Nag Hammadi Quotes

receiving knowledge means truly to come into being, to be manifested, whereas those who remain in error do not really exist at all

Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you.

Focus your attention upon yourselves. Do not focus your attention upon other things—that is, what you have cast away from yourselves. Do not return to eat what you have vomited. Do not be moth-eaten, do not be worm-eaten, for you have already gotten rid of that. Do not be a place for the devil, for you have already destroyed him. Do not strengthen what stands in your way, what is collapsing, to support it. One who is lawless is nothing. Treat the lawless one more harshly than the just one, for the lawless does what he does because he is lawless, but the just does what he does with people because he is righteous. Do the Father’s will, then, for you are from him.

Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.

Steady the feet of those who stumble and extend your hands to the sick. Feed the hungry and give rest to the weary. Awaken those who wish to arise and rouse those who sleep, for you embody vigorous understanding. If what is strong acts like this, it becomes even stronger.

Another newly discovered text from Nag Hammadi, Trimorphic Protennoia (literally, the “Triple-formed Primal Thought”), celebrates the feminine powers of Thought, Intelligence, and Foresight.

What did Jesus say to you? Thomas said to them: If I tell you one of the words which he said to me, you will take up stones (and) throw them at me; and a fire will come out of the stones (and) burn you up. [Gospel of Thomas - 13]

The Gnostic has always been free to express his or her Gnosis in the manner he or she wishes. The Gnostics of the Nag Hammadi Library perhaps could be considered free thought, free spirited seekers of Gnosis, who reject authority and dogma.

Being male forms, since they have not originated from the sickness, which is femaleness,36 but from one who has already left the sickness behind, possess the name “church.” For

This idea inspires another impressive image, that of cosmic existence as a nightmarish dream, whose unreal nature is understood only when the dreamer wakes up

The Secret Book of James1 The Letter of James (1, 1–8) [James]2 writes to….3 Peace be [with you from] peace, [love] from love, [grace] from grace, [faith] from faith, life from holy life. Secret Books (1, 8–2, 7) You have asked me to send you a secret book revealed to me and Peter by the master,4 and I could not turn you

The Coptic Achievement In vivid contrast, the Egyptian churches certainly did reach the hearts of their natives, and from early times. Even the name Copt is a corruption of Aigyptos—that is, native Egyptians, whose language descends from the tongue of the pyramid builders. (The word Aigyptos derives from the name of ancient Memphis, the city of Ptah.) When nineteenth-century scholars translated the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone, they did so by using the language they found spoken in the liturgies of the Coptic church. Though Alexandrians wrote and thought in Greek, Coptic was from the earliest years a sophisticated language of Christian literature and theology, making it easy to spread the faith among ordinary Egyptians. The famous Nag Hammadi collection of alternative scriptures, probably written in the fourth century, is in Coptic.

Published in 1977 in English in its entirety, the Nag Hammadi collection provides strong evidence of Jewish sectarian influence on Gnostic speculation, and its contents have augmented enormously our knowledge of the teaching, ritual, and purpose of Gnosticism.

The origins of the "Gospel of Thomas" remain a topic of scholarly debate. It is believed to have been composed in the early to mid-second century AD, possibly in Syria. The primary surviving manuscript, in Coptic, was discovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945, as part of a collection of Gnostic texts.

à ceux dont l’âme a faim et soif de la lumière d’amour libératrice, je les invite à explorer certains travaux moins connus, tels que les manuscrits de la mer Morte et les manuscrits de Nag Hammadi. Ils y trouveront des traductions directes de discours du

together a few hundred years after Jesus’s crucifixion. But we know different. We know for a fact that early Christianity was very diverse in its beliefs and in its writings. It was made up of scattered communities of people who had competing interpretations of what Jesus was and what he preached and what he did, communities that based their faiths on very different ideas. And before too long, they started squabbling about whose version was right. Ultimately, one of these groups won by gaining more converts than the others. And the winners decided which of these early writings were the ones their converts should follow, they changed them to fit the story they settled on, and they branded all the others blasphemous and heretical and suppressed them. They buried the competition, along with their beliefs and practices, and then they rewrote the history of the whole struggle. My point is, they decided what would be considered genuine, sacred scripture, and what wouldn’t. And they did a great job. There’s hardly anything left of the texts they didn’t like. The only reason we know they even existed is that they’re occasionally mentioned by early church writers, and the handful of copies we have of any of these competing versions are down to the occasional fluke, like the discovery of that stash of gnostic gospels at Nag Hammadi back in the 1940s.

In December 1945 an Egyptian peasant, digging for soft and fertile soil near the village of Nag Hammadi in upper Egypt, exhumed a red earthenware jar. It proved to contain thirteen codices— papyrus books or scrolls—bound in leather.

The Nag Hammadi scrolls are a collection of biblical texts, essentially Gnostic in character, which date, it would appear, from the late fourth or early fifth century—from about A.D. 400.

the discovery in Upper Egypt of a stash of manuscripts in 1945. In the village of Nag Hammadi, not far from Luxor and the Valley of the Kings, thirteen ancient codices were unearthed, containing over fifty crumbling texts once thought to have been destroyed during the early Church’s struggle to define orthodoxy.

The Nag Hammadi Library, as its collection of works is now known, has, since its miraculous discovery just after the war, been published in its entirety. It is freely available on the Internet.

Przed sześćdziesięcioma laty w miejscowości Nag Hammadi w Egipcie odnaleziono prawdziwy skarb w postaci zapomnianych „Ewangelii”, zlokalizowany w pobliżu bardzo starej osady koptyjskich chrześcijan. Zwoje te były datowane na ten sam okres i miały podobne pochodzenie co wiele z późniejszych kanonicznych „autoryzowanych” Ewangelii, a przez długi czas określane były zbiorową nazwą „gnostyczne”. Miano to nadał im niejaki Ireneusz, jeden z wczesnych ojców Kościoła, który objął je zakazem, uznając za teksty heretyckie. Obejmowały one „Ewangelie” oraz dokumenty narracyjne dotyczące postaci marginalnych, lecz istotnych, jakie zostały zaakceptowane przez „Nowy” Testament, między innymi „niewiernego” Tomasza i Marii Magdaleny. Obecnie zaliczana jest do nich Ewangelia Judasza, o której istnieniu było wiadomo od setek lat, lecz dopiero niedawno ujrzała świat i została opublikowana wiosną 2006 roku przez National Geographic Society.

»Vosotros estad también alerta y guardaos del mundo. Ceñid vuestros lomos con fortaleza y preparaos para la acción, para que los ladrones no puedan penetrar y encuentren cerrado el paso hacia vosotros; pues si no las dificultades que esperáis se materializarán.

...the discoveries at Nag Hammadi reopen fundamental questions. They suggest that Christianity as we know it might not have survived at all. Had Christianity remained multiform, it might well have disappeared from history, along with dozens of rival religious cults of antiquity. I believe that we owe the survival of Christian tradition to the organizational and theological structure that the emerging church developed.

44. Jesús dijo: «A quien blasfeme contra el Padre, se le perdonará, y a quien blasfeme contra Hijo, se le perdonará también. Pero a quien blasfeme contra el Espíritu Santo no se le perdonará ni en la tierra ni en el cielo».

46. Jesús dijo: «Desde Adán hasta Juan el Bautista no hay entre los nacidos de mujer nadie que sea mayor que Juan el Bautista, como para no tener que inclinarse ante él.

48. Jesús dijo: «Si dos personas hacen la paz bajo un mismo techo, después que la hayan hecho dirán al monte: ¡muévete de aquí! Y éste se moverá».

Él le contestó: «Bienaventurados aquellos que han escuchado la palabra del Padre y la han guardado de verdad. Porque vendrán días en que diréis: Bendito el vientre que no concibió y los pechos que no amamantaron».

¿Qué nobleza es ésta? Primero fue el adulterio, después el asesinato. Y él fue engendrado en adulterio porque fue el hijo de la serpiente. Así que llegó a ser un asesino, semejante a

Entre los espíritus impuros los hay machos y hembras. Los machos son los que se unen con las almas que habitan en una forma femenina, pero las hembras son las que se mezclan con los que viven en una forma masculina por culpa de una desobedienciaY ninguno puede escapar de ellos porque los retienen si el novio y la novia no reciben un poder masculino o un poder femenino desde el reflejo de la cámara nupcial. Cuando las mujeres lascivas ven a un varón sentado solo, saltan sobre él y juegan con él y lo contaminan. Lo mismo

su padre, y mató a su hermano. De hecho, toda relación sexual que se realiza entre los que no son semejantes entre sí es adulterio.

Cuando lo soltaron se encontró con que estaba todavía en el mismo sitio. Hay hombres que hacen muchos viajes pero que no avanzan hacia ningún destino. Cuando les llegó la noche no vieron ninguna ciudad ni ningún pueblo, ni creación, ni naturaleza, ni potencia, ni ángel. Los desgraciados habían trabajado en vano.

potencias? ¿Cómo podrá […]? Hay algunos que dicen: «Somos fieles», para […] los espíritus inmundos y los demonios. Porque si tuvieran el Espíritu Santo ningún espíritu inmundo se pegaría a ellos. No temas la carne ni la ames. Si la temes, se convertirá en tu maestro y amo. Si la amas, te devorará y te paralizará.

estará en este mundo o en la resurrección o en los lugares intermedios. No quiera Dios que yo sea encontrado allí. En este mundo hay bien y mal. Las cosas buenas nos son buenas, y las malas no son las malas. Pero hay algo malo después de este mundo que es verdaderamente malo, lo que se denomina «el medio». Es muerte.

Because I am the first and the last I am the venerated and the scorned I am the whore and the saint I am the wife and the virgin I am the mother and the daughter I am the arms of my mother I am the sterile one, and my children are many I am the well-wed and the spinster I am the one who gave the light and the one who never gave birth I am the wife and the husband And it was my man who bore me in his belly I am the mother of my father I am the sister of my husband And he is my rejected son Respect me always Because I am the scandalous and the discreet.

The word is like a grain of wheat. When someone sowed it, he had faith in it, and when it sprouted, he loved it, because he saw many grains instead of just one. And after he worked, he was saved because he prepared it as food and he still kept some out to sow. “This is also how you can acquire heaven’s kingdom for yourselves. Unless you acquire it through knowledge,25 you will not be able to find it.

He in whom the Father dwells, and in whom dwell the members of the All, revealed himself first to the one who had lost his faculty to see and showed himself to those who wanted to gain vision, by shining forth with that perfect light.

It was premeditated in the Father’s wisdom that the ones for whom he had planned that they should attain knowledge, as well as all the good things that come with it, should, in addition, also experience ignorance and its pains.

The One is the immeasurable light, pure, holy, immaculate. It is unutterable, and is perfect in incorruptibility. Not that it is just perfection, or blessedness, or divinity: it is much greater.

Plagiarism was not considered blameworthy in the ancient world. Authors freely copied from predecessors without recognition. Thus, the world has no idea about what outside materials, and other teachings were added to the four authorized Gospels of the New Testament. On the other hand, the age and authenticity of the Nag Hammadi texts are not disputed. They were not subjected to two-thousand years of translating, editing, embellishing and re-copying as were the four traditional Gospels. These Nag Hammadi Gospels, and other writings found at Nag Hammadi, challenge the long-held precepts of the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the Christian churches (Lutheran, Baptist, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Evangelical and the like) of today. The Roman Catholic Church and Christian churches are unwilling, unprepared and reluctant to accept these long-hidden gospels.

Gnosticism, as we refer to it here, is not primarily a system of beliefs based on the set of writings found at Nag Hammadi or on the teachings of various groups during the early centuries of Christianity. They are the secret teachings of wisdom passed down through the ages.

Rzekł Jezus : „Niech ten, który szuka nie ustaje w poszukiwaniu, aż znajdzie. I gdy znajdzie Zadrży, a jeśli zadrży, będzie się dziwił i będzie panował nad Pełnią.

[Bóg] jest gnozą, i daje wiedzę. <...> Dlatego jego towarzyszka zostaje mu wysłana, a on opuszcza swego ojca i swą matkę. Nasza siostra Sophia, jest tą, która zstąpiła w niewinności, aby naprawić swój błąd. Dlatego została nazwana „Życie” („Zoe”), to znaczy matka żyjących przez Pronoia absolutnej władzy niebios, przez Epinoię, która się objawiła jemu. Przez nią zakosztowali [Adam i Ewa] doskonałej gnozy (gnosis teleios). Bo jej [Sofii] partner nie przyszedł do niej (sam od siebie), ale przyszedł do niej przez Pełnię (pleroma), po to, aby móc naprawić jej brak.

Kto zna Pełnię będąc pozbawionym siebie, cierpi z braku Pełni. Gdy pozwolicie powstać tamtemu, co jest w was, wtedy to, co macie, uratuje was. Jeślì nie istnieje tamto, co jest w was, wtedy to, czego nie macie w sobie, uśmierci was. Kto znalazł siebie samego, tego świat nie jest wart.

Rzekł Szymon Piotr do nich: „Niech Mariham odejdzie od nas. Kobiety nie są godne życia.” Rzekł Jezus: „Oto poprowadzę ją, aby uczynić ją człowiekiem, aby stała się sama duchem żywym, podobnym do was mężczyzn. Każda kobieta, która uczyni siebie człowiekiem, wejdzie do królestwa niebios.

Rzekł Jezus: Gdy macie zwyczaj czynić dwoje jednością, staniecie się synami człowieczymi i jeśli powiecie: „Góro przesuń się,” ona się przesunie.

Song and the lyric poem came first. Prose was invented centuries later. In Israel, Greece, and China came the primal, model lyrics for two and a half millennia. Read the biblical Song of Songs in Hebrew, Sappho in Greek, and Wang Wei in Chinese and be deeply civilized. You will know the passions, tragedy, spirit, politic, philosophy, and beauty that have commanded our solitary rooms and public spaces. I emphasize solitary, because the lyric, unlike theater and sport, is an intimate dialogue between maker and reader. From the Jews we have their two bibles of wisdom poetry, from the Chinese we have thousands of ancient nightingales whose song is calm ecstasy, and from the Greeks we have major and minor names and wondrous poems. However, because of bigotry, most of Greek poetry, especially Sappho, was by religious decree destroyed from the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. So apart from one complete ode, we read Sappho in fragments. Yet there survive fragrant hills for lovers and dark and luminous mountains for metaphysicians. Most of ancient Greek lyric poetry is contained in this volume. Do not despair about loss. You are lucky if you can spend your life reading and rereading the individual poets. They shine. If technology or return to legal digs in Egypt and Syria are to reveal a library of buried papyri of Greek lyrics equivalent to the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Gnostic Nag Hammadi Library, we should be able to keep singing and dancing for ten moons straight. For now, we have the song, human comedy, political outrage, and personal cry for centuries of good reading.

They established the Empire of Total Destruction with the creation of the Atomic Bomb and its detonation in 1945, but the Logos and Sophia manifested months later in the collection of Words of Wisdom in codices discovered at Nag Hammadi.

Nag Hammadi, On the Origin of the World, tells a variant of the same story:  … he boasted continually, saying to (the angels) … “I am God, and no other one exists except me.” But when he said these things, he sinned against all of the immortal ones … when Faith saw the impiety of the chief ruler, she was angry.… she said, “You err, Samael (i.e., “blind god”). An enlightened, immortal humanity [anthropos] exists before you!”3

In a sense, the rediscovery of the Nag Hammadi Library marks the resurrection of a more historical Jesus, an ecstatic rebel sage who preached enlightenment through rituals involving magical plants, and who is more analogous to the archetypal magician, than the pious ascetic and crucified savior that has come down to us through the Bible’s New Testament.

For where there is envy and strife there is deficiency, but where there is unity there is completeness.

¿Le suena la Epístola de Eugnostos? ¿Los textos de Nag-Hammadi, hallados en Egipto en 1945? ¿O el evangelio de Judas, descubierto hace poco en manos de un traficante de antigüedades?

It was stored away in a safe-deposit box in humid Hicksville, New York, for sixteen years and was placed in a freezer in the Midwest in a misguided effort to separate papyrus pages.

The [Savior answered] and said, “For [this reason I have told] you, ‘[Be filled],’ that you may not [lack. Those who lack] will not [be saved]. To be filled is good and to lack is bad. Yet since it is also good for you to lack but bad for you to be filled, whoever is filled also lacks. One who lacks is not filled in the way another who lacks is filled, but whoever is filled is brought to an appropriate end. So you should lack when you can fill yourselves and be filled when you lack that you may be able to [fill] yourselves more. Be filled with spirit but lack in reason, for reason is of the soul. It is soul.

Do not let heaven’s kingdom become a desert within you. Do not be proud because of the light that enlightens. Rather, act toward yourselves as I myself have toward you. I have put myself under a curse for you that you might be saved.

The efforts of the majority to destroy every trace of heretical “blasphemy” proved so successful that, until the discoveries at Nag Hammadi, nearly all our information concerning alternative forms of early Christianity came from the massive orthodox attacks upon them.

Freedom, however, is the knowledge of the truth, which existed before ignorance came into being and which reigns eternally without beginning and without end;

This aeon we here have been talking about is above the two orders of those who were fighting against one another. It shares nothing with those who hold dominion, nor is it implicated in the sicknesses and the weaknesses belonging to the remembrance or to the imitation. For that in which the Word established himself, filled with joy, was an aeon: it had the form of one, but it also had the constitution of its cause, which is what had been revealed, since it was an image of those who exist in the Fullness and who had come into being out of the abundant delight of the One Who Is.

Those who came into being from the presumptuous thought resemble in fact the Fullnesses of whom they are imitations, though they are phantoms, shadows, and illusions, deprived of reason and light, belonging to this empty thought, being nobody’s offspring.

It is also [called] [129] “the unsinking and fireless light,” not because it sheds light, but rather because those who wear it, and who are worn by it as well, are made into light. It is also called “the eternal life,” which means immortality.

These are the five aeons of the Father. They are: the first human, the image of the Invisible Spirit, that is, Forethought, which is Barbelo, and Thought,23 along with Foreknowledge, Incorruptibility, Life Eternal and Truth.