As Below, So Above: Apocalypticism, Gnosticism and the Scribes of Qumran and Nag Hammadi

Considering that the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library were discovered within the same decade, it is unsurprising that scholars have compared the two collections. Despite being the products of different centuries and consisting of a wide range of diverse material, the potential these collections have to significantly alter reconstructions of Jewish and Christian history of Late Antiquity is staggering. Unfortunately, despite this potential, scholarly comparisons have done little beyond reinforce the self-defining discourses of “orthodoxy” and “heresy.”
In examining the academic discourse concerning these two collections, As Below, So Above will argue that scholars have used the “Apocalyptic” Dead Sea Scrolls as a cipher for that which should or could be legitimately Christian and the “Gnostic” Nag Hammadi Library as that which should not or cannot be legitimately Christian. In particular, by incorporating a mythical narrative that sees Christianity as the inheritor of the salvation history of ancient Israel and as such “unique” in late antiquity, scholarship has created two binary categories; Apocalypticism as a way of linking “unique” Christianity to the prestigious pedigree of a sui generis Judaism, and Gnosticism as a way to quarantine “heretical” expressions that threaten this uniqueness.
By exploring the socio-political context of the Ancient Near and Middle East under Greco-Roman rule, this book will argue that the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library are not diametrically opposed, but are linked by a shared and Enochic worldview that was used by marginalized elements of the Near and Middle Eastern scribal class who were reacting to the cessation of native rule and the lack of a royal patron under Hellenism.