The Testimony of Truth is the third manuscript from Codex IX 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 ...
. The copy of the manuscript from the Nag Hammadi Codices is in very poor condition and is almost too fragmentary to read and comprehend. The text is different from many other Christian texts in that it does not portray martyrdom as something to be glorified:
:''The foolish, thinking in their heart that if they confess "We are Christians," in word only but not with power, while giving themselves over to a human death, not knowing where they are going or who Christ is, thinking that they will live while they are really in error, hasten toward the principalities and the authorities.''
and
:''But when they are "perfected" with a (martyr's) death, this is the thought that they have within them: "If we deliver ourselves over to death for the sake of the Name we will be saved." These matters are not settled in this way. But through the agency of the wandering stars they say they have "completed" their futile "course", and
..say,
.. But these
..they have delivered themselves ... ''
Testimony of Truth, also tells the story of the
Garden of Eden
In Abrahamic religions, the Garden of Eden ( he, גַּן־עֵדֶן, ) or Garden of God (, and גַן־אֱלֹהִים ''gan- Elohim''), also called the Terrestrial Paradise, is the biblical paradise described in Genesis 2-3 and Ezekiel 28 ...
from the viewpoint of the serpent. Here the serpent, long known to appear in
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 ...
literature as the principle of divine wisdom, convinces Adam and Eve to partake of knowledge while "the Lord" threatens them with death, trying jealously to prevent them from attaining knowledge, and expelling them from Paradise when they achieve it.
Notes and references
External links
Translation to English by Søren Giversen and Birger A. Pearsongnostics.tribe.net excerpt of Testimony of TruthJune 8, '06 New York Review of Books article
The Betrayer's Gospel By Eduard Iricinschi, Lance Jenott, Philippa Townsend
The Nag Hammadi Library
The Testimony of Truth
3rd-century works
Nag Hammadi library
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