Pachomian monastery in the context of "Nag Hammadi library"

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⭐ Core Definition: Pachomian monastery

The Pachomian monasteries or the Koinonia of Upper Egypt were a group of Christian cenobitic monasteries founded by Pachomius the Great during the 4th century A.D. Altogether, by the mid-300s A.D., nine Pachomian monasteries formed a network or federation of monasteries known as the Koinonia. All of the nine historical Pachomian monasteries are now defunct.

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👉 Pachomian monastery in the context of 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.

Twelve leather-bound papyrus codices (and a tractate from a thirteenth) buried in a sealed jar were found by an Egyptian farmer named Muhammed al-Samman and others in late 1945. The writings in these codices comprise 52 mostly Gnostic treatises, but also three works belonging to the Corpus Hermeticum, and a partial translation/alteration of Plato's Republic. In his introduction to The Nag Hammadi Library in English, James Robinson suggests that these codices may have belonged to a nearby Pachomian monastery and were buried after Saint Athanasius condemned the use of non-canonical books in his Festal Letter of 367 A.D. The Pachomian hypothesis has been further expanded by Lundhaug & Jenott (2015, 2018) and further strengthened by Linjamaa (2024). In his 2024 book, Linjamaa argues that the Nag Hammadi library was used by a small intellectual monastic elite at a Pachomian monastery, and that they were used as a smaller part of a much wider Christian library.

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