the heretics’ apostle and two pauline pseudepigrapha 347
it is sensible to assume, then, that the nag hammadi writings were not
the whole of this person or group’s library. rather, we are dealing with
material culled from an originally larger collection. This makes it difficult
to confidently assess the range of interests that might have motivated the
collectors of this material: we are lacking a large chunk of their collection,
and we don’t even know how large a chunk! no matter how large the com-
plete library may have been, however, thirteen codices is not insignifi-
cant, and their commonalities or emphasized elements should be taken
seriously as suggestions of their collector(s)’s interests. in terms of unify-
ing factors that arise from considering the nag hammadi collection as a
whole, the two most important are the emphasis on asceticism,21 and the
emphasis on the acquisition of esoteric wisdom. Although it is possible
to read ascetic exhortations into the Prayer and the Apocalypse of Paul,
neither work seems to be primarily concerned with asceticism, unlike
other nag hammadi works such as, for example, the Book of Thomas or
the Authentikos Logos.
The nag hammadi collection’s focus on esoteric wisdom is expressed
in two ways, by and large: either through the presentation of theoretical,
technical knowledge—whether acquired in treatise form or through “rev-
elation dialogues”—or through the depiction of apocalyptic encounters
and the transformation of both history and the self. The former category
includes, for example, the Gospel of Truth and the Gospels of Thomas and
Philip; Eugnostos; the Tripartite Tractate; the Paraphrase of Shem; the
hermetic material in codex Vi; the Teachings of Silvanus; and the Trea-
tise on the Resurrection. The latter category includes, among other works,
the Apocryphon of James and the Apocryphon of John; the Apocalypses of
James, Peter, Paul, and Adam; the Dialogue of the Saviour; and the Sophia
of Jesus Christ. we could roughly and provisionally distinguish these two
approaches by saying that one has to do with knowledge, the other with
experience.
now, as mentioned above, texts throughout the nag hammadi corpus
make use of paul’s writings, but there are only two that claim to be by
him or that feature him as a character.22 it is interesting to note how the
pauls created by the authors of the Prayer and the Apocalypse of Paul
21 As williams (Rethinking Gnosticism, ch. 8) and others have well-noted, this emphasis
obliges us to rethink old stereotypes of “gnostic libertinism.”
22 i have argued, however, that his apparent absence from one other text, the Letter of
Peter to Philip, masks a very significant implicit presence: the author of this work seems to
have been strongly inspired by paul’s career as recounted in Acts, the use of which marks
novelty in gnostic writings (see Kaler, “The Letter of Peter to Philip”)!