what actually amounts to a very consistent style in XIII that contains differences from II in only certain letters due to haste may be no more, or even less plausible than the simpler hypothesis of a different scribe with slightly different habits. 57 The British Museum fragments (the Oeyen Fragments) of another version of this writing do not involve the type of scribal similarities addressed in this study; see Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 2:96–134. 58 II 97.26 = XIII 50.26; II 98.4 = XIII 50.34. 59 II 97.26 (ⲁⲛⲟⲕ⳿); 97.28 (ⲉⲛ⳿ⲥⲉⲥⲟⲟⲩⲛ ⲁⲛ); 97.30 (ⲉⲥⲣ̄ⲥⲩⲙ̣⳿[ⲫⲱⲛⲉⲓ]); 98.3 (ⲕⲁⲕⲉ⳿).

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in orthography,60 and all of this within only the first ten lines of text. From his preliminary research in 1987, Williams considered the hand in XIII probably to be the same as the majority scribe in II, and that therefore this scribe must be responsible for both versions of the lines just mentioned from Orig. World. He also concluded that the best explanation for the differences was “not separate exemplars, but the degree of freedom in the use/non-use of articulation marks which the scribe manifests elsewhere.”61 But we now consider that earlier inference to be unsubstantiated in light of the wider range of evidence now at hand. Though Williams was aware of the three orthographic variants mentioned above, he did not have the benefit of Funk’s later analysis of variable orthographic patterns in Codex II and the implications for theorizing the influence of exemplars, nor of the correlation of this with a statistical analysis of articulation. It would seem that our results now require that one take more seriously than before several “moving parts” among the possibilities. Though a separate scribe for II,7 cannot be absolutely excluded, that theory is not as economical as a single majority scribe in II,1–7 who was evidently hugging rather closely to both orthographic and articulation patterns in his/her exemplars. Yet in spite of the differences we have established in those articulation patterns, they are still quite similar. That means that Codex II by itself allows us to “see” a scribal community at work, even if II,7 is not by a separate hand: We have the majority scribe of II along with at least two underlying exemplar scribes with similar but divergent articulation habits. One cannot know for certain whether there was also close resemblance among the lettering styles of these scribes but that inference is certainly not implausible.62 However, we contend that this in turn raises new questions regarding the scribal hand in XIII. Was this the same individual as the majority scribe of II, but now in more of a hurry and also more or less ignoring articulation in exemplars? Or in a hurry, but still mostly following exemplar articulation that was simply less dense than in II? Or, given the 60

II 97.24 (ⲉⲡⲉⲓⲇⲏ) = XIII 50.25 (ⲉⲡⲓⲇⲏ); II 97.26 (ⲗⲁⲁⲩⲉ) = XIII 50.26 (ⲗⲁⲁⲩ); II 97.27 (ⲛ̄ⲇⲉ) = XIII 50.27 (ⲇⲉ). As was mentioned above in the section on statistics, XIII,2 was not incorporated into those analyses due to its small size, and the comparisons in that analysis were organized by tractate. The observations in this paragraph comparing XIII,2 and the first lines of II,5 are limited by that small sample size which prevents any statistical argument in the proper sense. Instead, the observations are pointed out only as phenomena that might now be better understood when read in light of the overall analysis in this essay. 61 Williams, “Scribes of the Nag Hammadi Codices,” 4. 62 The manuscript group of Nag Hammadi Codices IV, V, VI, VIII, and IX could be pointed to as an example of hands as well as articulation patterns that are so remarkably similar that they were once considered the work of the same scribe. Closer study eventually revealed the probability of multiple scribes. See Williams, “Scribes of Nag Hammadi Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX.”

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overall evidence, is it not more economical to hypothesize that there was a different scribe for XIII with very similar training but somewhat more fluid style, and with an exemplar for Orig. World different from that underlying II? We consider this last explanation to be at least as plausible as any other, and we argue that the results of our analysis should now increase caution against dismissing the style in XIII as merely hasty work.

A Closer Peek Inside a Scriptorium? Codices II and XIII probably attest to a context where there were scribes with similar hands, but varying scribal habits in the use of articulation marks. If one does have a single scribe in II imitating at least two remarkably different habits in exemplars, that act in itself is fascinating. We noted above Funk’s comment that the majority scribe in II appears to have been reluctant to tamper with the orthography in exemplars. If our evidence in this study supports the picture of a fairly rigid imitation also of articulation markings in exemplars, this raises an interesting set of questions. If the fundamental function of the marks was to aid in reading as most researchers have argued (correctly, in our view), then in that regard how are we to understand the striking differences between II,7 and the rest of II (and XIII) in these “reading aids”? Why would a scribe copy so rigidly someone else’s notion of what helps a reader rather than follow his/her own preferences? What, precisely, does a “reading aid” then mean? Aid for whom? It has been concluded by some scholars studying scribal habits in the production of late antique Greek manuscripts that scribes would often copy not only the Greek text but also the punctuation in underlying exemplars. So if a single scribe is indeed switching to follow the somewhat different pattern of articulation in a different exemplar underlying II,7 that fact in itself would not appear unusual. As William Johnson has commented with regard to examples from Oxyrhynchus Greek literary manuscripts, punctuation often appears to be treated simply as “part of the paradosis.”63 However, that does not without further ado answer the question about the precise sense in which, or the readers for whom, our articulation marks would have functioned as “reading aids.” There are not only the differences observed here across II and XIII, there are also the divergent systems, patterns or habits in the Nag Hammadi collection as a whole. So although one is surely justified in referring to all these patterns as “reading aids,” at another level it does not appear that eventual readers of those copies shared 63

William A. Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 8; cf. E. G. Turner, Greek Manuacripts of the Ancient World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 12.

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some highly standardized perception of what was needed as lectional aids – otherwise we might have expected a lot more evidence of addition or revision of articulation in Nag Hammadi manuscripts by later readers.64 As mentioned earlier, recent research has established the likelihood that codices were very often composed in accordance with “rationales” that suggest purposes as communal instruments,65 and so as communal instruments they may often have been read aloud. But if so, variations in articulation marking, resulting from revisions in overall articulation approach in the history of copying,66 were apparently not perceived as obstacles to such purposes. A related question pertains to the dittographies in II that we discussed above. Particularly in the case of a relatively long dittography such as II 23.17–20, would not users have begun at some point to notice this, at least after several readings?! We know that at least some correcting of II occurred, because at II 12.28 a haplography is corrected with words inserted between lines. John Turner suggested that this could be evidence of the involvement of student and instructor, so that the insertion “could be an overseer’s correction to a similar hand.”67 But if so, why did the overseer not catch the dittographies we have mentioned? Perhaps the scribe never actually saw Codex II again after completing its inscription. Did other readers simply not notice the dittographies, or if they did then why did they not correct them? Is this evidence of infrequent reading? 64 Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus, 35–36, mentions a rather different situation in his Greek manuscript sampling. He mentions indications that in many cases also “readers added their own points of distinction routinely as they made use of the book. In fact, in many of these manuscripts a majority of the punctuation dots are plausibly attributed to a later reader or readers. An interesting question to ask is then whether, once a reader’s punctuation had been added, a subsequent copyist felt the duty to copy these marks as well.” Johnson concludes that this was generally not the case. While it is certainly possible that occasionally a later reader has added an articulation mark in NHC II or XIII, we have so far not been able to identify instances in which that must certainly be the case. 65 E.g., see works above, n. 4. 66 For example, there are the very different systems of articulation II,1 and IV,1, in copies of the Apocryphon of John that nevertheless evidently stem from virtually the same ancestral translation. Though not directly related to articulation, there is at least one intriguing scribal correction shared by these two manuscripts: the insertion of the upsilon by the scribe or a corrector at II 14.6 ⲡⲉ`ⲩʹⲡⲗⲏⲣⲱⲙⲁ is matched by exactly the same correction in the parallel in IV 22.9. The shared correction brings II and IV in line with the reading in III 21.7–8. Though the text in IV 22.9 is very fragmentary, one can see by the shape of the upsilon that the correction in IV 22.9 is by a different hand than in II 14.6, and seems like it could be the hand of the scribe of IV. This could indicate that the correction in II was made by someone in possession also of the corrected manuscript of IV. 67 In Hedrick, Nag Hammadi Codices XI, XII, XIII, 362.

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Of course, these are interesting questions about the social history of scribes and books that one could ask about all sorts of ancient manuscripts. A proper discussion of the phenomenon here would in fact entail a comparative and systematic study of a wider sampling of longer uncorrected dittographies. However, we are not aware of any previous study of that sort, and such a task certainly falls beyond the basic objectives of this essay. For now we note only that uncorrected, longer (and therefore more obvious) dittographic errors like II 23.17–20 seem to present questions beyond merely traditional issues of text criticism (determining an older or “more original” reading, etc.) and could – along with other evidence – help us gain a slightly closer glimpse of social history in the production and reading of a book. One recent study does explore in a different way the social world of Codex II as a book: the excellent 2009 Princeton dissertation by Eduard Iricinschi, “Scribes and Readers of Nag Hammadi Codex II: Book Production and Monastic Paideia in Fourth-Century Egypt.” There is not space to summarize the entire argument of his dissertation, but his overall thesis with respect to the rationale in the composition of the codex is congruent with observations in this study. Iricinschi worked under the hypothesis that the same scribe as the majority hand (whom he calls Scribe A) also copied in II,7, though he leaves open the possibility of a different scribe (Scribe C). Iricinschi hypothesizes that: Scribe A planned and executed Nag Hammadi Codex II in two stages. In the first phase, Scribe A added the ‘core’ of tractates II.2–6 to the Apocryphon of John, to fulfill an exegetical request originating in a Southern monastic milieu. During this process Scribe A asked his student, scribe B, to fill eight lines on page 47, and arguably left ten pages blank (C/D; and 138–45). In a second phase, scribe A, or perhaps a scribe C, trained in the same scriptorium as Scribe A, added II.7 and the colophon to the first six tractates of NHC II, accentuating its monastic features.68

In speaking of II,2–6 as the “core” in the codex, Iricinschi was building on the analysis by Wolf-Peter Funk that we have mentioned above.69 Iricinschi surmises that the codex was built by first copying the Apocryphon of John and then creating an exegesis of Ap. John with the addition of II,2–6. Then the Book of Thomas in II,7 was added “as an important element in the planning of NHC II, in order to appeal to a specific community within Egyptian monastic circles”70 – to pull the contents of the entire codex in this direction.

68

Iricinschi, “Scribes and Readers of Nag Hammadi Codex II,” 162. Iricinschi, “Scribes and Readers of Nag Hammadi Codex II,” 153–54. 70 Iricinschi, “Scribes and Readers of Nag Hammadi Codex II,” 161. 69

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Summary and Conclusion Our statistical analysis reveals that the scribal “habit” in articulation marking in Codex II,7 is too distinct from what is found in the rest of the codex to be the result of a single scribe randomly beginning to shift habits in II,7. If the scribe of II,7 is the same as the majority hand of II,1–6, then the shift in articulation habit is better explained from habits in a different exemplar for II,7. That would dovetail with Wolf-Peter Funk’s conclusion that different orthographic features in II,7 come from the scribe’s close imitation of a different exemplar. Therefore, viewing Codex II itself, and “looking through” it to scribal habits beneath, we are probably observing the habits of a community of scribes with similar training but personal variations (“habits”) on that training that in some cases are statistically distinguishable. In our view, Codex XIII is best understood as further evidence of such a community. We see no reason to force the responsibility for this codex on an individual familiar to us from Codex II, but who now for some reason employs a (partially) more fluid hand and shows less interest in as much articulation. While that possibility cannot be ruled out with certainty, it is unnecessary. In the course of our study, a few further questions have arisen that we have been able here only to introduce. These include some puzzlement over what precisely it means for articulation marks to be “aids for reading”; also, curiosity as to what rather obvious (at least to us as modern researchers) and yet uncorrected blunders in manuscripts (e.g., longer dittographies) might or might not indicate about ancient scribes, readers, and reading practices. Perhaps our raising of such issues here might encourage exploration of some of them in future research. Bibliography Agresti, Alan. Categorical Data Analysis. 2nd ed. New York: Wiley, 2002. Böhlig, Alexander, and Frederik Wisse, eds. Nag Hammadi Codices III,2 and IV,2: The Gospel of the Egyptians (The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit). Nag Hammadi Studies 4. Leiden: Brill, 1975. Bullard, Roger Aubrey, ed. The Hypostasis of the Archons: The Coptic Text with Translation and Commentary. With a Contribution by Martin Krause. Patristische Texte und Studien 10. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1970. Corder, Gregory W., and Dale I. Foreman. Nonparametric Statistics for NonStatisticians: A Step-by-Step Approach. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2009. Doresse, Jean. “Les reliures des manuscrits gnostiques coptes découverts à Khénoboskion.” Revue d’Égyptologie 13 (1961): 27–49.

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–. The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics: An Introduction to the Gnostic Coptic Manuscripts Discovered at Chenoboskion. Translated by P. Mairet. New York: Viking Press, 1958; ET 1960. Emmel, Stephen. “The Nag Hammadi Codices Editing Project: A Final Report.” American Research Center Newsletter 104 (1978): 10–32. Funk, Wolf-Peter. “The Linguistic Aspect of Classifying the Nag Hammadi Codices.” Pages 107–50 in Les textes de Nag Hammadi et le problème de leur classification: Actes du colloque tenu à Québec du 15 au 19 septembre 1993. Edited by Louis Painchaud and Anne Pasquier. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi section “Études.” Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 1995. Gamble, Harry Y. Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Haines-Eitzen, Kim. The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Hedrick, Charles W., ed. Nag Hammadi Codices XI, XII, XIII. Nag Hammadi Studies 27. Leiden: Brill, 1990. Holm, Sture. “A Simple Sequentially Rejective Multiple Test Procedure.” Scandinavian Journal of Statistics 6.2 (1979): 65–70. Iricinschi, Eduard. “Scribes and Readers of Nag Hammadi Codex II: Book Production and Monastic Paideia in Fourth-Century Egypt.” PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 2009. Johnson, William A. Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Klingshirn, William E. and Linda Safran, eds. The Early Christian Book. Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007. Krause, Martin. “Zum koptischen Handschriftenfund bei Nag Hammadi.” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo 19 (1963): 106–13. Layton, Bentley. “The Hypostasis of the Archons (Conclusion).” Harvard Theological Review 69 (1976): 31–101. –, ed. Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, together with XIII, 2, Brit. Lib. Or.4926(1), and P.Oxy. 1. 654, 655. 2 Vols. Nag Hammadi Studies 20–21. Leiden: Brill, 1989. –. “The Text and Orthography of the Coptic Hypostasis of the Archons (Cg Ii,4 Kr.).” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 11 (1973): 173–200. Mahé, Jean-Pierre. Hermès en Haute-Égypte. Tome I: Les textes hermétiques de Nag Hammadi et leurs parallèles grecs et latins. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi section “Textes.” Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 1978. Mehta, Cyrus R., and Nitin R. Patel. “Algorithm 643. Fexact: A Fortran Subroutine for Fisher's Exact Test on Unordered R*C Contingency Tables.” ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software 12.2 (1986): 154–61. Nichols, Stephen G., and Siegfried Wenzel, eds. The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany. Recentiores: Later Latin Texts and Contexts. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. Painchaud, Louis, and Wolf-Peter Funk, eds. L'écrit sans titre: Traité sur l’origine du monde (NH II,5 et XIII,2 et Brit. Lib. Or. 4926[1]). Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi section “Textes” 21. Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 1995. Painchaud, Louis, and Michael Kaler. “From the Prayer of the Apostle Paul to the Three Steles of Seth: Codices I, XI, and VII from Nag Hammadi Viewed as a Collection.” Vigiliae Christianae 61.4 (2007): 445–69. Parkes, M. B. Their Hands before Our Eyes: A Closer Look at Scribes. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008.

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Patefield, W. M. “Algorithm As159. An Efficient Method of Generating R X C Tables with Given Row and Column Totals.” Applied Statistics 30.1 (1981): 91–97. Pearson, Birger A., ed. Nag Hammadi Codices IX and X. Nag Hammadi Studies 15. Leiden: Brill, 1981. Poirier, Paul-Hubert, ed. Le Tonnerre, Intellect parfait (NH VI, 2). Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi section “Textes” 22. Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 1995. –. La Pensée Première à la triple forme (NH XIII, 1). Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi section “Textes” 32. Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 2006. Reil, Moritz. “Zur Akzentuation griechischer Handschriften.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 19.2 (1910): 476–529. Robinson, James M. The Coptic Gnostic Library: A Complete Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Robinson, James M., ed. The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices. Codex II. Leiden: Brill, 1974. Schenke, Gesine, ed. Die dreigestaltige Protennoia (Nag-Hammadi-Codex XIII). Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 132. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1984. Schenke, Hans-Martin, ed. Das Thomas-Buch (Nag Hammadi-Codex II,7). Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 138. Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 1989. Turner, E. G. Greek Manuacripts of the Ancient World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971. Wasserman, Tommy. “Papyrus 72 and the Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex.” New Testament Studies 51.1 (2005): 137–54. Williams, Megan Hale. The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Williams, Michael A. “The Scribes of the Nag Hammadi Codices.” Newsletter of the American Research Center in Egypt 139 (1987): 1–7. –. “The Scribes of the Nag Hammadi Codices IV, V, VI, VIII and IX.” Pages 334–42 in Actes du IVe congrès copte, Louvain-la-Neuve, 5–10 Septembre, 1988, Vol. 2: De la linguistique au gnosticisme. Edited by Marguerite Rassart-Debergh and Julien Ries. Publications de l'Institut Orientaliste de Louvain. Louvain-la-Neuve: Université Catholique de Louvain, Institut Orientaliste, 1992. –. “Interpreting the Nag Hammadi Library as ‘Collection(s)’ in the History of ‘Gnosticism(s).’” Pages 3–50 in Les textes de Nag Hammadi et le problème de leur classification: Actes du colloque tenu à Québec du 15 au 19 Septembre 1993. Edited by Louis Painchaud and Anne Pasquier. Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi: Section “Études” 3. Québec: les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1995. Williams, Michael A. Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Williams, Michael A., and Lance Jenott. “Inside the Covers of Codex VI.” Pages 1025– 52 in Coptica, Gnostica, Manichaica: Mélanges offerts à Wolf-Peter Funk. Edited by Louis Painchaud and Paul-Hubert Poirier. Bibliothéque copte de Nag Hammadi section “Études” 7. Québec: Les presses de l’Université Laval, 2006.

Dating Early Greek and Coptic Literary Hands CHRISTIAN ASKELAND This chapter considers modern contributions to the dating of early Coptic manuscripts. With regard to paleography, it revisits and reinforces arguments originally offered by Peter Parsons, critiquing developmental models of paleography in light of the extant datable evidence. Paleography should remain a means of last resort, and is not reliable for dating literary manuscripts to a single century. The survey underscores the clear connection between our securely-datable manuscripts and Egyptian monasticism.1

Status quaestionis Coptic Paleography Publications At present, Coptic paleography remains at best a guild art – a craft often practiced but seldom discussed. The twentieth century began on a conservative note. In his 1905 British Museum catalog in which he generally did not date manuscripts, Walter Crum referenced Hyvernat’s 1888 Album de paléographie copte as the only significant work on Coptic paleography, and indicated that “Suspended judgment is indeed still imperative on this fundamental question and little can here be said upon it.”2 Viktor Stegemann published his 1936 Koptische Paläographie album with its extensive examples, although without any synthesis or methodological conclusions.3 Whereas Stegemann’s edition has endured as a valuable source for paleographic parallels, the 1964 Koptische Paläographie edition of Cramer 1

I thank Alin Suciu and Brent Nongbri for their comments on this chapter. Walter Ewing Crum, ed., Catalogue of the Coptic Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: The British Museum, 1905), xviii; Henri Hyvernat, Album de paléographie copte pour servir à l’introduction paléographique des Actes des martyrs de l’Egypte (Paris: Leroux, 1888). 3 Viktor Stegemann, Koptische Paläographie: 25 Tafeln zur Veranschaulichung der Schreibstile koptischer Schriftdenkmäler auf Papyrus, Pergament und Papier für die Zeit des III.–XIV. Jahrhunderts; mit einem versuch einer Stilgeschichte der koptischen Schrift (2 vols.; QSGKAM, Reihe C 1; Heidelberg: Bilabel, 1936). 2

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was not well received. According to Martin Krause, Cramer’s edition dated manuscripts both too early and too late in apparent ignorance of recent scholarly publication.4 Krause’s second major criticism of Cramer consists of the manner in which the editor had organized her character specimens, and further critiques concerned the quality of images, labeling of images and the inopportune timing of the endeavor given the impending publication of relevant manuscripts.5 Aside from Crum’s dictionary, Paul Kahle’s two-volume Bala’izah edition was perhaps the most pivotal work of the twentieth century, particularly in terms of redefining dialect and reassessing the ever-increasing number of Coptic manuscripts. Preceding a list of early manuscripts in his edition, Kahle summarized four characteristics upon which he relied for dating: Greek paleography, demotic letters, superlineation, dialect and external evidence.6 Although its contents were not novel, the list details the influences which were active both before and after Kahle – most of which will be discussed in the present article. Peter Nagel has described how Coptic manuscripts from the early Islamic period were larger in format, were typically written on parchment and were more elaborately illustrated than earlier manuscripts.7 As a general principle, most scholars would agree with Nagel’s thesis concerning the notable increase in format during and after the seventh century, allowing for characterizations of later manuscripts. Indeed, the collections of larger format parchment manuscripts acquired from Hamuli, Scetis and Sohag corroborate such a generalization. Bentley Layton’s 1985 discussion of Coptic paleography encouraged a new spirit of minimalism among Coptologists as they approached manuscript dating, and also outlined a strategy for creating a viable science for dating Coptic manuscripts. Specifically, Layton underscored the need to identify manuscripts in holding institutions and to produce the basic editions which would afford scholars fundamental 4

“Die Arbeit der Verfasserin ist – um das Urteil vorweg zu nehmen – ein Rückschritt gegenüber der Paläographie von V. Stegemann: nicht nur deshalb, weil sie die koptische Urkunden nicht mit behandelt und alle neueren Bemühungen um die koptische Paläographie völlig ignoriert, sondern auch, weil die angewandte Methode m.E. falsch und die Durchführung im einzelnen voller Fehler ist.” Krause, review of M. Cramer, Koptische Paläographie in BO 23 (1966): 287. 5 In this way, Krause repeats his contention that Stegemann’s edition was still the standard (review of M. Cramer, Koptische Paläographie, 293). 6 Paul E. Kahle, Bala’izah: Coptic Texts from Deir el-Bala’izah in Upper Egypt (2 vols.; London: Oxford University Press, 1954), 1:269. 7 “DVCTVS,” n.d., n.p. [cited 26 October 2012]. Online: http://dvctvs.upf.edu/catalog o/ductus.php?operacion=introduce&ver=1&nume=266. Frank Feder has conducted a similar conspectus of theoretically fourth-century manuscripts in Joshua I–VI and Other Passages in Coptic (CBM 9; Dublin: Hodges Figgis, 1963).

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interaction with the scripts and formats of the relevant witnesses.8 According to his vision, the construction of a paleographic method would only require first a comprehensive and systematic electronic database.9 Objectively Dated Manuscripts Few Coptic literary manuscripts can be dated to the earliest period with confidence, leaving scholars with a limited sample of paleographic evidence with which to begin. Numismatic and papyrological evidence accompanying the biblical and Manichaean texts from Kellis date the majority of the collection to 355–380.10 H. I. Bell dated BL Or. 7594, the Sahidic codex of Deuteronomy, Jonah and Acts to the early part of the fourth century based upon papyrus fragments in the codex’s bindings. 11 Likewise, Bell dated the Middle Egyptian glosses to Hosea and Amos to the first half of the third century due to the Greek documentary text on the reverse.12 Fragments from the bindings of the Nag Hammadi Codex VII date to 341,

8 Bentley Layton, “Towards a New Coptic Paleography,” in Acts of the Second International Congress of Coptic Studies, Roma, 22–26 September 1980 (ed. Tito Orlandi and Frederik Wisse; Rome: C. I. M., 1985), 150. 9 Layton (“Towards a New Coptic Paleography”) references the Comité de paleographie hebraique as a model for this undertaking; see Colette Sirat, Michel Arié, and Mordehaï Glatzer, eds., Codices hebraicis litteris exarati quo tempore scripti fuerunt exhibentes (3 vols.; Turnhout: Brepols, 1997). 10 Iain Gardner, ed., Coptic Documentary Texts from Kellis (Dakhleh Oasis Project monographs 9; Oxford: Oxbow, 1999), 8–11. Similarly, five biblical codices from Saqqara may be dated to circa 600 based upon nine coins with which they were found; Herbert Thompson, ed., The Coptic Version of the Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline Epistles in the Sahidic Dialect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), x. 11 Bell referenced both Greek paleography and data related to inflation for his conclusions; E. A. Wallis Budge, ed., Coptic Biblical Texts in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London: The British Museum, 1912), xiv–xvii. “Two [scraps from the binding] contain writing in literary uncials which might be of the fifth century, but are not perhaps necessarily so (cf. P.Oxy. 661). They were, presumably, if of the fifth century, later insertions” (Budge, Coptic Biblical Texts, xvii). His most compelling evidence, however, may be the references to pagan priests and temples and the lack of reference to Christianity in the binding fragments (ibid., xvii). The current contents of the codex may not have been create at the same point in history; Peter Nagel, “Aufbau und Komposition des Papyruskodex BL OR. 7594 der British Library,” in Coptology: Past, Present, and Future: Studies in Honour of Rodolphe Kasser (OLA 61; Leuven: Peeters, 1994), 347–55. 12 Arthur Hunt, however, argued concerning the script on the verso that it was “late third if not fourth; in places the latter has to me almost an early Byzantine look.” Harold Idris Bell and Herbert Thompson, “A Greek-Coptic Glossary to Hosea and Amos,” JEA 11:3 (1925): 241.

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346 and 348;13 the date of the enclosed leaves remains at issue,14 but they were probably created not more than a century after the binding.15 Radio isotope dating of the Tchacos codex offered five dates ranging from the third to fourth centuries.16 The “Panopolis archive” was created from archival materials sometime in the middle of the fourth century.17 Most other ‘early’ manuscripts, however, are dated on various other characteristics. The present survey will deal with the question of paleography (section II), will review securely-datable Greek-Coptic hands (section III) and will second consider other issues germane to dating (section IV). Are Greek and Coptic Hands Comparable? Most paleographic dating of Coptic manuscripts has relied upon Greek parallels. In other words, a scholar could assume that ancient Egyptian scribes used the same ductus and character forms when copying Greek manuscripts that they used for their Coptic manuscripts. Such an assumption accords with the current consensus on ethnicity and language in preIslamic Egypt. Indeed, the concept of distinctly Greek and Coptic ethnic groups is no longer defensible.18 The same persons and institutions were creating and reading our extant Greek and Coptic manuscripts. Although the argument for parallel Greek-Coptic paleography seems convincing prima facie, scholars have voiced hesitation. Rodolphe Kasser has argued “a Coptic script that possesses the same graphic characteristics 13 John W. B. Barns, Gerald M. Browne, and John C. Shelton, eds., Nag Hammadi Codices: Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Cartonnage of the Covers (NHS 16; Leiden: Brill, 1981), 11. 14 Stephen Emmel, “The Coptic Gnostic Texts as Witnesses to the Production and Transmission of Gnostic (and Other) Traditions,” in Das Thomasevangelium: Entstehung – Rezeption – Theologie (ed. Jörg Frey, Enno Edzard Popkes, and Jens Schröter; BZNW 157; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 38–40. 15 Hugo Lundhaug, “Shenoute of Atripe and Nag Hammadi Codex II,” in Zugänge zur Gnosis: Symposium of the Patristische Arbeitsgemeinschaft (PAG) (ed. Christoph Markschies; Patristic Studies 12; Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 209–210. For a discussion of reused papyri, cf. Eric Gardner Turner, “Recto and Verso,” JEA 40 (1954): 102–6. 16 The current discussion weighs these dates in a later section; Herbert Krosney, The Lost Gospel: The Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2006), 269–74; Peter Head, “The Gospel of Judas and the Qarara Codices: Some Preliminary Observations,” TynBul 58:1 (2007): 11–13. 17 Roger S. Bagnall, “Public Administration and the Documentation of Roman Panopolis,” in Perspectives on Panopolis: An Egyptian Town from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest; Acts from an International Symposium Held in Leiden on 16, 17 and 18 December 1998 (ed. Arno Egberts, Brian Paul Muhs, and Jacques van der Vliet; Papyrologica Lugduno-Batava 31; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 1–12. 18 Roger S. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 230–60.

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as a Greek one may nevertheless be of clearly later date.”19 Kasser cited Kahle to substantiate his opinion, but appears to misinterpret him.20 In fact, in his list of early manuscripts, Paul Kahle appealed directly to Greek paleography and to the person of C. H. Roberts to support his dates, with no caveats about bilinguals.21 In his recent survey of the Coptic biblical majuscule, Pasquale Orsini has argued that early Coptic scribes prepared their Coptic manuscripts with the same Greek hands used contemporaneously in the Greek tradition.22 While many Greek diglots use a single consistent Greek script (e.g. Strasbourg Achmimic 1 Clement, Gregory-Aland T 029, and the Hamburg Bilingual codex), Gardner and Choat have noted that the documentary texts discovered in Kellis differentiate between Greek and Coptic.23 Although some sort of relationship may have existed between Greek and Coptic scripts, the nature of this relationship is currently uncertain. Possibly, Greek-Coptic biblical texts may have employed an archaic Greek hand throughout, especially in the later period when the minuscule form and its incumbent Greek textform become standard in the rival Byzantine tradition.24 With regard to perhaps the oldest diglot manuscripts, Anne Boud’hours has noted that later medieval Bohairic Greek scribes employed the sloping uncial to distinguish their Greek characters from the late Alexandrian majuscule of the Coptic parallel text.25

19 Kasser, “Paleography,” in The Coptic Encyclopedia (ed. Aziz S. Atiya; New York: Macmillan Library Reference, 1991), 8:182. 20 The interpretation may actually lie with Guglielmo Cavallo, who first read Kahle in this way. “Γράμματα Ἀλεξανδρίνα,” JÖBG 24 (1975): 52–53. 21 Kahle, Bala’izah, 1:269. He also cites demotic characters, superlineation, dialect and external evidence as informative for certain manuscripts. 22 Orsini, “La maiuscola copta,” Segno e Testo 6 (2008): 142. 23 These authors reference Stegemann’s Koptische Paläographie as the locus classicus for the above assumption concerning the similarity of Greek and Coptic hands, and they likewise note Kahle’s suspicions concerning this presumption; Iain Gardner and Malcolm Choat, “Towards a Palaeography of Fourth Century Documentary Coptic,” in Coptic Studies on the Threshold of a New Millennium: Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Coptic Studies, Leiden, August 27–September 2, 2000 (ed. Mat Immerzeel and Jacques van der Vliet; 2 vols.; OLA 133; Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 2:495–503. 24 No minuscule manuscripts survive from Sohag or Hamuli, only Greek majuscules. 25 Anne Boud’hors, “L’onciale penchée en copte et sa survie jusqu’au XVe siècle en Haute-Égypte,” in Scribes et manuscrits du Moyen-Orient (ed. François Déroche and Francis Richard; Etudes et recherches; Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1997), 117–33.

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Modern Approaches to Paleography Modern Paleography For purposes of the present discussion, modern Greek literary paleography can be presented in three stages. In the first stage, Guglielmo Cavallo published his developmental reconstruction of Greek paleography, which most scholars support to this day. In the second phase, several non-specialists published controversial and indefensible reassessments which posited earlier dates for various manuscripts. In the third and present stage, several specialists are responding to those unscholarly publications, generally reinforcing the developmental theories of Cavallo. In first phase, the modern concept of Greek paleography was codified. The preeminent voice in the science of paleography has been Guglielmo Cavallo, whose many publications have standardized the already-popular notion of an evolutionary model of script development. According to Cavallo’s evolutionary model, an ancient script’s development could be traced through various features as it rose, reached its apogee and then declined. For example, Cavallo describes the biblical majuscule in the following terms: If in the biblical majuscule, for instance, the canon or ideal configuration is represented by the hand of the Codex Sinaiticus, then the Vienna Dioscurides . . . shows the beginning of its decline, and later stages of its degeneration can be seen [in later manuscripts] . . . By the end of the period under consideration, the main literary scripts have all become mannered and betray symptoms of decline, some more so than others.26

According to Cavallo, then, the various Greek scripts rose and fell just like the ancient empires which employed them.27 As one reviews the dozens of examples of biblical majuscules in his 1987 edition, one encounters only a few dated literary witnesses, a fact which the editors themselves emphasize.28 In fact, only one literary codex with a biblical majuscule script appears, the regal Vienna Dioscurides, dated to circa 515 CE. Criticizing Cavallo’s method, Eric Turner writes: 26 Guglielmo Cavallo and Herwig Maehler, Greek Bookhands of the Early Byzantine Period (AD 300–800) (Supplement 47; London: University of London, Institute of Classical Studies, 1987), 2. 27 “L’epoca del Vaticano e del Sinaitico segna il momento del massimo splendore della maiuscola biblica, al quale segue, con lo spirare del IV secolo, la lenta ma sempre più evidente decadenza” (Cavallo, Ricerche sulla maiuscola biblica [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967], 69). 28 “The main reason for our general lack of confidence in dating later Greek bookhands is the apparent lack of securely dated specimens which could serve as chronological points of reference for comparable scripts” (Cavallo and Maehler, Greek Bookhands, 1).

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If I cannot accept this metaphysical concept, it is from a wish to have an empirical anchor in time and place for examples of this handwriting; and a belief that unless this hand can be proved to have emanated from a single centre, it too is unlikely to have developed and degenerated in linear fashion. If it was written in several centres it is likely that cross-influences will have affected this style, as they did other styles.29

P. J. Parsons offered the most direct critique, underscoring Cavallo’s lack of empirical evidence to support the proposed dating scheme. After describing Cavallo’s method as essentially following traditional practice, Parson states: But [Cavallo] follows the line with unusual rigour and confidence: his observation of stylistic details is admirably precise and acute; his view of the development of the [biblical uncial] is correspondingly detailed; and the datings deduced are of unprecedented exactness – within 25, even within 10 years. First, what exactly is the evidence? From Cavallo’s material we can list some thirteen MSS which offer evidence of date; for the rest, about 120 MSS, we rely entirely on paleographic judgement. Of the thirteen, one was dated by its scribe (Vat Gr 1666); one can be dated historically (the Vienna Dioscurides); the others depend on the testimony of marginalia or verso texts. This testimony is naturally flexible.30

According to Turner and Parsons, Cavallo has constructed a propositional mansion on a minute foundation. This mansion is correspondingly as expansive and ornate as its foundation is diminutive and fragile. In this way, the problem is not limited to the point of departure, but extends to the perhaps overly aggressive execution. In Cavallo’s defense, no distinct alternative method of dating has been proposed. The scholar is essentially left with the approach of Cavallo, or with a paleographic agnosticism. Although the latter is not appealing, it is generally accepted with respect to contemporary epigraphic dating. Bradley McLean writes: The dating of Hellenistic and Roman inscriptions according to allegedly key developments of particular letter forms is notoriously difficult and unreliable because older letter forms persist alongside new forms . . . it is not possible to date inscriptions precisely on the basis of letter forms. Older masons often continued or even revived the use of letter forms, formulae, layouts, and spellings characteristic of earlier periods, sometimes even mixing them indiscriminately with contemporary letter forms. This tendency may represent an attempt to make inscriptions look older and more venerable than they really were. For example, from Hadrian’s reign onward, there was a general archaizing tendency, in society, resulting in the use of archaic letter forms in inscriptions.31 29

Eric G. Turner, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World (2nd ed.; Supplement 46; London: University of London, Institute of Classical Studies, 1987), 22 (1st ed. p. 26). 30 Peter J. Parsons, “Review of Ricerche sulla maiuscola biblica by Guglielmo Cavallo,” Gnomon 42:4 (1970): 379. 31 Bradley McLean, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods from Alexander the Great down to the Reign of Constantine 323 B.C. – A.D. 337 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 42–43. McLean is optimistic about research directed toward identifying inscribers, and is open to future research on dates

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Likewise, Geoffrey Woodhead offers his own caveats concerning epigraphic dating: In many cases, even in the majority of cases, a precise dating is impossible, and it would be misleading to attempt to offer one. In this event, the most that can be done is to suggest the period within which, as it appears, the inscription may be safely attributed – ‘the Hellenistic period’, ‘aetas Imperii Romani’, or, more closely, the second century, BC, the first century AD, and so forth. In the edition of an inscription some indication date ought always to be given, even though it be of the vaguest.32

Woodhead’s conservatism here assumes that the dating is based upon evidence other than the script itself, which he suggests “is much better left as a final refuge; its evidence is far less precise and secure than is popularly supposed.”33 The cognate field of epigraphy may be an imperfect parallel for Greek and Coptic literary paleography, but the cited sources demonstrate the kind of methodological conservatism advisable for Greek and Coptic literary hands. Paleography Gone Wrong In 1960, Herbert Hunger argued that 66 could be paleographically assigned to 100–150 AD. 34 Twenty eight years later, Young Kyu Kim assigned 46 to the middle or early second century contra the accepted early third century date.35 In 1994, Carsten Peter Thiede redated 64 to the late first century, whereas formerly scholars had placed the manuscript around 200 AD.36 Thiede co-authored a popular book based on his analysis,37 and various New Testament scholars emphatically rejected his arguments in journal articles.38 Phillip Comfort produced a survey of pre-fourth century based upon “styles” by which he means the general formatting (codicology) of the inscription, especially when these “styles” can be studied within their own regional contexts. 32 Arthur Geoffrey Woodhead, The Study of Greek Inscriptions (2nd ed.; Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981), 52. 33 Woodhead, Study of Greek Inscriptions, 62. 34 Herbert Hunger, “Zur Datierung des Papyrus Bodmer II ( 66),” AÖAW.PH 4 (1960): 12–23; Turner, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, 108. 35 Young Kyu Kim, “Palaeographical Dating of 46 to the Later First Century,” Biblica 69 (1988): 248–57; Daniel Wallace, “Review of Young Kyu Kim’s Paleographical Dating of 46 to the Later First Century,” BSac 146 (1989): 451–52. 36 Carsten Peter Thiede, “Papyrus Magdalen Greek 17 (Gregory-Aland 64). A Reappraisal,” ZPE 105 (1995): 13–20. 37 Matthew D’Ancona and Carsten Peter Thiede, Eyewitness to Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1996). 38 Peter M. Head, “The Date of the Magdalen Papyrus of Matthew (P. Magd. Gr. 17 = 64 ): A Response to C.P. Thiede,” TynBul 46 (1995): 251–85; Klaus Wachtel, “ 64/67: Fragmente des Matthäusevangeliums aus dem 1. Jahrhundert?” ZPE 107 (1995): 73–80; Harald Vocke, “Papyrus Magdalen 17 – weitere Argumente gegen die Frühdatierung des

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New Testament manuscripts which escalated the endeavor, paleographically examining 55 manuscripts.39 The most extensive paleographic enterprise in this group has received the least published scholarly response, perhaps due to its enormous size (5163 pages, PDF on CD);40 Karl Jaroš offered editions and paleographic examinations of 95 biblical papyri, eighteen of which were dated to the period 50–150 CE. A Modern Reaction In the last phase, several scholars have criticized these assessments. Brent Nongbri has questioned both the dating and the ideological abuses of the dating of John Rylands Greek Papyrus 3.457.41 This small fragment, which is better known by the Gregory-Aland number 52, has been widely cited as the earliest New Testament manuscript. Specifically, Nongbri has argued that the second-century examples employed to date 52 should be augmented by witnesses dated to the third century. Nongbri’s colleague, Don Barker, has similarly argued with respect to three New Testament papyri that scholars have assigned date ranges which are more precise than evidence would allow. 42 Barker, for example, argues thus for a threecentury window for 67 (mid-second to mid-fourth centuries).43 In contrast to these technical, paleographic arguments, Roger Bagnall has criticized the dating of New Testament manuscripts arguing from statistical probability concerning the unlikelihood that “we would possess more than one or two pieces of Christian text from any time before the Severan period (193–

angeblichen Jesus-Papyrus,” ZPE 113 (1996): 153–57; David C. Parker, “Was Matthew Written before 50 CE? The Magdalen Papyrus of Matthew,” ExpTim 107 (1996): 40–43. 39 The criticisms of this edition are many. Comfort copied his transcriptions from editiones principes, and not from images. He did not mark uncertain characters with diacritical dots. His edition included manuscripts dated earlier than 300 CE, and aggressively dated witnesses to this period. Finally, although his edition covered fifty-five manuscripts, only forty-one have a plate. David P. Barrett and Philip W. Comfort, eds., The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001); David C. Parker, “Review of Comfort and Barrett, The Text of the Earliest New Testament,” TC 4 (1999); Maurice A Robinson, “Review of Comfort and Barrett, The Text of the Earliest New Testament,” TC 6 (2001); Anna Passoni dell’ Acqua, “Byblica in papyris. IV (2003),” in Papiri e ostraka greci (Papyrologica Lupiensia 13; Lecce: Congedo Editore, 2004), 151. 40 Karl Jaroš, ed., Das Neue Testament nach den ältesten griechischen Handschriften: Die handschriftliche Überlieferung des Neuen Testaments vor Codex Sinaiticus und Codex Vaticanus (Würzburg: Echter, 2006). 41 Brent Nongbri, “The Use and Abuse of 52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel,” HTR 98 (2005): 23–48. 42 Don Barker, “The Dating of New Testament Papyri,” NTS 57 (2011): 571–82. 43 Barker, “The Dating of New Testament Papyri,” 578.

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235).” 44 The eminent papyrologist’s arguments derive not only from his previous statistical survey of Christian names in documentary texts,45 but also extend to literary references to the expansion of the Egyptian episcopate and related historical data. Notably, Bagnall’s analysis led him to expect twelve manuscripts from the late second/early third century.46 These concerns and objections are best understood in light of the indefensible arguments for ridiculously early dates of various New Testament papyri.47 The preeminent work on the issue to date is, no doubt, that of Pasquale Orsini and Willy Clarysse, which challenges the lackluster attempts of Comfort and Barrett and Karl Jaroš.48 The Orsini-Clarysse article presents the developmental views first championed by Guglielmo Cavallo, augmented by an updated graphic typology and listing of dated/datable manuscripts. Essentially, Orsini-Clarysse support the accepted Kurzgefasste Liste dates, dating four manuscripts earlier and nine later.49

Foundations for Paleographic Study The vast majority of dated specimens from the Roman period are reused papyri consisting of paleographically-dated documentary texts which have been reused for a literary text.50 Thus, the paleographic examples are themselves largely dependent on paleography.51 In the present section, the read44

Roger S. Bagnall, Early Christian Books in Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 25. 45 Roger S. Bagnall, “Religious Conversion and Onomastic Change,” BASP 19 (1982): 105–24; “Conversion and Onomastics: A Reply,” ZPE 69 (1987): 243–50. 46 Bagnall, Early Christian Books in Egypt, 20. 47 Thiede, “Papyrus Magdalen Greek 17 (Gregory–Aland 64). A Reappraisal”; Barrett and Comfort, The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts. 48 Pasquale Orsini and Willy Clarysse, “Early New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates: A Critique of Theological Palaeography,” ETL 88.4 (2012): 443–74; Barrett and Comfort, The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts; Jaroš, Das Neue Testament. 49 For a constructive response to Orsini and Clarysse, see Larry W. Hurtado, “New Testament Scholarship and the Dating of New Testament Papyri,” in Interdisciplinary Dating: Dialogues between Manuscript Studies and Material Sciences (ed. Zachary Cole; Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). 50 Grant Edwards, a PhD candidate at the University of Birmingham, created an extensive database of such manuscripts. In volumes 64–77 of the Oxyrhynchus volumes, he was able to identify approximately 260 examples. 51 Several excellent catalogs offer copious examples of mostly paleographically-dated Greek hands. Joshua D. Sosin et al., “Checklist of Greek, Latin, Demotic and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca and Tablets,” Duke University Libraries, n.d., n.p. “Instrumenta,” “Palaeography,” and “Handbooks” [cited 23 August 2014]. Online: http://library.duke.edu/ rubenstein/scriptorium/papyrus/texts/clist.html.

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er will encounter “objectively dated” samples of Greek/Coptic hands. Archeological provenance, binding materials, colophons, radiometric testing or other means allow scholars to assign these manuscripts to a period no greater than one century. The current study focuses on manuscripts from before the Islamic era which have been largely ignored for paleographic purposes, but also includes some prominent later examples, which are already widely-known. The present discussion will focus on biblical majuscule style and a broader group of informal Greek literary hands.52 Briefly, the Alexandrian majuscule will be mentioned as the beginning of a distinct phase of Coptic literary history. Through the presentation of script samples from documents datable by some non-paleographic means, the reader may determine for themselves whether indeed styles evolved over the centuries and to what degree reconstructions of these style histories is useful for paleographic dating. The present set of examples, while not exhaustive, expands upon examples from Greek paleography introductions. Biblical Majuscule The most prominent surviving Greek parchment codices of the Bible preserve Greek uncial script (e.g. the codices Alexandrinus, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus) referred to as the Biblical majuscule or unimodular script. This script parallels imperial Greek epigraphy with typical deviations from the earlier Attic system (e.g. ⲥ for Σ and ⲱ for Ω). Although epigraphers express extreme skepticism concerning the paleographic dating of this style, Greek and Coptic scholars have routinely and aggressively dated the literary parallels written on papyrus and parchment. The primary sources for paleographic reconstruction can be briefly presented in two categories, those with secure dates and those reused papyri with paleographicallydated material on the opposite side.53

52

Clarysse and Orsini (“Early New Testament Manuscripts,” 460) describe six distinct styles (severe style, round chancery script, canonized majuscules, semi-formal majuscules, Alexandrian chancery script of Subatianus Aquila, cursive), and doubtlessly the informal hands could be divided into some of these other styles as well as into the biblical majuscule. The limitation here to the biblical majuscule and the broader grouping of essentially everything else reflects the difficulties of the evidence and the time limits of the current study. 53 Orsini and Clarysse, “Early New Testament Manuscripts,” 452 n. 37.

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Securely-dated Biblical Majuscules: P.Ryl. I 16 Vindob. Med. gr. 1 Vat. Barb. Gr. 336 Vat. gr. 1666 Sin. gr. NE Meg. Perg. 12

regnal year colophon allusion 2 colophons colophon date colophon date

220–225 512–528 post 730 ca. 800 861/2

Paleographically-dated opisthographs with biblical majuscules:54 P.Oxy. XLV 3227 P.Oxy. LXII 4327 P.Oxy. XLIX 3509 P.Berol. 13929, 21105

II–III early III III–IV V

For the purposes of the present discussion, the term “securely-dated” references an objective means of dating such as radioisotope analysis, archaeological evidence, archival provenance or an inscribed dating. The term is used in distinction to paleographic dating, which this article seeks to demonstrate as highly subjective and circular in the case of literary hands from the Coptic period. The lists above demonstrate limited extent of dated literary hands from the early period. The only well-preserved specimens date to the sixth, eighth and ninth centuries. Similarly, the earlier pieces are papyri fragments whose date depends upon the paleographic assessment of documentary hands.55 Scholars lack even a single objectively dated equivalent to parallel the great biblical uncials Sinaiticus, Vaticanus and Alexandrinus in the fourth and fifth centuries. Objectively-dated Greek Biblical Majuscules P.Oxy. XLV 3227 (second to third century, reused papyrus)

P.Oxy. LXII 4327 (third century, reused papyrus)

54

Images of these four manuscripts are all available online through the institutional websites. The biblical uncial style is the simple formal style which dominates. 55 P.Ryl. I 16 is not an exception to this rule, as will be discussed below.

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P.Oxy. XLIX 3509 (third to fourth century, reused papyrus)

P.Berol. 21105 (fifth century, scholia in documentary hand)

Vindob. Med. gr. 1 (512–528 CE, colophon)

Vat. Barb. Gr. 336 (post 730?)

Vat.Gr. 1666 (ca. 800)

Sin.Gr. NE Meg.Perg. 12 (861/2)

Initially, the astute reader may identify a difference between those hands earlier than the fifth century and those later than the sixth century. The later hands are more polished, angular and benefit from a mastery of the writ-

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ing implement, allowing for a greater calligraphic variation between thick and thin strokes. The sample group above is, however, a corpus permixtum, containing examples from lower quality papyrus manuscripts (those above through the fifth century) and higher quality parchments (those above dated after the fifth century). Scholars should be aware of the logical consequences. Naturally, the production of codices of higher and lower quality was not limited in either era, and the evaluation of hands should focus on the ideal forms, or canons, which one assumes to have guided the scribes, and not on the skill with which the ideal form was executed. Eschewing the idiosyncratic issues of scribal skill, one struggles to identify paleographic distinctions among the above samples, which could form a basis for a scheme of paleographic development. The present examples are by no means a substitute for a broad study of the hands, but they do show that descending characters are not restricted to the confines of their lines in the earlier period, and likewise do not always drop low in the later period. Different shapes for a Kappa or Mu do not demonstrate that earlier or later forms were not know in the same time period. The samples offered above need not be the final word. The Coptic tradition offers numerous further examples of Greek hands which may be dated by a means other than paleography.56 The following examples selectively represent a wider corpus of securely-datable early Coptic hands. Greek paleography as a science has largely ignored this Greek-Coptic evidence. Additional Securely Dated Greek(-Coptic) Biblical Majuscules Tchacos Codex (Gospel of Judas, etc., third/fourth century)

Glazier Codex (Acts, fifth/sixth century)

56 For a paleographic assessment of the biblical majuscule in Coptic manuscripts, see Orsini, “La Maiuscola Copta.”

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Chester Beatty Coptic Codex A (Pauline Epistles, c. 600)

Chester Beatty Coptic Codex B (John’s gospel, c. 600)

Sotheby’s Pesynthios papyrus (Martyrdom of Chamoul, before 629)

Vat.Copt. 49 (circa 884)57

BnF Copt 13 (1178–1180)

Two of the above examples (Tchacos codex 58 and Pesynthios 59 ) derive from papyrus manuscripts, although the ductus does not betray this fact. Except in the case of the Bohairic witnesses (the final two examples), the 57

Hugh G. Evelyn White cites thirteen dated Scetian Bohairic manuscripts ranging from 830 to 979 CE. Evelyn White, ed., The Monasteries of the Wadi ‘n Natrûn, Part 1: New Coptic Texts from the Monastery of Saint Macarius (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1926), xxv. 58 The present author discusses the radiometric dating of the Tchacos codex in another publication; Christian Askeland, “Carbon Dating and the Gospel of Judas,” in Interdisciplinary Dating: Dialogues between Manuscript Studies and Material Sciences (ed. Zachary Cole; Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). 59 The majority of this manuscript is held in the British Library; C. W. Goodwin, “On Two Fragments of the Acts of the Martyrs Chamoul and Justus in the Sahidic Dialect,” Cambridge Antiquarian Society 6 (1856): 191–93; Crum, Catalogue of the Coptic Manuscripts in the British Museum, no. 325 (and 338), pp. 146–47, pl. 8. The sample above is from a leaf which Sotheby’s auction house sold 10 July 2012: http://www.sothebys.com/ en/auctions/ecatalogue/lot.pdf.L12242.html/f/5/L12242-5.pdf.

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biblical majuscules here depict canonical stability; even the Scetian Bohairic hands, which are distinguished by the sharp contrast in vertical and horizontal stroke thickness and the adoption of the ogival Mu, still reflect a general commitment to the style typical during the Roman Empire.60 Furthermore, the Bohairic hands demonstrate the rigid stability and consistency of their own subtype over a three-century period. The Chester Beatty Codices are part of a group of five found in Saqqara, all in excellent condition along with a number of dated mint-condition coins. 61 Similarly, at least a dozen other Bohairic manuscripts with dated colophons predating 1000 CE are extant from the Scetian monasteries where Vat.Copt. 49 was found.62 Informal Literary Scripts (‘reformed documentary’) The term “reformed documentary” was coined by C. H. Roberts and still occasionally functions to describe a biblical majuscule style with documentary qualities.63 While most would reject the terminology,64 this type of hand is largely accepted as a kind of middle class scribal hand, written by a non-professional scribe. Such hands have generally been dated to the first Christian centuries – before Constantine and the supposed rise of the “scriptorium.”65 60

For a discussion of BnF Copte 13, see Stephen Emmel, “Le mystère du manuscrit copte 13,” in Pages chrétiennes d’Égypte: les manuscrits des Coptes (ed. Anne Boud’hors; Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2004), 16–19. 61 Thompson, The Coptic Version of the Acts of the Apostles, ix–x. 62 Evelyn White, The Monasteries of the Wadi ‘n Natrûn, 1:25. 63 “What I think they all, in varying degrees, have in common is that, though the writing is far from unskilled, they are the work of men not trained in calligraphy and so not accustomed to writing books, though they were familiar with them; they employ what is basically a documentary hand but at the same time they are aware that it is a book, not a document on which they are engaged. They are not personal or private hands; in most a degree of regularity and of clarity is aimed at and achieved. Such hands might be described as ‘reformed documentary.’ One advantage for the palaeographer in such hands is that with their close links to the documents they are somewhat less difficult to date than purely calligraphic hands.” Colin H. Roberts, Manuscript, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt (London: Oxford University Press, 1979), 14. 64 Edoardo Crisci rejects the notion of the “reformed documentary” hand as a canon, but instead describes the Christian scribes as generally operating with a “sostanziale pragmatism,” which produced various formats and levels of quality in their manuscripts; see Crisci, “Riflessioni paleografiche (e non solo) sui più antichi manoscritti greci del Nuovo Testamento,” in Oltre la scrittura: variazioni sul tema per Guglielmo Cavallo (ed. Daniele Bianconi and Lucio Del Corso; Dossiers Byzantins 8; Paris: Centre d’études Byzantines, 2008), 59–60. Clarysse and Orsini cite Crisci’s statement as authorative, although Crisci did not offer a formal argument backed by evidence. 65 Bruce M. Metzger offered a classic synthesis of the scriptorium method of scribal copying in Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Greek Palaeography (Ox-

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In the first instance, these papyri may be dated by their resemblance to other similar informal literary hands. Unlike pure documentary texts, the number of informal literary hands with an objective (non-paleographic) date is small. 66 As already noted, numerous reused papyri with literary hands on one side and paleographically datable documentary hands on the opposite side offer some point of comparison. Similarly, informal literary hands could be dated based on their similarity to documentary hands. Documentary papyri, by the nature of their contents, are far more likely to include compositional dates than literary texts.67 In the following examples, the reader will encounter informal literary hands from the age of Constantine and later – during a period when monastic sects where avidly copying Christian manuscripts. Clearly, the “reformed documentary” style survives into the late fourth century, if not later. In the case of P.Oxy. II 209 ( 10), the first example below, one finds an example of the danger of dating a literary text based on documentary hands. This Greek fragment appears below to illustrate a danger common to Greek hands. This leaf contains writing exercises in the same ink but in two unrelated different styles. In other words, one could never deduce the peculiarities of the informal literary script from the documentary script. The literary script contains the beginning of Paul’s epistle to the Romans, while the documentary script reflects an attempt at mercantile terms (cf. infra τῶν παρὰ γενήματος). While some links can be found between the semi-literary and cursive scripts, one would never otherwise reconstruct the former from the latter. A variety of objectively dated Greek and Coptic examples follow which all have their origins amidst Coptic literary finds,68 and which sample larger groups of relevant manuscripts. ford University Press, 1981), 21–22. No actual evidence exists that such a system was used for a biblical manuscript. 66 The present writer knows of no comprehensive list of informal literary hands. Alan Mugridge has written about the spectrum of scribal hands which ranges from literary to documentary, and the different kinds of literature which appear in the various forms. Mugridge interacts extensively with William Johnson’s prior work on bookhands from Oxyrhynchus. See Mugridge, “Writing and Writers in Antiquity: Two ‘spectra’ in Greek Handwriting,” in Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Papyrology: Ann Arbor, July 29 – August 4, 2007 (ed. Traianos Gagos et al.; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 2010), 573–80; William A. Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus (University of Toronto Press, 2004). 67 Hermann Harrauer’s Handbuch contains 301 dated Greek cursive documents, while the University of Heidelberg’s “Pappal” database has over 3200 dated examples of documentary hands (http://www.pappal.info); Harrauer, Handbuch der griechischen Paläographie (2 vols.; Stuttgart: Hiersemannn, 2010). 68 The current list also includes one sample from the Dura-Europos papyri; C. Bradford Welles, R. O. Fink, and J. F. Gilliam, eds., The Parchments and Papyri. The Excavations at Dura-Europos Conducted by Yale University and the French Academy of In-

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Informal Greek(-Coptic) Hands P.Oxy. II 209 (Romans, 320–339 CE)69

P.Oxy. II 209 (writing exercise, 320–339 CE)

Genesis fragment NHC VII (fourth century)

Nag Hammadi Codices scribe A (late fourth/early fifth century)

Nag Hammadi Codices scribe B (late fourth/early fifth century)

Nag Hammadi Codices scribe C (late fourth/early fifth century)

scriptions and Letters, Final Report Volume 5, Part 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959). 69 According to AnneMarie Luijendijk, “The dates in the Leonides archive range from 315 C.E. to 334 C.E. . . . It is unknown when the archive was discarded, but in view of the dates in the archive it is likely that the NT papyrus was written . . . in the 320s or 330s.” Luijendijk, “A New Testament Papyrus and Its Documentary Context: An Early Christian Writing Exercise from the Archive of Leonides (P.Oxy. II 209/ 10),” JBL 129.3 (2010): 580.

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P.Ryl. I 1 (Panopolis trove, after 337 [293?])

P.Bouriant 3 (unknown hymn, Panopolis trove, after 337 [197])

P.Münch. II 34 (Greek Psalms, Panopolis trove, after 337 [302/3])

BL Or. 1920 (letter, Melitian archive, circa 330–340)

P.Kell. Copt. 53 (Mani’s epistles, before 380)

P.Kell. Copt. 54 (Manichaean instruction, before 380)

P.Kell. Gr. 97A I (“Acts of John,” before 380)

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P.Kell. Gr 98A I (Manichaean prayer, before 380)

Dura Parchment 24 (gospel harmony, before 256)

Alexandrian Majuscule Decades before the Islamic conquest (641/2 CE), the Coptic language was displacing Greek as the prestige language. Although the Biblical majuscule style survived well into the Muslim Era, a new regional style emerged, which was distinct to Egypt and to the Islamic Era in general. Known as the Coptic uncial, the bimodular script and as the Alexandrian majuscule, this formalized version of the cursive chancery script was used for Sahidic and Greek manuscripts widely from the seventh century onwards, and would be the basis for the distinctive script used in the extant Classical Bohairic manuscript tradition.70 Because the current chapter deals with the earlier period, only three examples of this Islamic era script appear here.71 Louvre, N 2406.3 (RE 48) (Pesynthios archive, before 629 CE) 72

70

Jean Irigoin discussed the script extensively, noted that it was used for paratext in Byzantine manuscripts of the tenth century, and argued that this was indeed the “Alexandrian script” referenced at the Fourth Council of Carthage. Irigoin, “L’onciale grecque de type copte,” JÖBG 8 (1959): 48. 71 Arguably, the Alexandrian majuscule has its origins in the Roman period and earlier in the chancery scripts of these eras. Pasquale Orsini hypothesizes an earlier stage among informal literary hands as the “unimodular Alexandrian majuscule.” Orsini and Clarysse, “Early New Testament Manuscripts,” 452–53. The present study uses the term only for the formal literary hand of the seventh century and later. 72 I thank Florence Calament for her help in producing this sample.

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Ägyptisches Museum, P. 10677 (Festal letter, probably 713 or 719)

M 579 (Hagiographic miscellany, 30 Aug 823)

Because of the secure dates of the Hamuli and Sohag manuscript colophons,73 this script is now associated with later Coptic manuscripts (ninth to tenth centuries), whereas the “biblical majuscule” has often been associated with earlier manuscripts (fourth to sixth centuries).74 This Alexandrian Majuscule, however, featured in the Greek tradition of the sixth century,75 and the biblical majuscule survived for hundreds of years in both the Sahidic and Bohairic traditions. Indeed, the biblical majuscule was likely used in Greek-Coptic diglot manuscripts for both Greek and Coptic texts in the early Islamic period.76 Often, elements of the Alexandrian majuscule 73 Twenty-five manuscripts from the Hamuli discovery contain colophons dated to the ninth and tenth century. Leo Depuydt, Catalogue of Coptic Manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library (2 vols; Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts 4–5, Oriental Series 1–2; Leuven: Peeters, 1993), 1:li–lii. For an initial and extensive survey of the White Monastery colophons, see Arnold van Lantschoot, Recueil des colophons des manuscrits chrétiens d’Égypte (2 vols.; Bibliothèque du Muséon 1; Leuven: Istas, 1929). Tito Orlandi has outlined the dates of these and other relevant Coptic manuscript groups; Orlandi, “The Library of the Monastery of Saint Shenute at Atripe,” in Perspectives on Panopolis: An Egyptian Town from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest Acts From an International Symposium Held in Leiden on 16, 17 and 18 December 1998 (ed. Arno Egberts, Brian Paul Muhs, and Jacque van der Vliet; Papyrologica Lugduno-Batava 31; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 211–31. Although the 1910 Hamuli find consisted solely of Alexandrian majuscules, the Sohag library preserves a broad array of Alexandrian and Biblical majuscules. Sometimes, marginalia and superlineation in Sohag Alexandrian manuscripts indicate an origin in the Fayum. 74 For a discussion of Greek scribal hands and examples of manuscripts, see Cavallo and Maehler, Greek Bookhands. 75 E.g., P.Grenfell II 112; Cavallo and Maehler, Greek Bookhands, pl. 37. 76 For instance, Pierpont Morgan manuscript M615 (a Greek-Coptic lectionary) uses the Alexandrian majuscule only for section titles. One may also note that Hamuli manuscripts written in the Alexandrian majuscule often have colophons written in Cavallo’s “sloping pointed majuscule.” Anne Boud’hors (“L’onciale penchée”) has described the influence of the sloping pointed majuscule in the Sahidic literary tradition, offering also an excellent overview of the various hands prominent in the Islamic era.

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appear in Biblical majuscule manuscripts, suggesting a date in the later period. Generally speaking, the Alexandrian majuscule flourished as a literary hand in Egypt from the seventh century onwards, eventually evolving into the peculiar script found in medieval Bohairic manuscripts. Although the Alexandrian majuscule is best known through parchment manuscripts, the script was also used on papyrus.77 Conclusions on Paleography The present survey is no substitute for a proper analysis, which would entail an online database with high resolution images, additional use of radiometric dating and an international collaboration from scholars with diverse skills and interests. The digitally mastered samples offered here are no substitute for high resolution color images. Furthermore, this overview essentially ignores the sloping script which is only rarely used for literary manuscripts in Egypt.78 Those already acquainted with these scribal hands will doubtlessly find them of limited help and will question the constructive nature of the present analysis. On the contrary, the simple and limited samples appear here to support the following caveats to non-specialists with an interest in dating, serving as a window into the often repeated clichés about the dangers of paleographic dating of Coptic (and Greek) hands. 1. Stability of the biblical majuscule. The samples above demonstrate the relative immutability of the primary Greek literary script in the early Christian era. The quantity of securely-datable biblical majuscules is too small to allow for any confident reconstruction of stylistic development, and, to the extent that the evidence does differ, the variations are probably limited to scribal acumen or whim. 2. Variety and diversity. Ancient manuscript caches, such as those surveyed here, demonstrate that a variety of substyles existed simultaneously. All scribes were not conforming to a slowly and consistently developing graphic pattern. 3. Distinguishing paleography from codicology. Some of the biblical majuscule variation between early and later manuscripts clearly reflects the use of parchment and related professional calligraphic skill. One would not 77

The seventeen papyrus codices of the library from Thinis could be the earliest extant group of literary Alexandrian majuscules. See Tito Orlandi, “Les papyrus coptes du Musée Egyptien de Turin,” Le Muséon 87 (1974): 115–27. 78 Sinai literary manuscripts frequently employ sloping scripts. See Dieter Harlfinger, Dieter R. Reinsch, and Joseph A.M. Sonderkamp, eds., Die datierten griechischen Handschriften des Katharinen-Klosters auf dem Berge Sinai 9.–12. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Reimer, 1983). Coptic scribes favored this script for letters and sometimes colophons, and, later, for bi-lingual manuscripts; Boud’hors, “L’onciale penchée.”

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want to assume that the stichometric formatting which created crisp bottom lines in certain manuscripts or the increased skill with the calamus which allowed for characters to be shaped with differing line thickness are developments in the biblical majuscule style. Instead, these features demonstrate that a skilled artisan produced the manuscript. 4. Semi-literary Greek hands. An abundant and diverse array of objectively dated hands of this type from the fourth to fifth century are extant. Minimally, the use of documentary hands to paleographically place such hands into the pre-Constantinian period deserves careful scrutiny. A paleographically-derived date range of less than two centuries for such a hand is generally unconscionable. 5. Early monastic contexts. One should not underestimate the repeated appearance of monastic setting such as Kellis, Panopolis, Dishna and Nag Hammadi. The rise of monasticism resulted in a literary revival evident in the extant manuscripts, resulting in an Egyptian milieu in which there was not only a greater number of Christians, but also a more pervasive Christian manuscript culture. One would expect that the lion’s share of undated manuscripts from the early period derive from the monastic milieu of the fourth and later centuries. In summary, the present discussion suggests that scholars should paleographically date only so far as empirical evidence allows. If the argument cannot be falsified, then it may not be verified. Such methodological conservatism is in principle nothing new. Cavallo and Maehler note that while literary hands of the Roman period had often been dated to half centuries, those from the fourth to eighth centuries often were dated to a period of two full centuries79 As already noted, Greek epigraphers have approached the use of paleography with even greater skepticism. The exception to the rule for both authorities is the identification of the epigrapher.80

Non-Paleographic Dating Venues Dialect Because certain dialects do not appear in the documentary witnesses of the sixth to eighth centuries, manuscripts which appear in these minor dialects are regularly dated early. Aside from Fayumic which appears to have

79

Cavallo and Maehler, Greek Bookhands, 1. Stephen V. Tracy, Attic Letter-Cutters of 229 to 86 B.C. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 80

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flourished into the eighth century,81 only the Sahidic and Bohairic traditions survive Late Antiquity.82 The history of these minor dialects remains unclear. 83 Excavations at Kellis have revealed that the Manichaean community there employed a subdialect of Lycopolitan, while orthodox Christian manuscripts from the same site use Sahidic. Iain Gardner has suggested that “Sahidic was deliberately promoted by the expanding Christian community in Egypt, presumably through education, and that there is consequently a social context for dialect usage.” 84 The list below indicates that canonical Christian manuscripts appear in all the minor dialects. In the case of biblical texts, the minor dialects often appear to preserve transpositions of the Sahidic biblical texts, and not de novo translations from the Greek.85 The Bohairic dialect offers special challenges. medieval Bohairic manuscripts are more easily dated because they often contain colophons with dates, their paper often contains watermarks or other datable features, and their systems of djinkim are known to have been expanded at the end of

81

Depuydt, Catalogue, 1:lxv. A significant number of Fayumic documentary texts have appeared along with their more frequent Sahidic counterparts. 82 For an overview of the dialects, see Rodolphe Kasser, “KAT’ASPE ASPE. Constellations d’idiomes Coptes plus ou moins bien connus et scientifiquement reçus, aperçus, pressentis, enregistrés en une terminologie jugée utile, scintillant dans le firmament Égyptien á l’aube de notre troisième millénaire,” in Coptica – Gnostica – Manichaica: Mélanges offerts á Wolf-Peter Funk (BCNH.É 7; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2006), 389–92. 83 For a geographic-statistical analysis of the dialects, see Wolf-Peter Funk, “Dialects Wanting Homes: A Numerical Approach to the Early Varieties of Coptic,” in Historical Dialectology: Regional and Social (ed. Jacek Fisiak; Trends in Linguistics 37; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), 149–92. 84 Iain Gardner, Coptic Literary Texts, Volume 2 (Dakhleh Oasis Project monographs 15; Oxford: Oxbow, 2007), 5. The Medinet Madi manuscripts perhaps also support this contention. The dialectal situation with Nag Hammadi is not reducible to one dialect, but also suggests that Sahidic was an ‘orthodox’ register; Wolf-Peter Funk, “Toward a Classification of the ‘Sahidic’ Nag Hammadi Texts,” in Acts of the Fifth International Congress of Coptic Studies, Washington, 12–15 August 1992 (ed. Tito Orland and David W. Johnson; 2 vols.; Rome: C. I. M., 1993), 2:163–77. 85 Peter Nagel has argued that the Achmimic texts are not only related to, but are indeed derived from the Sahidic versions; Nagel, “Papyrus Bodmer XVI und die achmimische Version des Buches Exodus,” in Ägypten und Altes Testament. Studien zu Geschichte, Kultur und Religion Ägyptens und des Alten Testaments (Religion im Erbe Ägyptens 14; Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1988), 94–152. The same has been noted of Lycopolitan texts; Herbert Thompson, The Gospel of St. John according to the Earliest Coptic Manuscript (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1924), xxi; Paulinus Bellet, “Analecta Coptica,” CBQ 40.1 (1978): 45. Paul Kahle’s work on the nature of the Fayumic (Bala’izah, 1:279–90) was not conclusive and deserves fresh attention.

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the fourteenth century.86 Because of these benchmarks, medieval Bohairic manuscripts can be dated. Several manuscripts are extant which appear to predate the paper period (tenth century and later). If these manuscripts could be dated, the resultant data would illuminate an important stage in the development of the Coptic Bible. In particular, the medieval Bohairic biblical tradition is often asserted to have been the result of a redaction in the sixth to eighth centuries.87 Material Typically, papyrus manuscripts receive early dates. While papyrus manuscripts containing one of the minor dialects have routinely been dated to the fourth century, parchment has been viewed as a later medium. As mentioned above, only paper offers a reliable basis for dating manuscripts. Both papyrus and parchment were options for any manuscript created between the fourth and tenth centuries. Monastic libraries appeared to have almost exclusively preferred parchment from the seventh to tenth centuries, but one can only presume that manuscripts were created outside Islamic-era monasteries for private (i.e. non-liturgical) purposes.88 Likewise, in the fourth century, the majority of Coptic manuscripts may have been private copies created with papyrus for individual use, but at least some high-quality parchment manuscripts were created in this period.89 Perhaps, the most promising means of dating may lie in the radiometric dating of the papyrus and parchment materials. As cosmic radiation strikes the earth’s upper atmosphere, Nitrogen atoms are converted to the Carbon 86 Monique Zerdoun Bat-Yehouda, Le papier au Moyen-Âge: histoire et techniques (Bibliologia 19; Turnhout: Brepols, 1999); Malachi Beit-Arié, Hebrew Codicology: Tentative Typology of Technical Practices Employed in Hebrew Dated Medieval Manuscripts (Études de paléographie hébraïque; Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1976), 20–40; Paul E. Kahle, “A Biblical Fragment of the IVth–Vth Century in Semi-Bohairic,” Mus 63 (1950): 147–57. Rodolphe Kasser surveyed the predecessors to the djinkim in the Middle Egyptian Fayumic and early Bohairic witnesses; Kasser, “‘Djinkim’ ou ‘surligne’ dans les textes en dialecte copte moyen-égyptien,” BSAC 23 (1976): 115–57. 87 E.g., Rodolphe Kasser, “Les dialectes coptes et les versions coptes bibliques,” Biblica 46 (1965): 303–4; Wolf-Peter Funk, “The translation of the Bible into Coptic,” in The New Cambridge History of the Bible. Vol. 1: From the Beginnings to 600 (ed. James Carleton Paget and Joachim Schaper; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 536–46. 88 “DVCTVS.” 89 Edoardo Crisci, “Papiro e pergamena nella produzione libraria in Oriente fra IV e VIII secolo d.C. materiali e reflexioni,” Segno e Testo 1 (2003): 79–127. For example, the dialectally idiosyncratic P.Bodmer 6 as well as the Middle Egyptian manuscripts of Acts (Codex Glazier), Matthew (Codex Scheide), and Psalms (Mudil Codex) could all theoretically be dated to the fourth century.

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14 isotope (14C), which decays with a half-life of approximately 5730 years and constitutes approximately one part per trillion of total atmospheric carbon. Breathing organisms maintain a level of 14C in keeping with the atmosphere until their death. Using the half-life and calibrating according to known variables, modern researchers can objectively reconstruct the time since the plant or animal’s death down to a stretch of decades.90 However, the actual employment of the technology is not simple. As Bronk Ramsey said, “A more powerful telescope needs more careful handling, and is no easier to use than a pair of binoculars.”91 Often, the results provide a firm date range of about two centuries, as in the cases of the Glazier Acts Codex (V–VI),92 the Tchacos Codex (III–IV),93 three White Monastery leaves dated by Schüssler (780–1014, X–XII, VII–VIII), 94 and the Medinet Madi codices (III–VI).95 Although the scientific results of radiometric dating are objective and reliable, the interpretation of these results can be downright pernicious. 96 “A more powerful telescope needs more careful handling, and is no easier to use than a pair of binoculars.”97 Codicology The Nag Hammadi codices suggest that early Coptic codices could be large (30 + cm in height), and other early texts such as the Crosby-Schøyen codex demonstrate the possibility that early manuscripts could be created 90

For an overview, see C. Bronk Ramsey, “Radiocarbon Dating: Revolutions in Understanding,” Archaeometry 50.2 (2008): 249–75. 91 Bronk Ramsey, “Radiocarbon Dating,” 266. 92 John Lawrence Sharpe, “The Earliest Bindings with Wooden Board Covers: The Coptic Contribution to Binding Construction,” in Erice 96, International Conference on Conservation and Restoration of Archive and Library Materials, Erice (Italy), CCSEM, 22nd–29th April 1996 (ed. Piero Colaizzi and Daniela Costanini; 2 vols.; Rome: Istituto centrale per la patologia del libro, 1996), 2:2383 n. 13. 93 Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin W Meyer, and Gregor Wurst, The Gospel of Judas (1st ed.; Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2006), 133–134. 94 Karlheinz Schüssler, “Zur 14C-Datierung der koptischen Pergamenthandschriften Sa 11, Sa 615 und Sa 924,” in Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies, Rome, 17–22 September 2012 (ed. Alberto Camplani and Paola Buzzi; Leuven: Peeters, 2016), 811–20. 95 Jason Beduhn and Greg Hodgins, “The Date of the Manichaean Codices from Medinet Madi, and its Significance,” in Manichaeism East and West (ed. Sam N. C. Lieu et al.; Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming). 96 The radiometric dates of the so-called Gospel of Jesus’ Wife were used to verify its authenticity; Karen L. King, “‘Jesus Said to Them, “My Wife . . .”’: A New Coptic Papyrus Fragment,” HTR 107.2 (2014): 135. The National Geographic Society’s publication of the Gospel of Judas selectively interpreted the results to suggest a date in the last half of the third century. See Askeland, “Carbon Dating and the Gospel of Judas.” 97 Bronk Ramsey, “Radiocarbon Dating,” 266.

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with multiple columns. Additionally, early Coptic scribes were capable of creating elaborate illustrations in their manuscripts.98 The tendency, however, was precisely the opposite; manuscripts written in the minor dialects (except later Fayumic) typically are between 10 and 25 cm in height, and use a one column format. Again, codicology is not linear – scribes did not begin creating manuscripts in one format and develop into other formats over the centuries. The Saqqara codices (circa 600 CE)99 indicate how later scribes operating in a monastic setting might create small format codices with unusual textual collections, whereas both phenomena would normally be more typical of the earliest period. Provenance Coptic literary texts have often survived in groups which provide some sort of historical context. Since the colophons from the White Monastery at Sohag are limited to the tenth to twelfth centuries, manuscripts from this collection could be assumed as a rule to date from this period. Likewise, the better preserved manuscripts from the library of the Archangel Michael monastery near modern-day Hamuli have colophons from the ninth to tenth centuries. James Robinson has argued that the Dishna collection which now mostly rests in the Bibliotheque Bodmer and Chester Beatty Library was buried in the sixth or seventh century,100 although one could argue for an earlier date of burial. In the case of the Nag Hammadi codices, the cartonnage bindings imply a date range after about 348.101 Numismatic and documentary evidence from Kellis in the Dakhleh Oasis suggest that the Manichaean texts were used by the community there between approximately 355 and 380. 102 Many other groups deserve further examination (e.g., the Panopolis trove [mid-fourth century], 103 the Saqqara codices [circa 600],104 the so-called Qarara codices [third/fourth century],105 the Bala’izah papyri [until the eighth century],106 the Wadi Sarga papyri [until the eighth 98

E.g., the illustration in Codex Glazier containing the Middle Egyptian of Acts; Hans-Martin Schenke, ed., Apostelgeschichte 1,1–15,3 im Mittelägyptischen Dialekt des Koptischen (Codex Glazier) (Berlin: Akademie, 1991), Abb. 18. 99 Thompson, The Coptic Version of the Acts of the Apostles, x. 100 James M. Robinson, The Story of the Bodmer Papyri: From the First Monastery’s Library in Upper Egypt to Geneva and Dublin (Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade, 2011), 130–50; Robinson, “The Pachomian Monastic Library at the Chester Beatty Library and the Bibliothèque Bodmer,” Manuscripts of the Middle East 5 (1990): 6. 101 Lundhaug, “Shenoute of Atripe and Nag Hammadi Codex II,” 209. 102 Gardner, Coptic Literary Texts, Volume 2, 6. 103 Bagnall, “Roman Panopolis.” 104 Thompson, The Coptic Version of the Acts of the Apostles, x. 105 Askeland, “Carbon Dating and the Gospel of Judas.” 106 Kahle, Bala’izah, 1:16.

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century], 107 the Edfu papers [tenth century], 108 the Teshlot archive [eleventh century]109).

Conclusions Aside from archeological evidence or the testimony of a colophon, scholars have little if any warrant to date Coptic manuscripts to a single century. Although later Egyptian monasticism appears to have gravitated toward more formal manuscripts (i.e. larger, double columned, illustrated, parchment manuscripts written in Alexandrian uncials containing traditional biblical textual collections), these manuscript features were not innovations, but rather institutional preferences. While the cumulative presence of these features may suggest an Islamic-era date, the opposite is not true. Many features employed to date texts early are highly circular and reveal little more than the unpretentious construction of an informal manuscript. A considerable number of those manuscripts which have been dated to the fourth and fifth century could therefore date to as late as the early eighth century or possibly later. Bibliography Acqua, Anna Passoni dell’. “Byblica in papyris. IV (2003).” Pages 123–53 in Papiri e ostraka greci. Papyrologica Lupiensia 13. Lecce: Congedo Editore, 2004. Askeland, Christian. “Carbon Dating and the Gospel of Judas.” Forthcoming in Interdisciplinary Dating: Dialogues between Manuscript Studies and Material Sciences. Edited by Zachary Cole. Leiden: Brill. Bagnall, Roger S. “Religious Conversion and Onomastic Change.” Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 19 (1982): 105–24. –. “Conversion and Onomastics: A Reply.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 69 (1987): 243–50. –. Egypt in Late Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. –. “Public Administration and the Documentation of Roman Panopolis.” Pages 1–12 in Perspectives on Panopolis: An Egyptian Town from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest. Acts from an International Symposium Held in Leiden on 16, 17 and 18 December 1998. Edited by Arno Egberts, Brian Paul Muhs, and Jacques van der Vliet. Papyrologica Lugduno-Batava 31. Leiden: Brill, 2002. –. Early Christian Books in Egypt. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. 107 Walter Ewing Crum and Harold Idris Bell, eds., Wadi Sarga: Coptic and Greek Texts from the Excavations Undertaken by the Byzantine Research Account (Coptica 3; Hauniae: Gyldendalske boghandel, 1922), 9. 108 Bentley Layton, Catalogue of Coptic Literary Manuscripts in the British Library Acquired Since the Year 1906 (London: British Library, 1987), xxvi–xxx. 109 Leslie MacCoull, “The Teshlot Papyri and the Survival of Documentary Coptic in the Eleventh Century,” OCP 55 (1989): 201–6.

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Contributors Christian Askeland Associate Director, Museum of the Bible, Scholars Initiative. Christian H. Bull Marie Curie Research Fellow, University of Oslo, and Visiting Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Princeton University. Dylan M. Burns Research Associate at Freien Universität Berlin. Julio Cesar Dias Chaves Professor of Ancient and Medieval History at UPIS Faculdades Integradas, Brasilia. David Coblentz M.A. and M.S., University of Washington, Seattle, has a diverse statistical consulting background and has served in a series of leadership positions in corporations specializing in applied statistics. Jon F. Dechow Fellow at the Westar Institute, Farmington, Minnesota; retired Lutheran (ELCA) pastor; Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania. René Falkenberg Associate Professor of New Testament Studies at Aarhus University. James E. Goehring Professor Emeritus of Religion at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Lance Jenott Lecturer in the Department of Classics and the Program in Religious Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Hugo Lundhaug Professor of Biblical Reception and Early Christian Literature at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo. Louis Painchaud Retired Professor of Early Christian Literature and History at Université Laval, Québec.

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Melissa Harl Sellew Associate Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota. Blossom Stefaniw Heisenberg Fellow of the German Research Council at Martin Luther University of Halle. Ulla Tervahauta Assistant Professor in New Testament at the University of Copenhagen. Paula Tutty PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo. Michael A. Williams Professor of Comparative Religion and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Subject Index Aaron 237 Abammon 209 Abbaton 367n172 Abel 148n35, 367n173 Abraham 110, 128, 132, 156, 175 Abraham of Farshut 77n124, 78 Abraxas 307 Abydos 216, 312, Acts of John 475 Acts of Paul 335n34, 340, 354n123 Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles 56, 158, 162, 243, 246, 248, 250 Acts of the Apostles 459n10, 472n61, 483n99, 483n104 Adam 148, 151, 153n53 Afterlife (see also Underworld) 6, 287–89, 292, 302, 304, 306, 307n75, 309, 311, 313, 318 Agamemnon 313 Agathos Daimon 218, 235 Agathon 99 Akhmim (see also Panopolis) 217n45, 288n3, 292–93, 296, 306n70 Alchemy 222, 223n71, 224 Alexandria 1, 21, 32, 41, 72n106, 75– 76, 107n1, 185, 218, 229, 231n107, 239–40, 242, 245, 249, 262, 264, 356–57 – patriarch of 24, 26–27, 32, 40–42, 157n79, 209n8, 231, 239, 242, 264n11 Alexandrian script 476n70 – majuscule 461, 467, 476–78 – uncial 484 Alexandrinus, Codex 350, 467–68 Allegorical exegesis 129, 237, 241, 248 Allogenes 62–63, 71, 208n6 Al-Mudil Codex 287n1, 290–93, 317, 481n89

Alonius 96 Al-Qasr 330 Al-Qurnah 332 Amduat 305 Amenirdis I 305n64 Ammianus Marcellinus 216n42, 228– 29 Ammon, Letter of 72n106, 75 Ammon Scholasticus 216–19, 240 Ammonius, pagan teacher 227n90, 229 Ammonius the Tall 25, 42 Amos 459 Amulets 4, 152n50, 156, 291, 302, 305, 308, 348, 367 Anastasius I 41n107 Anatolius 215–16, 225 Ancoratus: see Epiphanius, Ancoratus Anchorites 72n106, 85, 92 Androgyny 120n33, 271–72, 350 Angels 4, 30, 95, 97, 123–24, 141–42, 145, 147 Ani, papyrus of 304n61 Annianus 245, 249 Anthimus of Nicomedia 231n107 Anthropomorphites 17, 30–31, 45n122 Antioch 1, 15, 173n48 Antoninus Pius 309n83 Antonius, philosopher 212, 229 Antony, Saint 4, 35n91, 56, 61, 67, 76, 92–93, 95–99, 108, 110, 112n11, 114n19, 115–16, 122, 129, 132–33, 178n72, 239–40 – letters of 35n91, 55–56, 58, 70–71, 85, 94n35, 110, 115, 116n24, 117, 120–22, 123n38, 129, 132–33 – Life of: see Athanasius – monastery of 115n22 Apaioulle 178

494

Subject Index

Aphrodisios (in P. Nag Hamm. G69, C4–5) 22–23, 352 Aphrodite 293n21 Aphthonius 21 Apocalypse of Adam 145n18, 266, 278n45, 279n46, 341, 350n104, 367n173, 392, 407n86, 417n120 Apocalypse of Elijah 251, 292, 293n22, 354n123 Apocalypse of James, First 265n12, 266n17, 392 Apocalypse of James, Second 266n17, 392 Apocalypse of Paul 4, 163–67, 169– 70, 174–80, 266n17, 392 Apocalypse of Peter 60, 64, 65, 67, 151n49 Apocryphal books 27, 30, 32n79, 41, 43, 71, 89n23, 119, 163, 168, 198, 224–25, 245, 265, 269n24, 297, 335n34, 354, 365, 367–68, 417 Apocryphon of James 55, 392, 404 Apocryphon of John 129, 142–43, 145–46, 150–51, 154, 158, 183, 250n195, 266n17, 278n46, 341, 350n104, 353, 367n173, 389–93, 398, 403, 416–19, 433n23, 452n66, 453 Apollo, monastery of 366–68 Apollonius of Tyana 229 Apology of Phileas 335n34, 342n60 Apophthegmata Patrum 3–4, 35, 57n26, 67n87, 81, 82n4, 83–101, 107n1, 110n5, 115n22, 119n149, 251–52, 265, 371n189 Apotaktikoi 72 Arabs 152n50, 173, 294n27, 301, 476 Arabic 112n11, 114n19, 115, 300, 366 Aramaic 146n25, 157, 194 Arcadius 40–41 Archaizing tendency 461, 463 Arians 15, 41n106, 115, 167, 266, 352n114 Aristotle 118, 190, 209n8, 229n99, 231n107 Arius 115 Armant 227n90 Armenian 75, 112, 113n14, 243n165 Artapanus 232, 236n133

Asceticism 3–4, 20, 30n77, 46, 53, 57–58, 62, 67–72, 74–75, 81n2, 83, 85–88, 90, 92–101, 107–10, 112– 23, 125–35, 191–93, 196, 202, 252, 277, 293, 367 Asclepiades 229 Asclepius 211, 232, 235, 240, 246 Asclepius (Perfect Discourse) 56, 207, 211–14, 222, 223n71, 228–29, 232, 235n131, 239n144, 240n152, 243– 51, 404 Ashmunein (see also Hermopolis) 76, 153n53, 214n35, 292 Astrology 154n59, 209–11, 215, 216n42, 217–18, 220n62, 228–29, 231, 237–39, 242, 264, 278–82, 367 Asyut 333n27, 366 Athanasius 13, 25, 71, 73, 115, 173– 74, 291, 356, 367–68 – Letter of 367 16, 26, 28–31, 32n79, 34, 37, 40, 46–47, 300, 301n52, 352 – Life of Antony 93, 115, 195–96, 291n15, 371n189 Atlas 241, 243 Augustine 14, 212, 229, 242–43, 248, 250, 278 – City of God 212n22, 242–43 Ausonius 75 Authentikos Logos (NHC VI) 5, 56, 183–202, 243, 246, 249–51 Autogenes 142–43, 145–46, 149, 158, 247 Avarice 123, 125, 126n40, 195 Ba 303n60, 305, 308, 311, 313 Bahri Mamluks 301 Bala’izah 338n45, 366–68, 374, 458, 461n21, 480n85, 483 Baptism 59, 64, 70, 144n14, 145, 146n24, 179–80, 188, 199–201 – of five seals 146n24, 367n173, Barbelo 61, 142–44, 146, 150–52, 154, 156, 158 Barbelo Gnostics 146, 150–52, 154, 156, 158 Barsanuphius 193, 194n43 Bartholomew 298 Basil of Caesarea 13, 35, 300n49 Basilides 157, 262n6 Bedouins 301

Subject Index Beni Sueif 290 Bes 216 Bezae, Codex 345n77 Bible, the 5, 7, 30n77, 43, 53–54, 62, 81n2, 82n4, 84, 87–90, 97, 100– 101, 108, 110, 115, 118, 119n31, 121, 122n36, 127, 133–34, 149n41, 177n66, 183–84, 185n5, 186–88, 191, 195–98, 202, 208n3, 234, 244n168, 250, 268, 288n3, 288n4, 288n5, 330n10, 349, 350n108, 351– 52, 354–55, 360, 363–65, 367, 373n197, 374n198, 375, 394n19, 415, 459, 461–63, 465, 467, 468, 470, 472, 473n65, 476–81, 484 – Sahidic translations of 192, 193n39, 333n22, 363–64, 459, 480 Bilingualism 227n90, 342–43, 362, 461 Bishops 25, 32, 45–46, 60, 65, 74, 113n15, 115, 139, 239, 264n11, 276, 307n72, 352, 408n89 Blemmyes 223 Bodmer Library 229n44, 329n3, 334, 337n41, 351n110 Bodmer, Martin 334, 336n38 Bodmer Menander Codex 340–341, 348, 370 Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex (see also Dishna Papers) 334n31, 340n49, 341–342, 346, 428n4 Bodmer Papyri: see Dishna Papers Bodmer Visions Codex 335n34, 340– 41, 346–47, 370, 371n187, 372 Bohairic 26, 72n106, 226n85, 343, 349–50, 366, 461, 471–72, 476–78, 480–81 Book of the Dead 5–6, 287–94, 301– 12, 315, 317–19 Book of the Resurrection of Christ 298 Book of Thomas 405, 409, 430, 453 Book of Traversing Eternity 307–8 Book of Watchers 223n71, 250 Books 1, 4–7, 23, 26, 27n45, 28, 30, 32–34, 40–41, 45, 53, 57, 62–63, 65–66, 68, 81, 82n4, 87, 91, 93–94, 96n42, 100, 107n1, 111, 114, 117, 118n31, 119n149, 198, 202, 209– 10, 219–20, 224–25, 228, 230, 231n107, 234–35, 240, 242, 247,

495

250–51, 287–92, 294–96, 299–301, 303, 308n80, 310n81, 310n86, 312– 13, 317–19, 339, 342n63, 351, 354, 365, 369–70, 373–75, 388, 406–7, 413n12, 418n120, 427–29, 453, 472n63 – bindings of 1, 6, 17, 93, 244, 300n49, 353, 363, 389, 396–97, 398n38, 399, 459–60, 467, 483 – censorship of 27n45, 30, 32, 34, 40– 41, 45, 300, 352, 354 – destruction of 30–31, 45 – networks of exchange 247n183, 353, 419 – production of 28, 30, 53, 63, 68n92, 87, 91, 93–94, 247, 295, 300, 304n61, 347–48, 353, 364–65, 369, 373–74, 388, 408–9, 427–29, 452n64, 453, 472n63 British Library manuscripts – BL Or. 1920 475 – BL Or. 5000 (Psalter) 292 – BL Or. 5001 292, 298n41 – BL Or. 7022 165n7, 165n7, 175n60, 176n63, 176n64 – BL Or. 7027 298n43 – BL Or. 7594 (Deuteronomy Codex) 292n19, 317, 368n178, 459 Cain 367n173 Camels 21 Canon 28, 31–32, 82n3, 89, 90, 112, 119, 186, 265, 293, 319, 349, 351– 52, 363, 365, 367, 375, 480 Canon of Nicea 298 Canopus 212 Catherine, St., monastery 115n22 Cave of the Nymphs 129 Caves 32, 316–17, 353 Cave T8 (Psalms cave) 316 Cave T65 316 Cemeteries (see also Funerals) 5–6, 33, 39, 97, 174, 212, 214, 218, 251, 287, 288n3, 289–93, 294n24, 295– 96, 299–301, 303–6, 309, 312–19 Cenobites 20, 22, 30, 93 Centuries (CE) – 1st 13–15, 33, 90, 199, 214, 217, 262, 266, 311, 312n93, 464

496

Subject Index

– 2nd 1, 13–14, 28, 33, 35, 89–90, 112–113, 142, 146, 150, 156–58, 164, 194, 199, 201, 207, 214, 217, 230, 262–263, 266, 310–11, 312n93, 313, 317, 356, 360n144, 361, 464–66, 468 – 3rd 1, 13–14, 28, 33, 89, 142, 156, 163n3, 194, 207, 212–13, 217–18, 223, 226n86, 228n95, 251, 263, 264n11, 312n93, 314, 356, 360–61, 417n120, 459–60, 464–66, 468, 482–83 – 4th 1, 3, 5, 11–17, 20, 23, 28, 30, 33, 35n91, 36, 38n97, 39, 45, 53, 55– 56, 58, 62, 63n55, 71, 76, 86–87, 90, 107–9, 114–16, 128–29, 134– 35, 152, 156–57, 163–64, 167, 169n33, 169n34, 171–74, 180, 183, 193n36, 194, 207–18, 225–31, 233– 34, 245–46, 251, 264n10, 266–67, 290, 293, 299n46, 310n85, 314, 333n22, 338n43, 345, 347, 351, 354–55, 356n129, 357, 360n144, 361–62, 368, 373, 417n120, 453, 458n7, 459–60, 464–65, 468–70, 473–74, 477, 479, 481, 483–84 – 5th 1–3, 7, 32, 34, 39, 41–42, 44, 58, 69, 71, 74, 85n12, 87n19, 101, 109, 163–64, 169, 173–74, 177, 183, 194, 199, 208, 212, 217, 229–30, 233, 243, 245–46, 251, 264, 266– 67, 272n31, 273n31, 275, 277, 282, 293n21, 294, 301, 311, 313n95, 314n101, 317, 338n43, 346–47, 351, 353, 355, 360n144, 362–63, 368n178, 373, 375, 409, 417n120, 418n120, 459n11, 468–70, 474, 477, 479, 481, 484 – 6th 44, 73, 77n124, 85, 152n50, 163n3, 193, 194n43, 219n58, 252, 290n9, 291–92, 294, 295, 300–1, 314, 315n102, 338n43, 353, 355, 358, 360, 362, 468–70, 477, 479, 481, 483 – 7th 153, 163n3, 173, 294–95, 300, 338n43, 355, 363, 366, 368, 458, 476, 478–79, 481, 483 – 8th 7, 153, 294–95, 345n77, 357–58, 366, 368, 468, 477, 479–81, 483–84

– 9th 7, 153n53, 157n79, 294–95, 297, 300–1, 357, 468, 477, 481, 483 – 10th 115n22, 153, 294, 297n37, 300, 476n70, 477 481, 483–84 – 11th 292, 294, 300, 483–84 – 12th 83n7, 292, 294, 300, 483 – 13th 300–1 – 14th 194, 294, 301, 481 – 15th 219n58, 294, 300n48 Chalcedon, Council of 34n83, 40, 77n124 Chaldaean Oracles 229 Chaos 119, 121–23, 126, 130, 147, 251, 248, 275 Charity 20–21, 98, 198n57, 200 Chenoboskion/Sheneset 16, 29, 46, 315, 330, 354, 400 Chester Beatty Coptic Codex A 471 Chester Beatty Coptic Codex B 471 Chester Beatty Codices 472 – IX (Esther) 360 – X (Daniel) 360 Chester Beatty Library (see also Dishna Papers) 299n44, 334, 337n41, 351n110, 362–63, 483 Children – literal 29, 95, 107, 123, 166, 175, 287 – metaphorical 29, 110, 115–17, 123, 307n72 Chreiai 3, 81n2, 83–86, 87n20, 88–90, 97 Chrismation 146n24, 201 Cicero 214, 335n34, 343n67 Clement of Alexandria 5, 13, 18n11, 185, 189–193, 199, 209n8, 215n39, 230 – On the Salvation of the Rich Man 193 – Stromata 193 Cleopatra VII 309 Clergy (see also Bishops; Priests) 3, 24–26, 31, 56, 58, 70, 299n46, 373 Codicology 6–7, 57, 70, 339–40, 344n71, 348, 351, 354, 355n125, 361, 364, 368n178, 374, 376, 389n10, 395n29, 419, 464n31, 478, 482–83 Coins 316, 459, 472, 483 Cologne collection 338, 362

Subject Index Colossians 185 Concept of Our Great Power 56, 243, 246, 248–50 Constantine I, Roman Emperor 28, 231, 472–73 Constantinople 41n107, 44, 229, 241 Contemplation 30, 36, 117n28 Coptic Museum in Cairo 287n1, 291, 298n40, 334, 419n121 Corinthians, First epistle to 70, 184– 85, 278n45 Corinthians, Second epistle to 29, 166, 275n36, 315n111 Cosmology 16, 124, 264, 267, 274, 282 Crosby–Schøyen Codex 335n34, 356n129, 360, 482 Crucifixion: see Christ, passion of Crux ansata 342, 405 Cryptogram 404, 412–13, 414n113, 415 Cynicism 113–14 Cyril of Alexandria 29n68, 209n8, 230–31, 232n113, 233–36, 239–43, 247–48, 250 – Against Julian 231, 242–43 Dakhleh Oasis 483 Dair al–Qusair 233 Daniel, book of 360 Davithe 143, 147, 152–53, 155–56, 158 Deacons 60, 65 Deir al–Malak: see Gabriel, monastery of at Naqlum Demetrius Cythras 216 Demons 64, 91, 116, 117n26, 127, 147, 196, 211, 220–223, 225, 243, 280, 308, Demotic 214n31, 226, 227n90, 309n81, 310n86, 311n89, 458, 461n21 Dendera 333 Deuteronomy 292, 317, 459 Devil, the 66, 123–24, 194–96, 367n172 Dialect mixture 76, 300, 332n18, 342– 43, 366, 389, 396, 401–3, 405, 417, 479–81

497

Dialogue of the Savior 395n29, 419n121 Didymus the Blind 5, 128n42, 129, 193, 233–40, 242, 245 – Commentary on Ecclesiastes 236 – Commentary on the Psalms 237 – On the Trinity 233–35, 239–40 Diodorus Siculus 241 Dioscorus 41–42, 44–46, 300, 352–53 – Letter to Shenoute 300 Diospolis Magna 228, 248 Diospolis Parva 315, 400 Diospolite nome 400 Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth 57, 211, 226–27, 243, 245, 247–50, 252 Dishna 332–33, 373n195, 479 Dishna Papers 6, 298, 299n44, 329– 34, 336–51, 354–57, 360–70, 371n187, 372–76, 479, 483 – Chester Beatty XIII 340n49 – Chester Beatty XIV 340n49 – Chester Beatty XV 340n49 – Chester Beatty Ac. 1390 335n35, 340, 342n64, 342n66, 348, 369, 372, – Chester Beatty Ac. 1486 337n41, 362–363 – Chester Beatty Ac. 1494 and 1495 337n41, 363 – Chester Beatty Ac. 1499 335n35, 340n49, 342n64, 343n67, 351n111 – Chester Beatty Ac. 2554 335n35 – Chester Beatty Ac. 2556 337n41, 340n49, 362 – Chester Beatty Ms. W. 145 337n41, 362 – Montserrat Miscellaneous Codex 340n49, 341, 342n64, 343n67, 372 – P. Barc. 45 348 – P. Bodmer I 332n17, 335n35 – P. Bodmer II 335n34, 340n49, 341, 347–48, 351n110, 356, 361, 364 – P. Bodmer III 335n34, 340, 343–46, 349–50, 360 – P. Bodmer IV 335n34, 344n72, 348 – P. Bodmer V 335n34, 344n72, 346n84, 354n123 – P. Bodmer VI 332n18, 335n34, 343, 481n89,

498 – P. Bodmer VII 334n31, 335n34, 344n72, 346n84, 364, 369 – P. Bodmer VIII 334n31, 334n34, 335n34, 344n72, 346n84, 364, 369 – P. Bodmer IX 335n34, 344n72, 346n84, 369 – P. Bodmer X 335n34, 344n72, 346n84, 354n123 – P. Bodmer XI 335n34, 344n72, 346n84 – P. Bodmer XII 335n34, 344n72, 346n84 – P. Bodmer XIII 335n34, 344n72, 346n84 – P. Bodmer XIV–XV 334n31, 335n34, 340–41, 347n90, 348, 352, 356, 361, 364 – P. Bodmer XVI 335n34, 341, 348 – P. Bodmer XVII 335n34 – P. Bodmer XVIII 335n34, 340n49 – P. Bodmer XIX 335n34, 344n72, 351n111 – P. Bodmer XX 335n34, 342, 344n72, 346n84 – P. Bodmer XXI 335n34, 340–41, 344n72 – P. Bodmer XXII 335n34 – P. Bodmer XXIII 333, 335n34, 340– 41, 348 – P. Bodmer XXIV 335n34, 340–41, 344n72, 348 – P. Bodmer XXV 335n34, 344n72, 348 – P. Bodmer XXVI 335n34, 344n72 – P. Bodmer XXVII 340n49, 344n72 – P. Bodmer XXVIII 335n35 – P. Bodmer XXIX 335n34, 344n72, 346n85 – P. Bodmer XXX 335n34, 344n72, 346n85 – P. Bodmer XXXI 335n34, 344n72 – P. Bodmer XXXII 335n34, 344n72, 347 – P. Bodmer XXXIII 335n34, 344n72, 347 – P. Bodmer XXXIV 335n34, 344n72 – P. Bodmer XXXV 335n34, 344n72 – P. Bodmer XXXVI 335n34, 344n72 – P. Bodmer XXXVII 335n34, 344n72, 346n85

Subject Index – P. Bodmer XXXIII 335n34, 344n72, 346n85 – P. Bodmer XXXIX 337n41 – P. Bodmer XL 335n34 – P. Bodmer XLI 335n34, 340, 347, 354n123 – P. Bodmer XLII 351n111 – P. Bodmer XLIII 144n13, 335n34, 340, 348, 350, 354n123 – P. Bodmer XLV 335n34, 340n49, 344n72 – P. Bodmer XLVI 335n34, 340n49, 344n72 – P. Bodmer XLVII 344n72 – P. Bodmer XLVIII 335n35 – P. Bodmer XLIX 335n35 – P. Bodmer L 332n17 – P. Bodmer LI 348 – P. Bodmer LIII 333 – P. Bodmer LIV 333 – P. Bodmer LV 333 – P. Bodmer LVI 333 – P. Köln I 3 348 – P. Köln IV 174 337n41 – P. Köln VIII 331 348 – P. Köln Kopt.1 337n41 – P. Köln Kopt.2 337n41 – Schøyen MS 193 335n34, 340n49, 341, 360, 368n178 Dittography 447–48, 452–54 Djinkim points 7, 480–81 Docetism 15, 54–55, 59–60 Documentary hands 357–58, 468–69, 472n63, 472n64, 473, 479 Domnius the Armenian 75 Doxology 145, 184, 197–98, 201 Ductus 460, 471 Dura Parchment 24 Easter 26, 37, 76, 81, 360 Eden 32, 100, 148, 367n173 Edfu 296, 298, 367n172, 484 Education 57–58, 67, 107n1, 115–16, 118, 119n31, 125, 217, 226, 227n90, 288, 305–6, 310–11, 313, 371, 453, 480 Egypt – Lower 16, 36, 67, 85n13, 86–87, 245

Subject Index – Middle 402, 459, 481n86, 481n89, 483n98 – Upper (see also Thebaid) 1, 3, 5, 11, 16–17, 23, 27, 30, 36–37, 41, 54, 58, 69, 73–77, 163n3, 208, 216, 218, 245, 262, 292, 298, 329, 331, 333, 343, 352–53, 356–57, 364–65, 373, 376 Eleleth 4, 141–59 El-Hibeh 290 Empedocles 216 Ennead 56, 209n10 Enoch 250, 295, 317 Enoch, first book of 32, 294 Ephesians 184 Ephesus, Council of (431) 43 Ephrem the Syrian 197 Epigraphic dating 463–64, 467, 479 Epiphanius of Salamis 13–16, 20n27, 28, 32n78, 32n81, 33–37, 41n107, 43–44, 189n22, 197n53, 268n23 – Anchoratus 15–16, 36–37, 43, 268n23 – Letter to John of Jerusalem 16, 20n27 – Panarion 14–16, 33, 34n85, 36–37, 41n107, 43–44, 268n23 Epiphanius, monastery of at Thebes 408n89 Eschatology 37, 42, 53, 63, 67–68, 145n17, 184, 198, 201, 246–47, 250, 273, 289 Esther 360 Eucharist 24, 26, 70, 201, 314 Eugnostos 5, 129, 261–82, 350n104, 390–93, 405, 414, 417n120, 419 Euhemerism 232, 239, 247–48 Eunomianism 40, 41n106 Euripides 234n122 – Alcestis 335n34, 343n67 Eusebius 28, 179n76, 191n31, 231n107, 232n115, 236n133, 243, 250 Eustathius of Antioch 13 Evagrius Ponticus 4, 16, 29n71, 35, 66n77, 67, 108, 109n3, 110–22, 126–34 – Antirrhetikos 116 – Chapters on Prayer 117

499

– Praktikos 116, 117n26, 118, 127, 134 Eve 148n35 Exegesis on the Soul 183, 202, 350 Exodus 241n158, 341 Ezra – Fourth book of 198–99 – Fifth book of 184, 198–99 – Sixth book of 198–99 Faw Qibli: see Pbow Fayum 297, 313, 314n101, 357n133, 367n172, 477n73 Fayumic 366, 477n73, 479–81, 483 Festivals 171, 215, 226n86, 318 Firmus 75 Flavia Neapolis (Nablus) 194 Flooding 211, 250 Fourth Martyrdom of St. Victor 176 Funerals 39n100, 290, 292, 294n24, 296n33, 299n46, 303n58, 303–5, 308–9, 312–17 Funerary texts 39, 307, 311 Gabriel the Archangel – Investiture of 155, 158 – Naqlum monastery of 299, 314–15 Galatians 184 Genesis, book of 15, 100, 268, 340, 343n68, 344, 348–50, 363–64, 367n173, 474 George Syncellus 223n71, 249, 250n193, 250n194 Georgian 112, 115 Glazier Codex 291, 335n35, 470, 481– 83 Gnosticism 1, 4, 12–16, 18, 27–28, 31–37, 38n98, 39n98, 41–42, 46– 47, 55, 58, 60, 63n55, 88, 90, 109n4, 141–42, 145n17, 147, 153– 58, 163n3, 164, 167, 177, 179, 194, 201, 207–8, 244–45, 261, 301n52, 311, 330n5, 339, 349n103, 364–65, 367–68, 374, 407n88, 413n108, 417 Gnostics 32–33, 146, 157–58, 207, 231n107, 244, 364–65 God 4–5, 11, 15–16, 20n27, 23–25, 30, 32, 57, 61, 66, 91, 94, 96–99, 101, 107–8, 110n6, 112n13, 113n13, 115, 116n25, 117, 119–26,

500

Subject Index

129–34, 143, 145n21, 148n35, 149, 151, 153–56, 170n36, 171, 174, 190, 195–98, 221–22, 224–25, 234– 39, 241–43, 247–48, 251–52, 266n18, 267–70, 274n35, 280, 282, 293, 367n172, 409 Gospel of the Egyptians (Holy Book of the Great Invisible Sprit) 145n18, 147n28, 147n29, 150, 266n17, 278n46, 389–93, 404–5, 414–15 Gospel of John 33, 184–85, 196, 273n31, 299n46, 335n34, 340–41, 342n66, 344–46, 349, 350n108, 370, 471 Gospel of Luke 23, 81–83, 89, 149n41, 179n76, 18485, 188–89, 192, 275, 335n34, 340 Gospel of Mark 65, 68n91, 81, 89–90, 149n41, 179n76, 188 Gospel of Mary 192–93 Gospel of Matthew 65, 68n91, 81–82, 127, 184–85, 188, 190, 192–93, 464–65, 481n89 Gospel of Peter 294, 317 Gospel of Philip 100, 199–201 Gospel of Thomas 3–4, 81–84, 87– 101, 344n73, 345n76, 392 Gospel of Truth 55, 198n57, 199–201, 390–93 Government administration 34, 126, 279, 399 Grave goods 5, 39n100, 292, 296, 306, 313–14, 317, 319 Gregory–Aland number B52 465 Gregory–Aland T 029 461 Hadrian 309n83, 335n34, 343n67, 463 Hamburg Bilingual Codex 461 Hamouli 297, 458, 461n24, 477, 483 Hamra Dûm 315 Harpocrates 307 Hathor, Melitian monastery 72–73, 75 Hawara 313–14 Heaven 4–5, 15, 95, 98, 101, 122–23, 143–45, 147–49, 151n48, 154–55, 164–67, 169, 170n36, 174–80, 188, 190, 193n36, 196, 198, 209, 211– 13, 216, 228, 237–39, 248–51, 273– 75, 277–78, 295, 303, 317, 319

– ascent to 4–6, 53, 59, 62–65, 67, 71, 128–29, 134, 166, 175, 177–79, 183, 196–97, 200–1, 209–11, 215, 226–28, 243, 248, 273, 287, 289, 303, 308, 315, 317–19 Hegesippus 13 Helias (Elijah), monk 37, 42 Helladius 229 Heraiscus 229, 230n104 Heresiologists 13–14, 16–18, 28, 32n81, 33, 36–37, 177, 208, 244 Hermes Trismegistus 5, 207, 209–16, 218–25, 227, 229–43, 246–52 Hermeticism 5, 56, 207–10, 214–16, 218, 222, 224–25, 227–35, 236n135, 240–45, 247–49, 250n194, 251 Hermonthis 246n180 Hermopolis (see also Ashmunein) 76, 153n53, 214–16, 218, 225, 232, 251, 292,417 Hesiod 234n122 Hieracites 16 Hieratic 226, 308 Hieroglyphs 211, 226–29, 250, 306, 309n83 Hippolytus 13, 190, 231n107, 417n120 – Syntagma 231n107 Holy Spirit 133, 149, 154, 166, 234, 236 Homer 183, 234n122, 332n17 – Iliad 313, 332n17 Honorius 40–41 Horion I 219 Horion II 219 Horsiesios 24, 43, 71, 336–37, 339n46, 354, 363 – Regulations of 24 Hosea 459 House of Life 218–19, 226 Hymn of the Pearl 128, 130–31 Hymn on the Virgin Mary 335n34, 343n67 Hymns 61, 63, 67, 71, 199n59, 228, 234n122, 301, 335n34, 343n67, 360, 475 Hypatia 229, 240 Hypostasis of the Archons 148, 150– 51, 158, 183, 428

Subject Index Iamblichus 111n9, 209–10, 225, 227, 229, 231n107, 271 Ibis 214, 218, 232 Idolatry 233, 236, 241–43, 246–48, 250–51 Imouthes/Imhotep 246 Irenaeus 13, 146, 150, 156–57, 189– 90, 278n46 Isaac 110, 175, 178 Isaac, monastery of 77n124 Isaiah 184, 191n31, 197–99, 201, 251, 300n49, 333n22, 340–41 Isidore 98 Isis 211, 213, 303, 307n75 Islam 39n100, 294n24, 458, 460, 467, 476–77, 481, 484 Ismant el–Kharab 299n46 Israel 197–98, 242, 293, 354n121 Jabal Abu Mana 330, 332–33, 337 Jabal al-Tarif 330, 354 Jacob 110, 115n20, 175 James, Epistle of 184, 195, 201 Jars 316, 332, 334n29, 351–52, 354, 356n127 Jeremiah, Saqqara monastery 291n12 Jerome 19, 20n27, 22–23, 34, 41n108, 42n110, 113, 239n145, 243n165, 338 Jerusalem 91, 166, 197–98 Jesus Christ 15, 29, 55, 58, 60–61, 64– 66, 81–84, 87–101, 110n6, 114, 123–24, 133, 142–46, 149n41, 153n53, 155, 157, 165, 170, 172, 176, 179n76, 188–89, 194, 196–97, 201, 230, 233, 242, 246, 261, 268, 271, 272n31, 275, 367nn172–73, 409, 414 Jeu, Books of 100, 144n15 John Cassian 35, 100 John Chrysostom 44, 157n79, 172, 180, 191n31 John of Gaza 193 John Rylands Greek Papyrus 3.457 465 John the Apostle 667n173 John the Baptist 188–89 John the Dwarf: see John the Little John the Little 95, 97, 99, 100n55, 110n5

501

Jonah 292–93, 317, 335n34, 360, 459 Joseph 97 Joshua 340–41, 458n7 Judaism 12–14, 32, 34, 232, 262n6, 296 Judas Iscariot 81 Jude 13, 32, 334n31, 335n34, 369 Julius of Aqfahs 169n33, 173n48 Justin Martyr 13, 179–80, 189, 192– 94, 201 Justinian 41, 213 Kellia 20, 301 Kellis 299n46, 459, 461, 479–80, 483 Kephalaia 111, 117, 194, 261n1, 268n23, 269n24, 270, 273n34, 274– 75, 278–81 Khaibit 303n60 Kings, Second book of 368 Kronos 232 Labla monastery 73 Lactantius 212, 231–34, 236, 239–40, 242, 247–48, 250 – Divine Institutes 231, 240 Latin 94, 112–13, 114n19, 115, 199, 207n2, 211, 228, 231, 243, 246, 335n34, 336, 338, 342–43, 351n111, 406 Latopolis 25–26, 74–76 Leiden Kosmopoiia (PGM XIII) 209n8, 227 Leonides archive 474n69 Letter of Peter to Philip 414 Letter to Anebo 210 Letter to Marcellinus 291 Libraries (see also Pachomians, libraries of) 6, 15–18, 26–27, 30, 33, 42, 45, 47, 177, 197, 225–26, 244, 247, 295n29, 299–300, 312n93, 331n15, 339, 351, 356, 364, 368–70, 372, 374, 387–88, 397n32, 402n66, 414n115, 477n73, 478n77, 481, 483 Literary hands 7, 294, 357–58, 464, 467–68, 473, 476n71, 478–79 Lithargoel 157 Liturgy (see also Eucharist; Baptism) 30, 53, 70, 144n14, 145, 179–80,

502

Subject Index

199n59, 227, 297, 307, 367, 369, 481 Longinus 98 Lycopolis 388n8, 417 Lycopolitan 342 – L4 279 – L6 69, 76, 402–3, 415, 417 Macarius of Alexandria 20, 35, 192– 93 Macarius monastery at Scetis 33n77, 471n57 Macarius the Egyptian (the Great) 35, 92–93, 96–98 Maccabees, Second book of 335n34, 360 Magic 4, 95, 142, 152–54, 156–59, 170n36, 209, 225–28, 288–89, 291– 92, 304–5, 312, 318, 367 Manetho 231n107, 250 Mani 194, 261n1, 267n21, 270, 273n31, 281n53, 475 Manichaeism 5, 12, 59, 100, 237, 261, 263–64, 266–70, 273–78, 280–82 – Book of Psalms 100 Marcellus of Ancyra 231n107 Marcion 262n6, 301n52 Marriage 94n34, 96, 200, 290n10 Marsanes 389 Martyrdom of Chamoul 471 Martyrdom of Cyriacus and Julitta 173 Martyrdom of Ss. Paese and Tecla 175–76 Martyrdom of St. Julian of Anazarbus 294–95 Martyrdom of St. Peter 300n49 Martyrdom of St. Shenoufe 176 Martyrdoms of Ss. Apaioulle and Pteleme 176, 178 Mary, the Virgin 154, 335n34, 343n67 Medinet Madi 5, 261, 263–64, 279– 82, 480n84, 482 Melchizedek 145, 157, 367n173 Melitians 72–75, 167, 174, 475 Melito of Sardis 335n34, 360 Membres 225 Menander 231n107, 335n34, 340–41, 348, 370

Mercurius, monastery of at Edfu 298, 367n172 Methodius 197n53 Michael the Archangel 145, 151n48, 152, 157 – Discourse on 145, 157n79, 367n172 – Investiture of 367n172 – Phantoou monastery of 297, 357n133, 367n172, 483 Middle Egyptian 173, 291, 402, 459, 481n86, 481n89, 483n98 Middle Iranian 146n25, 276 Middle Kingdom 300, 303–4 Min 216–18 Miracle of Menas 298 Miracle of Saints Cosmas and Damian 298 Mithras 227 Montanism 40 Moses 110n6, 128, 133–34, 225, 232– 33, 236–37, 239, 241–43, 293 Mummification 172, 214, 290n9, 304, 307–9, 311n89, 313–15, 319 Naasenes 15 Nag Hammadi Codices – bindings of 1, 3, 17, 93, 244, 248, 344, 348, 358, 363–64, 389, 396– 401, 413n108, 414n115, 416, 456, 459, 483 – bowl discovered with 334n29 – Codex I 1n1, 54–56, 58, 63n55, 69– 71, 199, 334n29, 340, 342–44, 346– 48, 389–93, 394n19, 395–402, 404– 5, 409–10, 414–15, 418–19 – Codex II 1n2, 3, 6, 81n1, 89, 93–94, 142, 148, 159, 183, 199, 247n183, 342–46, 348, 349n101, 350, 361, 389–93, 394n19, 395–98, 401–5, 409–11, 414–17, 419, 427–40, 443– 44, 446–54 – Codex III 5, 143, 261, 262n6, 266– 68, 271, 273–79, 281, 334n29, 341, 347, 361, 389–93 , 394n19, 395–98, 401–2, 404–5, 414–15, 416n117, 417n120, 419, 431n11, 452n66 – Codex IV 54n6, 143, 145n18, 344n71, 389–99, 401–3, 404n73, 414–17, 419, 430n9, 435, 447n49, 450n62, 452n66

Subject Index – Codex V 4–5, 163–65, 167, 180, 261, 262n6, 266–69, 271, 276n41, 278n45, 279, 281, 341, 344n71, 389–99, 401–3, 414–17, 419, 435, 450n62 – Codex VI 5, 56–57, 62n54, 158, 183, 201–2, 207–8, 211, 222n71, 226n85, 228, 235n131, 243–48, 250–51, 344n71, 348, 387, 389, 391, 392n16, 393–99, 401–5, 407n87, 410, 411n99, 412, 414–18, 435, 450n62 – Codex VII 3–4, 22–23, 54–55, 58– 62, 63n55, 63n56, 65–71, 73n108, 76, 114, 154, 156, 247n183, 264n10, 291, 340–41, 344, 348, 350, 358n134, 361, 364, 389, 394n19, 395–402, 404–19, 459, 474 – Codex VIII 54n6, 143, 144n13, 145, 344n71, 348, 389, 393–99, 401–4, 412–17, 419, 435, 450n62 – Codex IX 145, 150, 344n71, 389, 393–99, 401–3, 415–17, 419, 435, 450n62 – Codex X 347–48, 389, 394n19, 396– 98, 402, 414–15 – Codex XI 54–55, 58, 62, 63n55, 69– 71, 342n63, 343–44, 346–48, 389, 394n19, 395–402, 414–15, 418–419 – Codex XII 4, 113n14, 344, 389–93, 394n19, 398, 414–15 – Codex XIII 6, 145, 344, 348, 389– 93, 395–98, 402–3, 415–17, 419, 427, 429, 434–40, 443–44, 448–51, 452n64, 454 – colophons of 38n98, 71, 247n183, 341–42, 376, 389, 404–5, 407–8, 410, 414–15 – dimensions of 56n21, 340, 348, 392, 397–98 – discovery of 1, 299, 315–17, 330– 31, 333, 338n43, 339–40, 387, 393 – jar buried in 45, 46, 299, 316, 334n29, 352, 354 – Scribe A 69, 345–47, 395–96, 429– 30, 453, 474 – Scribe B 69, 345–47, 395–96, 429, 453, 474 – Scribe C 69, 395–96, 453, 474 Nativity of Mary 335n34, 354n123

503

New Kingdom 214, 302–3, 304n61, 304n63, 305n64, 305n66, 309n83 New Philology 2n4, 5, 112, 263, 265– 66, 282 Nicotheus 413 Nile 75–77, 87, 225, 290n9, 315, 318, 329–30, 333n27, 402n62 Nilus 223 Nitria 20, 25, 37, 41–42, 45, 86, 116, 245, 301 Noah 32, 367n173 Norea 148–51 Nubia 298, 310n86 Oannes 232 Odes of Solomon 335n34 Old Coptic 226–28, 312 Old Kingdom 303n59, 316–17 Olympiodorus of Thebes 224n77, 229 Olympius, Abba 252 On the Origin of the World 100, 129, 389–93, 402–3, 416–17, 431, 449 On the Rebirth 208, 224–27, 239, 247 Opening of the Mouth 304–5 Ophites 141, 148, 151 Oppian 234n122 Origen 3, 5, 11–18, 20, 28, 29–31, 32n78, 32n81, 34, 36, 40–44, 46, 107n1, 110, 113, 128, 129n44, 133, 179n76, 189–90, 191n31, 197n53, 232n114, 234, 262n5 Origenist controversy 3, 11, 13–18, 20, 30, 32, 34–37, 40–42, 44, 46, 71, 77n123, 194n43, 234, 239, 409 Origenists 15–18, 20, 30, 32, 34–37, 40–42, 44–45, 116, 194n43, 239, 409 Orpheus 232, 235 Osiris 211, 227, 241, 303, 305, 307n75, 308, 312 Ouranos 232 Oxyrhynchus 89, 199, 261n3, 262n5, 287, 290, 451–52, 466, 473n66 P.Berol. 13929, 21105 468–469 P.Berol. 8502 5, 150n42, 150n43, 158n80, 165n6, 184n4, 207n2, 261n3, 262n5, 265, 268–69, 276n41, 279, 281, 296, 353,

504 367n173, 389n12, 390, 397n32, 411n96, 417n120 P.Bouriant 3 475 P.Florence 3676 311n89 P.Kell. Copt. 53 475 P.Kell. Copt. 54 475 P.Kell. Gr. 97A I 475 P.Kell. Gr. 98A I 476 P.Leiden 32 308 P.Münch. II 34 475 P.Oxy. II 209 (ो10) 473–74 P.Oxy. LXII 4327 468 P.Oxy. XLIX 3509 468–69 P.Oxy. XLV 3227 468 P.Ryl. I 1 475 P.Ryl. I 16 468 Pachomians 3, 6, 12, 16–31, 35–40, 43–44, 46–47, 71–77, 93, 118n31, 178n72, 244, 245n172, 299, 317, 329–31, 333, 335–39, 343, 347, 350, 352–56, 357n129, 360–64, 368–70, 371n187, 372–76, 400, 413, 414n115 – administrators (oikonomoi) of 19, 22–23, 76 – basilica of 329 – clergy 24–26, 31 – libraries of 6, 18, 27, 30, 47, 144, 356, 364, 368–69, 374, 414n115 – Passover celebration of 23, 76, 360 – praecepta of, 20, 22, 25–26, 30, 118n31, 317n111 Pachomius 12, 16–21, 23–27, 29–30, 35n91, 39n98, 44n120, 72n103, 72n106, 74–76, 93, 178n72, 330 – death of 25, 44n120, 75–76, 178n72 – letters of 335–336, 337n41, 338, 339n46, 362 – Life of 16, 24, 72n106, 74n110 – Bohairic Life of 24–25, 27 – First Sahidic Life of 16n6, 19 – First Greek Life of (G1) 12n3, 19, 20n25, 23–25, 30, 36, 43, 44n119, 74n112, 76n118, 76n119, 76n120, 317n111 – SBo Life of 23n43, 25n55, 26n56, 26n57, 27n58, 29n70, 29n72, 72n106, 74n110, 74n111, 75n115, 75n116, 76n118, 76n119, 76n120,

Subject Index 178n72, 317n111, 343n70, 352n113, 362n148 Paese 176 Pagans 5, 34, 73, 111n9, 113, 198n57, 207–8, 212–14, 216, 217n45, 229, 231, 234–35, 240, 243–46, 250–52, 292, 314, 318, 459n11 Palamon 74 Paleography 6–7, 156, 264n10, 264n11, 294n27, 389n10, 393n19, 394n19, 395n29, 419, 435, 457–68, 470, 473, 478–79 Palestine 35n91, 85, 90, 194, 252 Palladius 20–21, 30, 36n92 – Lausiac History 20, 30, 35n91 Pambo 35 Panodorus 245, 249–50 Panopolis (see also Shmin) 20, 44, 75–76, 216–18, 251, 288, 293–95, 310n85, 317, 332, 370n181, 372n190, 388n8, 417, 418n120, 460, 475, 477n73, 479, 483 Panopolis archive 460 Panopolitanus, Codex 288n3, 294–95, 317 Paper 7, 17, 329n3, 401, 480–81, 484 Paphnutius, Abba 84 Papyrus 1, 7, 152–53, 216, 226–28, 233, 243–44, 251, 261n3, 294n27, 295–96, 300, 302–3, 304n61, 304n63, 308, 309n81, 312–13, 314n100, 315n102, 329n3, 333n22, 335–36, 337n41, 340–41, 344, 346n86, 348, 358n134, 360, 361n145, 362–63, 370, 389, 396– 98, 416, 429, 459, 465, 467–71, 474n69, 478, 481 Paphnutius 84, 94n34 Paralipomena 21n33–36, 22n37, 30n73, 244, 317n111 Paraphrase of Shem 54–55, 59, 63– 65, 66n83, 341, 418n120 Parchment 7, 153–54, 293–94, 300, 329n3, 334n30, 335–36, 337n41, 340, 367, 458, 467, 470, 476, 478, 481, 484 Paul of Alexandria 229 Paul the apostle 5, 29, 33, 70, 116, 164–67, 179–80, 186, 269n24, 278n45, 343n67, 351, 473

Subject Index – apocryphal correspondence with the Corinthians 335n34, 354n123 Pbow 21, 23, 27, 75–76, 77n124, 299, 329–30, 354, 364 Perfect Discourse, The: see Asclepius Permit for Breathing 307–8, 309n83, 311 Peter the apostle 60, 97, 300n49 Peter, First epistle of 335n34, 360 Peter, Second epistle of 334n31, 335n34, 369, Petronius 178n72 Phantoou 357n133, 367n172 Philae 213, 310n86 Philastrius of Brescia 230, 231n107 Philoponoi 369, 372–373 Philosophy 11–12, 29, 122, 183, 210, 215, 217–18, 224, 230, 232–33, 235, 241–43, 307n73 Phnoum 25–26 Phocion Tano 338 Pierpont Morgan Library 167, 175–76, 297 – M579 357n133, 477 – M591 176n61 – M583 176n62, 176n65, 178n73 Pierpont Morgan Sr. 297n37, 298 Pistentius, Life of 300n49 Pistis Sophia 100, 194, 368 Plato 56–57, 113, 122, 128, 190, 214, 225, 231n107, 235, 240n135, 242 – Phaedrus 122, 128, 214, 240 – Philebus 214 – Republic 56, 243, 246, 248–49 – Timaeus 234n123, 242 Platonism 114, 118, 122, 128, 185, 214, 221, 242, 268, 270, 281, 412 Plotinus 145n17, 229, 413 Poemen 84, 86n17, 98–99 Poimandres 210, 216, 224, 227, 236n135 Porphyry 111n9, 129, 210, 231n107, 235, 242, 413 – History of Philosophy 235 Prayer 30, 83, 98–99, 108, 121–22, 127, 134, 144n13, 154, 172, 179, 197, 247n183, 252, 273n33, 289, 301, 315, 319, 389, 409–11, 476 Prayer of Mary 154

505

Prayer of Thanksgiving 56, 228, 243, 251, 404, 411 Prayer of the Apostle Paul 54–55, 58, 69n94, 70n97, 70n98, 404–5 Priests 24–26, 42, 73, 98, 125, 209– 10, 213, 215–32, 236, 250–52, 306, 309, 310n84, 310n85, 314, 400, 459n11 Priscillian of Avila 32 Proteria 22 Proverbs, book of 110 Psalms 82, 89, 100, 116n25, 129n45, 193, 237, 261n1, 269n24, 280, 287, 291–92, 340–41, 369, 475, 481n89 Pteleme 176 Ptolemais 311 Ptolemaic period 214, 226, 306–7, 309, 310n86, 318 Ptolemy II Philadelphus 250 Ptolemy XV Caesar 309 Pythagoras 225, 242 Pythagoreans 113n15, 242, 268, 271 Q Gospel 82, 193n36 Qarara codices 483 Radiocarbon dating 6–7, 290n9, 291, 359n138, 360n144, 460, 467–68, 471n58, 478, 481–82 Reading aids 451–52, 454 Recitation 108, 288n5, 303, 305 Remnuoth 19, 22 Repentance 95, 132, 143–44, 150, 188n21, 196, 240 Resurrection 3, 15–16, 35–37, 55, 60, 64, 68, 70, 81, 172, 197n53, 298, 344 Revelation, book of 184, 198 Ritual 4, 62–64, 67, 71, 81, 146n24, 158, 179–80 199–200, 209, 211, 215–16, 224–30, 241, 251–52, 288– 89, 299, 301, 303–4, 305n64, 307, 311, 314–15, 317, 319 Riyad Girgis Fam 338 Rolls 226, 313, 335–36, 337n41, 338– 39, 355, 362–63, 368, 374–75 Roman Empire 1–2, 28, 31–32, 34, 36, 39–40, 45–46, 121, 157, 170, 172, 222, 226, 232, 290n10, 292,

506 299n46, 307n72, 310, 313, 390, 463–64, 466–67, 472, 476n71, 479 Romans, Epistle to 184–85, 351n111, 473–74 Rome 1, 41n107, 194, 229, 231n107, 413 Romulus 75 Rubbish heaps 100, 299–300, 401n59 Rufinus 34n86, 113, 239 Sabbath 98, 200 Sacrifice 211, 216, 220–23, 225, 243, 246, 252n203 Sahidic 69, 72n106, 76, 192, 193n39, 316, 333n22, 342, 363–66, 401–3, 408, 415, 417, 459, 476–77, 480 Saite 302 Sakla(s) 147, 158 Salvation 32, 57–58, 60, 62, 68, 70– 71, 81, 97, 99, 118, 120, 133–34, 149, 154, 172, 179, 197–98, 200–1, 246n177, 248, 268, 273, 280 Sansnos 22, 24, 352, 400 Saqqara 291n12, 459n10, 472, 483 Sarapion 215 Sarapis 218, 229 Saturninus 212 Scetis 42, 85n13, 110n5, 194n43, 252, 301, 458, 471n57, 472 Scheide Codex 335n35, 481n89 Schøyen Collection 334 Schøyen MS 193: see Dishna Papers Scribal notes 6, 38n98, 56, 59, 71, 247, 389, 394n23, 404–5, 406n82, 410, 414–16 Scriptoria 77n122, 219, 341n54, 348, 356n129, 410n95, 446, 451, 453, 472 Sebakh 292, 299, 315 Second Treatise of the Great Seth 54, 59–60, 64–65, 67 Secrecy 30, 41, 46, 81, 188, 190, 220, 222–23, 227, 229–30, 307n72 Seleucus 231n107 Sentences of Sextus 4, 109, 112–14, 117–18, 120–21, 127, 130, 135 Septuagint 184, 188, 226n85, 251n200, 350 Serapeum 212, 229

Subject Index Seth 54, 59–64, 67, 71, 143–44, 147– 48, 153n53, 155, 303–4, 407n86, 407n88, 444n46 Sethians 12, 54, 59, 61, 63–64, 69, 141–42, 145–46, 148–50, 154, 156– 59, 263, 412 – Four luminaries of 4, 141–46, 149– 51, 154n59, 156–58 Shem 59, 63–64 Sheneset: see Chenoboskion Shenoute 17, 37, 41–43, 45–46, 73, 74n109, 75, 77n123, 93, 163, 213, 300, 314n99, 352–53, 354n121, 408, 417n120, 418n120 – canons of 353, 408 – I Am Amazed 37, 41, 42n109, 43, 77n123, 163, 409n91, 414n115, 418n120 – We Will Speak in the Fear of God 314n99 – You, God the Eternal 353n120, 354n121 Shepherd of Hermas 346n86 Shmun 214 Simon Magus 190 Sin. gr. NE Meg. Perg. 12 468–69 Sinaiticus, Codex 462, 467–68 Slavery 134, 180, 190, 196, 217 Sne 74 Sohag 458, 461n24, 477, 483 Sophia 143n5, 147, 150, 158 Sophia of Jesus Christ 262n5, 262n6 Sotheby’s Pesynthios papyrus 471 Soul 5–6, 15, 61, 66, 94, 96–97, 101, 116n25, 116n26, 117–19, 121–25, 129–32, 134, 143, 155, 165–66, 176, 183–84, 187, 189, 191–98, 199n59, 200–1, 210–11, 221, 243– 44, 249–50, 252, 269–70, 272–73, 281–82, 303n60, 305, 318, 350 Stephanus 229 Stichometric formatting 479 Stobaeus 234n123 Subachmimic: see Lycopolitan Superlineation 395, 458, 461n21, 477n73 Synesius 229, 240 Syria 15, 35n91, 90 Syriac 112, 115, 117n28, 219, 223, 225, 280n53, 371n187

Subject Index Tabennesi 20, 74–75, 330 Tat 224, 236, 239, 243, 248 Taxation 32, 188n21, 333n22 Tchacos Codex 208, 247, 265, 296n33, 389n12, 417n120, 460, 470–71, 482 Teachings of Silvanus 4, 54, 59–61, 65–67, 92, 109, 114, 116–18, 120, 122–27, 130–31, 132n55, 135, 193n36, 247n183, 350n104, 404, 406, 409 Temples 171, 211–20, 222–24, 226, 228–29, 241, 246, 248, 250–51, 293n21, 309–11, 312n93, 459n11 Tertullian 13 Teshlot archive 484 Testament of Isaac 175 Thauti, tomb of (T73) 316 Thebaid 20, 21n33, 34–37, 41–42, 44– 46, 55, 214, 223, 251, 399 Theban magical papyri 226n83, 312n93 Thebes 37, 43–45, 110n5, 211, 225– 29, 246, 251, 302–3, 309n83, 311, 312n93, 332–33, 343n69, 408n89 Theodora 100–1 Theodore 27, 29, 46, 71, 74–76, 178n72, 263n9, 336, 337n41, 339n46, 352, 362–63 – Letter 2 (Ac. 1486) 362–63 Theodosius 32, 34n83, 40, 41n107, 45, 217n45 Theon 229 Theonas 264n11 Theophanes 215, 227n90 Theophilus 40–43, 45, 239, 249, 300 – Festal Letter of 401 41–43, 300 Thessalonians, epistles to 185 Theurgy 209, 229 Thinis 312, 478n77 Thomas 81, 93, 97 Thoth 214–15, 218, 225–26, 229, 240n153, 250, 304 Three Steles of Seth 54, 59, 61–63, 67, 154, 156, 247n183, 404–9, 429n4 Thunder: Perfect Mind 56, 243, 245, 248–49 Tiberius 231 Tmoushons 330 Tobit 340

507

Trajan 309n83 Treatise on the Resurrection 45n122, 55, 197n53, 344 Trimorphic Protennoia 145, 147–48, 150, 156, 158, 248, 350n104, 391n16, 392 Trinity, the 14–15, 117, 129, 134, 154, 233–36, 239–40, 242, 247 Tripartite Tractate 55, 71, 199–201, 341n53, 345, 392, 396n30, 405n78 Tura papyri 129n45, 233–234, 237–38 Turin 302n5, 308n75, 478n77 Typhon 153n53, 241 Underworld (see also Afterlife) 120n34, 147, 289, 295, 303, 305, 312 Urban intellectuals 72, 229, 244–45, 369, 373, 417, 419 Valentinians 12, 15, 18n11, 54, 59, 69, 141, 166–67, 177, 189–91, 200n64, 200n65, 201, 262n6, 263, 267n22, 352n114, 417n120 Van Kampen Collection 334 Vat. Barb. Gr. 336 468–69 Vat. Copt. 9 335n35 Vat. Copt. 49 471–72 Vat. Gr. 1666 463, 468–69 Vatican Library 334 Vaticanus, Codex 465n40, 467–68 Victor 165n7, 176 Vienna Dioscurides 462–63 Vindob. Med. Gr. 1 468–69 Visio sancti pauli 166, 175, 178n71 Visions 30, 67n88, 117n28, 178, 209, 211, 226–227, 239, 252, 335n34, 346n86, 347, 370 Wadi Sarga papyri 483 Wahibre, papyrus of 308 Waste-paper trade 401, 417 Weighing of the Heart 304 White Monastery federation 41–42, 45n123, 298, 367n172, 477n73, 482–83 Wisdom of Solomon 151 Yaldabaoth 444n46

508 Zacchaeaus 178n72 Zeus 216, 241 Zoolatry 232, 236 Zoroaster 140, 232, 412n101, 412n103, 413, 414n113 Zosimus 216, 218–25, 227n90, 250– 51, 414n113, 418n120

Subject Index – Final Quittance 220n59, 221n63, 221n64, 221n65, 224–25 Zostrianos 62–63, 143–45, 156, 158, 340, 348, 350, 354n123, 404, 412– 14 Zurvanism 146n25