The Nag Hammadi Scriptures - by Marvin W Meyer & James M Robinson (Paperback)

About the Book

This up-to-date, one-volume, English-language edition of the sacred Gnostic manuscripts features introductory essays, notes, tables, and more to help the reader understand the context and contemporary significance of these texts that have shed new light on early Christianity and ancient thought.

Book Synopsis

The Nag Hammadi Scriptures, edited by Marvin Meyer, is the most complete, up-to-date, one-volume, English-language edition of the renowned library of Gnostic manuscripts discovered in Egypt in 1945, which rivaled the Dead Sea Scrolls find in significance. It includes the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and the recently discovered Gospel of Judas, as well as other Gnostic gospels and sacred texts. This volume also includes introductory essays, notes, tables, glossary, index, etc. to help the reader understand the context and contemporary significance of these texts which have shed new light on early Christianity and ancient thought. The compilation of ancient manuscripts that constitute The Nag Hammadi Scriptures is a discovery that challenges everything we thought we knew about the early Christian church, ancient Judaism, and Greco-Roman religions.

From the Back Cover

This is the most complete, up-to-date, one-volume, English-language edition of the renowned library of fourth-century Gnostic manuscripts discovered in Egypt in 1945, which rivaled the Dead Sea Scrolls find in significance. It includes the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and the recently discovered Gospel of Judas, as well as other Gnostic gospels and sacred texts. This volume also includes introductory essays, notes, tables, glossary, index, etc. to help the reader understand the context and contemporary significance of these texts which have shed new light on early Christianity and ancient thought.

Review Quotes

"The Gnostic speculation was the foremost other philosophical religion in the West. At its peak during nearly 1500 active years, the diverse schools of Gnostic dualism extended, like the Byzantine Empire, from Eastern Asia through Europe and North Africa. After decades of detective-book episodes following the1945 discovery of the Nag Hammadi Scriptures in the Egyptian Fayuum, here at last we have a beautifully accessible and complete edition of Gnosticism's earliest classical scriptures. In one definitive volume, in lucid English conversion, all is there: the immaculate texts each preceded by essential introductions, and an epilogue with major essays on four schools of Gnostic thought. The keenest minds in Gnosticism have given us their life of learning and expression to make this gift possible. With its publication we have reached the clear Everest summit of early Gnosticism. The Coptic scholar Marvin Meyer has directed the joint ascent to the peak. I urge all to indulge in the deep pleasure of expanding our understanding of spirit, soul, body and the cosmic forces behind our temporal condition. We have this triumph of scholarship and literary elegance to inform and guide us." - Willis Barnstone, author of The Gnostic Bible (with Marvin Meyer), The Other Bible and The Poetics of Translation.