The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1630 page)

Nag Hammadi library
.

A collection of thirteen texts, written on papyrus, found in 1945 buried near Chenoboskion (Nag Hammadi) near the Nile, in Egypt. The books contain fifty-two short tractates in Coptic, of which most are
gnostic
works translated from Greek. They have titles such as the
Gospel of Truth
, the
Apocalypse of Adam, Gospel of
Thomas
, and
Trimorphic Protennoia
.

 
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Nagid
.

The head of the Jewish community in a Muslim country. In Islamic countries, a head of the community was appointed by the head of the state. In the Middle Ages, there were negadim (pl.) in Yemen, Egypt, Kairourian, and Spain, and in the 16th–19th cents., there were negadim in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. The office was discontinued in the 19th cent.

 
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Na
manides, Moses ben Na
man
,
or Ramban

(1194–1270)
. Spanish Jewish philosopher and Talmudic scholar. Na
manides earned his living as a physician. He founded a
yeshivah
in Gerona and among his students was Solomon ben Abraham
Adret
. He had enormous prestige during his lifetime and was referred to as
ha-rav ha-ne’eman
(the trustworthy
rabbi
). In the
Maimonidean controversy
, he tried to reach a compromise, on the one hand condemning the way
Maimonides'
writings had been used; on the other, arguing against the
erem
that the French rabbis had declared. About fifty of his works survive, including prayers,
piyyutim
, theological works, biblical commentaries, and novellae on the
Talmud
and
halakhah
. His
Commentary on the
Torah
(publ. 1480) was written ‘to appease the minds of the students, weary through
exile
and trouble’.

 
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(1772–1811)
. Jewish
asidic
leader. A direct descendant of
Israel
b. Eliezer (Ba‘al Shem Tov), he emerged as a
zaddik
in Podolia and the Ukraine. Na
man believed he was destined to be at the centre of controversy, by his vocation to contest insincere leaders among the
asidim. Between 1800 and 1802, he was in dispute with Aryeh Leib, a popular
asidic leader who accused him of
Shabbatean
and
Frankist
leanings. Subsequently, in Bratslav, where he lived between 1802 and 1810, he came into conflict with all the local zaddikim. He left Bratslav for Uman, in the Ukraine, and died there of TB.
His disciple, Nathan Sternhartz, wrote his biography,
Hayyei Moharan
(1875), and organized his followers after his death. Groups of Bratslav
asidim still follow Na
man's teachings in Israel and elsewhere.
Na
man placed great emphasis on daily conversation with God in which the
asid pours out his feelings to God (
hitbodedut
). He promised that he would continue to lead his
asidim after his death—hence his followers are called by other
asidim ‘the dead
asidim’, because they have no living rebbe. He was a strong opponent of philosophical religion (with
Maimonides
as a particular example of error), stating that ‘where reason ends, faith begins’.
Sternhartz, as well as writing his biography, collected many of Na
man's words and works in several volumes, of which the best-known is
Sippurei Ma‘asiyyot
(Tales of Rabbi Na