Steve Watson

Text Hoard: Dead Sea Scrolls

October 3, 2026 – 12:48 am

Nature of the Hoard

972 manuscripts
- In the form of scrolls or fragments of scrolls
  - The fragments in Cave 4 are in >15,000 pieces
- Mostly parchment, some papyrus, and one of copper
Written mostly in Hebrew, about 15% in Aramaic, and a few in Greek
Dated 3^rd C BC – 1^st C AD (i.e. before the destruction of the second temple in 70AD.)
Consisting of ~230 ‘biblical’ scrolls bearing texts that are found in the modern Tanakh the rest being ‘non-biblical’ religious texts from the Second Temple period – about ¼ of which are described as ‘sectarian’ as they appear to be specific to a particular religious subcommunity.
Widely assumed (following Sukenik and DeVaux) to be the concealed property of a supposed Essene community settled at Qumran, though this is now disputed by some.

Location

Discovery

The term ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ originally referred only to manuscripts found in the caves in the cliffs along and nearby the Wadi Qumran and with every indication (by the presence of identical associated pottery types) of originating from the same community (and thus constituting a ‘hoard.’) Its use is now often expanded to include manuscripts discovered elsewhere in the Dead Sea Western coastal area and with different origins, but that expanded sense is not accepted here.

Sometime between late 1946 and early 1947, Bedouin shepherd Muhammad edh Dhib of the Ta’amireh tribe entered Cave 1 where he found 7 scrolls stored in jars. He and the two others with him took these back to their camp. The Bedouins made several attempts to sell them, and some passed through several hands in the process, eventually attracting the attention of John C Trever of the American School of Oriental Research (ASOR) who recognised their antiquity and probable value. He interviewed the Bedouins to learn the circumstances of the discovery. The discovery was announced to the public on 11 Apr. 1948 by Millar Burrows, head of the ASOR.

War and unrest made a search for the original cave impossible until the Jordanian government allowed the Arab Legion to do so. The cave was rediscovered on 28 Jan. 1948 by UN Observer Capt. Phillipe Lippens and Arab Legion Capt. Akkash el Zebn. Gerald Lankester Harding (British Director of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan (DAJ)) and Roland Guérin de Vaux (Director of the Dominican École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem) excavated the site from 15 Feb. to 5 Mar. 1949 for the DAJ, yielding additional fragments. From 1951 to 1956 R de Vaux led 5 further expeditions for the ASOR, searching for more caves in competition/collaboration with the Ta’amireh Bedouin and excavating various related sites.

All but one of the other caves were discovered between 1952 and 1956.

Cave 2 in Feb. 1952 by the Bedouin.
Cave 3 on 14 Mar. 1952 by the ASOR.
Cave 4 in Aug. 1952 by the Bedouin. This cave is the most productive site, containing 575 manuscripts, most of them in many small pieces. It is actually two caves, denoted 4a and 4b, but the contents looted by the Bedouin are hopelessly mixed, so they are considered as a single source.
Cave 5 and 6 in Sep. 1952, by the Bedouin
Caves 7-10 between Feb. and Apr. 1955 by the ASOR.
Cave 11 in Feb. 1956 by the Bedouin
Cave 12 in Feb. 2017 by Dr. Oren Gutfeld and Ahiad Ovadia from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute of Archaeology, with the collaboration of Dr. Randall Price and students from Liberty University in Virginia, USA. It had been looted, presumably by Bedouin, in the 1950s, and is therefore designated Q12 (The Q preceding the cave number indicates it contained no scrolls.)

Acquisition

In 1947, the Bedouin who discovered Cave 1 sold four of the seven scrolls to ‘Kando’ (Khalil Eskander Shahin,) a Bethlehem antiquities dealer (for $20,) and three to a second antiquities dealer named Faidi Salahi.
1. Salahi entrusted his three scrolls to an Armenian antiquities dealer named Ohan and arranged that they should be shown to Professor Eleazer Lipa Sukenik of Hebrew University. On 29 Nov. 1947 this occurred and the scrolls were informally given to Sukenik to be inspected at Hebrew University. The next day, however, the UN passed resolution 181 partitioning Mandatory Palestine and the scrolls were never returned.
2. Kando resold his four scrolls to Metropolitan Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, an Archbishop of the Syrian Church and head of the Syrian Orthodox Monastery of St Mark in Jerusalem (for $97.) In 1948, alarmed by the political situation, he smuggled them out of the country to Beirut and in 1949 to a Syrian Church in New Jersey. In 1954 he sold them for $250,000 to Yigael Yadin, son of Sukenik, who was acting on behalf of the State of Israel, and in 1955 they were given to the Hebrew University.
3. In 1965 the Cave 1 scrolls of Hebrew University were moved to the Shrine of the Book, a specially designed building on the grounds of the Israel Museum, in West Jerusalem.
The initial holding institution for the recovered texts was the Palestine Archaeological Museum (PAM) (after 1967, the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum (RAM))
1. Manuscripts recovered by the ASOR excavations or sold to the ASOR team by the Bedouin who competed with them (often through the intermediation of Kando) became the property of the DAJ and went to the PAM.
2. It is known that the Bedouin sold some recovered manuscripts to dealers from the caves that they had discovered. A concerted effort to recover these by purchase has led to very many being recovered and also sent to the PAM.
3. In 1956, the Bedouin sold Kando 7 scrolls from Cave 11. He sold 6 of them to the PAM which in turn auctioned them to European & American institutions.
The Copper Scroll (3Q15) and some fragments from Cave 1 were initially sent to the Jordan Archaeological Museum on Amman’s Citadel Hill.
In 1967, following the Israeli capture of East Jerusalem,
1. The scrolls of the PAM went to the Shrine of the Book.
2. Yadin searched Kando’s property in Bethlehem and found the Temple Scroll (11Q19, below) in a shoe box. It was sent to the Shrine of the Book.

Collection holding DSS Fragments	Acquired	Number
Israel Museum	1967	> 15,000
Schøyen Collection	1980, 1994, 1995	115
The Jordan Museum	1947–1956	> 25
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary	2009, 2010, 2012	8
Azusa Pacific University	2009	5
Ashland Theological Seminary		1
Museum of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures	1956	1
Lanier Theological Library		1
Pasadena private collection		1
Syrian Orthodox Church’s eastern U.S. archdiocese		1

Publication

On 21 Feb. 1948, John C. Trever, a resident for the ASOR, photographed 3 texts from the scrolls held by St Mark’s Monastery (a complete manuscript of the book of Isaiah, the Community Rule, and a commentary on the book of Habakkuk.) In the same year Sukenik published selections from the three scrolls he had obtained from Salahi: The War Scroll, the Thanksgiving Scroll (Hodayot), and a second copy of Isaiah. In 1950 Trever published his photos of the Isaiah scroll and the Habakkuk Commentary (1QpHab.)

In 1951 Millar Burrows and ASOR colleague William Brownlee publish the text of 1QS as the Manual of Discipline.

In 1956, the Genesis Apocryphon was unrolled at Hebrew University and published by Yadin.

In 1957, Theodore H. Gaster (Columbia U) published English translations of 13 texts from cave 1.

Between 1952 and 1967 the PAM, which housed the scrolls controlled by the DAJ, had the scrolls photographed by local photographer Najib Albina using broadband fluorescence infrared photography and producing over 1750 plates.

In 1953, all the scrolls controlled by the DAJ were put in the control of a small committee of scholars appointed by Harding and de Vaux to constitute the Dead Sea Scrolls Publication Project (DSSPP,) which would be led by de Vaux as Project Director, and whose results would be published in the series Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (DJD.) They were, from the US, Frank Moore Cross (McCormick) and Patrick Skehan (Catholic U;) from the UK, John M Allegro (Manchester) and John Strugnell (Oxford;) from France, Dominique Barthélemy and Jean Starcky; from Germany, Claus-Hunno Hunzinger (Göttingen;) and from Poland, Josef T. Milik. Access to the scrolls was almost completely restricted to this small group working in East Jerusalem, and this continued after 1967 when those scrolls became the responsibility of what is now the Israel Antiquities Authority. Publication of the texts was, however, extremely slow, leading to great international scholarly dissatisfaction.

In 1955, Barthélemy and Milik published the fragments of Cave 1 in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, volume 1: Qumran Cave 1 (DJD1.) In that year also, Allegro took the Copper Scroll to Manchester University to have it opened and sent a preliminary transcription of its contents to de Vaux. At the request of the director of DAJ, he published the text in 1960. (Milik, to whom the text had actually been assigned for the project, had published a translation in 1959 but his official edition did not appear until 1962 in DJD3.)

In 1965 the Psalms Scroll (11QPsa) was published in DJD4 edited by James A. Sanders.

Further editions of the DJD dealt with the contents of Cave 4 (as well as other non-Qumran material.)

DJD5 in 1968, edited by Allegro and A.A. Anderson, presented minimalist editions of many manuscripts
DJD6 in 1977, ed. Milik, presented 4Q128–4Q157
DJD7 in 1982, ed. Maurice Baillet (who had replaced Hunzinger on the Project team in 1958) presented 4Q482–4Q520
DJD9 in 1992, eds Skehan, E. Ulrich, and J. E. Sanderson dealt with “Palaeo-Hebrew and Greek Biblical Manuscripts.”

Note that publication of texts by the DSSPP was blocked for a time because of the refusal of de Vaux, Skehan, Starcky, and Milik to cooperate with the Israelis, but this resistance ended with the appointment in 1972 of Fr Pierre Benoit, also of the École Biblique, as Project Director following the death of de Vaux in 1971.

In 1983, Yadin published the Temple Scroll that he had recovered in 1967 for the Shrine of the Book.

In 1989, following a public dispute with John Strugnell, editor-in-chief of the DSSPP from 1984 to 1990, over the latter’s refusal to share access to photos of the Cave 4 Damascus Document with Robert H. Eisenman, many Israelis with access to the scrolls began to send Eisenman unauthorized photographs of the scrolls. The next year he showed 1700 of these to Michael Wise of Chicago, who began to transcribe them. On 20 Nov. 1991, Hershel Shanks published Eisenman’s photos in A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls co-edited by Eisenman and James M. Robinson for the Biblical Archaeology Society.

In 1989, the Royal Dutch Academy granted Ben Zion Wacholder, a researcher at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, OH, permission to publish its fragment of a 2^nd copy of the Temple scroll. Strugnell sent Wacholder scroll photos and a concordance of unpublished scrolls to assist him in this. In Sep. 1991 Wacholder and his colleague Martin G. Abegg, announced that they had developed a computer program that reconstructed fragmented sections of the scrolls from that concordance, thereby making the full content of the scrolls accessible.

In Sep. 1991 officials at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA, announced that they would allow researchers unrestricted access to the library’s complete set of photographs of the scrolls.

In the early 1990s, responding to developments, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) took major steps to advance the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls. On 30 Dec. 1990, Hebrew University Professor Emanuel Tov was nominated as editor-in-chief of the DSSPP, and the work was soon divided among about 100 international scholars. In Nov. 1991, Tov lifted all publication restrictions and allowed all scholars access to the official scroll photographs.

By 2009, with the appearance of DJD40, the official editions had all been published and were located in academic libraries.

Contents

Standard Identifiers

The Dead Sea Scrolls are identified by a manuscript number, which is the Cave number followed by a Q for ‘Qumran’ (recall that scrolls from other sites around the Dead Sea are also called Dead Sea Scrolls officially – but not by me – and they will have other letter designators) and a sequential number indicating the position in the catalogue. For example, 3 copies of the Temple Scroll were found in Qumran Cave 11 and were items 19, 20, and 21 catalogued from that site. These copies can be referenced as 11Q19, 11Q20, and 11Q21. If a text contains a composition that can be easily and conveniently named or described, like the Temple Scroll, this name or description is also commonly used as its title. Recognising this, many texts also have a manuscript name in which the catalogue index is replaced by an abbreviation of the name or description. If there are several copies of that text, the manuscript name includes a superscript indicating which copy it is. In the case of the Temple Scroll, the title ‘Temple’ is abbreviated to give 11QT^a, 11QT^b, and 11QT^c.

Contents by Caves

Cave 1

Manuscript name	Document	Manuscript number
1QIsa^a	Great Isaiah Scroll
1QIsa^b	Isaiah	cf. 1Q8
1QS	Serekh ha-Yahad or “Community Rule”
1QpHab	Pesher on Habakkuk
1QM	Milhamah or War Scroll
1QH^a	Hodayot or Thanksgiving Hymns
1QapGen	Genesis Apocryphon
CTLevi	Cairo Geniza or Testament of Levi
1QGen	Genesis	1Q1
1QExod	Exodus	1Q2
1QpaleoLev	Leviticus – Numbers	1Q3
1QDeut^a	Deuteronomy	1Q4
1QDeut^b	Deuteronomy	1Q5
1QJudg	Judges	1Q6
1QSam	Samuel	1Q7
1QIsa^b	Isaiah	Parts of 1QIsa^b as 1Q8
1QEzek	Ezekiel	Parts of 1QIsa^b as 1Q9
1QPs^a	Psalms	1Q10
1QPs^b		1Q11
1QPs^c		1Q12
1QPhyl	Phylactery	1Q13
1QpMic	Pesher on Micah	1Q14
1QpZeph	Pesher on Zephaniah	1Q15
1QpPs	Pesher on Psalms	1Q16
1QJub^a	Jubilees	1Q17
1QJub^b	Jubilees	1Q18
1QNoah	Book of Noah	1Q19
1QapGen	Fragments of the “Genesis Apocryphon”	1Q20
1QTLevi / 1QALD	Testament of Levi	1Q21
1QDM	“Dibrê Moshe” or “Words of Moses”	1Q22
1QEnGiants^a	Book of Giants	1Q23
1QEnGiants^b	Book of Giants	1Q24
1Q Apocr.Prophecy	“Apocryphal Prophecy”	1Q25
1Q Instruction	“Instruction”	1Q26
1QMyst	“The Book of Mysteries”	1Q27
1QS or 1QS^a	“Rule of the Congregation”	1Q28 (1Q28a)
1QS^b	“Rule of the Blessing” or “Rule of the Benedictions”	1Q28b
1QapocrMoses B	Apocryphon of Moses	1Q29
1Q Liturgical Text(?) A	“Liturgical Text 1”	1Q30
1Q Liturgical Text(?) B	“Liturgical Text 2”	1Q31
1QNJ(?)	“New Jerusalem”	1Q32
1QM	Fragment of the 1QM or “War Scroll” or “Milhamah”	1Q33
1QPrFetes / 1QLitPr	“Liturgical Prayers” or “Festival Prayers”	1Q34
1QH^b	“Hodayot” or “Thanksgiving Hymns”	1Q35
1Q Hymns	“Hymns”	1Q36
1Q Hymnic Composition(?)	“Hymnic Composition”	1Q37
1Q Hymnic Composition(?)	“Hymnic Composition”	1Q38
1Q Hymnic Composition(?)	“Hymnic Composition”	1Q39
1Q Hymnic Composition(?)	“Hymnic Composition”	1Q40
1Q41–70		1Q41–70
1QDan^a	Daniel	1Q71
1QDan^b	Daniel	1Q72

Cave 2

2QGen	Genesis	2Q1
2QExod^a	Exodus	2Q2
2QExod^b		2Q3
2QExod^c		2Q4
2QpaleoLev	Leviticus	2Q5
2QNum^a	Numbers	2Q6
2QNum^b		2Q7
2QNum^c		2Q8
2QNum^d?		2Q9
2QDeut^a	Deuteronomy	2Q10
2QDeut^b		2Q11
2QDeut^c		2Q12
2QJer	Jeremiah	2Q13
2QPs	Psalms	2Q14
2QJob	Job	2Q15
2QRuth^a	Ruth	2Q16
2QRuth^b	Ruth	2Q17
2QSir	“Wisdom of Sirach” or “Ecclesiasticus”	2Q18
2QJub^a	Book of Jubilees	2Q19
2QJub^b	Book of Jubilees	2Q20
2QapMoses /2QapocrMoses(?)	“Apocryphon of Moses”	2Q21
2QapDavid /2QapocrDavid	“Apocryphon of David”	2Q22
2QapProph /2Qapocr.Prophecy	“Apocryphal Prophecy”	2Q23
2QNJ	“New Jerusalem”	2Q24
2Q Juridical Text	“Juridical Text”	2Q25
2QEnGiants	“Book of Giants” from “Enoch”	2Q26
		2Q27 2Q28 2Q29 2Q30 2Q31 2Q32 2Q33
2QX1		2QX1

Cave 3

3QEzek	Ezekiel	3Q1
3QPs	Psalms	3Q2
3QLam	Lamentations	3Q3
3QpIsa	Pesher on Isaiah	3Q4
3QJub	Jubilees	3Q5
3QHymn	Unidentified Hymn	3Q6
3QTJud(?)	Testament of Judah(?)	3Q7
3Q Text Mentioning Angel of Peace		3Q8
3QSectarian text		3Q9
3QUnc	Unidentified	3Q10 3Q11
3QUncA-B	Unclassified fragments	3Q12 3Q13
3QUncC	Unidentified	3Q14
3QCopScr	The Copper Scroll	3Q15

Cave 4

4QGen-Exod^a	Genesis–Exodus	4Q1
4QGen^b	Genesis	4Q2
4QGen^c		4Q3
4QGen^d		4Q4
4QGen^e		4Q5
4QGen^f		4Q6
4QGen^g		4Q7
4QGen^h/4QGen^h1		4Q8
4QGen^h2		4Q8a
4QGen^h-para		4Q8b
4QGen^h-title		4Q8c
4QGen^j		4Q9
4QGen^k		4Q10
4QpaleoGen-Exod^l	Paleo-Genesis/Exodus	4Q11
4QpaleoGen^m	Paleo-Genesis	4Q12
4QExod^b	Exodus	4Q13
4QExod^c		4Q14
4QExod^d		4Q15
4QExod^e		4Q16
4QExod-Lev^f	Exodus–Leviticus	4Q17
4QExod^g	Exodus	4Q18
4QExod^h		4Q19
4QExod^j		4Q20
4QExod^k		4Q21
4QpaleoExod^m (olim 4QExα)	Paleo-Exodus	4Q22
4QLev-Num^a	Leviticus–Numbers	4Q23
4QLev^b	Leviticus	4Q24
4QLev^c		4Q25
4QLev^d		4Q26
4QLev^e		4Q26a
4QLev^g		4Q26b
4QNum^b	Numbers	4Q27
4QDeut^a	Deuteronomy	4Q28
4QDeut^b		4Q29
4QDeut^c		4Q30
4QDeut^d		4Q31
4QDeut^e		4Q32
4QDeut^f		4Q33
4QDeut^g		4Q34
4QDeut^h		4Q35
4QDeutⁱ		4Q36
4QDeut^j		4Q37
4QDeut^k1		4Q38
4QDeut^k2		4Q38a
4QDeut^k3		4Q38b
4QDeut^l		4Q39
4QDeut^m		4Q40
4QDeutⁿ	All Souls Deuteronomy	4Q41
4QDeut^o	Deuteronomy	4Q42
4QDeut^p		4Q43
4QDeut^q		4Q44
4QpaleoDeut^r	Paleo-Deuteronomy	4Q45
4QpaleoDeut^s	Paleo-Deuteronomy	4Q46
4QJosh^a	Joshua	4Q47
4QJosh^b	Joshua	4Q48
4QJudg^a	Judges	4Q49
4QJudg^b	Judges	4Q50
4QSam^a	Samuel	4Q51
4QSam^b		4Q52
4QSam^c		4Q53
4QKgs	Kings	4Q54
4QIsa^a	Isaiah	4Q55
4QIsa^b		4Q56
4QIsa^c		4Q57
4QIsa^d		4Q58
4QIsa^e		4Q59
4QIsa^f		4Q60
4QIsa^g		4Q61
4QIsa^h		4Q61
4QIsaⁱ		4Q62
4QIsa^j		4Q63
4QIsa^k		4Q64
4QIsa^l		4Q65
4QIsa^m		4Q66
4QIsaⁿ		4Q67
4QIsa^o		4Q68
4QIsa^p		4Q69
4QIsa^q		4Q69a
4QIsa^r		4Q69b
4QJer^a	Jeremiah	4Q70
4QJer^b		4Q71
4QJer^c		4Q72
4QJer^d (olim 4QJer^b)		4Q72a
4QJer^e (olim 4QJer^b)		4Q72b
4QEze^a	Ezekiel	4Q73
4QEze^b		4Q74
4QEze^c		4Q75
4QXII^a	The Twelve Minor Prophets	4Q76
4QXII^b		4Q77
4QXII^c		4Q78
4QXII^d		4Q79
4QXII^e		4Q80
4QXII^f		4Q81
4QXII^g		4Q82
4QPs^a	Psalms	4Q83
4QPs^b		4Q84
4QPs^c & 4QPs^t^{[n 1]}		4Q85 / 4Q98^c
4QPs^d		4Q86
4QPs^e		4Q87
4QPs^f		4Q88
4QPs^g		4Q89
4QPs^h		4Q90
4QPs^j		4Q91
4QPs^k		4Q92
4QPs^l		4Q93
4QPs^m		4Q94
4QPsⁿ		4Q95
4QPs^o		4Q96
4QPs^p (olim 4Q237)		4Q97
4QPs^q		4Q98
4QPs^r		4Q98a
4QPs^s		4Q98b
*4QPs^t (see 4QPs^c)		*4Q98c
4QPs^u		4Q98d
4QPs^v (olim 4QPs^u frg. 2)		4Q98e
4QPs^w		4Q98f
4QPs^x (olim 4Q236)		4Q98g
4QJob^a	Job	4Q99
4QJob^b	Job	4Q100
4QpaleoJob^c	Paleo-Job	4Q101
4QProv^a	Proverbs	4Q102
4QProv^b	Proverbs	4Q103
4QRuth^a	Ruth	4Q104
4QRuth^b	Ruth	4Q105
4QCant^a	Canticles (Song of Songs)	4Q106
4QCant^b		4Q107
4QCant^c		4Q108
4QQoh^a	Ecclesiastes	4Q109
4QQoh^b	Ecclesiastes	4Q110
4QLam	Lamentations	4Q111
4QDan^a	Daniel	4Q112
4QDan^b		4Q113
4QDan^c		4Q114
4QDan^d		4Q115
4QDan^e		4Q116
4QEzra	Ezra	4Q117
4QChr/4QChron	Chronicles	4Q118
4QLXXLev^a gr	Septuagint Leviticus	4Q119
4QpapLXXLev^b/ pap4QLXXLev^b gr	Septuagint Leviticus	4Q120
4QLXXNum^b gr	Septuagint Numbers	4Q121
4QLXXDeut gr	Septuagint Deuteronomy	4Q122
4QpaleoparaJosh	Paraphrase on Joshua	4Q123
4QUnid gr	Unidentified text	4Q126
4Qpap paraExod / pap4QParaExod gr	Paraphrase on Exodus	4Q127
4Qphyl^a	Phylactery Scrolls	4Q128
4Qphyl^b		4Q129
4Qphyl^c		4Q130
4Qphyl^d		4Q131
4Qphyl^e		4Q132
4Qphyl^f		4Q133
4Qphyl^g		4Q134
4Qphyl^h		4Q135
4Qphylⁱ		4Q136
4Qphyl^j (olim 4Qphyl^a)		4Q137
4Qphyl^k		4Q138
4Qphyl^l		4Q139
4Qphyl^m		4Q140
4Qphylⁿ		4Q141
4Qphyl^o		4Q142
4Qphyl^p		4Q143
4Qphyl^q		4Q144
4Qphyl^r		4Q145
4QPhyl^s		4Q146
4Qphyl^t		4Q147
4Qphyl^u		4Q148
4QMez^a	Mezuzah Scrolls	4Q149
4QMez^b		4Q150
4QMez^c		4Q151
4QMez^d		4Q152
4QMez^e		4Q153
4QMez^f		4Q154
4QMez^g		4Q155
4QtgLev	Targum of Leviticus	4Q156
4QtgJob	Targum of Job	4Q157
4QRP^a	Reworked Pentateuch A	4Q158
4QOrdinances^a	Ordinances A	4Q159
4QVisSam	Vision of Samuel	4Q160
4QpIsaiah^a	Pesher on Isaiah	4Q161
4QpIsaiah^b	Pesher on Isaiah	4Q162
4QpHosA	Pesher on Hosea A	4Q166
4QpHosB	Pesher on Hosea B	4Q167
4QpMic(?)	Pesher on Micah?	4Q168
4QpNah	Pesher on Nahum	4Q169
4Q Eschatological Commentary A	Florilegium or Midrash on the Last Days	4Q174
4QTest	Testimonia	4Q175
4QapocrLamA	Apocryphal Lamentations A	4Q179
4Q Horoscope	Physiognomies/Horoscopes	4Q186
4QpapTobit^a	Tobit	4Q196
4QTobit^b		4Q197
4QTobit^c		4Q198
4QTobit^d		4Q199
4QTobit^e		4Q200
4QEn^a	The Enoch Scroll	4Q201^a
4QALD / 4QLevi^a-f ar	The Aramaic Levi Document (ALD)	4Q213 4Q213^a 4Q213^b 4Q214 4Q214^a 4Q214^b
4QTNaph	Testament of Naphtali	4Q215
4QCant^a(?)	Pesher on Canticles/Song of Songs	4Q240
4QapocrDan	Aramaic Apocalypse or The Son of God Text	4Q246
4QCommentary on Gen A /4QCommGenA	Commentary/Pesher on Genesis	4Q252
4QCommentary on Gen B /4QCommGenB		4Q253
4QCommentary on Gen C /4QCommGenC		4Q254
4QCommentary on Gen D (olim 4QpGenc)		4Q254^a–820
4QS^d	Serekh ha-Yahad or Community Rule	4Q258
4QD	The Damascus Document	4Q265–273
4Q Sefer ha-Milhamah	Rule of War	4Q285
4QMyst^a	The Book of Mysteries / The Book of Secrets	4Q299
4QMyst^b		4Q300
4QMyst^c		4Q301
4QRP^b	Reworked Pentateuch	4Q364
4QRP^c		4Q365
4QRP^d		4Q366
4QRP^e		4Q367
4QapocrJosh^a	Apocryphon of Joshua	4Q378
4QapocrJosh^b	Apocryphon of Joshua	4Q379
4QpsEzek	Pseudo-Ezekiel	4Q385 4Q385^b 4Q385^c 4Q386 4Q388 4Q391
4QMMT /4Q Cal.Doc.D	Miqsat Ma’ase Ha-Torah or Some Precepts of the Law or the Halakhic Letter	4Q394–399
4Q Non-Canonical Psalms A	Songs of Sabbath Sacrifice or the Angelic Liturgy	4Q400–407
4QInstruction	Sapiential Work A	4Q415–418
4QParaphrase	Paraphrase of Genesis and Exodus
4Q Barkhi Nafshia	Barkhi Nafshi – Apocryphal Psalms	4Q434
4Q Apocr. Psalm and Prayer	Hymn to King Jonathan or The Prayer For King Jonathan Scroll	4Q448
4QpapGen or papJub	pap-Genesis or pap-Jubilees	4Q483
4QShir^a-b	Songs of the Sage or Songs of the Maskil	4Q510–511
4Q Messianic Apocalypse	Messianic Apocalypse	4Q521
4Q Jonathan		4Q523
4QTempleScrollb	Temple Scroll	4Q524
4QBeatitudes		4Q525
4Q TJoseph	Testament of Joseph	4Q539
4QapocrLevi(?)^b	Testament of Levi^d	4Q541
4QTKohath (4QTQahat)	Testament of Qahat	4Q542
4QNJ^c	New Jerusalem	4Q555
4QGenⁿ	Genesis	4Q576
Unnumbered

Cave 5

5QDeut	Deuteronomy	5Q1
5QKgs	Kings	5Q2
5QIsa	Isaiah	5Q3
5QAmos	Amos	5Q4
5QPs	Psalms	5Q5
5QLam^a	Lamentations	5Q6
5QLam^b	Lamentations	5Q7
5QPhyl	Phylactery	5Q8
5QapocrJosh or 5QToponyms	Toponyms	5Q9
5QapocrMal	Apocryphon of Malachi	5Q10
5QS	Rule of Community (Serek ha-Yahad)	5Q11
5QD	Damascus Document	5Q12
5QRule or 5QRégle	Rule of Community	5Q13
5QCurses	Curses	5Q14
5QNJ	New Jerusalem Scroll	5Q15
5QUnid	Unidentified	5Q16–5Q24
5QUnc	Unclassified	5Q25

Cave 6

6QpaleoGen	Genesis	6Q1
6QpaleoLev	Leviticus	6Q2
pap6QDeut or 6QpapDeut(?)	Deuteronomy	6Q3
6QpapKgs	Kings	6Q4
pap6QPs or 6QpapPs(?)	Psalms	6Q5
6QCant	Song of Songs	6Q6
6QpapDan	Daniel	6Q7
6QpapGiants or pap6QEnGiants	Book of Giants from Enoch	6Q8
6Qpap apocrSam-Kgs or pap6QapocrSam/Kgs	Apocryphon on Samuel–Kings	6Q9
6QpapaProph or pap6QProph	Unidentified prophetic fragment	6Q10
6QAllegory	Allegory of the Vine	6Q11
6QapProph	An apocryphal prophecy	6Q12
6QPriestProph	Priestly Prophecy	6Q13
6Q Apocalypse	Apocalyptic text	6Q14
6QD	Damascus Document	6Q15
6QpapBened or pap6QBen	papBenediction	6Q16
6QCalDoc	Calendrical Document	6Q17
pap6QHymn	Hymn	6Q18
6Q Text Related to Genesis	Genesis	6Q19
6QDeut(?)	Deuteronomy	6Q20
6QfrgProph or 6Q Prophetic Text	Possibly prophetic text	6Q21
pap6QUnidA	Unclassified fragments	6Q22
pap6QUnidA ar	Unclassified fragments	6Q23
6QUnidB	Unclassified fragments	6Q24
6QUnidB	Unclassified fragments	6Q25
6QUnidB or 6QpapAccount or Contract	Accounts or contracts	6Q26
6QUnidB	Unclassified fragments	6Q27–6Q28
6QpapProv	Proverbs	6Q30
6QUnidB	Unclassified fragments	6Q31

Cave 7

7QpapLXXExod	Exodus	7Q1
7QpapEpJer	Letter of Jeremiah	7Q2
7Q3	Unidentified	7Q3
7Q4	Unidentified	7Q4
7Q5	Unidentified	7Q5
7Q6–18	Unidentified	7Q6–18
7Q papImprint	Unidentified	7Q19

Cave 8

8QGen	Genesis	8Q1
8QPs	Psalms	8Q2
8QPhyl	Phylacteries	8Q3
8QMez	Mezuzah	8Q4
8QHymn	Unidentified hymn	8Q5

Cave 9

9Qpap

Unidentified

9Q1

Cave 10

10QOstracon

Ostracon

10Q1

Cave 11

11QpaleoLev^a	Paleo-Leviticus^a	11Q1
11QLev^b	Leviticus^b	11Q2
11QDeut	Deuteronomy	11Q3
11QEzek	Ezekiel	11Q4
11QPs	The Great Psalms Scroll	11Q5
11QPs^a	Psalms	11Q5
11QPs^b		11Q6
11QPs^c		11Q7
11QPs^d		11Q8
11QPs^e		11Q9
11QtgJob	Targum Job	11Q10
11QapocrPs	Apocryphal Psalms	11Q11
11QJub	Jubilees	11Q12
11QMelch	Melchizedek	11Q13
11Q Sefer ha-Milhamah	Sefer ha-Milhamah (“The Book of War”)	11Q14
11QHymns^a	Hymns	11Q15
11QHymns^b	Hymns	11Q16
11QShirShabb	Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice	11Q17
11QNJ	New Jerusalem	11Q18
11QT^a	Temple Scroll	11Q19
11QT^b		11Q20
11QT^c		11Q21
11Q Unidentified	Unidentified	11Q22
		11Q23
		11Q24
		11Q25
		11Q26
		11Q27
		11Q28
		11Q29
		11Q30
		11Q31
11Q9999	Unidentified

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Text Hoard: Nag Hammadi Library

September 24, 2026 – 10:26 am

Nature of the Hoard

12 codices
- Contain 52 tractates (51 bound and one unbound)
  - The unbound tractate, formerly ‘Codex XIII,’ was found inside the front cover of Codex VI
- Comprise at least parts of 1139 pages of text
Written in Coptic.
Dated to the 4^th C AD.
Principally gnostic – both Christian and some non-Christian – though with other material included: e.g. three texts from the Corpus Hermeticum and an extract from Plato’s
Generally assumed to be the concealed property of the nearby Pachomian monastery. They may have been removed from the monastery collection after Athanasius in his 39^th Festal Letter in 367 AD published a list of texts he deemed canonical and condemned the use of texts he deemed non-canonical.

Location

Discovery

The existence of the codices became known in 1946. Between 1947 and 1950 French historian Jean Doresse investigated their origins, establishing that in 1945 a buried jar containing the codices had been unearthed by a farmer, reportedly from a graveyard near some 6^th Dynasty tombs. In the 70s the farmer, one Muhammad ‘Ali al-Samman, was found and interviewed by James Robinson who described to him the circumstances of the discovery, which was at the base of the Jabal el Tarif cliffs near the village of Hamra Dom, within sight of the Pachomian monastery of Pbau/Pbow (modern Faw Qibli) 5 km from the Pachomian monastery of Chenoboskion/Seneset (modern al-Qasr wa as-Sayyad,) and 11 km from Nag Hammadi. The story he told is not much to be trusted, but his mother did mention that she used some of the texts as kindling and Robinson believes that that explains the poor condition of Codex XII.

Acquisition

Most of the texts were initially collected from 1946 onwards by Phokion J. Tano(s), a Cypriot antiques dealer in Cairo.
In 1948 they were taken by the Department of Antiquities and in 1956 they were given to the Coptic Museum.
In 1947/8 Codex I was sold to Albert Eid, a Belgian antiques dealer in Cairo.
It was then bought by the Gustav Jung Institute in Zurich in 1952 as a gift for Gustav Jung and named the ‘Jung Codex.’
In 1975, after the text had been published, it was given to the Coptic Museum.

Photo: Courtesy of Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont, CA

Publication

The editio princeps of the Jung Codex (NHC I) appeared in stages from 1956 to 1975, prepared by scholars for the Jung Institute using material from both Zurich and Cairo, after which NHC I was returned to Egypt.

The Gospel of Thomas (NHC II, 2) was published in a photographic edition in 1956 and an English translation with Coptic text was issued in 1959 as The Gospel of Thomas by A Guillaumont, H-C Puech, G Quispel, WC Till, Y ‘Abd al-Masih (eds.)

The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices in 12 volumes was published largely between 1972 and 1977 (with the volumes Cartonnage appearing in 1979 and Introduction in 1984) by the International Committee for the Nag Hammadi Codices, established in 1970 by UNESCO and the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, under the direction of JM Robinson of Claremont Graduate University.

Images of the original codices may be seen via the Claremont Colleges Digital Library’s Nag Hammadi Archive.

An English translation by members of the Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity of Claremont CA (James M. Robinson, Director and General Editor,) appeared as The Nag Hammadi Library in English in 1977.

Contents

Tractate References

Order	NHC	Number	Title	Pages	Abbreviation
01	I	1	Prayer of the Apostle Paul	(2)	Pr. Paul
02		2	Apocryphon of James (Secret Book of James)	1–16	Ap. Jas.
03		3	Gospel of Truth	16–43	Gos. Truth
04		4	Treatise on the Resurrection	43–50	Treat Res.
05		5	Tripartite Tractate	51–140	Tri. Trac.
06	II	1	Apocryphon of John	1–32	Ap. John
07		2	Gospel of Thomas	32–51	Gos. Thom.
08		3	Gospel of Philip	51–86	Gos. Phil.
09		4	Hypostasis of the Archons	86–97	Hyp. Arch.
10		5	On the Origin of the World	97–127	Orig. World
11		6	Exegesis on the Soul	127–137	Exeg. Soul
12		7	Book of Thomas the Contender	138–145	Thom. Cont.
13	III	1	Apocryphon of John	1–40	Ap. John
14		2	Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit (Gospel of the Egyptians)	40–69	Gos. Eg.
15		3	Eugnostos the Blessed	70–90	Eugnostos
16		4	Sophia of Jesus Christ	90–119	Soph. Jes. Chr.
17		5	Dialogue of the Saviour	120–149	Dial. Sav.
18	IV	1	Apocryphon of John	1–49	Ap. John
19	IV	2	Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit (Gospel of the Egyptians)	50–81	Gos. Eg.
20	V	1	Eugnostos the Blessed	1–17	Eugnostos
21		2	Apocalypse of Paul	17–24	Apoc. Paul.
22		3	First Apocalypse of James	24–44	1 Ap. Jas.
23		4	Second Apocalypse of James	44–63	2 Ap. Jas.
24		5	Apocalypse of Adam	63–85	Apoc. Adam
25	VI	1	Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles	1–12	Acts Pet. 12 Apost.
26		2	Thunder, Perfect Mind	13–21	Thund.
27		3	Authoritative Teaching (Authoritative Discourse)	23–35	Auth. Teach.
28		4	Concept of Our Great Power	36–48	Great Pow.
29		5	Fragments: 588a-589b of Plato’s Republic.	48–51	Plato Rep.
30		6	Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth	52–63	Dis. 8–9
31		7	Prayer of Thanksgiving	63–65	Pr. Thanks.
32		8	Asclepius	65–78	Asklepius
33	VII	1	Paraphrase of Shem	1–49	Paraph. Shem
34		2	Second Treatise of the Great Seth	49–70	Treat. Seth
35		3	Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter	70–84	Apoc. Petr.
36		4	Teachings of Silvanus	84–118	Teach. Silv
37		5	Three Steles of Seth	118–127	Steles Seth
38	VIII	1	Zostrianos	1–132	Zost.
39	VIII	2	Letter of Peter to Philip	132–140	Ep. Pet. Phil.
40	IX	1	Melchizedek	1–27	Melch.
41		2	Thought of Norea	27–29	Norea
42		3	Testimony of Truth	29–74	Testim. Truth.
43	X	1	Marsanes	1–68	Marsanes
44	XI	1	Interpretation of Knowledge	1–21	Interp. Know.
45		2	Valentinian Exposition	22–40	Val. Exp.
46		3	Allogenes	40–44	Allogenes
47		4	Hypsiphrone	45–69	Hypsiph.
48	XII	1	Sentences of Sextus	15–16, 27–34	Sext
49		2	Gospel of Truth		Gos. Truth
50		3	fragments		Frm.
51	XIII	1	Trimorphic Protennoia	35–50	Trim. Prot.
52		2	On the Origin of the World		Orig. World
			fragments

C2SRC Maps

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Towards a ‘Virtue Theory’ for Literature (3)

September 17, 2026 – 1:45 pm

I said previously that the narrative virtues, being associated with the literary elements that are widely accepted as requirements for fine literature, require little explanation. That little explanation, however, is required. We can begin by noting that the relationship to the listed literary elements is not quite so obvious as might be thought. For example, the analysis of these literary elements in the relevant literature often deals with aspects that are not obviously related to a ‘virtue’ associated with them: the virtue associated with the element of ‘Narration’ isn’t going to be much concerned with point of view questions or with omniscient narrators or unreliable narrators or other such things, the virtue associated with ‘Plot’ isn’t going to be much concerned with ‘the hero’s journey’ or the other supposedly necessary forms of plotline, the virtue associated with the element of ‘Character’ isn’t going to be concerned with whether the characters fill the roles of protagonist or antagonist, and so on. Moreover, at least one of the classic literary elements, ‘Conflict,’ doesn’t seem to be associated with anything I’d count as a virtue at all.

Five Narrative Literary Virtues

Thematic Engagement

Every narrative will be found to have one or several themes. A theme is, bluntly speaking, the point of the narrative, it is what the narrative is about beyond a simple recounting of a sequence of events. Although it is often stated that the theme can be described in a single word – like ‘love,’ ’revenge,’ or ‘loneliness’ – and that it is to be sharply distinguished from a ‘moral,’ in which a particular (usually normative) claim is more or less explicitly supported by the text, we find that the most rewarding treatments of a theme involve a great deal of usually implicit propositional content. A work shows the virtue of thematic engagement when a variety of attitudes and claims related to the themes are explored in that work – intelligently, though not necessarily systematically, and without necessarily endorsing or disapproving any of them. The associated vice of defect is seen in a lack of intelligent exploration of the theme(s,) in which case the narrative is intellectually unengaging and will be experienced as vacuous. The vice of excess risks making the work a treatise and overwhelming the narrative experience.

Plot Integrity

Every narrative has a plot, in the sense of a series of causally related events/situations/states of affairs: that is true almost by the very definition of narrative literature. From classical times (I’m thinking particularly of Aristotle’s claims in his Poetics relating to tragic theatre) it has been recognised that event sequences that fail to satisfy certain obvious criteria of causal integrity are experienced as unsatisfactory: thus, events in general should follow one another according to the normal way of things, and coincidences, extraneous events (outside the chain of causes,) extraordinary events, irrelevant events, and so on are not to be overly relied on to move the story forward nor to be allowed to distract from the plot. On the other hand, it is precisely some such unusual event that may precipitate the action of a narrative or create the unusual circumstance that makes the story worth hearing. The virtue of plot integrity finds the middle way between the vice of excessive reliance on such events – experienced as laziness or incompetence on the part of the story teller – and the vice of complete rejection of any unusual events – which will make the plot a nullity in the narrative experience and will usually nullify the narrative experience itself.

Character Accessibility

Where the plot of a narrative consists of a sequence of events, the characters in a narrative are those involved in the events, whether as patients or agents (or both.) Amongst the pleasures of narrative literature is that afforded by the exercise of our capacity for empathy which may thus be focused on one or several of the characters presented. In order for empathy with a character to be reasonably possible that character has to be adequately defined: motivations have to be comprehensible, actions and responses and emotions and so on have to be plausible given their history, circumstances, desires, fears, etc. In short, some work of psychological definition has to be undertaken in order to create a particular character that can be reasonably modelled by the reader’s theory of mind – though not necessarily through direct description, for the character may more effectively emerge through the actions of the story. Without this sort of definition, a character will lack sufficient detail to invite or permit empathy. The virtue of character accessibility lies in achieving a character definition adequate to permit empathetic identification without going so far into the complexities and details and peculiarities of those invented psyches that the narration becomes subordinated to the psychological exploration, which invites psychological analysis at a distance rather than empathetic identification and subverts the narrative experience.

Imaginative Appeal (of the Setting)

Events and characters necessarily exist in a particular place and time and milieu which provides the context and background for the narrative. Similarly to the pleasure of empathizing with characters, amongst the pleasures of narrative literature is that afforded by the exercise of our capacity to imagine ourselves in an alien environment, where things are otherwise than they are outside the narrative. In order for this imaginative immersion to be possible a sufficient description has to be provided of the narrative’s setting that the imagination can use to begin its inner construction of the narrative’s world, presented in such a way that it invites the imaginative effort. On the other hand, the background is just the background, and any descriptive work should not be allowed to dominate the narrative to the extent that the work becomes an exercise in world-building or socio-historical documentation rather than a narrative. There are rewards to those arts certainly, but they are not those of narrative literature. It’s worth noting, too, that the setting of a narrative may be used as a support for thematic or character elements, and some narrative pleasure can be gained from the setting in that use, but only if the setting has independently succeeded in appealing to the immersive imagination

Stylistic Distinction

Every narrative as presented necessarily has a certain style constituted by the distinctive way in which the author chooses words, structures the work, uses various literary devices, and so on. Style may be used to engage the audience, manage pacing, regulate tone and mood, and perform many other essential functions. A good style – in the most basic sense – is one that allows these functions and may be judged on that ground. Beyond such fundamental criteria for the acceptability of any style, an author may also use this as a place to display ludic literary virtues. For whatever reason, however, we also find pleasure in simply experiencing a narration delivered in a style that is distinct and particular to an author. The virtue of stylistic distinction is achieved by finding the middle way between a style that is pedestrian and unremarkable and indistinguishable from any number of other uninspired writers, and a style that in striving for distinction overshoots and becomes intrusive, so that the narrative becomes subordinated to the narration – or worse, the narrator.

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On the Modification of an Institution

August 22, 2026 – 10:39 am

A discussion with a group of friends turned – never mind how – to the subject of same-sex marriage (SSM.) I made the traditionalist claim that marriage is an institution whose purpose and function is to regulate sexual behaviour, to provide support for children and child-bearing women, and to support the nuclear family which is the smallest sustainable social structure and the fundamental partition of society. The laws supporting this institution accepted that function until quite recently. I argued that the SSM campaign and the changes to the law that it has occasioned are destructive of the traditional notion of marriage and risk subverting its valuable social function.

The problem with SSM, as I see it, is that the most popular argument given in support of the change is that marriage is supposed to be a recognition of inter-personal love and a support for the continuance of a relationship deemed essential for the happiness of the partners. This being the case there is no reason not to extend its coverage to partnerships of the same sex. Love and happiness are everyone’s right! Of course, I deny that this is a principal motivation for the continuance of the marriage institution – it is at best an incidental and historically unusual feature of modern marriage customs. As an end of marriage, however, this is competitive with the social good traditionally intended. It is not at all clear that the two ends can both be served by the same institution; nor has any effort been put into demonstrating or arguing that they can. If society comes to accept that rationale for marriage (implicitly even more than explicitly) and begins to treat marriage in general as being intended to support hedonistic goals rather than socially functional goals, then the originally accepted function of marriage may be subverted, and the institution may fail to produce the good effects of a well-functioning institution of marriage. In support of this contention, I think we’ve already begun to see the dire consequences of no-fault divorce – which was another institutional modification defended on reasonable grounds but inimical to the good functioning of the institution.

It occurs to me also that the case of the acceptance of SSM gives a clue to at least one mode by which institutions are made dynamic rather than static. Let us suppose that the form of marriage observing the traditional norms of that institution was in fact effective in bringing about the ‘intended’ stability in the formation and maintenance of the family unit. It may nevertheless have been the case that dissatisfaction with that institution arose from the perceived inability of that institution under those conditions to reasonably provide for the happiness (romantic contentment, companionability, etc.) of the participants. Dissatisfaction there might have led to a conviction that such happiness ought to be an intended outcome of the institution – or that the institution that made such personal happiness impossible ought to be dissolved. The latter is an extreme conclusion, but it is one that has certainly had its defenders in the socialist, feminist, and (prior) homosexual rights movements. Desiring to retain the institution, however, and desiring modification of its intended function to include the happiness criterion, would naturally lead to a modification of the set of norms that are considered applicable to the institution. Modification of the normset would then lead to a modification of the Institutional Function of marriage. Whether the modified function would match the intended function is quite another question.

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Towards a ‘Virtue Theory’ for Literature (2)

August 12, 2026 – 11:45 am

Earlier it was determined that :

Literature is a performance of language use (of a particular kind) and has natural elements of assessment as a performance of a certain kind. (They may not be the only elements of assessment, but they are the fundamentals.) In the particular case of fine literature as we are understanding it, those natural elements of assessment are exactly the elements of literature determined to be relevant to the two sources of pleasure in literature that we have identified: storytelling and language play. Excellence in literature will be judged by the degree to which excellence is displayed in those elements.

Functions Determine the Virtues

According to a long-established understanding of the nature of excellence in general, the excellence of a performance has to be understood in terms of the fitness of certain elements for the achievement of the purpose of the performance. This view of excellences can be most obviously traced to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, in which the excellences (αρεται, virtues) of character were determined to be traits or dispositions tuned to the achievement of happiness (eudaimonia) through the exercise of practical reason. In the argument to that point, Aristotle noted that excellences or virtues in other things that were described as good of their kind were precisely those qualities that fitted those things to perform their characteristic functions well – the sharpness of a knife, the skill of a flautist, the speed of a horse, etc.

The difficulty here, however, is that the functions of the two modes of linguistic performance – storytelling and language play – are, respectively, mysterious and merely vestigial. In the case of language play (let us call it the ludic mode,) it was argued earlier that the original function was to provide a mode of linguistic behaviour in which language competence could be demonstrated or honed and that the pleasure found in it functioned to reward participation in performances in that mode. That being the case, it would be reasonable to assume that the virtues in that performance are precisely those characteristics of the performance that demonstrate the competence of the performer, and which give pleasure to the audience. The same will of course apply to the performances in that mode which are the continuations of that juvenile mode into maturity.

In the case of storytelling (the narrative mode,) the function is not so clear, though, as was suggested previously, there have been hypothesized uses in social display or cultural transmission. Those uses, however, cannot constitute the function: the function properly performed has those uses. We can say no more than that the function of performances in the narrative mode is to transmit a structure of events and other contents in an interestingly integrated form. We are correspondingly required to deduce the virtues from the observation of the characteristics that give pleasure in the narrative mode – assuming, as we did for the ludic mode, that those pleasures are fitted to encourage the characteristics important to the function. The identification of those virtues will require us to distinguish the relevant pleasures from others that may be due to functionally irrelevant features of a performance (or of any performance.)

Constraints on the Literary Virtues

Two further points made be made that will assist in determining whether some identified characteristic of a literary performance can really be a virtue of that mode. In the first place, we may note that every virtue of a mode of performance can be present in any particular performance; which is to say that none of the virtues can be mutually exclusive. That this is generally assumed to be the case for the classical virtues of character, for example, is apparent when Socrates is able to claim that they can be united in deriving from knowledge. More generally, it seems to be simply a matter of the meaning of the terms that if something counts as an excellence of a mode of performance it can be expected to be present in any particular performance.

In the second place, we shall assume that each of the virtues exists on a continuum and that the virtue does not consist in a simple maximisation of that particular characteristic. In this respect, again, we assume a similarity with the virtues of character. There is a distinction to be drawn here between those virtues and certain other kinds of positive characteristics. At first sight we might not be inclined to say, for example, that the right degree of sharpness in a knife was anything less than the sharpest it could be, that the right level of skill in a flautist was anything less than the best he could manage, or that the right speed for a horse (a racehorse, anyway) was anything less than the fastest a horse could go – and we note also that such characteristics are exactly the sorts of characteristics that cannot all be maximised (present at their ‘right’ degrees) at the same time. In practice, however, the sharpness of a knife, for example, its safety, its comfort of use, its strength, and so on are all characteristics that need to be balanced against each other in order for the knife to be optimal at its intended function, whereas virtues of the other kind have to be balanced against the function of the mode of performance itself. Therefore, both kinds of virtue (if the distinction is accepted) can be considered means in the Aristotelian sense.

It’s finally worth recalling the observation made in part 1 that we do not approach the identification of literary virtues alone or as an entirely new project. Literary critics and the general population from ancient times until today have had many opinions on the appropriate characteristics of fine literature guided by their relevant intuitions and operating on long experience of the form. It makes very good sense to take their opinions seriously.

Seven Ludic Literary Virtues

Syntactic Innovation

The ability to deploy or discover non-normative ways of constructing meaning-bearing locutions that do not stray so far from the bounds of normative syntax that the meaning becomes overly difficult to recover, or where there is ambiguity that that be intended. The associated vices of defect and excess would be respectively a too strict adherence to supposed syntactic norms and a too liberal departure from those norms. Note that a failure to master the grammar is just grammatical illiteracy.

Lexical Invention

The ability to coin new terms according to implicit rules of word construction, or to deploy unusual or non-standard terms in ways that expand their semantic field. The associated vice of defect would be displaying a too limited capacity for invention and expansion of the language’s capabilities, while the vice of excess would be showing too great a tendency to employ unusual, jargon, erudite, specialist, exotic, or invented terms in which meaning is obscured beyond desirable limits. Note that simple errors in word use (using the wrong word, for example) or just not knowing the available vocabulary adequately is just lexical illiteracy.

Semantic Density

The ability to clearly express complex or multiple meanings within a limited compass by the artful use of language. This sort of semantic compression may involve alternative possible intended interpretations, intended ambiguities, metaphors, similes, irony, and a range of other techniques of semantic subversion, overlay, or extension. The associated vice of defect would be an inadequate degree of semantic sophistication resulting in a pedestrian, plodding text, while the vice of excess would be a text that is so heavily saturated with semantic possibilities that it presents too formidable a barrier to comprehension. Unintended ambiguities, possible interpretations etc. are simple errors of clarity and intention.

Affective Control

The ability to direct the emotional effects of a text by the skilful use of language. This control may be effected through management of the tone, mood, atmosphere, reader response, etc. of a text. The associated vice of defect is the failure to adequately control the affective aspects of the text. Since every text necessarily has all the types of affect, this failure risks allowing the uncontrolled affect of the text to be irrelevant or distracting or contradictory to the intention of the author or the type of text. The vice of excess runs a similar risk by imposing affects where they are irrelevant or distracting or contradictory to the intention of the author or the type of text. In unskilled hands, attempted affective control can be seen as incoherent or manipulative.

Stylistic Distinction

The ability to create and maintain a style of expression in a text that distinguishes that text from others of a comparable kind by means of artful use of language – structure, lexicon, literary devices, etc. The associated vice of defect is the inability to develop a distinct style resulting in derivative, banal, or confused text stylings. The vice of excess risks producing texts whose stylings are distracting, idiosyncratic, confusing, etc. Note that a notably poor style that is not intended as such by the author is just the result of a lack of sensitivity to the language, not a form of stylistic distinction.

Musical Engagement

The ability to use features of language to create sonic effects pleasing or, at least, engaging to the ear. The relevant features include meter, rhyme, alliteration, assonance, and repetition amongst many others. Obviously, this is particularly important in poetry (perhaps even definitively so,) but it has a role in any text. The associated vice of defect is to fail to create such pleasing effects making the text either not pleasant or even unpleasant. The vice of excess risks making the text confusing or inappropriate to its genre. It is well known that these features are not easily handled, despite their popularity.

Structural Complexity

The ability to create semantically coherent complex structures in a text – including an overall structure for any particular text. The structure may be defined in narrative, semantic, thematic, or other terms. The associated vice of defect is an inability to impose a semantically coherent structure beyond, of course, limited syntactic units, resulting in a text that lacks a unifying principle or principles and is experienced as fragmentary, pointless, or incoherent. It is worth noting that a second level of the vice is seen where only very simple overall structures are attempted, in which case there may be a risk only of tedium or predictability. The vice of excess risks producing texts whose structures are overly complex and prove unintelligible to the reader, producing confusion and frustration. Attempted structures that fail of coherence are just incompetent constructions.

Seven Narrative Literary Virtues

Although the characteristics that constitute ludic literary virtues are relatively little studied, at least quâ virtues, the narrative virtues turn out to be very well known and require little explanation. They are conveniently associated with the literary elements that are commonly listed as requirements for any piece of literature (meaning fine narrative fiction.)

Theme
Plot
Conflict
Character
Setting
Narration
Tone

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Stumbling Blocks on the Gnostic Path

July 19, 2026 – 4:39 am

Suppose that we have justified a Gnostic cosmology and cosmogony of the usual form: hierarchical heavens presided over by a more or less tripartite God and its Aeons and Luminaries and so on, a material world existing as the failed creative effort of a Demiurge, humans containing particles of divinity seeking to escape that world, and a redeeming Christ figure who brings knowledge which will allow that escape. Still, there are details that require to be filled in.

How does knowledge bring about liberation?

The role of knowledge is inspired by Neoplatonic philosophy, as is the idea that by some sort of intellectual enlightenment the divine soul can be reunited with the One (achieving ἕνωσις/henosis.) In the Neoplatonic system (to speak generally) this is possible because the human soul in contemplation participates in Nous (Intelligence, the first emanation of the One) because it is simply a reflection of Nous’ own activity, and this in turn is simply a reflection of the One’s Being, so that human contemplation has an essential identity with the One that ‘simply’ requires intellectual effort to realise. The rather cruder metaphysics of the Gnostics does not allow this form of ascent (known in Neoplatonism as ἐπιστροφή/epistrophe,) because the divine spark in Man is not so derived.

Instead, the idea is that since ignorance (of the One?) is the cause of the defectiveness of the world created by the demiurge, supplying that knowledge eliminates the effect – at least, in the knower. Since the writers must have been aware that even those who did have ‘propositional’ knowledge of the true nature of the world (like themselves) were not ipso facto liberated, the knowledge would have to be of some other kind, and if the propositional knowledge was nevertheless important then that other kind would have to be somehow dependent upon it. Again, by appeal to the Neoplatonists, it would be natural to assume that some kind of immediate experiential ‘knowledge’ was in question (and in support of this, γνωσις/gnosis is the word used for that sort of thing,) but then, what could be the contribution of the propositional knowledge so copiously imparted in their writings? Presumably, by directing the knower toward the real God and away from the Demiurge, whatever conscious efforts might be made towards achieving spiritual union with God could at least hope for some effect.

Why is this liberating knowledge secret?

The Gnostics find a role for Christ as a redeemer by claiming that the liberating knowledge cannot be achieved without divine revelation. His role then is to make this revelation and show us the way to achieve liberation. This knowledge, however, is restricted in availability and appears in secret traditions and oral transmissions rather than in the explicit texts concerning Christ’s teachings. Reasons given for this, and they are not many, are pretty unconvincing. It is claimed, for example, that the demiurge is jealous and desires no one to adore another God in his stead – he commands this of us in first Commandment of the Decalogue – and therefore these teachings are to be kept secret so that He will not destroy them, and His archons in command of the various worlds collaborate in this suppression.

In fact, it is more likely that the explicit reasons for secrecy are merely ad hoc explanations for a thing that was already preferred or existent. The Gnostic sects arose in a time when the general cultural influence and prestige of ancient mystery religions (such as those of Eleusis, Cybele, Orpheus, Isis, Mithras and many others) was very great and the tradition of secret knowledge being imparted by inspired teachers and (divine) sages was widespread (Apollonius of Tyana etc.) It would have been quite natural for the Gnostics to have adopted the forms and tendencies of the religious traditions about them, amongst those being the idea of secret doctrines, initiations, and being part of an elite of spiritually privileged souls. Hermeticism, one of the earliest pre-Christian ‘esoteric’ sects, which arose in Egypt (an early centre of Gnosticism,) and that is thought to have influenced the development of Gnosticism, was a semi-mystery religion; and Christianity itself from its beginnings had many of the elements of a mystery cult: Jesus was accepted to have had deeper teachings for his apostles than those he gave in parables to the general public, the baptism constituted an initiation without which full participation in the community was impossible, and so on.

What does this all mean for our sins?

In the usual view, we are sinful by nature because we are in rebellion against the will of God. This is either illustrated by the story of the Fall or that event is taken to taint the posterity of Adam; but in the Gnostic cosmology the God of this world is merely the Demiurge, and we do no wrong by defying His will. It is well known, in fact, that many Gnostic sects reinterpret the story of the Fall itself to make the God of this world its villain, rather than the serpent or ourselves. Moreover, since the Gnostics insist that without Christ or some other revelator of the Truth we cannot know of the true God, we cannot be said to sin by denying His will for we can have no knowledge of His will. It’s not even clear that the One has willed anything for us. It is hard, then, to see why we should be thought to have a sinful nature at all.

One problem this creates is that because Christ does not come to redeem our sins by his death his passion becomes a problem for the theorists and adds to the Christological chaos of the Early Christians. Another is that lacking any guidance to behaviour from the One True God, there seems to be no moral law at all – at least in the way that the moral law was understood by Christians of the time. The licence to immoralism that this provided was further supported by the Gnostic’s dismissive attitude to the physical world that the ‘moral agent’ inhabited, and, no doubt, by a desire to flaunt their disregard for the rules that bound those who were their spiritual inferiors. We may doubt the atrocity stories told by the heresiologists who accused them of every form of immoralism – not excepting cannibalism – but the danger of libertinism is very real.

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A Gnostic Library

July 16, 2026 – 8:18 am

Secondary Texts

Modern

Brakke, D (2010) The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity, Harvard University Press.
Ehrman, B (2003) Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, Oxford University Press
Jonas, H (1958) The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, Beacon Boston
Lewis, ND (2013) Introduction to “Gnosticism:” Ancient Voices, Christian Worlds, Oxford University Press.
Markschies, C (tr. J Bowden) (2003) Gnosis: An Introduction, T & T Clark
Pagels, E (1979) The Gnostic Gospels. Penguin
Mead, GRS (1892) Simon Magus
Pearson B.A. (1990) Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity
Pétrement, S (tr. C Harrison) (1990) A Separate God: The Origins and Teachings of Gnosticism. Harper San Francisco.
Rudolph, K (tr. R McL Wilson et al.) (1977) Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism. Harper San Francisco
Williams M.A. (1996) Rethinking Gnosticism. An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category

Ancient

Hippolytus of Rome, Refutation of All Heresies (Elenchus, Philosophumena) in Ante-Nicene Fathers 5 (tr. JH McMahon) 9-153
Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies (Adversus Haereses, On the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis) in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1 (tr. Roberts/Rambaut) 309-567
Epiphanius of Salamis, Against Heresies (Panarion) [Relevant sections are extracted in Layton, B The Gnostic Scriptures 185-216]
Clement of Alexandria, Stromata (Miscellanies) in Ante-Nicene Fathers 2 (tr. JH McMahon) 299-568

Primary Texts

Online

Gnostic Society Library: Sources on Gnosticism and Gnosis

Collections

Barnstone, W & M Mayer (2009) The Gnostic Bible, Shambhala
Layton, B (1995) The Gnostic Scriptures, Anchor Bible

Codices

Askew Codex (Codex Askevianus, BL Additional MS 5114)
- GRS Mead (1921) Pistis Sophia
Berlin Codex (Akhmim Codex, Berlin Gnostic Codex, BG, Papyrus Berolinensis8502)
- Gospel of Mary (BG 8502, 1) in Robinson J. The Nag Hammadi Library (tr. KL King, GW MacRae, RMcL Wilson, DM Parrott) 523-7
- Apocryphon of John(NHC II, 1, III, 1, IV, 1; BG 8502, 2) in Robinson J. The Nag Hammadi Library (tr. F Wisse) 104-23
- The Sophia of Jesus Christ (NHC III, 4; BG 8502, 3) in Robinson J. The Nag Hammadi Library (tr. DM Parrott) 220-43
- Epitome of the Act of Peter (BG 8502, 4) in Robinson J. The Nag Hammadi Library (tr. J Brashler, DM Parrott) 528-31
Bruce Codex (Codex Brucianus, Bruce 96)
- Book of Jeu (Online Text)
- Untitled Text(Untitled Apocalypse, The Gnosis of the Light) (Online Text)
Codex Tchacos
- Letter of Peter to Philip (NHC VIII, 2) in Robinson J. The Nag Hammadi Library (tr. MW Meyer, F Wisse) 431-7
- First Apocalypse of James (NHC V, 3) in Robinson J. The Nag Hammadi Library (tr. WR Schoedel, DM Parrott) 260-8
- Gospel of Judas (Online pdf, tr. R Kasser, M Meyer, G Wurst, F Gaudard)
- The Temptation of Allogenes in Wurst, G & R Kasser (2007) The Gospel of Judas: Critical Edition. National Geographic.
The Nag Hammadi Library (NHC I – XIII)
- Robinson J. (ed.) (1978/88) The Nag Hammadi Library, Harper San Francisco

Texts of the Sethian Gnostics

The Gospel of Judas (Online pdf, tr. R Kasser, M Meyer, G Wurst, F Gaudard) (ex Codex Tchacos)
Robinson J. The Nag Hammadi Library
- The Apocalypse of Adam (V, 5) (tr. GW McRae, DM Parrott) 277-86
- The Apocryphon of John (II, 1; III, 1; IV, 1; and BG 8502,2) (tr. F Wisse) 104-23
- The Thought of Norea (IX, 2) (tr. BA Pearson, S Giversen) 445-7
- The Trimorphic Protennoia(XIII, 1) (tr. JD Turner) 511-22
- The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit(also known as the Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians) (III, 2; IV, 2) (tr. A Böhlig, F Wisse) 208-19
- Zostrianos (VIII, 1) (tr. JH Sieber) 402-30
- Three Steles of Seth (VII, 5) (tr. JE Goehring, JM Robinson) 396-401
- Marsanes (X, 1) (tr. BA Pearson) 460-71
- Melchizedek (IX, 1) (tr. BA Pearson, S Giverson) 438-44
- Allogenes (XI, 3) (tr. AC Wire, JD Turner, OS Wintermute) 490-500
- The Second Treatise of the Great Seth (VII, 2) (tr. JA Gibbons, RA Bullard) 362-71
- The Reality of the Rulers, also known as The Hypostasis of the Archons (II, 4) (tr. RA Bullard, B Layton) 161-9
- The Thunder, Perfect Mind (VI, 2) (tr. GW MacRae, DM Parrott) 295-303
Untitled Text (Untitled Apocalypse, The Gnosis of the Light) (Online Text) (ex Bruce Codex)
The Coptic Apocalypse of Paul. Shneemelcher, W (1989) New Testament Apocrypha Vol 2 698f.

Texts of the Valentinian Gnostics

Ptolemy’s Version of the Gnostic Myth in Irenaeus Against Heresies I, viii, 5, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1 328f
Ptolemy’s Epistle to Flora in Epiphanius Panarion (33.3.1 – 33.7.10) in Barnstone, W & M Mayer The Gnostic Bible 299-306
Robinson J. The Nag Hammadi Library
- The Gospel of Truth(I, 3; XII, 2) (tr. HW Attridge, GW MacRae) 38-51
- Tripartite Tractate (I, 5) (tr. HW Attridge, EH Pagels, D Mueller) 58-103
- Prayer of the Apostle Paul (I, 1) (tr. D Mueller) 27f
- Treatise on the Resurrection(Epistle to Rheginus) (I, 4) (tr. ML Peel) 52-7
- Gospel of Philip (II, 3) (tr. WW Isenberg) 139-60
- A Valentinian Exposition (XI, 2) (tr. EH Pagels, JD Turner) 481-9

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Justifying the Gnostic Cosmos

July 12, 2026 – 5:30 am

The massively complicated cosmogony, cosmology, and metaphysics of Gnosticism often strikes students as merely fantastical. I propose, however, that a very large part of it can be explained as an attempt to integrate a small set of not-obviously-coherent principles and presuppositions. Amongst those are the following, listed here in no particular order:

Christ appeared on Earth and is the path to our salvation
God has to be purely good
The material world is flawed and hard to explain as the creation of a purely good God
The trinitarian doctrine indicates a tripartite nature of the ultimate God
A feminine principle is required in the nature of God
The Middle and Late Platonists have demonstrated that
- The world has a hierarchical structure in which lower levels of reality are emanations of higher levels
- The world is the creation of an emanation (known in that role as the Demiurge.)
- All emanations ultimately originate from the Good.
- The goal of man is to know the Good

On these assumptions, the general form of an argument for the claims made by the gnostic theorists can be imagined.

The world is a sad and inferior place, and we cannot explain why the perfect and good God would make it so poorly. Perhaps He didn’t make the world at all, but it was made by someone else, someone flawed.
But if that one made the world, He would have to be a divine being too. So, there is at least one divine being below the real God (between Him and us,) and if the real God is the real source of all Being, then He would have to be the ultimate cause of that one too.
That’s OK, because we already know that God has given rise to other divine beings in the form of the Holy Trinity, in which both the Holy Spirit and Christ ‘proceed’ from the Holy Father. The idea that those who proceed from the Father are equal to the Father is incomprehensible, so we think that there is going to be a hierarchy here, even if the precise nature of the hierarchy is going to be a bit mysterious.
But anyway, none of those are going to be the World Creator, because Christ is sent to save us from this world, and the Holy Spirit only works with the Holy Father and the Holy Son. So there has to be yet another level of Being between the Trinity and us.
Incidentally, how odd is it that the Trinity consists of two persons, both male, and a non-person? Wouldn’t it make more sense for a Holy Family to have a Holy Mother, or at least some sort of female principle? Particularly if we want to talk about the Trinity as a generative principle. It’s not as if we don’t have plenty of examples of divine family groups and divine females. Let’s suppose that the third, or rather, second person of the Trinity is the female principle, the Holy Mother, and call her Barbelo.
Getting back on topic, this is starting to look like a cosmic hierarchy, and we already have a model of the structure of the world in terms of a hierarchy of Being in the Platonist teachings that are the best philosophical explanations that we have for the way the world works. In that view, the lower levels are emanations of the higher levels and the highest level of all is the Good, which looks a lot like God. In that view too, the material world is a wretched thing that we need to get away from somehow. And they confirm our deductions in saying that the world is not the product of the perfect One but of an inferior Demiurge.
Let’s suppose then that the divine realm consists of a collection of emanations from God. The Trinity might be a special case in which they aren’t quite separated somehow, but the others can be fully autonomous divine beings. The Platonic emanations are the Forms of various things all subordinate to the Good (somehow,) so the emanations from God – call them Aeons – can be analogous hypostatizations of divine attributes, like wisdom, eternality, immeasurability, and so on. This divine realm is the ‘Entirety’ of the world (the Pleroma)
One of these Aeons has to be responsible for the flawed world that we see. Which one of the hypostatized divine attributes might act in such a way as could explain this flawed creation? It is proposed that Sophia ‘Wisdom’ is the one who is responsible. She, following her nature, sought to understand the Pleroma, but she was unable to fully comprehend it because it is only for the One to fully grasp it. But in her failure, the faulty thoughts that she had gave rise to a world, this material world, as a distorted version of the Pleroma – for creation by the divine is really just thinking a thing to be.
But if this were the case, then Sophia would be the real creator of this world, and She would be the God responsible. She would be the God who claimed that She was jealous and that there was no God but Herself. This can’t be right, because there’s no reason for Sophia to be a wicked, arrogant liar in that way, She is still, after all, a divine attribute. There must be a further step to be taken.
It is further proposed, then, that Sophia, in her failure, emanates not the world directly, but a being who, although divine, is, as a consequence of her faulty comprehension of the Pleroma, flawed, ignorant, and arrogant. He is called Ialdabaoth, and He then creates the world that we inhabit because He is a very hypostatization of a misunderstanding of the Pleroma and has both creative desire and fatal incompetence.
The world that He emanates is the standard world of concentric zones corresponding to the planets, the Earth, and perhaps some underworld areas, all ruled over by dedicated spirits Archons) and containing all sorts of living beings.
Now, we humans are also created by this Ialdaboth so we partake of this incompetent performance, and we are trapped here in this disastrous attempt at a world. What are we to do? How are we to be saved? We have two clues to the answer to this problem. In the first place we know that Christ came to save us. In the second place, we have the example of the Platonists (who have investigated the hierarchical nature of the universe) to tell us that the way to escape from the illusions and evils of this world is to come to know the truths of the higher worlds of purer Forms and more authentic Being.
Those two clues tell us that Christ has come down from the Pleroma to guide us to truths about the higher realms that will allow us to escape this sorry world.
But how can we escape this world when we are completely and utterly part of it, created along with the rest of it by Ialdabaoth in his great error? Clearly, there must be some part of us that is able to separate from this material world; a divine part. Again, we find support in the Platonic philosophers who tell us that the soul of man is indeed of a higher nature and only temporarily estranged from the world of Forms to which it must return.
A natural supposition is that, somehow, Sophia is at the root of this possibility: it cannot be Ialdabaoth, and the other Aeons are not involved. Perhaps she gave off divine sparks of herself in her retreat, and they have found housing in material bodies in this world.

And so, we find ourselves with something like these structures:

Note, of course, that this is just one possible chain of reasoning leading to one possible (Sethian) Gnostic-style cosmos. For various reasons, it might well have gone otherwise: where the solution to a problem is achieved through a hypothesized inference to the best explanation other choices could have been made leading to other solutions; where other problems occurred to the theorist solutions to those might have led in different directions; and where different presuppositions were present those might also have justified different outcomes. The point is, that the entire, seemingly absurd elaboration can be rationally motivated. Gnosticism is a serious position.

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Thoughts on Our Troubled Souls

July 10, 2026 – 11:57 am

In discussion, we have wondered about the lunacies that are afflicting us, and I have been asked what I make of them. I begin by noting that the nonsense we observe is characterized by its uniformly destructive nature. I have previously noted that in order to determine whether the agents of apparent madness will approve or disapprove of something there is always a simple litmus test to apply: something will be approved just insofar as it leads to a degradation of the institutions of the West or to the weakening of the West or to some other deleterious effects on the West (which is to say, on modernity itself.) I observe this with claims that CAGW/Climate Change/today’s label means we must destroy our energy system; humanitarian compassion means we have to open the borders to all comers; tolerance means that we must accept multiculturalism as the state ideology and no assimilation can be encouraged; historical guilt means that we must behave as if we have no right to exist in this country, aborigines must be privileged, obeisance must be paid at every public event, their flags need to be flown and their Voices dominate; and so on. The outcomes of these postures are so obviously and uniformly disastrous for the West (or for any Western country in which they are enacted) or for modernity, and the arguments for them are so weak, that one has to suspect that the outcomes are desired for reasons other than those provided by in those arguments.

What could motivate such nihilism? I think this enmity of modernity and of the West as its avatar is somehow related to the fact that modernity does not admit the role of any metaphysical element that provides an overarching organizing principle for one’s life. The modern zeitgeist is essentially materialistic and hedonistic (if anything.) There is no supernatural world to which the natural world is subordinate and for whose benefit the events and entities of the material world exist. In fact the ultimate pointlessness of existence is widely accepted amongst the class of those who consider such things – and this attitude percolates through society.

In the Christian period (300-1700) which was the precursor of modernity, life in the world had a purpose determined by an eternal principle of goodness, God, (the ultimate positive value) and everything that one did in the world was evaluated ultimately wrt that purpose. It wasn’t necessary that one was conscious of this dependency at all times or ever; it was sufficient that one knew that there were those who could, if called upon, explain how one’s life and choices fitted into the great eternal plan. There was a purpose, and you were a part of it. Other civilizations had similar, more or less sophisticated, systems that gave purpose to their members. The West had such a system but has now abandoned it.

This abandonment has resulted in a type of spiritual crisis – or a crisis in mass psychology if one would prefer – from two directions. In the first place, the fact that modern culture fails to satisfy this essential demand of any culture – to integrate the life of the individual both externally (in the world and society) and internally – has direct results on the participants in that culture. Their lives are unintegrated, with all the psychological ills that follow from that of dissatisfaction and aimlessness; and the effect of this may be disintegration of the culture itself, perhaps followed by atomisation (Bowling Alone) and re-integration into whatever units of sense-making present themselves (Neo-tribalism.) In the second place, the realisation of the meaninglessness, pointlessness, or sheer absurdity (in Nagel’s sense) of life in modernity manifests in a reaction against the culture that fails to satisfy this essential integrative demand of any culture. The realisation may come by observation of the lives of others or of one’s own situation, and the realisation may be either explicit or merely implicit. In either case the culture that fails to do its job will be rejected.

Our modern civilisation fails to satisfy our need for deep meaning and participation in something greater than ourselves and our own petty preferences. It was one of the boasts of those who argued the modern world into existence that this new civilisation would be self-consciously rational, by which we mean practically rational, and that mere traditions and irrational motivations would be set aside with the Morris dancers and transubstantiation. Weber, for example, was big on this characteristic of the modern world as it manifested itself in his time. In this new world, however, if we seek the ultimate motivations for our actions and the great purpose of our existence on Earth, we get no further than Aristotelian happiness. This compares unfavourably with the eternal struggle against absolute evil that justified the past worlds. The modern motivation – if it even counts as such – is obviously trivial, and our lives are diminished by its inescapability. Many people react to this pointlessness even if they are not explicitly aware of this being their motivation, by rejecting the modern world almost in toto, and yearning for release from its bonds of banality. Thus, we see large swathes of the populace leaping from one doomsday promise to the next – Global warming, the population bomb, organophosphates, hormones in the water, peak oil, limits to growth, etc. ad nauseam. It is a desire for destruction as a punishment for the ‘sin’ of diminishing the human spirit. Escape from contentment. Fear that this is all there is and it’s not enough, forever.

The modern secular, rational, individualist, materialist world lacks the magic and moral majesty that some people seem to need in order to give their lives meaning. It is not a ‘noble’ goal to seek one’s own happiness. A society built on that as its goal must be a trivial and unworthy society, and whatever can be done to humble it should be done. The fact that Western liberal market democracies have delivered more happiness and prosperity and general flourishing than any competing system by a long, long way is not at all to the point and will not move these dissatisfied folk at all. They will take the ‘emptiness’ of this success claim as further evidence of the vacuity of the West.

Deborah wondered whether there were non-religious formations that could play the integrating role that I’ve proposed for Christianity in the case of the west. I had been wondering about that, because it would be disappointing result to find that the only thing that made decent society possible was (sincere) acceptance of an ontology and associated teleology that was false – or that many people would find it impossible to accept. I hadn’t thought of an argument for either side, but Bill opined that the idea of a metaphysical principle of the appropriate sort really did seem to be restricted to religious thought and he could see no prospect of developing one independent of religious connotations.

In this case we may have something like the problem with ethical categorical imperatives or absolute obligations. It seems impossible to justify these in any way that doesn’t depend upon unacceptable metaphysical assumptions. What can be done is to explain how they come about according to naturalistic processes, how they contribute to the pursuit of societal goods when widely accepted, and why they should be encouraged as a kind of fiction or Noble Lie. What can’t be done is to make them independent objects in the world with non-instrumental justification. An ‘ought’ can only come from an ‘is,’ and such an ‘ought’ cannot be other than hypothetical or instrumental.

I made the pessimistic point that I’ve usually avoided mentioning before, that if it is indeed the case that people just can’t cope with a culture in which there is no external objective power to impose an unambiguous and non-arbitrary order upon their values and in which it is left up to themselves to create a value order whose arbitrariness is inescapably obvious, and if it is the case that modernity necessarily involves just such a culture, then we are in a pickle.

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Some Comments on Prescriptive Multiculturalism

July 9, 2026 – 12:19 pm

It has no foundational texts

We were discussing the origins of the multiculturalist ideology and the idea that ‘Diversity is Our Strength.’ (I shall call this the MCD Complex – MCDC.) I pointed out that although Liberalism could point back to JS Mill and any number of other philosophers, and Socialists could point to Marx and Rousseau, and Feminists could look to de Beauvoir, and Anarchists had their Proudhons and Kropotkins, and even Conservatives – the least ideological of all ideologues – could refer to Burke or Halifax, and so on for the other political ideologies, there was no one of comparable calibre making the case for the MCDC; so where did these ideologies come from and how were they able so quickly to come to dominate the intellectual world of the élites?

It has no models

Moreover, if multiculturalism is championing something different from a multiracial or multiethnic society, it must mean that a single polity ought to contain arbitrarily many cultures. Now, this is a not a fact about the individuals in that society – for no single person is multicultural – but about subgroups. We are supposed, then, to welcome the existence of many distinct groups with comparable political power in a single polity, where each of those groups is distinguished by its own ways of life, interests, values, attitudes, etc. But that is an obvious recipe for intercommunal conflict. Such things may exist stably in authoritarian regimes like the Roman Empire or the Ottoman (where the millet system formalised the arrangement) or in Yugoslavia or other suchlike places, but there are precisely no successful liberal democratic examples, so how has it suddenly become the official doctrine of all the Western democracies?

It is oddly targeted

And note that it is only the Western democracies that are supposed to adopt the MCDC as policy / moral imperative / governing ideology. No one demands that Russia or China or Ethiopia or Iran or Fiji or Indonesia adopt the MCDC, or that they subject themselves to vast (barely regulated) inflows of immigrants in pursuit of the end of global diversification. This, at least, has been pretty widely recognised, but the reason for this tightly restricted application of what would seem to be universally applicable ideology remains elusive. And when it is addressed by defenders of the MCDC it is far too often in terms of a just punishment for previous sins of those societies (again, note, sins that are only counted as punishable for the West,) which gives ammunition to those who would treat it as an act of deliberate aggression against the West.

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Steve Watson

Text Hoard: Dead Sea Scrolls

Text Hoard: Nag Hammadi Library

Towards a ‘Virtue Theory’ for Literature (3)

On the Modification of an Institution

Towards a ‘Virtue Theory’ for Literature (2)

Stumbling Blocks on the Gnostic Path

A Gnostic Library

Justifying the Gnostic Cosmos

Thoughts on Our Troubled Souls

Some Comments on Prescriptive Multiculturalism

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