Digging around a massive boulder, they hit a red earthenware jar, almost a meter high, sealed with bitumen. One day, Muhammad Ali and his brothers went out to dig for sabakh, a soft soil they used to fertilize their crops. Thirty years after their discovery, the Egyptian who found them, Muhammad Ali al-Sammn, told of their discovery. There discovery was one of the major archaeological finds of the twentieth century. Of course, the Nag Hammadi documents were not found in a monastery library in 1945, but rather buried in clay jars in the region of Nag Hammadi about three kilometers from the village of al-Qasr. A number of other Egyptian monasteries also house considerable collections. Catherines maintains an enormous collection of ancient and important Christian texts, but this is not the only important monastic library in Egypt. Catherine in the Sinai, though after a roundabout journey through Russia is now in the British Museum. In fact, the Codex Syniaticur which was used as a basis for the English translation of most modern bibles was discovered in the Monastery of St. As the home of monasticism, Egypt contained a proliferation of early monasteries, frequently located in the dry desert, which made perfect repositories for large Christian libraries. It should come as no surprise that such ancient volumes have been found in Egypt either. What they do reveal is the diversity of the early church in the Holy Land, during the formative years of Christianity. The Gnostic texts of Nag Hammadi number fifty-two comprising 1240 pages, and make up a fairly complete Gnostic library.Ĭertainly the Nag Hammadi documents are important historical texts. 180, declares that heretics "boast that they possess more gospels than there really are.'' 120-150, since Irenaeus, the orthodox Bishop of Lyons, writing C. However, it is believed that they are copies of earlier texts written in Greek, though scholars sharply disagree about the dating of the original texts. Examination of the datable papyrus used to thicken the leather bindings, and of the Coptic script, place them c. The Gnostic texts are called the "unaltered gospels," and the New Testament texts are dismissed as propaganda for the goddess-bashers.Ībout the dating of the manuscripts themselves there is little debate. In order to deliver on his conspiratorial plot, Brown has to lay the groundwork by having his main characters deny the inspiration and authority of the biblical text and replace Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John with the Gnostic gospels found just after World War II at Nag Hammadi.
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