The discovery of the Nag Hammadi scrolls, in 1945 in upper Egypt by an Arab peasant, represented a pivotal point in the study and understanding of early gnosticism. While the interpretation of the scrolls' content has been heavily debated by historians and theologians worldwide, the scrolls themselves have been riddled with a lot of drama and black market trading.
Discovery and Partial Destruction of the Nag Hammadi Scrolls
Muhammad Ali Al-Samman, an Egyptian peasant discovered the scrolls, when Al-Samman and his brothers had gone to the Egyptian desert to look for soft soil to fertilize their crops. 13 papyrus books, bound in a leather, were discovered when the brothers started digging around a massive boulder.
As Al-Samman and his brothers did not know the value of their discovery, they brought the scrolls home, dumped the books and loose papyrus leaves on the straw near the oven. Their mother admitted to burning some of the papyrus along with the straw to kindle the fire.
How the Nag Hammadi Scrolls Came into Prominence
A few weeks after the discovery of the scrolls, Al-Samman and his brothers are said to have murdered Ahmed Ismail, a man they believed was instrumental for their dad's death. Since they feared being sought out by the police in connection with the murder, they passed the scrolls along to a local priest for safekeeping. A history teacher named Raghib also had a chance to see the books and suspected it had value. The history teacher sent one of the books to a friend in Cairo to determine its value.
After they were sold on the black market through antiquities dealers, the manuscripts eventually caught the attention of the Egyptian Government officials, who bought one book and confiscated 10 and a half of the remaining 13 codices and deposited them in the Coptic museum in Cairo.
Nag Hammadi's 13th Codex Leaves Egypt and is Offered for Sale in America
A large part of the 13th codex containing five extraordinary texts was smuggled out of Egypt and offered for sale in America. Professor Gilles Quispel of Netherlands, was successful in getting the Jung Foundation in Zurich to buy the manuscript. When he looked at the content of the 13th codex, he flew to Egypt to look at the other codices from the Coptic museum.
When Quispel deciphered the first line of the codex he found in the museum, he was surprised to see that it read, "These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and which the twin, Judas Thomas, wrote down."
The scrolls eventually attracted top historians and researchers of gnosticism from all over the world and have been hotly debated to the present day. The texts are Coptic translations of the original Greek works and are believed to have been written 1500 years ago.
Even though the original discoverer, Al-Samman admitted to destroying some of the scrolls, what remains is a collection of 52 texts, that still represent a wealth of information describing the formative years of early Christianity.
Related Reading
Readers may be interested in understanding the basics of gnosticism in What is Gnosticism? To learn more about the archeological discoveries in Qumran and Nag Hammadi, also read Gnostic Gospels of the Nag Hammadi Scrolls and Dead Sea Scrolls - The Qumran Manuscripts
Source
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels [Vintage Books, 1989].
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