probably crucial event in the film AGORA, apart from the murder of Hypatia, the destruction of Serapeum in 392 by the Christian mob, accompanied by soldiers, interpreted and Theodosius's decree in 391en which stated that "nobody will go to the sanctuaries, walk through the temples, or raise his eyes to statues created by man." Is usually associated with the destruction of the remains of the Alexandrian library, the library called "daughter of Serapeo because the library had been looted mother in 272 in Aureliano times, and in 297, under Diocletian.
In view of these unfortunate events, it is not surprising that the film, like the legend of Hypatia's death associated with the destruction of the Alexandrian library, and show both events as a tragic symbol of the death of classical culture and pagan religion at the hands of Christianity triumphant.
We've been checking in this series of articles that have shaped this blog, how such a view is rather reductionist Manichean and, ultimately, inaccurate. To act on it and see how the result was far from Christian 1 - 0 Pagans, now let's talk about another library, much smaller but highly valuable, contemporary of Alexandria, who was also in Egypt, and that around the same time, if not destroyed, it was because it was saved by a whisker, at the cost of lost in oblivion enclosed in a jar and buried in the desert ... until fifteen centuries later (coincidentally?) again saw the light and the eyes of new readers.
Anno Domini 1945. In that year, some of the best brains in the West worked on the Manhattan Project and managed to give birth to a monster ... to kill another monster, and cause a holocaust in response to another holocaust, July 16 made the first atomic bomb explode fission and shortly after two other throw, 6 and 9 August on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Oblivious
the beginning of the atomic age, December 7 fellahin, Egyptian peasants, rode their camels in search of sabakh , kind of litter they used as fertilizer for their crops.
When they arrived at Jabal al-Tarif, an impressive cliff on the left bank of the great bend of the Nile, near Nag Hammadi, on the other side, sixty-five kilometers northwest of the Valley of the Kings and Luxor, they began to dig and they met first with a human skeleton at his side, with a jar of clay about two feet tall, with a covering the upper bowl, sealed with bitumen. According to one account, Muhammad 'Ali al-Samman, at first did not dare to break it, for fear that dwell within a jinn or spirit. But they also could be a treasure to keep it, finally broke it and he said he, his interior flew a gold dust rose into the sky ... The rest, to his disappointment, was nothing more than a collection old papyrus bound and covered in leather. In fact, the "gold dust" was not nothing but papyrus spray glittering in the sun. Muhammad 'Ali tore the books to share the "treasure" with peers, but no one wanted any part of the booty. Then wrapped them in his turban, put them in the back of his camel, and threw, when you get home, the straw of the barn with the animals. Muhammad's mother acknowledged that some of the papyri used to light the fire and cooking dinner ... Almost 1500 years buried ... to end at the stake ...!
But the story does not end there. Apparently, Muhammad Ali and his family were involved in a brawl of blood with a tribe from a neighboring village. The affair had begun six months earlier, when Muhammad's father, who worked as a guard irrigation machines imported from Germany, shot dead an intruder. The attacker's family, meanwhile, killed the father of Ali the next day. A month after the discovery of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts, Muhammad and his brothers learned that the murderer of his father was sleeping
drunk at roadside. They took their spades and reached the place where it was and, still asleep, beat him to death by Zach, they opened the chest, took out the heart and ate it, still warm, in an act worthy of Aztec priests ... if not for the curse and vengeance rather officiated the rite of prayer and sacrifice.
What follows is no less gruesome, but more gray and shameful, Unfortunately, more often: illegal sale on the black market of some manuscripts, jealousy among researchers and disputes over the primacy of issues, conflicts of interest between institutions and other niceties sordid guilty of the first complete translation of the texts, English is delayed more than thirty years ... The full translation into Castilian still take another twenty years, ie half a century after discovery so valuable ... But what manuscripts we talking about?
These thirteen codices, in fact, twelve plus loose leaves of another lost manuscript, "covered with leather covers, containing 52 treatises written in Coptic on papyrus dated around the late fourth century. Coptic is the Egyptian language, that of Nefertiti and Akhenaton, written in the Greek alphabet, which will add seven new characters, taken from the Demotic, representing the Egyptian consonants that do not exist in Greek. Very near the site of the discovery more than 150 caves, some of which are paintings and funerary inscriptions of the time of the sixth dynasty, 4300 years ago. Moreover, if the people closest to the Nag Hammadi discovery is now almost beside it, on the other side, that of finding, are the remains of Kenosboskion, where in 320 St. Pachomius founded the first Christian monastery. Some fifty years later, maybe some of these monks write these manuscripts, most translations of earlier Greek documents, ... for, before long, be forced to bury them.
In view of these unfortunate events, it is not surprising that the film, like the legend of Hypatia's death associated with the destruction of the Alexandrian library, and show both events as a tragic symbol of the death of classical culture and pagan religion at the hands of Christianity triumphant.
We've been checking in this series of articles that have shaped this blog, how such a view is rather reductionist Manichean and, ultimately, inaccurate. To act on it and see how the result was far from Christian 1 - 0 Pagans, now let's talk about another library, much smaller but highly valuable, contemporary of Alexandria, who was also in Egypt, and that around the same time, if not destroyed, it was because it was saved by a whisker, at the cost of lost in oblivion enclosed in a jar and buried in the desert ... until fifteen centuries later (coincidentally?) again saw the light and the eyes of new readers.
Anno Domini 1945. In that year, some of the best brains in the West worked on the Manhattan Project and managed to give birth to a monster ... to kill another monster, and cause a holocaust in response to another holocaust, July 16 made the first atomic bomb explode fission and shortly after two other throw, 6 and 9 August on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Oblivious
the beginning of the atomic age, December 7 fellahin, Egyptian peasants, rode their camels in search of sabakh , kind of litter they used as fertilizer for their crops.
When they arrived at Jabal al-Tarif, an impressive cliff on the left bank of the great bend of the Nile, near Nag Hammadi, on the other side, sixty-five kilometers northwest of the Valley of the Kings and Luxor, they began to dig and they met first with a human skeleton at his side, with a jar of clay about two feet tall, with a covering the upper bowl, sealed with bitumen. According to one account, Muhammad 'Ali al-Samman, at first did not dare to break it, for fear that dwell within a jinn or spirit. But they also could be a treasure to keep it, finally broke it and he said he, his interior flew a gold dust rose into the sky ... The rest, to his disappointment, was nothing more than a collection old papyrus bound and covered in leather. In fact, the "gold dust" was not nothing but papyrus spray glittering in the sun. Muhammad 'Ali tore the books to share the "treasure" with peers, but no one wanted any part of the booty. Then wrapped them in his turban, put them in the back of his camel, and threw, when you get home, the straw of the barn with the animals. Muhammad's mother acknowledged that some of the papyri used to light the fire and cooking dinner ... Almost 1500 years buried ... to end at the stake ...! But the story does not end there. Apparently, Muhammad Ali and his family were involved in a brawl of blood with a tribe from a neighboring village. The affair had begun six months earlier, when Muhammad's father, who worked as a guard irrigation machines imported from Germany, shot dead an intruder. The attacker's family, meanwhile, killed the father of Ali the next day. A month after the discovery of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts, Muhammad and his brothers learned that the murderer of his father was sleeping
drunk at roadside. They took their spades and reached the place where it was and, still asleep, beat him to death by Zach, they opened the chest, took out the heart and ate it, still warm, in an act worthy of Aztec priests ... if not for the curse and vengeance rather officiated the rite of prayer and sacrifice.
What follows is no less gruesome, but more gray and shameful, Unfortunately, more often: illegal sale on the black market of some manuscripts, jealousy among researchers and disputes over the primacy of issues, conflicts of interest between institutions and other niceties sordid guilty of the first complete translation of the texts, English is delayed more than thirty years ... The full translation into Castilian still take another twenty years, ie half a century after discovery so valuable ... But what manuscripts we talking about?
These thirteen codices, in fact, twelve plus loose leaves of another lost manuscript, "covered with leather covers, containing 52 treatises written in Coptic on papyrus dated around the late fourth century. Coptic is the Egyptian language, that of Nefertiti and Akhenaton, written in the Greek alphabet, which will add seven new characters, taken from the Demotic, representing the Egyptian consonants that do not exist in Greek. Very near the site of the discovery more than 150 caves, some of which are paintings and funerary inscriptions of the time of the sixth dynasty, 4300 years ago. Moreover, if the people closest to the Nag Hammadi discovery is now almost beside it, on the other side, that of finding, are the remains of Kenosboskion, where in 320 St. Pachomius founded the first Christian monastery. Some fifty years later, maybe some of these monks write these manuscripts, most translations of earlier Greek documents, ... for, before long, be forced to bury them.
What we now call the Nag Hammadi Library is a collection of texts reflecting a mystical and esoteric religious movement that experts call Gnosticism because, although the term covers very heterogeneous concepts, all seem to agree on the pursuit of salvation through gnosis , in Greek, "knowledge." Most of these texts are also Christians, many unknown so far and other by only fragmentary references or citations, written as it is called apocryphal, that critics term was synonymous with "false." However, it should stop in the full meaning of these two Greek words, now as then we run the risk of using them as mere taxonomic labels. On the
gnosis and Gnosticism much has been written, and many scholars engaged in explaining the complex worldviews and divine genealogies of the various Gnostic groups. On the other hand, there are many occult middling new Gnostics, who are quick to seize not know what heritage bequeathed supposedly secret knowledge by the Gnostics of old. The truth is that among so many trees is difficult to envisage the forest ... Gnostics sought
knowledge that had nothing to do with memory or with the books ... but certainly not stopped reading and writing. Sought a further understanding of worldly knowledge, and therefore we are at once attracted the "kingdom" not of this world, that vision is not everyday perception, the depth dimension of reality and the divine that seemed to hide behind the teacher's words of Jesus when he said that "he who has ears to hear, hear. " And looking both outside and especially inside, in that hidden place where the soul hides the divine spark. Thought that most men do not really get to know that deep, so the images that describe this sorry state are the sleeping man, the drunkard, the ignorant, the sick, the captive in the darkness. Gnosis , thus, stands for awakening, healing and release. What should be saved? The shipwreck which is a life in ignorance of what really is. There is no sin that a mistake of believing in "this" world, in this conventional system of values, in this fantasy and farce that we fly deaf to the "silent music" in this rumor of herds that keeps us from the solitude sound "in this bustling stuns us and prevents us from listening to the cosmic symphony of which the Pythagoreans spoke ... He who has ears to
hear ... As for the apocryphal term, since the time of the first heresiologists so far has been being used as a synonym for "fake" or "inauthentic", and this has been applied to Christian writings not accepted by the orthodoxy considered uninspired or false attribution. However, if rigorously applied this criterion, there to say that none of the considered canonical Gospels, except perhaps that of Lucas, was written, according to critics, the authors attributed by tradition. Therefore, they would all be apocryphal Apocryphal ...
in Greek literally means "hidden", "hidden", "secret." In this sense the term appears in some of the works found at Nag Hammadi, as the "Apocrifon of John" or "Secret Book of John." Arguably, therefore, that these manuscripts are spurious in three ways, namely because, according to orthodoxy, not writing "real" they are presented as secret teachings and, last but not least, because they were literally hidden for over fifteen centuries.
Who, when and why they hid the manuscripts? Although the answer to this question is already suggested triple between the lines, soon-or at least I hope, we will dive into deeper inquiry ...
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