Wisdom's Dare: The Future of a Divine Experiment - John Lamb Lash

Around 1997 when I undertook to write a book on the Mysteries of pre-Christian Paganism, I faced a formidable challenge. Central to the scant surviving textual evidence of the Mysteries is a problematic body of material called the Nag Hammadi Codices. Problematic on several counts. First because these writings (of unknown origin) are in their content fragmentary, chaotic, and contradictory. Most of the documents are pastiches of incongruous material with breathtaking gaps in continuity. Problematic again because this mess of pottage comes down to us in a scribal shorthand called Coptic, an awkward language riddled with grammatical errors, misspellings, inconsistencs of syntax, and contextual ambiguities (e.g., possessive pronouns as "theirs, ours" have uncertain reference). Not to mention that Coptic is totally unfitted for high sophistication of metaphysical and cosmological syntax, the signature of Mystery teachings. I compared it to hiking boots on a ballerina. Mud-caked hiking boots.
No wonder scholars prattle endlessly over the meaning of passages in the NHC,  even the meaning of single lines, and never get around to extracting the message contained in that flawed but precious legacy. An unfortunate omission, there. For this material carries a message not to be found elsewhere, not in any spiritual teachings be it the Vedas or Navajo creation myth, and not in any metaphysical corpus, ancient or modern.  Link