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Introduction to the Collection

During the middle years of the twentieth century two important but very different collections of ancient religious texts were unearthed in Palestine and Egypt: the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library.  Visitors to the Gnostic Society Library often do not understand the distinction between these two discoveries.  Since our Library collection contains a vast amount of material related specifically to the Nag Hammadi texts (including complete translations), a brief description of the two discoveries might be useful.

What are popularly called The Dead Sea Scrolls consist of a very large number of scrolls – most poorly preserved and many surviving only as tiny scraps – discovered in a series of eleven caves near Qumran and the Dead Sea beginning around 1947.  Over 800 separate texts of several divergent types are now recognized among this find. The scrolls date from the "intertestamental period" – a period ranging from about 250 BCE to 100 CE, the epoch after textual formation of the "Old Testament" but still before the formation of Christianity and rabbinical Judaism.

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