Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott examine the provenance of the Nag Hammadi Codices and defend the view that they were produced and read by Christian monks of Upper Egypt in the fourth and fifth centuries. Eschewing the modern classification of these texts as "Gnostic," the authors analyze the codices in the context of the diverse monastic culture of late antique Egypt, with special attention to monasticism in the Thebaid and controversies over extra-canonical books and the theological legacy of Origen. The question of ownership is examined by means of a detailed study of the Nag Hammadi...

Since their discovery in 1945, the significance of the texts contained in the thirteen papyrus manuscripts now known as the Nag Hammadi Codices has been fiercely debated. In the history of scholarship, the texts have primarily been analyzed in light of the contexts of their hypothetical Greek originals, which in a majority of cases have been thought to have been authored in the second and third centuries CE in a variety of contexts. The articles in this volume take a different approach. Instead of focusing on hypothetical originals, they ask how the texts may have been used and understood by...