The Nag Hammadi library, also called the Chenoboskion Manuscripts and the Gnostic Gospels, is a group of early Christian and Gnostic writings found near the town of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945.
In late 1945, an Egyptian farmer named Muhammed al-Samman and others discovered twelve leather-bound papyrus books (and one additional text from a thirteenth book) inside a sealed jar. These books contain 52 mostly Gnostic writings, three texts from the Corpus Hermeticum, and a partial version of Plato’s Republic. James Robinson, in his book The Nag Hammadi Library in English, suggests the books may have belonged to a nearby Pachomian monastery and were hidden after Saint Athanasius banned non-canonical books in his Festal Letter of 367 A.D. This idea has been supported by Lundhaug and Jenott (2015, 2018) and further explained by Linjamaa (2024). Linjamaa argues in his 2024 book that the library was used by a small group of educated monks at a Pachomian monastery and was part of a larger Christian collection.
The writings in the books are in the Coptic language. The most well-known text is the Gospel of Thomas, which is the only complete version of this work found in the Nag Hammadi codices. After the discovery, scholars found that parts of this text had appeared in earlier manuscripts from Oxyrhynchus (P. Oxy. 1) and other early Christian sources. Most scholars believe the Gospel of Thomas was written in the second century, but the buried manuscripts date to the 3rd and 4th centuries.
Today, the Nag Hammadi codices are kept in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, Egypt.
Discovery
In 1946, scholars first learned about the Nag Hammadi library. Between 1947 and 1950, Jean Doresse carefully investigated and found that a local farmer, who was a teenager at the time, had uncovered the texts from a graveyard in the desert near tombs from the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt. In the 1970s, James Robinson met with the farmer, identified as Muhammad ‘Ali al-Samman. Al-Samman shared a complicated story about a mission linked to a family conflict, digging for fresh soil for farming and discovering the manuscripts in a buried jar. He hesitated to break the jar due to beliefs about a jinn. At the mission’s end, he claimed to have eaten the heart of the person targeted. His mother said she burned some of the manuscripts as fuel for the family oven; Robinson connected these to Codex XII. Robinson described the discovery with varying numbers of people present, from two to eight. Jean Doresse’s account did not include these details.
Later research focused on al-Samman’s mention of a corpse and a "bed of charcoal" at the site where the soil was dug. His brother strongly denied these claims. Some scholars believe the library was originally found through grave robbing, and the more unusual parts of the story were made up later. In ancient Egypt, burying books was common, but if the Nag Hammadi texts were part of a funeral, it would conflict with Robinson’s belief that they were hidden to avoid persecution. Instead, Lewis & Blount (2014) suggested the codices were privately commissioned by a wealthy non-monastic person and buried as funeral items. The "blood feud" story, however, is widely accepted.
Over time, most of the texts came into the possession of Phokion J. Tanos, a Cypriot antiques dealer in Cairo. The Department of Antiquities kept them to prevent them from being sold abroad. After the 1952 revolution, the texts were given to the Coptic Museum in Cairo and declared national property. Pahor Labib, the museum director at the time, wanted to ensure the manuscripts stayed in Egypt.
Meanwhile, one codex was sold in Cairo to a Belgian antiques dealer. Attempts to sell it in New York and Paris failed until 1951, when the Carl Gustav Jung Institute in Zurich acquired it through Gilles Quispel. The codex was meant as a birthday gift for Jung, so it is often called the Jung Codex, known as Codex I. After Jung’s death in 1961, a dispute over ownership arose. The pages were not given to the Coptic Museum until 1975, after the text’s first edition was published. Today, in Cairo, the papyri from the 1945 discovery include 11 complete books and fragments of two others, totaling more than 1,000 written pages.
Translation
The first copy of a text found at Nag Hammadi came from the Jung Codex. A partial translation of this text was published in Cairo in 1956, and plans were made to create one full copy. However, because of political problems in Egypt, copies from the Cairo and Zurich collections were made slowly over time.
This situation changed in 1966 with the Messina Congress in Italy. This meeting brought scholars together to agree on a definition of Gnosticism. James M. Robinson gathered a group of editors and translators to create a bilingual version of the Nag Hammadi codices in English. They worked with the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity at Claremont Graduate University in California, where Robinson was a teacher.
Robinson was chosen as secretary of the International Committee for the Nag Hammadi Codices, which was created in 1970 by UNESCO and Egypt’s Ministry of Culture. In this role, he managed the project. A facsimile edition in twelve volumes was published between 1972 and 1977, with additional volumes in 1979 and 1984 by Brill Publishers in Leiden. This edition, called The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices, allowed people to study all the texts in some form.
At the same time, in the German Democratic Republic, scholars like Alexander Böhlig, Martin Krause, and New Testament experts Gesine Schenke, Hans-Martin Schenke, and Hans-Gebhard Bethge worked on the first German translation of the Nag Hammadi texts. The last three scholars, supported by Berlin Humboldt University, completed a full scholarly translation that was published in 2001.
James M. Robinson’s translation, called The Nag Hammadi Library in English, was first published in 1977 by E.J. Brill and Harper & Row. Robinson said this single-volume edition marked the end of one stage of Nag Hammadi scholarship and the start of another. Paperback editions followed in 1981 and 1984. A fully revised third edition was published in 1988. This made all the texts available worldwide in many languages. A system to compare Robinson’s translation with the Bible also exists.
Another English edition, published in 1987 by Yale scholar Bentley Layton, was called The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation with Annotations. This book included new translations from the Nag Hammadi Library, along with writings from early Christian groups that opposed Gnosticism and other Gnostic materials. It remains one of the most accessible translations of the Nag Hammadi texts. The book includes historical introductions, translation notes, annotations, and clear groupings of texts into defined movements.
Not all scholars believe the entire Nag Hammadi library should be called Gnostic. Paterson Brown argued that the three Gospels of Thomas, Philip, and Truth cannot be labeled Gnostic because, in his view, they may describe the value of human life as real and sacred, which Gnosticism considers false.
List of codices and tractates
The table below lists some codices and tractates found in the Nag Hammadi library, as described by Aleksandr Leonovich Khosroev. The abbreviations used are from The Coptic Gnostic Library.
The item called "Codex XIII" is not a book, but instead contains the text of Trimorphic Protennoia. This text was written on eight pages that were removed from a 13th book from late antiquity and placed inside the front cover of the sixth codex. Only a few lines from the beginning of the text Origin of the World can be seen on the bottom of the eighth page.
Dating
The manuscripts found at Nag Hammadi are usually dated to the 4th century, but some scholars disagree about when the original texts were first written.
The Gospel of Thomas is often considered the earliest of the "gnostic" gospels. Most scholars believe it was written between the early and mid-2nd century. While the Gospel of Thomas includes some ideas linked to gnosticism, it does not fully explain the complex beliefs of gnostic teachings. The label "gnostic" for this text is based mainly on the assumption that it belongs to the gnostic tradition, which itself is supported mostly by the fact that it was discovered with other gnostic writings at Nag Hammadi.
Some scholars, like Nicholas Perrin, suggest that the Gospel of Thomas was influenced by the Diatessaron, a text written by Tatian in Syria around 172 AD. Others argue that it was written earlier, with a small group of scholars proposing it may have been created as early as 50 AD, partly because of its possible connection to the hypothetical Q document.
The Gospel of Truth and the teachings in Pistis Sophia are believed to date to the early 2nd century, as they were part of the original Valentinian school. However, the Gospel of Truth itself is from the 3rd century.
Texts influenced by Sethian beliefs, such as the Gospel of Judas or the Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians, are generally dated to the 2nd century. Some scholars place them later, in the early 3rd century, using traditional dating methods.
Certain gnostic gospels, like Trimorphic Protennoia, include ideas from Neoplatonism, a philosophy developed after the 3rd century. Because of this, these texts must be dated to after the time of Plotinus, who lived in the 3rd century.