This volume presents critical editions of three of the most fragmentary codices in the Nag Hammadi Library. Their nine tractates are presented in an English translation with critically edited transcriptions of Coptic texts, including introductions and notes. A complete set of indices is provided for Coptic and Greek words, proper names, ancient texts and authors, and modern authors. The contents of these three ancient books reflect the rich diversity of the Library as a whole. They include a fragmentary (and apparently non-Christian) revelation descent narrative (Hypsiphrone); a non-Christian Sethian text reflecting heavy platonizing influence (Allogenes); Hellenistic Greek wisdom literature (Sentence of Sextus); a non-christian Sethian text, secondarily Christianized (Trimorphic Protennoia); Valentinian Gnosticism (A Valentinian Exposition); a Christian-Gnostic tractate with Valentinian affinities (The Interpretation of Knowledge). A Christian-Gnostic (perhaps Valentinian) homily on the gospel (the Gospel of Truth); the first page of On the Origin of the World (completely preserved in NHC II) and an identified fragmentary tractate with ethical content. There are also five Valentinian liturgical supplements appended to Allogenes. The publication of these religio-philosophical materials from Nag Hammadi provides the scholar and interested reader with critical editions of texts that help to fill in background and context of gnostic origins, and that shed light on the interaction among early Christianity and gnostic movements in antiquity.

An die Seite des Corpus der Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller (GCS) stellte Adolf von Harnack die Monographienreihe der Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur (TU), die er bereits 1882 begründet hatte und die nunmehr als »Archiv für die ... Ausgabe der älteren christlichen Schriftsteller« diente. In ihr werden vor allem die alten Übersetzungen der im Corpus erscheinenden Schriften teils im Original, teils in deutscher oder einer anderen modernen Sprache gedruckt. Daneben steht die Reihe auch für Voruntersuchungen zu den Editionen und für begleitende Abhandlungen offen.

The self-emptying of Christ, proclaimed in the letter to the Philippians 2:7, remains a much-debated topic in modern theology and exegesis. The Interpretation of Kenosis from Origen to Cyril of Alexandria brings the insights of Greek Christianity to the understanding of kenosis to illustrate that new dimensions of the topic open up when it is examined in the historical era of early Christianity. Origen of Alexandria showed that his understanding of kenosis allowed him to resist overly confining understandings of divine immutability, yet retain the conviction that the immutable Word's self-emptying calls the Christian believer to awe and wonder. Gregory of Nyssa found in kenosis a way to emphasize the Son of God's embrace of all of human life, including historical development. Cyril of Alexandria, finally, the term kenosis more than anyone else in Greek-speaking Christianity. It was a theme across all major eras and genres of his writing, from scriptural exegesis to doctrinal disputes, including those about the divinity of the Son and the natural union of the Son with human reality. Cyril found in kenosis an anchor point for two themes: first, that the strangeness and shocking quality of the term kenosis reminds the believer that God's categories always stretch beyond human "who emptied himself?" can only be answered by a single-subject Christology that proclaims the kenosis of the Word. This book opens and closes with chapters relating early Christian teaching on Christ's self-emptying to modern scripture scholarship and to concerns of feminist systematic theology.

Both the Thunder: Perfect Mind (NHC VI,2) and the Trimorphic Protennoia (NHC XIII,1) present their readers with goddesses who descend in such auditive terms as sound, voice, and word. In Linguistic Manifestations in the Trimorphic Protennoia and the Thunder: Perfect Mind, Tilde Bak Halvgaard argues that these presentations reflect a philosophical discussion about the nature of words and names, utterances and language, as well as the relationship between language and reality, inspired especially by Platonic and Stoic dialectics. Her analysis of these linguistic manifestations against the background of ancient philosophy of language offers many new insights into the structure of the two texts and the paradoxical sayings of the Thunder: Perfect Mind.

1999 Biblical Archaeology Society Publication Award for the category Best Book Relating to the Old Testament. Explores the evolution of the biographical traditions of some fifteen biblical figures

The volume contains a critical review of data, results and open problems concerning the principal Greek and Coptic majuscule bookhands, based on previous research of the author, revised and updated to offer an overview of the different graphic phenomena. Although the various chapters address the history of different types of scripts (i.e. biblical majuscule, sloping poitend majuscule, liturgical majuscule, epigraphic and monumental scripts), their juxtaposition allows us to identify common issues of the comparative method of palaeography. From an overall critical assessment of these aspects the impossibility of applying a unique historical paradigm to interpret the formal expressions and the history of the different bookhands comes up, due to the fact that each script follows different paths. Particular attention is also devoted to the use of Greek majuscules in the writing of ancient Christian books. A modern and critical awareness of palaeographic method may help to place the individual witnesses in the context of the main graphic trends, in the social and cultural environments in which they developed, and in a more accurate chronological framework.

This Festschrift honors the life and work of John D. Turner (Charles J. Mach University Professor of Classics and History at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln) on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Professor Turner’s work has been of profound importance for the study of the interaction between Greek philosophy and Gnosticism in late antiquity. This volume contains essays by international scholars on a broad range of topics that deal with Sethian, Valentinian and other early Christian thought, as well as with Platonism and Neoplatonism, and offer a variety of perspectives spanning intellectual history, Greek and Coptic philology, and the study of religions.

This groundbreaking study argues that the Gospel of Thomas was written in Greek and influenced by New Testament writings.

An uplifting study of Jesus, his times and his teaching

Le traite intitule L'Allogene (litteralement d'une autre race, etranger) est une apocalypse qui raconte la montee dans l'au-dela d'un personnage denomme Allogene et les revelations qu'il y recoit de la part d'etres divins. Ce traite appartient a un courant qui a du se developper apres 220 de notre ere (puisqu'il est inconnu d'Irenee et d'Hippolyte), probablement en Occident. Vers 300, Porphyre, dans sa Vie de Plotin, declare que le philosophe s'en prit a certains gnostiques qui produisaient des apocalypses de Zoroastre, de Zostrien, de Nicothee, d'Allogene, de Messos et d'autres figures du meme genre (16). La plupart des specialistes pensent que les traites Allogene et Zostrien retrouves a Nag Hammadi (NH XI, 3 et VIII, 1) doivent etre identifies aux revelations mentionnees par Porphyre. L'Allogene appartient a un ensemble d'ecrits, designes sous l'appellation de traites platonisants sethiens, qui comprend outre les deux traites connus de Porphyre, les Trois Steles de Seth (NH VII, 5) et Marsanes (NH X). Ces quatre traites partagent une metaphysique et une ontologie caracteristiques de Plotin et des neoplatoniciens tardifs, ainsi que de certaines sources medioplatoniciennes. Les particularites linguistiques et les nombreuses difficultes que presente le texte copte de L'Allogene indiquent qu'il s'agit tres certainement d'un ouvrage originellement compose en grec et dont le vocabulaire metaphysique d'une grande technicite a du representer un defi de taille pour ses traducteurs coptes. L'original grec a vraisemblablement ete compose quelque part en Mediterranee orientale, peut-etre a Alexandrie, vers 240, pour ensuite aboutir a Rome au milieu du IIe siecle, ou il fut lu et refute dans l'ecole de Plotin. C'est dire son importance pour l'histoire du gnosticisme et pour celle du platonisme. Le present volume offre une introduction au traite, un texte copte nouvellement etabli, une traduction francaise et un index verborum.