When those Greek originals were composed has been a topic for
vigorous debate. For example, Elaine Pagels has proposed that
theGospel of Thomas was written earlier than the canonical
Gospel of John(Pagels 2003). She suggests that this is why the
Gospel of Johnpresents such a hostile portrait of the disciple
Thomas as the most unenlightened of Jesus’ followers (such as
the ‘doubting Thomas’ of John20.24–9). In Pagels’ view, this
polemical caricature of Thomas was intended to subvert the teach-
ings contained in the gospel that went under his name and which
promised secret insights into Jesus’ message. Pagels’ dating,
however, is a hypothesis – plausible it might be, but it cannot be
proved. The absence of Greek originals of the Gospel of Thomas
and the other Nag Hammadi texts means that they cannot be dated
precisely. As it is, estimates for the dates of the various writings
in the collection range from the first century to the third.
Discussions of the Nag Hammadi tracts in a second- or
third-century context obscure a significant detail about them.
What we possess are Coptic copies, not the Greek originals, and
the manuscripts can be dated quite precisely. Their leather bind-
ings contain a material known to archaeologists as cartonnage.
This is made from scraps of papyrus pasted together and it gives
the book covers rigidity. Study of the cartonnage of the Nag
Hammadi codices has revealed a number of dated papyrus docu-
ments, the latest of which is a receipt written in 348. This gives
the earliest date for the construction of the bindings. Thus the
manuscripts belong to a historical context that is 150 years later
than the one in which the texts themselves are usually discussed.
Any explanation of the Nag Hammadi library must take account
of this.
A starting point is suggested by place names in the carton-
nage scraps that suggest the library was bound (and perhaps
written) in the same region of Egypt where it was discovered. In
the fourth century, this was the location of a number of important
monasteries led by an ascetic called Pachomius. Some scholars
have suggested that the name Pachomius (in its Coptic form
Pachom) can be read in the cartonnage papyri, but whether this
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