Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Our most important discovery of ancient Christian writings. The Nag Hamadi Library by Bart D. Erman, read by John Paul Middlesworth.
[00:00:10] The most significant discovery of Christian manuscripts ever was the Nag Hamadi Library, popularly and a bit inaccurately, known as the Gnostic Gospels. One of the intriguing features of the discovery is that no one is quite sure how it happened. When I was in graduate school, everyone heard a standard tale that we then passed, along with some glee to our students. But now that story is in a bit of disrepute, thanks in large part to that destroyer of New Testament scholarship orthodoxy, my friend and colleague Duke Professor Mark Goodacre. As you will see in subsequent posts, just to be clear, the discovery itself was definitely made. We have the books of the Nagamati Library readily available in English translations, and I want to talk about a few of them. But I first want to talk about what we know and what we don't know about the discovery itself.
[00:01:01] I'll start in this post by giving the popular tale that, until recently, just about everybody knew. This is how I laid it out when I didn't realize there was much dispute to it many years ago, in the early editions of my undergraduate textbook, the New Testament a Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Oxford University Press in a later post, Mark Goodacre will explain why he thinks this story is dubious, and in a post after that, I'll explain why I'm not so sure he's right. It is an intriguing story, this chance discovery of a cache of ancient Christian documents in 1945 in a remote part of Upper Egypt. A story of serendipity ineptitude secrecy, ignorance, scholarly brilliance, murder and blood revenge. Even now, after scholars have spent years trying to piece it all together, details of the find remain sketchy. We do know that it occurred in December 1945, about a year and a half before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, hundreds of miles away in the Judean desert, when seven fellaheen field hands were digging for Sabak, a nitrate rich fertilizer near a cliff called Jabal Atarif along the Nile in Upper Egypt. The fertilizer was used for the crops they grew near their small hamlet of Al Qazar, across the river from the largest village of the area, Nag Hamadi, some 300 miles south of Cairo and 40 miles north of Luxor and the Valley of the Kings.
[00:02:27] The leader of the group, the one responsible for the find once it was made, and the one who later divulged the details of the discovery, was named, memorably enough Muhammad Ali. It was Ali's younger brother, however, who actually made the find, accidentally striking something hard below the dirt with his matic. It turns out to have been a human skeleton. Digging around a bit, they uncovered next to the skeleton a large earthenware jar, about 2ft high, with a bowl over the top, sealed with Batuman. Muhammad Ali and his companions were reluctant to open the jar for fear that it might contain an evil genie. On further consideration, they realized it might also contain gold and so, without further ado, smashed into it with their mattox. But there was no genie and no gold, just a bunch of old leather bound books of little use to this group of illiterate fellahine. Ali divided up the fond, ripping the books apart so everyone would get a fair share. His companions evidently wanted no part of them, however, and so he wrapped the lot in his turban, returned home and deposited them in the outbuilding where they kept the animals. That night, his mother evidently used some of the brittle leaves to start the fire for the evening meal.
[00:03:40] The story gets a bit complicated at this point, as real life intrudes, but in an almost unreal way. Muhammad Ali and his family had for a long time been involved in a blood feud with a tribe in the neighboring village. It had started some six months earlier when Ali's father, while serving as night watchman over some imported German irrigation machinery, had shot and killed an intruder. By the next day, Ali's father had himself been murdered by the intruder's family. About a month after they discovered the old books in the jar, muhammad Ali and his brothers were told that their father's murderer was asleep by the side of the road next to a jar of sugarcane molasses. They grabbed their mattox, found the fellow still asleep, and hacked him to death. They then ripped open his chest, pulled out his still warm heart and ate it. The extreme act of blood revenge. As it turns out, the man they had murdered was the son of a local sheriff. By this time, Muhammad Ali had come to think that perhaps these old books he had found might be worth something. Moreover, he was afraid that since he and his brothers would be prime suspects in this cold blooded murder, his house would be searched for clues. He gave one of the books over to the local Coptic priest for safekeeping until the storm blew over. This local priest had a brother in law who was an itinerant teacher of English and history who stayed in his home once a week while making his rounds in the parochial schools in the area. The history teacher realized that, in fact, the books might be a significant find, significant enough to fetch a good price, and went over to Cairo to try to sell the volume in his possession. It was not an altogether successful attempt. The book was confiscated by the authorities. Eventually, however, he was allowed to sell it to the Coptic Museum. The director of the museum had a good idea what the book was. And to make a long story short, in conjunction with a young visiting French scholar of antiquity, Jean Duresse, whom he had known in Paris known fairly well, in fact, as he had proposed marriage to Mrs. Duresse before she became Mrs. Duresse managed to track down most of the remaining volumes and acquire them for the museum. Duresse had the first chance to look over them as a scholar. Eventually, an international team was assembled by UNESCO to photograph, study, translate and publish them. The international team was headed by an American scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity, James Robinson. The work was finally accomplished. We now have editions of the collection available in quality English translation, and you can purchase them online or in almost any really decent used bookstore. In my next post, I'll say a few things about what is actually in this library, which here just means a collection of books discovered at Nag Hamadi before returning to the question of what happened during the discovery itself.
