Stacking Nag Hammadi Newspaper Stories

One of the most interesting concepts I’ve gotten excited to learn more about in recent years is Gnosticism. I’m a slow learner; I didn’t get into like most probably did after The Matrix films were released. Yet for some reason as I enter my years 40’s and on, the idea of reality being a simulation, the concept of Earth being some type of prison, and that all of us being submitted to the will of what Philip K. Dick called an insane, demented and self-conscious demiurge seems to make more sense to me. Call it a 21st-century epiphany, I guess?

With all that said, where to begin? I started with picking up a modern edition of the Nag Hammadi Library, or the NHL.
It’s large, full of fragmented texts, and is filled with references to Seth, Christ, Noah, Hermes, the archons, gnosis, and much, much more. Then I thought to myself, “Hey, I have a subscription to Newspapers.com…why don’t I see what the newspapers were discussing year over year and let that guide my journey concerning the discovery of the Nag Hammadi and its content?” With that said, I began my journey to find new leads, books, context, and names of people long forgotten. I might even find a good UFO and/or Jungian symbol in it now and then too.

So I’d like to start sharing my research with like-minded, intellectually curious folks on Blurt and @blurtreligions. Let us being with the year 1949 and see what the big newspapers were feeding the masses with gnosis. I’ll add references at the tail end of each post so that others can look at source materials if interested.

The Nag Hammadi in the Year 1949

Jean Doresse

The adventure begins in the year 1949, wherein a young French scholar by the name of M.J. Doresse presented initial findings to the Paris based Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres. The lecture was presented to a group of reporters and academics, one of whom included a Guardian’s correspondent whose name has been lost to time. Some notes of interest at this period:

• The works were found by fellahin in a jar near Nag Hammadi, some thirty miles north of Luxor on the east bank of the Nile River at the beginning of 1946
• The works included 12 volumes of text dating from the mid-third century to early 4th century
• The majority of the volumes were written in a Sabidic dialect of Coptic
• Five of the works included in the finding are attributed to Thrice Great Hermes
• Other works appear concerned with Noah, and Doresse is quoted as saying several works attributed to Seth are of “striking literary and religious beauty”

Gnosticism in this article is defined as the belief system of a group of heretics who arose in the second century AD. As a mix of followers of neo-Platonism, Judaism, late Classical Egyptian Mysticism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and of course Christianity, the Gnostics here are defined as “flowering pagan philosophers.”

Later that year, a plan was put together wherein the Egyptian Government would purchase the NHL and place it under the care of a Mr. Toga Mina of the Coptic Museum. Researchers involved with the library at this time also included an M.H.C. Puech and Professor Till.

Doresse and Toga Mina

At this point of debate, it is believed that further study of the NHL would allow for researchers to determine whether Gnosticism is a later religious doctrine than Christianity, or if it is older than Christianity; if older, did Gnosticism then adopt the names of Christ and Christian saints as the system of belief evolved over time? Also of academic interest, it is mentioned that the NHL hoped to assist in resolving the origin and framework of Manicheanism. Did Mani simply synthesize the work and philosophy of the Gnostics, give it a personality, a church, and spread it across the known world to allow it to compete in popularity against Christianity in the third century?

Standing in Front of the NHL Discovery Site

Curiously, The Guardian’s last statement at this time positions the belief that the NHL simply represented Gnostic thought as a product of small-town and unassuming intellectuals out of touch with the religious memes and constructs of big cultural and intellectual centers of the time. Despite attributions of the writing to Hermes, Seth, Allogenos, and Messos, The Guardian suggests the works ultimately originated with the “feelings and aspirations of educated men, small-town officials, merchants, and the like in smaller towns in the Near East and Egypt during first century BC and first century AD.”

More to come as we advance through the timeline...

Sources:

Scriptures of the Gnostic Sect (1949, June 18), The Guardian

The Gnostic Scriptures (1949, June 24), The Guardian