J.R. Ritman Library - Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica

Secret books	a. Gnostic sources and studies before the Nag Hammadi find b. The Nag Hammadi Library c. Gnostic studies and inspiration after the Nag Hammadi find
Tertullian, Opera, Basel, 1539; woodcut of the scheme of the Pleroma, by Conrad Schmitt	a. Gnostic sources and studies before the Nag Hammadi find - from Tertullian (ca. 200 C.E.) to G.R.S. Mead 1 Tertullian (ca. 150-223/225) was one of the first patristic and antignostic writers who polemicized against the Gnostics, whom he regarded as heretics. His De praescriptione haereticorum (ca. 200) exhorted the Christian community that the truth of Christian doctrine was founded exclusively on Christ and his apostles. In Alexandria especially Origen and Clement carried on a campaign against the Gnostics though at the same time they themselves acknowledged and defined a Christian kind of gnosis. In his Stromateis Clement of Alexandria incorporated fragments of Theodotus (2nd century), a pupil of Valentine, amongst which for example Theodotus' well-known gnostic reflection about who we were, what we have become; where we were, in what place we have been cast; whither we hasten, from what we are delivered, what birth is, what rebirth is. Irenaeus of Lyon's knowledge of the gnostics and the Valentinian system in Adversus Valentini, & similium gnosticorum haereses appeared limited; nevertheless the work is regarded as an important source of information on Gnosticism.


The Petermann and Schwartze edition of the Pistis Sophia; Mead's copy 1853 ed., with his marginal comments in pencil. Mead's workbook with texts on the Pistis Sophia by Amélineau and Schmidt.	2 Ca. 1773 the English Dr. A. Askew happened to come across a Coptic codex in a London bookshop. He picked it up and paid a mere 10 pounds for it; the transaction failed to raise much of a stir. In 1785, after Askew's death, the British Museum acquired the vellum manuscript from the heirs and C.G. Woide, the library's keeper of manuscripts, briefly drew attention to what became known as the Codex Askewianus. At the time Woide thought that the Greek original of this Coptic codex should be attributed to Valentine the Gnostic. Subsequently, Jacques Matter, M.G. Schwartze, E. Amélineau and Carl Schmidt paid close attention to the work in their scholarly studies. Editions of the Askew Codex began to appear together with another recent find, the Bruce codex, with which it was associated (see 3). Among the fragments and extracts contained in the Askew Codex the largest is now referred to as the Pistis Sophia. All these texts must have been part of a larger collection. In England it was the theosophist and gnostic scholar George Mead (1863-1933) who studied the Pistis Sophia. For his English-language edition he compared the Latin edition of Petermann and Schwartze (1851) - Mead owned the 1853 edition - with the French edition by Amélineau, and later, with the German translation by Carl Schmidt.
George Robins, ed. A Catalogue of a valuable collection of Oriental literature, collected by James Bruce, of Kinnaird , 1842 Carl Schmidt, ed., Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache aus dem Codex Brucianus, 1892	3 Codex Brucianus. The sale catalogue (1842) shown here describes the collection of Ethiopic and Arabic manuscripts of the Scottish traveller, diplomat and physician, Lord James Bruce of Kinnaird (1730-1794) who is still known today for his search for the origins of the Nile. At the end the catalogue also contains the first description of the Gnostic papyrus that was to be named after him. Bruce discovered the Coptic Gnostic papyrus in Thebes (Medinet Habu) in Upper Egypt ca. 1769. From 1848 the manuscript has been in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS Bruce 96). It contains the Coptic-gnostic Books of Jeu and an untitled work. The first authoritative modern translation (into German) was made by Carl Schmidt (first edition 1892).
G.R.S. Mead: portrait published in The Quest - Old and new, 1, 1926	4 The English gnostic scholar G.R.S. Mead (1863-1933) started his career as H.P. Blavatsky's secretary but after parting company with the Theosophical Society in 1908 he continued as an independent scholar of early Christianity and Gnosis. Obviously Mead did not have the Nag Hammadi find at his disposal but he was familiar with the Gnostic source texts that had been discovered (e.g. the Askew and Bruce codices; cf. 2, 3). Mead was not a coptologist but he knew Greek and Latin (he read classics at Cambridge) and the modern languages. He began publishing his English translation of the Pistis Sophia in installments in the theosophical magazine Lucifer (1890-1891) but this publication remained incomplete after H.P. Blavatsky, who had been supplying commentaries to the main text, died in 1891. The illustration as it appeared in Lucifer is Mead's scheme of the Valentinian Pleroma, after Tertullian (cf. 1, 8). Mead's scheme of the Pleroma, with Blavatsky's interpretation, in Lucifer, 1890-1891
Walter Till and H.M. Schenke, eds., Die gnostischen Schriften des koptischen Papyrus Berolinensis 8502, 1972	5 The Codex Berolinensis was named after the Berlin Museum for which the manuscript was acquired. It was presented to the world of learning by Carl Schmidt in 1896. However, the integral edition was not to appear for quite some time: the first edition was lost when the printer's office was waterlogged. The Second World War and the Nag Hammadi find itself (1945) delayed publication even further. Finally, Walter Till published the codex in 1955 (after Schmidt's decease). This edition was revised by H.M. Schenke in 1972. The codex contains three gnostic texts, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the Secret Book of John and the Sophia Jesu Christi - versions of the latter two texts were also found at Nag Hammadi - (the fourth is not a gnostic text but may have been used by the gnostic community).
G.R.S. Mead, ed., Pistis Sophia, 1896 G.R.S. Mead, Fragments of a faith forgotten, 1906 (2nd rev. ed.) G.R.S. Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes, 1906	6 Mead's complete English translation of the Pistis Sophia was published in 1896 by the Theosophical Society (revised ed. 1921 after having consulted Schmidt's translation (1905)). His contemporaries much admired Mead as a translator and today his translations of e.g. the Corpus Hermeticum in his study Thrice-Greatest Hermes (1906) are often still read next to more modern renderings. At the time Mead's scholarly and authoritative study Fragments of a faith forgotten (1900; 2nd ed. 1906) drew international attention to the source texts of Hermetism and Gnosis. In this work also appeared Mead's English translations of excerpts from the Coptic-gnostic texts discovered up to then (Codices Askew, Bruce and Berlin (cf. 2, 3, 5) though largely unknown still to the general reading public.