More on Shenoute

PHILIP JENKINS has two more posts on the ancient Egyptian monastic leader Shenoute: SHENOUTE’S WARS and SHENOUTE AND THE GNOSTICS. From the latter:

Shenoute wrote against both Origenists and Gnostics, and (not surprisingly, being Shenoute) he also undertook direct action. One of his campaigns, against the temple of Pneuit near Akhmim, around 412, was probably directed against still-surviving Sethian Gnostics. He particularly wanted to seize their “books full of abominations” – presumably, a collection very much like what was found at Nag Hammadi in modern times.

[...]

We can understand why Shenoute was hunting for Gnostic books. But the more interesting question might be, why were other monks likely using them? Did they still value them for their religious truth? Or were they mining them for evidence to denounce heresy? Scholars have debated this for years. Increasingly, I think these were books that monks themselves were reading for enlightenment and spiritual revelation, or at least had at some stage in their institutional development.

Background here.