Nag Hammadi Codex VII
Journal article by Nicola Denzey; The Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 118, 1998
Journal Article Excerpt
Nag Hammadi Codex VII by Nicola Denzey Edited by BIRGER A. PEARSON. The Coptic Gnostic Library; Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies, vol. 30. Leiden: E. J. BRILL, 1996. Pp. xxvi + 479. HF1 198, $127.75. The year 1995 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the thirteen codices which comprise the Nag Hammadi library. The fifty-two tractates they contain have dramatically altered our understanding of early Christian heterodox communities. In the past five decades, an international team of scholars has endeavored to make this discovery fully accessible to all, a movement spearheaded by James Robinson at Claremont, the driving force behind the Coptic Gnostic Library project. The Coptic Gnostic Library includes not only the Nag Hammadi tractates, but also the contents of three additional codices, the Papyrus Berolinensis 8502, the Askew codex, and the Bruce codex, all known prior to 1945. The series in which the Library is published, Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies, now boasts thirty-six volumes of studies, editions and conference proceedings. The series, with contributions from American, German, and Dutch scholars, parallels that produced by scholars at the Universite Laval: the Bibliotheque copte de Nag Hammadi. Nag Hammadi Codex VII completes the series of critical editions from this Claremont-based group. As a collaborative work, Nag Hammadi Codex VII required considerable time to complete; it represents the work of ten contributors, some of whom have been involved with the project since the 1960s. Frederik Wisse's introduction of the Paraphrase of Shem, to cite an example, represents work from years ago. Gregory Riley, by contrast, has completely redone the work of Joseph A. Gibbons on the Second Treatise of the Great Seth. In some cases, the old and new meet, as in Michel Desjardins' contribution of a new introduction to James Brashler's edition of the Apocalypse of Peter. This collaborative effort works - the volume strikes the right balance between the strengths of many experts contributing their best efforts and research to the field, and the careful editing of Birger Pearson, which imposes a rigid enough framework to give coherence to a disparate collection of materials. The volume begins with a detailed introduction to the orthographic and papyrological details of the codex. Codex VII, the best preserved of the Nag Hammadi codices, contains five separate tractates: the Paraphrase of Shem, the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Teachings of Silvanus and the Three Steles of Seth. Each tractate has an introduction, a critical edition of the text in Coptic with a facing-page English translation (Greek loanwords in Coptic are transliterated into Greek and included after their English translation), and notes by the critical editor. Indices of Coptic and Greek words and a list of proper names complete the volume. The series' strengths are the critical introductions, absent from the English translations assembled in the Nag Hammadi Library in English (NHLE). Since the NHLE was last revised in 1990, the introductions and bibliographies in this series represent the most up-to-date summaries of scholarship in a nascent field. The five treatises of codex VII constitute an eclectic collection. Their diversity raises provocative questions about the nature of the Egyptian monastic community which assembled them in the fourth century or earlier. It would be inaccurate to label all these texts "gnostic" - a conventional label now in the process of reassessment. The syncretic Teachings of Silvanus, for instance, belongs to the genre of early Hellenistic-Christian wisdom literature. The Paraphrase of Shem is an apocalypse with no clearly Christian overtones, although its author seems to be familiar with Genesis. The Apocalypse of Peter, too, is a revelatory text, clearly Christian, with a worldview consistent with other Christian gnostic apocalyptic writings. The Second Treatise of the Great Seth and the Three Steles of Seth share an eponymous hero in their titles, but otherwise have divergent styles and perspectives. The first is a gnostic homily, in which Christ exhorts his followers to hold fast to their sense of community and self-identity in the face of opposition from the Great Church. This paraenetic work is thus an important source for inter-Christian polemic in the second or third century. The Three Steles of Seth, by comparison, contains no clearly Christian elements. Its author weaves together Jewish and Neoplatonist strands of thought into a revelatory, hymnic work which formed the basis of one community's liturgical ascent to its celestial origin.The historian may be frustrated by the sheer impossibility of reconstructing community from the tractates contained in codex VII, and the morass ... |
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