Mark Gagnon
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
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Now, nearby the cliffs of Nag Hammadi, there was a monastery founded by a man named Saint Pacomius.
The monks that were there were, you know, technically within, you know, the mainstream Christian faith, but they clearly had a...
secret interest for these mystical texts, for these heretical books that could potentially get them killed, but they thought they were too fascinating to destroy.
So they had copied them.
They bound them in leather and they studied them.
They referenced them, perhaps not in an official capacity or teaching them to their congregations and people that went to them for information, but they just wanted to know.
But when the order came down from the bishop to canonize specific texts and basically cleanse the library, these monks faced a choice.
Do they burn the books they love or do they disobey the bishop and keep them around in a secret library somewhere?
But they chose a third option.
They gathered all of these forbidden texts and sealed them inside a heavy jar to protect them from insects and water and exposure from all the elements.
And they hiked out to the base of the Jabal al-Tarif cliff and they buried them.
They probably thought,
You know, we'll let the heat die down and let things kind of chill.
And then we'll come back for them like a year or two.