The Prayer of the Apostle Paul is a

New Testament apocrypha The New Testament apocrypha (singular apocryphon) are a number of writings by early Christians that give accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives. Some of these writings were cite ...

l work, the first manuscript from the Jung Codex (Codex I) of the

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. Thirteen leather-bound papyr ...

. Written on the inner flyleaf of the codex, the prayer seems to have been added after the longer tractates had been copied. Although the text, like the rest of the codices, is written in Coptic, the title is written in

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

, which was the original language of the text. The manuscript is missing approximately two lines at the beginning.

Authorship and Composition

Like other early Christian writings, the author of this prayer identifies themself with the historic

Apostle Paul Paul; grc, Παῦλος, translit=Paulos; cop, ⲡⲁⲩⲗⲟⲥ; hbo, פאולוס השליח (previously called Saul of Tarsus;; ar, بولس الطرسوسي; grc, Σαῦλος Ταρσεύς, Saũlos Tarseús; tr, Tarsuslu Pavlus; ...

to give authority to the text. Consequently, the prayer is widely understood to be a pseudepigraphical work. Because the prayer lacks its opening lines, it is unclear whether there was a title at its beginning. However, a title written in Greek is preserved at the bottom of the treatise, reading "Prayer of the Apostle Paul" and followed by a colophon. The colophon, also written in Greek, states "In Peace. Holy is Christ." The prayer in its entirety was likely written in Greek and translated into Coptic.

Content

The prayer shows a distinctive

Gnostic Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized p ...

tone. It begins with a series of invocations addressed to the Redeemer. The term, with numerous meanings in both the Jewish Scriptures and the New Testament, has varied potential implications. The Redeemer is understood to be YHWH in the

Book of Job The Book of Job (; hbo, אִיּוֹב, ʾIyyōḇ), or simply Job, is a book found in the Ketuvim ("Writings") section of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and is the first of the Poetic Books in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. Scholars a ...

, just as he is known as the "Redeemer of Israel" in the

Book of Isaiah The Book of Isaiah ( he, ספר ישעיהו, ) is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Major Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. It is identified by a superscription as the words of the 8th-century B ...

. By contrast, in Paul's

Letter to the Romans The Epistle to the Romans is the sixth book in the New Testament, and the longest of the thirteen Pauline epistles. Biblical scholars agree that it was composed by Paul the Apostle to explain that salvation is offered through the gospel of Jes ...

, Jesus is the Redeemer. In 3:24-25, Paul writes that believers "are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood"—in essence, redemption is the saving nature of Jesus' death. The Redeemer might also be understood as the supreme, hidden God of the Gnostic belief system. Whomever the prayer intends to address, the author employs the formula "you are" four times to characterize the Redeemer as mind, treasury, fullness or pleroma, and repose. With the exception of the word "treasury"—translated into Coptic as ''aho'', the terms remain in Greek as ''nous'', ''pleroma'', and ''anapausis'', respectively. Although these terms are frequent in Valentinian literature, they are also found elsewhere. Many scholars have dubbed it as a Valentinian work due to characteristic phrases such as the "psychic God"—this would indicate that it was composed between 150 and 300 AD; if it is not of Valentinian origin it could date from as early as 75.Hal Taussig, ed., ''A New New Testament'', , page 241.

Parallels to other works

Scholars have found parallels to many other works which may be partial sources, including Corpus Hermeticum, the Three Steles of Seth, the Gospel of Philip, and the authentic Pauline letters.

References

External links

A Translation by Dieter Mueller
{{The Nag Hammadi Codices , state=collapsed P The Prayers of Paul the Apostle Coptic literature Pseudepigraphy Nag Hammadi library