Was There A Skeleton Found With The Nag Hammadi Library?
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(You are more than welcome to email me questions using the contact button on the sidebar: I do not bite.)
My helper tells me someone came to this weblog with a splendid question: was a skeleton found with the Nag Hammadi Library?
(This evidently appears in Ehrman's book on the Gospel of Judas: I wonder what, if anything, Dr. Ehrman footnotes.)
Short answer: No.
Long answer: It depends on how you treat oral history.
Muhammad Ali, the discoverer of the Nag Hammadi Library told James Robinson, the American scholar who interviewed him, that he found a mummy next to the jar which contained the 13 ancient books. Later attempts by Robinson and others to examine the exact spot found no trace of a mummy, or any burial of any kind. Robinson's published accounts tend not to mention the mummy, it is in his interview notes. Elaine Pagels read those notes (which is why she refers to the mummy in interviews.)
A body would be a tremendous help in sorting out who copied, read, and hid these books — and when. (Unless, of course, the body was from a different century.) However, there has never been any evidence a body ever lay near the spot and Robinson treats the detail as a fantastical elaboration, Pagels does not.
The best short introduction to the (mostly) Gnostic library found near Nag Hammadi, Egypt is a thin square paperback called:
Nag Hammadi Codices: A General Introduction to the Nature and Significance of the Coptic Gnostic Library from Nag Hammadi
Or, failing that, the introduction to:
The Nag Hammadi Library in English
If you're wondering what all the fuss is about, this is a readable (and recent) explanation:
The Gnostic Discoveries: The Impact of the Nag Hammadi Library
-Kushana







Dr. Robinson has spoken many times publically and in classroom settings about the discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices, and he has never mentioned a body. In fact, last Fall (2008), he spoke to a Coptic Studies class and gave an account of the find in meticulous detail. The omission of such a find would be out of character for him.
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Dear Robert Rowland,
I know: my impression has always been that he regards the story as too fanciful to be reliable.
Ask him about it. (I would not mind if he had a word with Dr. Ehrman, as well.)
(I am glad to hear he is in good heath.)
-Kushana Torumekia
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