Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Texts: A Firsthand Account of the Expedition That Shook the Foundations of Christianity

"Includes the first translation of the Gospelaccording to Thomas, with critical commentary"Hidden for sixteen centuries, the Nag Hammadi library, the most prodigious collection of sacred gnostic texts, was discovered in the late 1940s in Chenoboskion, a remote hamlet in upper Egypt. Among these texts was the Gospel according to Thomas, which aroused international publicity and alerted the world to the significance of this archaeological find, believed by many scholars to surpass the Dead Sea Scrolls in importance."The Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Texts" is the original survey of the contents of these documents and their significance to the world at large. Doresse was a member of the party that discovered these ancient Coptic documents. His narrative allows readers direct contact with an ancient form of Christianity through the philosophical wealth of the texts--ranging from gnostic revelations and Christian apocrypha to Hermetic literature. Included in the book is the original English translation of the Gospel according to Thomas first published in 1960.JEAN DORESSE is a renowned historian and a scholar of Egyptology and Greek papyrology. He was head of the research department at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique and for five years undertook expeditions on behalf of the French government, establishing the first archaeological service in Ethiopia. He lives in France.