Talk:Nag Hammadi library

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Nag Hammadi library article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Religious texts (defunct)

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Religious texts, a project which is currently considered to be defunct.Religious textsWikipedia:WikiProject Religious textsTemplate:WikiProject Religious textsReligious texts

Christianity Low‑importance

	Christianity portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Christianity, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Christianity on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ChristianityWikipedia:WikiProject ChristianityTemplate:WikiProject ChristianityChristianity
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Libraries Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Libraries, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Libraries on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LibrariesWikipedia:WikiProject LibrariesTemplate:WikiProject LibrariesLibraries
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Religion Low‑importance

	Religion portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Religion, a project to improve Wikipedia's articles on Religion-related subjects. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the wikiproject page for more details.ReligionWikipedia:WikiProject ReligionTemplate:WikiProject ReligionReligion
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Egypt Low‑importance

	Egypt portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Egypt, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Egypt on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EgyptWikipedia:WikiProject EgyptTemplate:WikiProject EgyptEgypt
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Archaeology Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Archaeology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Archaeology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ArchaeologyWikipedia:WikiProject ArchaeologyTemplate:WikiProject ArchaeologyArchaeology
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Text and/or other creative content from this version of Jung Codex was copied or moved into Nag Hammadi library with this edit on March 25, 2015. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

Tip: Anchors are case-sensitive in most browsers.

This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist.

[[Gnosticism#Christianity and Gnosticism|Gnosticism]] The anchor (Christianity and Gnosticism) has been deleted.

Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. | Reporting errors

Jean Doresse, not Dorese

see http://www.amazon.com/Discovery-Nag-Hammadi-Texts-Christianity/dp/159477045X —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.17.50.44 (talk) 14:40, 29 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Error

There seems to be an error loading the Gnostic Cross image. Sadly, I'm not sure how to fix this...

Renaming suggestion

The information on this page is excellent, however the subject matter in current popular culture seems to be far better known by the name of Gnostic Gospels than "Nag Hammadi library". Even looking at the references on the page, the books that are quoted tend to use the name Gnostic Gospels. I therefore propose moving this page to Gnostic Gospels (where I saw that someone had created a stub page, since they couldn't find this one, but I changed it into a redirect for now). Any opinions supporting or opposing the move? --Elonka 12:42, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My only concern would be that there are other Gnostic Gospels that are not included in the Nag Hammadi Library, such as the Gospel of Mary. And so I would agree that popular culture is now refering to the Library as the Gnostic Gospels, but should not the encyclopedia retain some accuracy in its definitions? Perhaps the Gnostic Gospels page needs writing as another, separate, article? 22/6/06 19.43

I agree with the previous suggestion that there should be a separate page for the Gnostic Gospels and this page should retain its current name. Perhaps I am better informed than most members of 'current popular culture' but I was certainly looking under "Nag Hammadi library" for the information on this page. Although the Nag Hammadi library contains texts that are common to the Gnostic Gospels it does not, for example, contain the Pistis Sophia which is a foundation of Gnostic belief. The Gnostic Gospels should be dealt with separately in order to avoid the type of confusion that appears to be prevalent in 'current popular culture'. Surely, an important role of the encyclopeia is to redress such confusion. 2006-09-15. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.2.124.251 (talk • contribs)

One has to remember that, if the work is not actually Gnostic in nature and ideas, then it is only non-canonical and not Gnostic, or that is how I see some of these works. The problem is, some who might read them, might say, well, they are labeled Gnostic, and not worth my time, when some may not be of the whole. Christian religions will no doubt use this to keep the readers from wanting to read these important works, such as the Gospel of Thomas.--Craxd (talk) 12:22, 5 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Holy Blood, Holy grail

I've altered it from the blatently anti-HbHg statement "...which has been since proven to be unreliable, as much of that book's research and claims of "fact" were based on forged medieval documents which had been created for the Priory of Sion hoax." to "Much of that book's research was based on the hypothesis that allegedly forged medieval documents which had been created for the Priory of Sion hoax were in fact, what they claimed to be."

The reasons being that: 1) The research by the authors of HbHg was using the Priory documents to fill in spots already left blank by our history books. They weren't deliberitly pulling stuff out of their asses as the old line suggests, rather, they were analyzing if the Priory Docuement's attempts to fill the holes left by scholarly works are at all plausible. 2) They don't make claims of fact, that clearly lay out that their sections dealing with the Priory Documents are based off of Hypotheses and speculation, they make no effort to hide that and say "such and such did do this for sure!" 3) You can't prove speculation for which there is circumstantial evidence (and little or no evidence to the contrary) as "unreliable" 4) Yes, I just noticed some grammer errors, will fix.

I therefore concluded that the person who wrote that sentence in regards to Dan Brown's book and the Holy Blood, Holy Grail probably hasn't even read either one, and at best has only read the Da Vinci Code, and I've changed the text to be more neutral in it's assessment of self-proclaimed speculation, that makes up the HbHg. --xx-Mohammad Mufti-xx 07:50, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Biblical archaeology relevance

User:999 reverted my addition of Biblical archaeology to the "See also" section by saying "article doesn't even mention gnosticism". But the Nag Hammadi library is an archeological find which is relevant to the compilation of Biblical scriptures. This is my interest and I believe that others would be interested in more background of about Biblical archaeology in studying this subject, including both gnostic and non-gnostic scriptural writings. Also, I don't think that a reasonable link added in good faith should be reverted without discussion, as if it were vandalism. --Ben Best 16:55, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, why not also add some mention of the archeology of Nag Hammadi to the Biblical archaeology article? Maybe b/c it wasn't an archeological find at all, but was rather serendipitously discovered? So the relevance is what, exactly, again? 999 (Talk) 03:06, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you are right. I admit that I do not have special expertise in this field. The subjects seemed closely related to me in my "layman's research" and I thought that a link that would have made things easier for me could make things easier for others. Anyway, I have done as you suggested and added a paragraph to Milestones during 1945 - 1967. If it is all reverted by "experts" I won't fight it. --Ben Best 14:43, 7 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Story of Library's Origin and Burial

The story of who copied or held the codices, and why they were buried, is in need of revision, and I would like to offer some rationale for my changes. Currently the problematic section of the article reads as follows:

The codices are believed to be a library hidden by monks from the nearby monastery of St Pachomius when the possession of such banned writings denounced as heresy was made an offense. The zeal of Athanasius in extirpating non-canonical writings and the Theodosian decrees of the 390s may have motivated the hiding of such dangerous literature.

For a start, this passage is inconsistent with Wikipedia guidelines on at least three counts: (1) No sources are cited; (2), There are weasel words such as "believed" and "may"; and (3), Words such as "zeal," "motivated," and "dangerous" might suggest a non-NPOV.

Indeed, there are long-standing objections in the academic literature. A link to nearby Pachomian monasteries was suggested in a provisional and posthumous report by John Barns published in 1975.^[1] In an appendix to that report, E.G. Turner argued that Barns had taken his paleographic findings too far. Nonetheless, James Robinson accepted Barns' conclusions and popularized them via his "Introduction" to The Nag Hammadi Library in English.^[2] Subsequent analyses also threw doubts on the proposed link,^[3] but by this time the story was firmly welded to the Nag Hammadi legend. The following objections are summarized from a paper by Pachomian scholar, Armand Veilleux^[4]:

There is no positive paleographic evidence linking these codices to Pachomian monks
Athanasius' letter in 367 focused on Arians, not the kind of Gnosticism represented in the Nag Hammadi codices
There is no positive evidence in the body of Pachomian literature, especially circa 367, showing any self-conscious interest in Gnosticism

Of course it is possible that Robinson's version of the story is true. To that extent, the weasel words in the passage above are understandable, but misleading without further context. --Tm19 23:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Barns, J.W.B. "Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Covers of the Nag Hammadi Codices." In Essays on the Nag Hammadi Library, ed. M. Krause. Leiden: Brill, 1975, pp. 9-18
^ Robinson, J.M. "Introduction," in The Nag Hammadi Library in English. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1977, pp. 16ff.
^ See, especially, Shelton, J.C. "Introduction," in Nag Hammadi Codices: Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Cartonnage of the Covers, ed. J. W. Barnes, G. M. Browne, and J. C. Shelton. Leiden: Brill, 1981, pp. 1-11.
^ Veilleux, A. "Monasticism and Gnosis in Egypt." In Proceedings of the Conference on the Roots of Christianity in Egypt, Claremont-Santa Barbara, 1986.

Image caption

User:P4k recently changed the caption of the image (twice) from "The Nag Hammadi library is a collection of early Christian Gnostic texts discovered near the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945." to "Codex IV". The edit summaries haven't been particularly civil, so I thought it might be better to discuss it here, rather than get in a lame edit war.

The former caption may not be ideal, but "Codex IV" goes against Wikipedia:Captions in that it's not a complete sentence. – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 18:44, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you satisfied with it now?P4k (talk) 19:13, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, yes, thanks. – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 20:00, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also, fuck Wikipedia:Captions, the old caption was awful.P4k (talk) 19:14, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you can learn to be civil, you'll probably last a lot longer around here. – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 20:00, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why would I want that?P4k (talk) 20:00, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Link to "Black Iron Prison"

I don't really see what Philip K. Dick's idiosyncratic, modern mythology has to do with early 2nd and 3rd century Gnosticism, and these texts in particular. Maybe link to him from a more specific aspect of Gnosticism that accords more with his notion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.20.132.128 (talk) 09:04, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Marvin Meyer's Edition

I think his edition (2007 I believe) should be mentioned. I'd do it, but I don't trust that much my English. --Nazroon (talk) 19:51, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

File:Kodeks IV NagHammadi.jpg Nominated for Deletion

An image used in this article, File:Kodeks IV NagHammadi.jpg, has been nominated for deletion at Wikimedia Commons in the following category: Media without a source as of 2 October 2011

What should I do?

Don't panic; a discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion, although please review Commons guidelines before doing so.

If the image is non-free then you may need to upload it to Wikipedia (Commons does not allow fair use)
If the image isn't freely licensed and there is no fair use rationale then it cannot be uploaded or used.

This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 19:34, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Removed embedded link metalog.org

Removed embedded link - "Are the Coptic Gospels Gnostic?", could be a reference but metalog.org appears to be down. Jonpatterns (talk) 14:35, 12 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to one external link on Nag Hammadi library. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://web.archive.org/20101227104649/http://metalog.org/ to http://www.metalog.org/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers. —^{cyberbot II}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 08:22, 17 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Dating > point 2 > garbled sentences

I don't know enough about the NH library to sort out the sentences below and put each author with the proper position, but the final sentences (in italics for some reason) are garbled and need to be sorted out. It appears that a sentence got inserted into the midst of another sentences and wasn't properly edited. This is the passage I'm seeing:

"The traditional view and dating has continued to be affirmed by the mainstream of biblical scholars,[14][15] however, G. R. S. Mead His Gospel was presumably the collection of sayings in use among the Pauline churches of his day. Of course the patristic writers say that Marcion mutilated Luke's version.[16][17] have argued that Marcion's gospel predates the canonical Luke and was in use in Pauline churches."

Why Buried?

Why buried rather than burned? Miistermagico (talk) 05:57, 6 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Nag Hammadi library. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070622200655/http://jdt.unl.edu/triadaft.htm to http://jdt.unl.edu/triadaft.htm
Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Neoplatonism

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 09:10, 9 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified (February 2018)

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Nag Hammadi library. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 09:03, 11 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Broken citation

There is a "Khosroev 2016" citation that has been broken since the day it was added (without complete source information). The author has multiple publications that year, including one listed at his ru.wikipedia article, and two more findable quickly with Google search on Aleksandr Leonovich Khosroev 2016. I don't know which source was intended, so I'm not in a position to fix it. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:23, 9 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Barns, J.W.B. "Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Covers of the Nag Hammadi Codices." In Essays on the Nag Hammadi Library, ed. M. Krause. Leiden: Brill, 1975, pp. 9-18

[2] Robinson, J.M. "Introduction," in The Nag Hammadi Library in English. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1977, pp. 16ff.

[3] See, especially, Shelton, J.C. "Introduction," in Nag Hammadi Codices: Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Cartonnage of the Covers, ed. J. W. Barnes, G. M. Browne, and J. C. Shelton. Leiden: Brill, 1981, pp. 1-11.

[4] Veilleux, A. "Monasticism and Gnosis in Egypt." In Proceedings of the Conference on the Roots of Christianity in Egypt, Claremont-Santa Barbara, 1986.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]