Essential Gnostic Scriptures

by Marvin W. Meyer

The people we’ve come to call gnostics were passionate advocates of the view that salvation comes through knowledge and personal experience, and their passion shines through in the remarkable body of writings they produced over a period of more than a millennium and a half. Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer have created a translation that brings the gnostic voices to us from across the centuries with remarkable power and beauty—beginning with texts from the earliest years of Christianity—including material from the Nag Hammadi library—and continuing all the way up to expressions of gnostic wisdom found within Islam and in the Cathar movement of the Middle Ages. The twenty-one texts included here serve as a compact introduction to Gnosticism and its principal ideas—and they also provide an entrée to the pleasures of gnostic literature in general, representing, as they do, the greatest masterpieces of that tradition.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, Spirituality, Mythology

282 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 28, 2010

About the author

Marvin Meyer is a scholar of religion and a tenured professor at Chapman University, in Orange, California.

He is the Griset Professor of Bible and Christian Studies at Chapman University and Director of the Albert Schweitzer Institute. He is also Director of the Coptic Magical Texts Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity. Dr. Meyer is the author of numerous books and articles on Greco-Roman and Christian religions in antiquity and late antiquity, and on Albert Schweitzer's ethic of reverence for life. He has been interviewed on television programs that have aired on ABC, BBC, CNN, PBS, A&E, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, and the National Geographic Channel.

Professor Meyer is best known for his translations of the texts of documents associated with the ancient mystery religions, early Christian magic, and Gnostic texts, of which the most notable have been the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Judas. He is regarded as an authority on Gnosticism and has published many books on the subject.

Meyer died of melanoma on August 16, 2012.

Reviews

[Noam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the gnostic creation myths to be very interesting, but was very bored by much of the poetics and gospels. It makes sense to skip around this collection to the parts that are interesting to you.

It is fascinating that I can borrow a book from the public library that contains ideas that the Church fought so hard to suppress.

Read banned books.

[LemontreeLime · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only skimmed through this, more interested in the descriptions of the texts than the texts themselves in all honesty. I was impressed with the Song/Odes of Solomon translations, those were very nice and would like to see that whole cycle in a separate book.

[Kevin Lanahan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ancient texts, presented with large gaps and little interpretation. Interesting read, but because of the gaps in many of the texts, it was difficult to get more than an impression of many of them.

[Steve]

William T. Vollmann sez:

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