Who Created the Nag Hammadi Library? Where the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Scriptures Came From, by James Bean
I suspect the monasteries of Saint Pachomius in Egypt during the 4th century was home to many gnostics, thus all the copying of Nag Hammadi books and other gnostic writings.
The Nag Hammadi scriptures were translated from Greek manuscripts into the Coptic language used in Egypt.
From the Preface of, The Nag Hammadi Scriptures, by Marvin Meyer:
"Since most of the tractates are Gnostic, it is assumed that there must have been a sympathetic community in the region that collected, cherished, and then buried its library. The cartonnage — the discarded papyrus used to thicken the inside of the leather covers—contains references to the region near where they were discovered and dates on receipts just before and in the middle of the fourth century. Thus, the time and place of the production of the codices coincides with the emergence of the Pachomian monastic order, with which there may be some association. In fact, fragments of a Coptic letter from a Papnoute to a certain Pahome may be from Papnoutios, the “business manager” of the nearby monastery, to its founder, Pachomius.
"In 367, Athanasius, the orthodox patriarch of Alexandria, wrote an Easter letter to be read in all the monasteries of Egypt, calling upon them to eliminate from their libraries apocryphal writings; in the letter he listed those books that were to be included as acceptable—the oldest extant list of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament. It has been suggested that the Nag Hammadi codices were among the books that had to be excluded but were buried for safekeeping in a sealed jar by those who valued them."
There are notes from monks in the Nag Hammadi itself. Scholars have been rather mindful of the fact the monks are known for copying texts. Also, the location of the discovery site of the Nag Hammadi Library was near a couple of Pachomian monasteries that existed during the same period that the books were copied. Thus we have scholars mentioning Pachomian monks as the most likely source for the Nag Hammadi codices. If we do key-word searches of "Pachomian", "Pachomius", and "monk" we will find much discussion about this in, The Nag Hammadi Library in English, edited by James M. Robinson. For instance, this on page 16:
"Dates found in such cartonnage of Codex VII are 333, 341, 346, and 348 C.E. This indicates that the cover of Codex VII was manufactured after these dates. The cursive scribal hand of some of this discarded papyrus used to line the cover of the same codex may be dated as late as 360 C.E. A document found in the cartonnage of Codex I mentions "Chenoboskeia’’ and “Dio: [polis Parva].” Other locations in.the same general region also occur in the cartonnage of other covers. Personal names, titles, forms of address, and the like that are present in the cartonnage tend to indicate it came from the Pachomian monasteries founded in this region up and down the Nile during the first half of the fourth century. In fact the cartonnage in the cover of Codex VII seems to have belonged to a monk named Sansnos who was in charge of the cattle of a monastery, which would no doubt account for his close relationship to the manufacture of the leather covers. The headquarters monastery of the Pachomian order at Pabau, where the Basilica of Saint Pachomius was located, as well as the third Pachomian monastery at Chenoboskeia, where Pachomius himself began his Christian life as a hermit, are only 8.7 and 5.3 kilometers (5.4 and 3.3 miles) respectively from the place where the library was buried." (page 16) https://archive.org/details/naghammadilibrar0000unse_d5b8
What's especially intriguing are references to Saint Pachomius using a code for secret communications. Seems a bit subversive. That's mentioned by Robinson in his Nag Hammadi Library in English.
These folks were doing their own thing out in the desert, and their library had lots of gnostic texts in it.
One can see the appeal in joining such an intentional spiritual community. Mighty sweet deal for the young monk into mystical Christianity looking for a home. Have read that the Pachomian monasteries, though claimed by Orthodoxy, were not so orthodox.
I bet many of the monks had a Valentinian background and brought Greek copies of various books with them when they joined the community.
It would have been a very sad day indeed when their leadership eventually got taken over by conservative orthodox bishop types during the fifth century. Bishopricks!
