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What does a broken text reveal about water, faith, and the search for salvation?
On the Baptism A is a short, damaged teaching on baptism from the Nag Hammadi library. Its author is unknown. Scholars connect it with the Valentinian school, a Christian movement that links salvation with knowledge: a deep recognition of who a person is and where they come from.
The text survives in Coptic in a fourth-century papyrus codex found in Egypt. Alongside a Valentinian Exposition and companion pieces on anointing and the Eucharist, it offers a glimpse of a community's religious life. Read it to explore how this school understands baptism, while keeping the fragment's gaps and limits in view.
What you’ll discover
- Water and spiritual meaning Explore baptism through a brief teaching concerned with what the rite means for a believer.
- A Valentinian perspective Encounter a Christian school that connects salvation with knowledge of the self and its origins.
- A fragment's limits Meet a short, broken text rather than a long argument with every step intact.
- A wider ritual setting Consider baptism beside the companion teachings on anointing and the Eucharist in the same codex.
- Beyond the biblical canon Explore a teaching outside Christian scripture, associated with a school opposed by some church leaders.
Who will love it
For readers curious about how early Christians understood baptism, and for students of the Nag Hammadi books who enjoy exploring water, faith and salvation in Valentinian thought.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A fragment from a buried library
- Baptism as part of a larger teaching
- Water, faith and salvation in the early church
- Why it stands outside the Bible
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On the Baptism A
by Attributed to Tertullian of Carthage
A Coptic teaching from Nag Hammadi reveals how one early Christian community connects baptism with salvation.
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In short
On the Baptism A is a short, damaged text from the Nag Hammadi library, the group of papyrus books found in Egypt in 1945. It survives in Coptic, the language of Christian Egypt, in a codex copied in the fourth century.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A fragment from a buried library
The text comes from Codex XI, one of thirteen leather-bound papyrus books found near the town of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. The books were hidden in a jar, and scholars generally date their copying to the fourth century. They contain dozens of works, many of them Gnostic or close to Gnostic thought, and most had been unknown for over a thousand years.
On the Baptism A is one of several short pieces added after A Valentinian Exposition in Codex XI. Others in the same group are titled On the Anointing, On the Baptism B and two pieces On the Eucharist. Together they look like brief notes for worship or teaching rather than full treatises.
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What is On the Baptism A?
It is a short, fragmentary Coptic text from Codex XI of the Nag Hammadi library. It is a brief teaching about baptism, probably from a Valentinian Christian community, and it appears with similar short pieces on anointing and the Eucharist.
Who wrote On the Baptism A?
The author is not known. Scholars link it to the Valentinians, followers of the Christian teacher Valentinus. The original was probably Greek, and what survives is a Coptic translation copied in the fourth century.
Why is On the Baptism A not in the Bible?
It was written within a particular school and was not among the books the churches came to accept as scripture. Church writers such as Irenaeus opposed Valentinian teaching, so most Christians did not preserve it.
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