The First Apocalypse of James is a late second century
Gnostic
Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized pe ...
apocalypse.
Contents
The form of the text is primarily that of a Revelation Dialogue/Discourse between
James the brother of Jesus (James the Just) and
Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label= Hebrew/ Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religiou ...
, with a rather fragmentary account of the departure (possibly meaning martyrdom) of James appended to the bottom of the manuscript, connected to the remainder by an oblique reference to crucifixion. The first portion of the text describes James' understandable concern about being crucified, whereas the latter portion describes secret "passwords" given to James so that he can ascend to the highest heaven (out of 72) after dying, without being blocked by evil "powers" of the
demiurge
In the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy, the demiurge () is an artisan-like figure responsible for fashioning and maintaining the physical universe. The Gnostics adopted the term ''demiurge'' ...
. In the text, Jesus tells James, "you are not my brother materially."
Manuscripts
The ''First Apocalypse of James'' is regarded as part of the
New Testament apocrypha
The New Testament apocrypha (singular apocryphon) are a number of writings by early Christians that give accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives. Some of these writings were cite ...
.
Nag Hammadi
It was first discovered amongst 52 other
Gnostic
Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized pe ...
Christian texts spread over 13
codices
The codex (plural codices ) was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term ''codex'' is often used for ancient manuscript books, with ...
by an Arab peasant, Mohammad Ali al-Samman, in the Egyptian town of
Nag Hammadi
Nag Hammadi ( ; ar, نجع حمادى ) is a city in Upper Egypt.
It is located on the west bank of the Nile in the Qena Governorate, about north-west of Luxor. It had a population of close to 43,000 .
History
The town of Nag Hammadi is name ...
late in December 1945.
The Nag Hammadi Coptic manuscript is remarkably well preserved for its age; it was reported that the cache of texts called the "
Nag Hammadi library
The Nag Hammadi library (also known as the " Chenoboskion Manuscripts" and the "Gnostic Gospels") is a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945.
Thirteen leather-bound papyr ...
", when originally found, were sealed within a large terra cotta vessel. They were secreted during the fourth century, in an effort to hide the texts from destruction by others.
Codex Tchacos
Another copy has more recently been found in the
Codex Tchacos, where it is merely titled 'James'. Those texts were in the
Coptic language.
Oxyrhynchus
In 2017, the first
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
copy was found (the work was originally written in Greek)
amongst unpublished
Oxyrhynchus Papyri
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of manuscripts discovered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by papyrologists Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt (, mo ...
housed at Oxford University.
The first-known Greek copy of the text was discovered in 2017 at
Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...
by Geoffrey Smith and Brent Landau, religious studies scholars at the
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...
. The fragments date from the fifth or sixth century and were probably a teacher's model used to help students learn to read and write.
The fragments will be published in the Oxyrhynchus compilation ''The Greco-Roman Memoirs''.
References
Further reading
* Jones, F. S. (1990). The Martyrdom of James in Hegesippus, Clement of Alexandria, and Christian Apocrypha, Including Nag Hammadi: A Study of Textual Relations. In Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers (Vol. 29, pp. 323–27).
External links
Online English text of ''The First Apocalypse of James''* James M. Robinson, ed., ''The Nag Hammadi Library'', revised edition. HarperCollins, San Francisco, 1990.
* Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., translation by R. McL. Wilson, ''New Testament Apocrypha : Gospels and Related Writings'' (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1992), pp. 313–326.
{{Authority control
Christian apocalyptic writings
James, 1
2nd-century Christian texts
Texts in Koine Greek
James, brother of Jesus
Nag Hammadi library