This chapter studies the implications of the multiple versions of texts in the Nag Hammadi codices. Previously, scholars have viewed the existence of such duplicates as indicating that the texts were not meant to be regarded as a collection, or even that they were not owned by the same people. Who would keep two copies of the same text? This chapter offers a new interpretation and argues that reading two or more text versions parallel to each other could, in fact, be used as a valuable interpretative and theological exercise tool. The various Nag Hammadi duplicates and triplicates are studied, and the differences between them are analysed in light of ancient school exercises practised in Christian monasteries. Keeping multiple versions turned them into useful pedagogic tools when training monks in interpretation and the practice of reformulating gnomic sentences. The chapter draws on the growing field studying textual fluidity in ancient texts.

This chapter argues that textual fluidity may be understood as a fundamental component of early Black Atlantic literature, texts orally related or written by individuals of African descent, predominately those first published before 1800. Early Black Atlantic orators and writers revised their texts for various purposes; nonauthorial subjects also regularly altered the literature for a variety of reasons. New – and needed – discoveries concerning the publishing and reception histories of early Black Atlantic literature emerge when unauthorized, posthumous, and abridged editions are studied with the same rigor as authorized editions. By employing this approach, Lamore offers fresh insights on the publishing histories of John Marrant’s, Olaudah Equiano’s, and Venture Smith’s autobiographical narratives.

In the broad scope of Western Literature, the Bible fits squarely within what is called Ancient Near Eastern literature. This article surveys the literature of antiquity by examining three separate pieces from three separate cultural contexts. The Gilgamesh Epic represents the literature of a large and affluent Mesopotamian empire. The Baal Cycle considers a serial poem from the small but influential city-state of Ugarit in northwestern Syria. The Mesha Stele, or Moabite Stone, stands for a single literary piece from the small and relatively provincial kingdom of Moab. Each of these documents is summarized with an eye toward literary finesse and the fluidity of texts. The larger question of how to define literature based on such diverse exemplars as these is also raised, with the understanding that literature was written to be shared. Ancient texts, including the Bible, are misunderstood when they are treated as final forms.