The Nag Hammadi Library

March 13, 2009, 10:48 am by dc-agape.

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The Nag Hammadi Library (NHL) was written by Christians.  Just like all the New Testament Books, these were copied over and over again.  In the same way that the NT Books have errors so do the NHL, each new copy either introducing errors or repeating errors, just like the NT.  In 325CE with Constantine and the Council of Nicaea, some sects were condemned as heretical.  In this particular case the Arianism sect of Christianity was the center of attention.  But do the math; nearly 200 years of scribes re-copying the events of the first century had taken place.  Add to the math that almost none of the Books of the NT were written on a first account basis, except the letters of Paul (who had never met Jesus).  This adds up very quickly to the simple fact that the Books of the NT were cherry picked by a “christians”, over centuries to be taken as the literal “Word of God”.  On essortment.com is an excellent article about this event.  It was not until the third Council of Carthage (397CE) that the New Testament canon was agreed upon.  Anything written that was not cherry picked by this group would soon become “Gnostic”, just as the Arian sect was treated 72 years before.

In fact, to use mostly Paul as the source of Christian doctrine is rather odd to a gay Atheist.  He was not a direct disciple of Jesus, yet almost all of Christian doctrine is taken from his letters in the NT.  Now that takes faith to believe that Paul knew better than the 12 Apostles (yes, I say twelve, see my topic of freewill).  Even Jesus said:

Matt 16:18-19 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.  I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

So Peter is the “cornerstone” of the Church, yet only 2 Books can be directly linked to his authorship.  And even one of those, and possibly both, are still hotly debated as to whether Peter actually wrote the Books of 1^st and 2^nd Peter (both from Wikipedia).  The “rock of the church” not being the central author of the NT will be a topic for my “Becoming an Atheist” posts. 

So with all that said above, why are the Books of the NHL not part of the NT?  Paul was just the first Christian Apologist (Apologetics Index), why would these other Books written as apologies not “hold the same weight”?  Well, if you are a Christian, your faith tells you that the 3^rd Council of Carthage was inspired by the Holy Spirit, even thought it was well over 350 years since the founding of the Christian religion.  On the other hand, if you are not a Christian (Jew, Muslim, Atheist, Hindu, Buddhist, should I go on?) the history of the NT makes you go hummmmmmmmmmmm. Can you truly trust that the writings of Paul should be the only source for the doctrine of Jesus’ religion?  The answer is a simple one – No.  But because the budding Catholic Church destroyed every copy of the “heretical” writings, we only have the Nag Hammadi Library by accident.  No other documents survived that taught a different “Christianity”.  One that might actually be the religion that Jesus wanted!

Remember, nowhere does YHWH or Jesus come down and say “this is correct” about the NT structure.  In fact, both are strangely silent.  It is almost as if when Jesus died he really died.  Not a peep has been heard from the Trinity since the long before the Council of Carthage.  Since the Council was created under very political circumstances, can and should we trust them?  Hence, the Nag Hammadi Library is just as valid as the New Testament.

There are problems with the NHL.  Many of the Books were written in-between the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries.  Many are definitely not “conical”, such as “The Treatise on the Resurrection”, “The Exegesis on the Soul”, and “The Gospel of Philip”.  These Books claim that the resurrection, spiritually, had already occurred.  But in general, these are writings from the earliest period of the Christian religion.  As a gay Atheist, I want to know what they say, and I think that everyone should as well.  Whether you are an Atheist who just wishes the “christians” would go away, or a “dyed in the wool” Christian…these Books are seminal to religion as a whole.  There is no way of getting around the fact that these Books are Christian in nature.  There is no way of getting around that these Books were banned from “conical” Christian doctrine.  There is no way to get around the fact that these Books are just as likely to be “God inspired” as the New Testament.  As a result, I will be adding them to the Holy Texts.  This means that they are part of my experiment and will be treated with the same analytical skills that I have used in the Book of Genesis, Gospel of Mark, the Damascus Document, and the Holy Qur’an.

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