The Prayer of the Apostle Paul

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Codex 1 Tractate 1

The entire Nag Hammadi Library can be read at the Gnostic Society Library.  Any future posts that I do with these Codices will have the link at the bottom of the post.  But I am giving you the link to the Gnostic Society Library in this post right now.  Enjoy!

The first Tractate of the First Codex is called the “The Prayer of the Apostle Paul”.  But unless he was the original Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he was not the author of this “Prayer”.  There a number of reasons for me to say this.  The Editor of “The Nag Hammadi Library: The Definitive Translation of the Gnostic Scriptures”, James M Robinson, describes a number of similarities between this “Prayer” and the Gnostic doctrines. Which I will describe below.  And reading Paul in the NT compared to this “Apostle Paul” it is obviously not the same person.

In James M Robinson’s introduction he makes no bones about the date of writing was certainly past Paul’s lifetime (150 – 299 CE).  He also writes in the introduction that this Tractate is related to Valentinian doctrine (also from the Gnostic Society).  And yes, this is the same man as Saint Valentine (Wikipedia) that Valentine’s Day is named after.  The Catholic Online has a shorter less direct assumption that this Saint and this Gnostic was the same person.  Recently an Esoteric Christian actually blogged on the topic of this Saint (Katie’s Esoteric Christianity Blog).

The Editor also mentions “striking resemblance” of this “Prayer” to “The Three Steles of Seth” and “The Gospel of Philip”.  Both of these Texts are tractates in the Nag Hammadi Library.  And both of these Texts are Gnostic.  I will get to posting on them at later dates.

Personally, as a gay Atheist, I can read the NT and read this Prayer, and I can know that if this had anything to do with the Apostle Paul he was the original Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  I can easily say this because of the language used in this Tractate.  As with the Dead Sea Scrolls, these Tractates are the originals, and as a result, when reading them I can feel the author’s emotions.  The NT and OT have been copied so many times and I have been exposed to them so much that the original author’s emotions have been erased from the documents.

In “The Prayer of the Apostle Paul” the author uses a “whine” that is just not the Paul that is in the NT.  The author begs:

A.I.5-10 [I am] yours; the one who has come forth from you.  You are [my] mind; bring me forth!  You are my treasure house; open for me! You [are] my fullness; take me to you! You are (my) repose; give me [the] perfect thing that cannot be grasped!

In reading this, first I should explain the [ ] and the ( ).  The [ ] indicate were the translation is rough at best, due to damage to the original document.  The ( ) is material directly supplied by the editor of the translation.  In the above quote these marks are there specifically to make the reading more similar to the English language. 

From this quote, it is quite obvious that this is not Paul from the NT.  Take a look at this passage:

Philippians 1:20 I eagerly expect and hope that I will not be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in by body, whether in life or by death.

Warning: Having read this “Prayer” and looking back on Paul’s writings I do see his “whining”. But it is still different from the whining in this “Prayer”. When looking at Philippians it is obvious that Paul is not 100% confident about his own actions. But he confident that the Gospel will be spread and glorified by whatever happens to him.

The writer of this “Prayer” continues to use phrases that just do not belong to Paul.  Words like the “Paraclete of [truth]” and “First-born of the Pleroma of grace” just do not fit Paul’s style.  Paraclete is defined as the “Holy Spirit”.  And Pleroma is defined as “abundance, plenty” (both definitions are from Dictionary.com).  Phrases like these are just too flowery for Paul.  In the NT he was simple and to the point, these “over the top” adjectives were just not his way of talking or writing.  Why should we even believe that this is how he prayed?

What I find most humorous, to a gay Atheist, is the last closing words of the “Prayer”:

B.I.3-6 [for] yours is the power [and] the glory and the praise and the greatness for ever and ever. [Amen.]

Wow, that is almost exactly how the Lord’s Prayer ends:

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Gnostics influence of Christianity is very evident from this prayer’s ending and from the practice of Valentine’s Day.  So even if this was a pseudonymous written Holy Text, even if all the Hag Hammadi is the same, it tells us something about Christianity in general.  BTW, pseudonymous writing was also used in the NT: read the controversy over the Gospel of Matthew (Wikipedia) and 2^nd Peter (Bible.org). 

I will end with this thought:  the New Testament was not canonized until the Council of Carthage (397 CE).  Any document written before this time would have been used by certain Christians as Holy Documents.  What can be told of the date the Nag Hammadi were collected indicate that it was in the years around 341, 346, and 348 CE.  This is the collection date, not the original “publishing” date.  So, in the end, the Nag Hammadi are just as likely to be Books of the New Testament as the actual Books that were chosen at the Council of Carthage.

This entry was posted on March 14, 2009, 12:10 pm at 12:10 and is filed under The Nag Hammadi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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