What was the find at Nag Hammadi? What are the Nag Hammadi scrolls?

from the old testament

• Gnosticism claims secret knowledge available to a select few. But Scripture teaches no such distinction. Rather, the Bible shows that the true distinction is between our limited understanding and God’s complete understanding. This is highlighted in the book of Job, chapter 38, when God makes it clear that Job doesn’t know even how God created a drop of dew, much less all of creation (Job 38:28-29).
• Deuteronomy 29:29 indicates that God has revealed some knowledge to human beings, but some knowledge belongs solely to Him: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”
• The truth God does choose to reveal to human beings is meant for everyone. In fact, the Old Testament recounts the many prophets God sent —Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and others—to publicly proclaim His Word to His people. And His people, the Israelites, were meant to be a “light to the nations” (Isaiah 42:6), showing that what God wanted to reveal was not hidden from some and revealed secretly to others.

from the new testament

• Conspiracies surrounding the Bible say that the books found at Nag Hammadi were destroyed or suppressed during the early days of Christianity because they contained "secret knowledge" that the disciples of Jesus did not want people to know. This is contradicted directly by Scripture (1 Corinthians 2:7).
• The disciples were eager to impart truth to any who would hear—even the "secret" and "hidden" wisdom of God. But the Gnostics believed in another knowledge about God and Jesus, one that was accompanied by a variety of heresies, including the idea that the body was evil and the spirit was good, a perversion of Paul's argument in Romans 7. By asserting this heresy, they were excusing all sins committed in the flesh, and focusing on knowledge alone as the signal of salvation. Paul calls this kind of thinking "puffed up" and conceited (1 Timothy 6:3–4).
• The Gnostics were a group that gave early Christians a lot of trouble. At the end of Paul's first letter to Timothy, he makes what scholars see as an indirect reference to the Gnostics, when he says "avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called 'knowledge,' for by professing it some have swerved from the faith" (1 Timothy 6:20–21).
• James also comments on the difference between wisdom from above, and wisdom that is demonic and unspiritual (James 3:13–18). The main difference is that the wisdom from above is humble, while earthly wisdom is characterized by jealousy and selfish ambition (James 3:14–15).
• Paul reminds the Corinthians that "love builds up, but knowledge puffs up" (1 Corinthians 8:1). We are all familiar with this dynamic. When our focus shifts from Christ and His work in the heart to the workings of the human mind, people begin to compare themselves with one another, elevating the smarter, more intellectual, or more mysterious religious thinkers as those to follow. This is tempting, but it is not the truth (1 Corinthians 3:18–20).

implications for today

Seeking knowledge that is only available to a chosen or lucky few is the trap that Gnostics fell into in the first century, and it is the same trap many of us fall into today. There is no "secret knowledge" that only priests or pastors or professors or the extra-faithful have access to. God is available to all people in equal measure—rich and poor, intelligent and uneducated. Even Paul said "I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2). Paul rightly taught that the emphasis should be on Christ. As the leader of the church, both then and now, people are to look to Christ for redemption, His Holy Spirit for guidance, and His Word for wisdom. Only by abiding in Him can we understand what we really need to know (John 15:4; 1 Corinthians 2:14-16).

The finds at Nag Hammadi are interesting historically. But the books themselves are fraudulent, not written by the people the books are named for, contradictory to what is contained in the Bible. The early church fathers quickly recognized the Nag Hammadi books as not part of inspired Scripture.