The Nag Hammadi Codices as Monastic Books

Since their discovery in 1945, the significance of the texts contained in the thirteen papyrus manuscripts now known as the Nag Hammadi Codices has been fiercely debated. In the history of scholarship, the texts have primarily been analyzed in light of the contexts of their hypothetical Greek originals, which in a majority of cases have been thought to have been authored in the second and third centuries CE in a variety of contexts. The articles in this volume take a different approach. Instead of focusing on hypothetical originals, they ask how the texts may have been used and understood by those who read the Coptic papyrus codices in which the texts have been preserved and take as their point of departure recent research indicating that these manuscripts were produced and used by early Egyptian monastics. It is shown that the reading habits and theological ideas attested historically for Upper Egyptian monasticism in the fourth and fifth centuries resonate well with several of the texts within the Nag Hammadi Codices.Christian H. Bull/Hugo Lundhaug: Monastic Readings of the Nag Hammadi Codices – Lance Jenott: Peter's Letter to Philip: Textual Fluidity in a New Testament Apocryphon – Ingvild Sælid Gilhus: Ascetic Readings in Codex II from Nag Hammadi – René Falkenberg: The 'Single Ones' in the Gospel of Thomas: A Monastic Perspective – André Gagné: The Gospel of Thomas in a Monastic Context: Reading the Text as a Spiritual Exercise – Hugo Lundhaug: »This is the Teaching of the Perfect Ones«: The Book of Thomas and Early Egyptian Monasticism – Kristine Toft Rosland: »Not as Moses Said« Revisited: Christ as Interpreter of Scripture in the Apocryphon of John – Kimberley A. Fowler: Eschatology in Nag Hammadi Codex II: A Monastic Reading of the Hypostasis of the Archons (NHC II,4) and On the Origin of the World (NHC II,5) – Paul Linjamaa: Why Monks Would Have Read the Tripartite Tractate: A New Look at the Codicology of Nag Hammadi Codex I – Tilde Bak Halvgaard: The Thunder: Perfect Mind and the Notion of Epinoia in Early Christianity – Dylan M. Burns: The Nag Hammadi Codices and Graeco-Egyptian Magical and Occult Literature – Christian Askeland: Translation Technique in the Coptic Version of Plato's Republic – Christian H. Bull: Plato in Upper Egypt: Greek Philosophy and Monastic Origenism in the Coptic Excerpt from Plato's Republic (NHC VI,5)