03 Aug 2007 07:57:37
mountain man
OT: Nag Hammadi [348CE]: Thrice-Great Hermes; and evidence of early christian fabrication

Nag Hammadi Archive, 348 CE.
=================================

A selection of data from Robin Lan-Fox's book
"Pagans and Christians" (1996)

[Editor: What was popular in "Christian Literature"
eleven years after the Boss, it's inventor,
went to the underworld?]

======================================

p.414: Nag Hammadi Library - in Upper Egypt, near Nile
12 books (codices) with leaves from a 13th in jar (1945)
Consistent of 57 Coptic tracts; "spurious gospels".
But "none of the "gnostic christians" wrote/read Coptic."

[Editor: The "gnostic christians" (see above),
were part of the fabrication (of the Galilaeans).]

"The collection is not a single library, not uniformly
heretical, nor even entirely christian."
includes a poor trans of Plato's republic,
and a pagan letter of "Eugnostos the Blessed"
the letter was then given a christian preface
and a conclusion and represented in another copy
as the "wisdom" which Jesus revealed
to his Apostles after his death.

[Editor: Again, here we see the act of
"christianisation of literature" essentially in-progress 348 CE.]

Extant also are three texts: a prayer and two discourses
of Thrice-great Hermes.

[FN:35] "Fascinating postscript on prayer,
carefully inscribed in decorated rectangle"
(Codex 6.7, Robinson,p299)

"I have copied this one discourse of his [Hermes].
Indeed, very many have come to me.
I have not copied these too,
because I thought that they had come to you.
I hesitate to copy these for you,
because perhaps they have come to you already,
and the business may burden you ..."

--- Anonymous "Nag Hammadi" scribe.

Later, RLF summarises ... The picture is intriguing. By c.350,
we have a group of Christian monks who owned such a quantity of texts
from the pagan's spiritual master, "The ",
that a scribe hesitated before sending any more.

[Editor: See further Hermes Trismegistus and Apollonius of Tyana
in the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh The notion that the first century
philosopher, sage and author, Apollonius of Tyana is either
"The Thrice-Great Hermes", or the transmitter of the writings of
"The Thrice-Great Hermes", is intriguing.]

Bindings of the codices carbon-dated to 348 CE.

[Editor: Aside from this C14 citation, with respect to the entire
corpus of new testament related texts, and this is inclusive of
all papyrii fragments, and codexes, I know of only one other
C14 citation. The second and final C14 citation was publsihed
in reference to the newly acquired Gospel of Judas. In this
instance the bindings of the codices (gJudas) carbon-dated
to 290 CE (+/- 60 years).]

conjectured that the books were owned by monks
from the nearby monastic community (Pachomius)

p.415: "Coptic was the language of the majority
in the early Pachomian monasteries (after 350 CE)".

"There were no 'Gnostics' at Nag Hammadi in the
mid-fourth century" "certainly no study group of
Coptic-speaking Hermeticists, pagans who wished
to own so many christain books besides their own."


Thrice-Great Hermes
SUMMARY (p.415):

"Our texts seem to fall into three separate collections,
which were gathered, perhaps, by their owners,
and hidden near a deserted pagan temple when the books
in the monasteries began to be questioned and sought out.
The picture is intriguing. By c.350, we have a group of Christian
monks who owned such a quantity of texts from the pagan's spiritual
master, "The Thrice-Great Hermes", that a scribe hesitated
before sending any more.


300 CE: "christian authors already welcomed "Thrice-Great Hermes"
as a pre-Christian to the Christian theology".[FN:39]
[FN:39] R.M. Ogilvie, Library of Lanctatius (1978) 33-6;
earlier Hermes in Athenag. Leg. 28.6

[Editor: When the boss went west (poisoned by family,
in revenge for the execution of his son Crispus, 326 CE),
Eusebius in his Vita Constantini 337 CE, goes thrice-blessed balistic:

* "I contemplate his thrice-blessed soul in communion with God himself";
* "The end of his life was honorable and thrice blessed";
* "royal deeds of this thrice-blessed prince";
* "our thrice blessed prince";
* "and all united in honoring this thrice blessed prince";
* "and sometimes the thrice blessed one addressed the people ...";
* "the earthly tabernacle of his thrice blessed soul,
according to his own earnest wish,
was permitted to share
the monument of the apostles.

[Editor: It seems clear enough that Constantine had planned
in advance to be the "Thrice-Blessed Thirteenth Apostle"
of the religion which, according to this thesis, he invented.]



p.580: [FN:19] P.Oxy. 1025; 1026

"When a local notable returned to Hermopolis from
Gallienus' Rome in the 260's, the council honored him
with magnificent literary allusions and praises of:


'Thrice-great Hermes, our father's god,
who always stands besides you."

p.659: "By 324, Lactantius was an old man, possibly over 80, family tutor.
"As a pagan witness, the 'Thrice-great Hermes' was dear to Lactantius,
yet absent from Oration. Lactantius had stressed that the truth of miracles
and the power of the cross had a symbolic and prophetic meaning.
He said nothing about the wisdom of the apostles, whom the Oration exalted."

The libraries extract from Plato (mistranslated in Coptic)
refers to the virtue of ...

"casting down every image of the evil Beast and trampling
on them, together with the image of the Lion.
Monks were the supreme destroyers of pagan's religious art,
the "image of the Beast and Lion".

[Editor: He who controlled the technology of literature
controlled the dreams of the future.
Here it appears that the literature of Plato
is being perverted for political incitement
Such evidence, and the patterns of similar facts
surrounding the propaganda of malevolent despots
the world over has its characteristic signs and signals.

This represents a clear citation for the political perversion
of patristic literature at Nag Hammadi c.348 CE,
a practice which was commenced 312,
when Constantine took Rome as his own;
and Eusebius took up the stylus.]


Besides three texts of Hermes, another
pagan text called "Zostrianos" [FN:41]

p.416: "[Father Pachomius] used a cryptic alphabet with a mystical
significance which has still to be deciphered."

[Editor: There's nothing like a good mystery.]

Another Nag Hammadi text --
from a pagan disciple of Hermes, reads:

"I have found the beginning of the power
that is above all powers,
the power without beginning.
I see a fountain bubbling with life.
I have said, 'O my son, I am Mind.
I have seen ...
no words can reveal it ..."

[Editor: Describes mystical illumination from
a universal and cosmic intelligence.
A great pity it is that so much of
the "pagan literature" was destroyed,
if it was not lucky enough to have been interpolated
(Josephus, Lucian, Marcus, etc).

The widely distributed books of the author
Apollonius obviously were destroyed.
His biography by Philostratus c.216 CE,
was exceedingly lucky to have survived.
It's tale of preservation to the arduous road
back to light is an intriguing story.]


PRF Brown
www.mountainman.com.au/essenes
Constantine invented christianity

www.mountainman.com.au/tubelink.html
Keep Paddling into Them ...





04 Aug 2007 09:09:34
Surfer Bob
Re: OT: Nag Hammadi [348CE]: Thrice-Great Hermes; and evidence of early christian fabrication

That's an obsessively impressive collection of theological arguments,
Farmer Brown. And an obsessively impressive collection of surf links.
And an obsessively impressive collection of philosophical writings. I
marvel at the obsessive thoroughness of all your collected texts. Your
mind is wildly detail oriented, which is a good thing as long as it
doesn't drive you crazy! I'm sure the surfing helps quite a bit.

You da man!

Surfer Bob