Provenance

The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth was discovered among the Nag Hammadi writings found in Upper Egypt in 1945. The surviving text is in Coptic, but the discourse may have originally been written in Greek in the second century ad (Mahé, “Reading,” 81). The original title of the work is lost because of the damage to the tops of the work’s pages. Its modern title was drawn from the first few lines of the surviving text and its overall subject matter (Dirkse et al., “Discourse,” 342).

The work, which was unknown prior to the Nag Hammadi discoveries, mentions the names Trismegistus and Hermes and bears a striking resemblance to other works in the Corpus Hermeticum, indicating it is a hermetic tractate (Dirkse et al., “Discourse,” 345; Mahé, “Reading,” 79–80). Although the text shows many similarities with gnostic texts (especially in terms of vocabulary), some of its concepts share a closer affinity with Middle Platonism. For this reason, Dirske, Brashler, and Parrott argue that calling the work “gnostic” is inaccurate (Dirkse et al., “Discourse,” 342–44).

The conclusion of the text (62) gives a command to preserve the work in hieroglyphics on stone tablets in a particular temple, indicating the work is of Egyptian provenance (Mahé, “Reading,” 80). Internal evidence may indicate that the text was used by a Hermetic community. Previously, use of other hermetic texts remained merely speculative.