Kristine Rosland: Reconsidering the Apocryphon of John and Scripture

The Apocryphon of John (Ap. John) four times corrects the creations story from Genesis with the phrase "it is not as Moses said" or similar. Earlier scholarship on Gnosticism took this as evidence of a rejection of the Old Testament that Ap. John and (at least some of) the other Nag Hammadi works were meant to replace. This understanding is no longer tenable. Ap. John’s dependence on Genesis, even when rewriting the creation narrative, has been demonstrated by many, most recently David Creech in his 2017 study The Use of Scripture in the Apocryphon of John.However, discussing the work’s attitude towards ‘Old Testament, ‘the Bible’ or ‘Scripture’ is in itself problematic. Ap. John quotes Genesis and Isaiah, it alludes to John and other New Testament texts, but it also refers to a book of Zoroaster and it is clearly influenced by Plato. What is, then, the canon of Ap. John? Which works are authoritative and what does being authoritative imply?

Hugo Lundhaug: The Book of Thomas and Early Egyptian Monasticism

While the texts of the Nag Hammadi Codices have traditionally been interpreted as expressions of “Gnosticism,” this contribution will draw on recent research indicating a monastic provenance for the Nag Hammadi Codices and analyze the Book of Thomas, the final text of Nag Hammadi Codex II, as an example of early monastic literature. The preserved Coptic text will be approached as a piece of Coptic literature, and compared with other monastic texts roughly contemporary with the Nag Hammadi Codices, including parts of the Pachomian corpus and the writings of Shenoute. Moving beyond traditional questions of the authorship and composition of the hypothetical original, and taking into account the textual fluidity and scribal creativity inherent in the production and dissemination of such literature in Coptic, it will be demonstrated that the Book of Thomas deals with questions of theology and ascetic praxis that were of major interest to Egyptian monks.

Paula Tutty: A reconsideration of the fate of the Psychics in the Tripartite Tractate

The Tripartite Tractate is a long and often obscure text in the Nag Hammadi Codices that has been the subject of only a handful of scholarly works, despite its significance as a fourth or fifth century eschatological treatise. The theme of the creation of Mankind is detailed in the third and final section of the text as the concluding act of a creation myth that culminates in the coming of the Saviour. This text has commonly been explored for its connection to third century Valentinianism, but how was it utilised by fourth century readers? The final section of the work is particularly interesting in this respect, for both its commentary on the fate of the Psychic people and the ethical instructions embedded into the text. It begins with a recapitulation of the creation and characteristics of the Psychics following which, most importantly, it appears to acknowledge that the Psychics possess a form of inward grace that could eventually allow them to receive the same measure of salvation as their Pneumatic counterparts. In my paper, I suggest that this change is prompted by the fact that, whilst the Tripartite Tractate may, in its original form, have been written for use by a small an exclusive sect, it was later utilised within a wider Christian milieu. This has resulted in a reinterpretation and a reworking of the original content in order to fit the new context and developments in soteriological doctrine.