texts like nag hammadi?

I am curious to know if any new texts have been found or if you know of any research teams happening?

Originally posted by japike
I am curious to know if any new texts have been found or if you know of any research teams happening?

Have a look at my page on manuscripts at www.tertullian.org... At the top it has details on various manuscript finds.

Earlier this year a Polish team at Qurna in Egypt found some coptic manuscripts, contents unknown. At the moment a gnostic 'Gospel of Judas' that has been circulating in the antiquities trade for at least 20 years is being readied for publication.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Ah very interesting! Oh it drives me crazy how long it takes to get them out to the public. I am very interested in the Gospel of Judas!

It seems to me the most important texts are Nag and Gospel of Thomas would you agree? Also what would you say are the next in line as importance of facts/knowledge?

Also whats the deal with the Vatican? Do you think they are sitting on a lot of misc texts in the Vatican library? It kind of pisses me off that the would keep secrets like that! Who are they to control a man's knowledge of history fake or not! I am just guessing they do with many other texts based on the summary of Judas...fill me in though.

Originally posted by roger_pearse

Originally posted by japike
I am curious to know if any new texts have been found or if you know of any research teams happening?

Have a look at my page on manuscripts at www.tertullian.org... At the top it has details on various manuscript finds.

Earlier this year a Polish team at Qurna in Egypt found some coptic manuscripts, contents unknown. At the moment a gnostic 'Gospel of Judas' that has been circulating in the antiquities trade for at least 20 years is being readied for publication.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Originally posted by japike
Ah very interesting! Oh it drives me crazy how long it takes to get them out to the public. I am very interested in the Gospel of Judas!

The main problem with quick publication is that whichever scholar gets hold of a text wants to make his reputation -- a quick publication will inevitably be superficial. This was the problem with Nag Hammadi, and James Robinson had to do a lot of politicking to get past it. In the case of the 'Gospel of Judas' the dubious ownership of the text has a lot to do with it.

It seems to me the most important texts are Nag and Gospel of Thomas would you agree? Also what would you say are the next in line as importance of facts/knowledge?

It depends entirely 'important to whom'. For the study of gnosticism, certainly the Nag Hammadi texts are the most important, which include the coptic Gospel of Thomas. But they tell us nothing much about Christian origins, unless we belong to the sort of revisionist that tries to date Christianity late and heresy early. That always irritates me, I must say. They do tell us something about the paganism of the day, since they combine Christianity and paganism, as Tertullian alleged the gnostics did (De praescriptione haereticorum 7ff -- ideally in Greenslade's translation). One example may be the references in the 'Gospel of Judas' to Jesus as Allogenes -- the stranger. Such a description will immediately suggest the Stranger of Plato's Laws to those who have read them; and it is a fact that the Nag Hammadi codices did contain portions of Plato.

More interesting to me are the Toura discoveries of lost works by Origen and Didymus the Blind. The discoveries of Manichean texts at Medinet Madu are important for that subject also.

Also whats the deal with the Vatican? Do you think they are sitting on a lot of misc texts in the Vatican library? It kind of pisses me off that the would keep secrets like that! Who are they to control a man's knowledge of history fake or not! I am just guessing they do with many other texts based on the summary of Judas...fill me in though.

The idea that the Vatican hide texts is a Victorian urban legend. The Vatican did used to have closed shelves. The example I know of is the single medieval manuscript of Zosimus, New History, which abused Constantine and the Christians, and sat on those shelves for centuries. But such habits ended in the mid-19th century.

What did not stop was the sheer difficulty of getting access, or of using the collection when you did. Scholars couldn't get access. Those who did were forbidden to copy anything, even by hand. They weren't allowed to consult the catalogue. And so on. Naturally rumours sprang up about what the papists were trying to hide.

The truth, according to a recent paper which I wish I'd kept, was more prosaic. It was that the popes employed Italian librarians. Even today these are an utter pain in the neck to deal with. I've had very few responses to emails to them. Around 1900 the then pope got fed up with all the bad publicity, and turned the running of the library over to the Swiss guard. These are all Germans, and so very efficient. Consequently during the last century the collection has been very thoroughly examined. They are also one of only two libraries to respond by email to my enquiries about a particular manuscript. So new texts will be found elsewhere.

All the best,

Roger Pearse