Unlocked after one year for patrons only:
The secretive Gnostic stream of Christianity, which taught a radically different metaphysics and spiritual cosmology from "orthodox" doctrine in the first four hundred years of the church, was largely lost to history, until 1945, when a camel-herder in a remote part of Egypt stumbled upon an old ceremic jar with 13 massive books containing 52 ancient Gnostic texts. We consider what the so-called "Nag Hammadi LIbrary," which may have been hidden in the desert to protect it from destruction, reveals about the origins and importance of the Gnostics' secret teachings.
Image: A Nag Hammadi codex open to the beginning of the Apocryphon of John.
Suggested further reading: Jean Doresse, "The Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Texts"; Elaine Pagels, "The Gnostic Gospels."
Please sign up as a patron to hear all patron-only lectures: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632
Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrong