When “The Nag Hammadi library”, also known as the Chenoboskion Manuscripts was discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945, among the early Gnostic Christian codices that comprised 52 mostly Gnostic treatises, three works belonging to the Corpus Hermeticum, and a partial translation/alteration of Plato’s Republic were also found, pointing out the esteem, importance and influence of the Greco-Egyptian literature upon Christianity.
If one reads the Hermetic literature, one notes the extent influence of Hermetism upon the biblical accounts. One among the numerous tests of this literature, particularly proves whence the Christians adopted their God who certainly doesn’t match at all with the Hebrew Yahweh. Shall I remind you that Marcion was one who rejected the Old Testament and its unethical accounts?
Thoth-Hermes: “Presumptuous and immoral are those who attempt to ascribe to “Unknown and inconceivable being” the personality, qualities, characteristics and attributes of themselves ascribing to the Creator the human emotions feelings and characteristics even down to the pettiest qualities of mankind, susceptibility to flattery and praise, desire for offerings, and all the other residues from the early days of the mankind. Such ideas are not worthy of grown sceptic men and women, and are quickly being discarded”.
The apophatic (via negation) is the theology that we encounter in Heraclitus and by extension in Plato, Proclus and Plotinus, was a movement of the Greek tradition, which reflected confirmation throughout denial. For the Greeks, the apophatic theology aimed at redeeming the myths of the gods of the Greek Pantheon and promoting the emergence of a revised vision of an unknown god (singular) as an inaccessible, undeclared, incomprehensible and preexisting deity. All those philosophers were influenced by the Hermetism, Stoicism and Orphism, just like the Jews where Hermes’ influence is apparent everywhere in the OT. For example, we read in Deuteronomy 32:8,
«When the Most High* apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods;* 9 the Lord’s own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share».
Comparing these verses with Plato’s Timeous, we notice the similarities, “Father God (Hermes Trismegistus named god “The ONE”, or “The Logos”) assigned to minor gods that he created, the creation of the humans. Those minor gods having understood the Father God’s instructions fabricated the body for every human and in this body, they placed the immortal soul”!
We actually read the same in the early Christian Gnostic teaching, how the Archons, demons, dominions and spirits contributed to the creation of the human body.
Isn’t it obvious, whence the early Christians copied their beliefs? How can one explain the origin of the diversity of beliefs that led to the creation of more than 120 heresies at the end of the 1st century? Which was the source of those beliefs, rather than the “teaching of Jesus” we read in the “apocryphon of Thomas’ gospel” that alludes to Eastern Asiatic philosophies and the Greco-Egyptian theosophy?
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Article URL : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library