Includes bibliographical references and index.

Front Matter -- The Discovery and Trafficking of the Nag Hammadi Codices -- The French Leadership in Early Nag Hammadi Studies 1946–1953 -- The Eid Codex = the Jung Codex = Codex I -- The Swiss Leadership in Nag Hammadi Studies -- The International Committee of Gnosticism 1956 -- The Gospel of Thomas -- The German Leadership in Nag Hammadi Studies -- Unesco under French Leadership 1960–1970 -- The Coptic Gnostic Library Project -- The International Committee for the Nag Hammadi Codices -- The Nag Hammadi Excavations -- Index.

The Nag Hammadi Story is not a history of research in the usual sense of a Forschungsbericht , which would report on the massive amount of scholarship that has been devoted to the content of the Nag Hammadi Codices for more than a half-century. Rather it is a socio-historical narration of just what went on during the thirty-two years from their discovery late in 1945, via their initial trafficking, and then the attempts to monopolize them, until finally, through the intervention of UNESCO, the whole collection of thirteen Codices was published in facsimiles and in English translation, both completed late in 1977.