346 michael kaler
placed in a historical context, and the Apocryphon of James even specifies
that they are destined to be superseded by later generations of christians
(16.12–19), possibly even including paul, who would not have been con-
verted at the time that the Apocryphon of James is set. This codex presents
paul as an authoritative figure for any age, including the fourth or fifth
century in egypt, in contrast with James and peter, whose position and
authority were context-specific, relating only to the first half of the first
century in palestine.
The Collection as a Whole
it is difficult—for me, impossible—to imagine that a christian person or
group in late antique egypt could have been interested enough in mysti-
cal, esoteric literature to want thirteen codices of it, and wealthy or well-
connected enough to acquire them, without possessing a single one of the
canonical new Testament writings or the writings of the hebrew Bible,
nor any other “mainstream” early christian works.19 This aspect of the nag
hammadi collection becomes apparent when we examine the roughly
contemporary and very diverse collection of monastic works discovered
at deir el-Bala’izah, site of the monastery of Apa Apollo. in this collec-
tion, we find a fragment of what looks to be a gnostic revelation dialogue
between the savior and John (dated by Kahle to the fourth century) that
is located amidst selections from the old and new Testaments and vari-
ous other texts including some excerpts from the Apophthegmata, Lives of
several monks and even a sermon by the Alexandrian bishop Athanasius.20
in his 39th festal letter, Athanasius attempts to control and restrict the
reading habits of monks—which of course suggests that they were actu-
ally more open and unrestricted than he would have liked—and in the
process, supports the reading of canonical scriptural texts as well as some
works that have been accepted for centuries as edifying reading, despite
not being canonical—for example, the wisdom of solomon, Tobit, Judith,
or the Shepherd of Hermas. Yet none of these works are present among the
nag hammadi codices.
19 The vast majority of the nag hammadi material is explicitly christian, albeit rep-
resenting approaches to christianity that would come to be defined as “heretical” or
“heterodox.”
20 paul Kahle, Bala’izah: Coptic Texts from Deir el-Bala’izah in Upper Egypt (vol. 1; lon-
don: oxford university press, 1954), 473–77.