Prayer of Thanksgiving

Nag Hammadi · 200-300 C.E.

Besides the Nag Hammadi version, this communal Hermetic prayer to God the Father also exists in Greek and Latin. The English text is the public-domain translation from the Coptic by Samuel Zinner, edited by Mark M. Mattison.

Gratitude for Revelation

1“To you we give thanks!
To you is every soul and heart lifted up, O tranquil name, honored with the name ‘God,’ and praised with the name ‘Father.’
For to everyone and everything is the fatherly compassion and tenderness and love, and every possible instruction that is sweet and clear, imparting to us mind, speech, knowledge.
Mind: that we would understand you. Speech: that we would explain you. Knowledge: that we would know you.
We rejoice, enlightened by your knowledge.
We rejoice, because you have revealed yourself to us.
We rejoice, because when we were in the body by your knowledge you made us divine.

To Know the Father

2The thanksgiving of the one who reaches you is this one fact: that we know you.
We have known you, O light of the intellect.
Life of life, we have known you.
Womb of every created being, we have known you.
The pregnant womb bearing the essence of the Father, we have known you.
Eternal continuance of the Father who begets, in this way we have worshiped your goodness.
One favor we ask: we wish to be preserved in knowledge.
And one shelter we desire: that we stumble not in this manner of life.” Having said these things in prayer, they embraced one other, and they departed to eat their holy, bloodless food.

Glossary