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The Gnostic Gospels and Other Non-Canonical Texts
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Adam, Eve, and The
Serpent by Elaine Pagels
How did it happen that Christian tradition came to find sexual desire sinful and to claim that infants, from the moment of conception, are infected with disease of original sin, that Adam's sin corrupted the whole of nature, which until that point had known neither death nor labor nor suffering? How did it happen that the Christian Church, which also proclaims the infinite value of each individual and celebrates the moral freedom of all its members, came by the middle of the fourth century to insist that humankind - made in God's image - cannot choose not to sin?
This great paradox at the heart of Christian, and therefore Western, tradition is the subject of Elaine Pagel's brilliant Adam, Eve, and The Serpent, a work that will prove a landmark of historical thought and profoundly affect all future interpretations of the historical meaning of Christianity.
"The first major and eminently readable book on gnosticism benefiting from the discovery in 1945 of a collection of Gnostic Christian texts at Nag Hammadi in Egypt." -The New York Times Book Review
"Dr. Pagels raises questions, both profound and fascinating, and she handles them with the sure and graceful touch of a historian who knows her sources." -Kingsley Barret, Professor of Divinity, Durham University
GNOSIS: The Nature & History of
Gnosticism by Kurt Rudolph
"Gnosis is a religion of redemption."
"An excellent job in the first major work to encompass the Nag Hammadi findings." -Los Angeles Times
"Kurt Rudolph is the world's leading expert on the only branch of Gnosticism that has survived down to the present. He also is the scholar who has the most authoritative overview of the whole Gnostic phenomenon...[His] popular survey of Gnosticism...does for the next generation what Hans Jonas' Gnostic Religion did for the generation just past: present a readable and appealing introduction to what otherwise might seem an inaccessible religion of late antiquity." -James M. Robinson, General Editor, The Nag Hammadi Library in English
THE
GNOSIS
ARCHIVE
http://www.webcom.com/~gnosis/welcome.html
ServantWORKS
Gnostic
Gospels
http://members.aol.com/FreeWyngz/bible/gnostic.html
The Gnostic
Gospels by Elaine Pagels
In 1945 an Egyptian peasant unearthed what proved to be the Gnostic Gospels, the sacred books of one of the earliest Christian sects. This landmark study, a winner of both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, draws on those texts to illuminate the world of the first Christians and to examine the different ways in which both Gnostics and the orthodox constructed God, Christ, and the Church. Did Jesus literally rise from the dead? Was there only one God, and could He be both Father and Mother? Whose version of Christianity came down to us and why did it prevail? Brilliant, provocative, and stunning in its implications, The Gnostic Gospels is a radical yet accessible reconsideration of the origins of the Christian faith.
"Pagels sets forth [gnosticism's] principles with a concise clarity...Her evocation of the world of the church fathers is a marvel." -Boston Globe
The Lost Books of the
Bible
From the PREFACE:
You will find between these covers all the ecclesiastical writings of early
Christian authorities that are known to exist, and yet were omitted from
the authorized New Testament. They are published here as a matter of record.
Whether they are canonical or not, at least these writings are of very great
antiquity... This collection of The Lost Books of the Bible, is published,
without prejudice or motive, save that the reader may find whatever pleases
and instructs him, and may be free to enjoy his own speculation and hold
his own opinion of these ancient and beautiful writings. -R.H.P., Jr. New
York, January 1, 1926
From the FOREWARD TO THE 1979 EDITION:
Until 1926, when the texts in this book were first published, people interested
in the historical Jesus and his times had little more to consult than the
New Testament, the Koran, and the writings of Josephus, one of the few historians
who actually mentions Jesus. In recent years, however, many documents from
that time have been rediscovered and made public, increasing our sources
of information about Jesus... The two Gospels of Christ's infancy are more
problematic. In the biblical Gospels there are examples of Jesus' toughness,
like his driving the money changers out of the temple and his response to
his mother at the wedding feast at Cana, when he changed water into wine:
"Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come" (John 2:4).
But the accounts in the infancy gospels often display Jesus with an enormous,
vicious ego. In II Infancy, for example, a boy running through the streets
brushes against Jesus' shoulder. Jesus, in his anger, causes the boy to fall
down dead. When various members of the community accuse him of murder, he
causes them to go blind. It is not difficult to see why this piece was omitted
from the Bible. -Solomon J. Schleps
From the INTRODUCTION:
The great things in this world are growths. This applies to books as well
as to institutions. The Bible is a growth. Many people do not understand
that it is not a book written by a single person, but it is a library of
several books which were composed by various people in various countries.
It is interesting to know how this library grew and upon what principle some
books were accepted and some rejected... This is what this Lost Books
of the Bible enables us to do. We can examine the books of the Scriptures
which we have in the authorized version, and then in this book we can read
those scriptures which have been eliminated by various councils in order
to make up our standard Bible. -Dr. Frank Crane
The Nag Hammadi
Library James M. Robinson, General Editor
This revised, expanded, and updated edition of The Nag Hammadi Library is the only complete, one-volume, modern language version of the renowned library of fourth-century manuscripts discovered in Egypt in 1945.
James M. Robinson's updated introduction reflects ten years of additional research and editorial and critical work. An afterward by Richard Smith discusses the modern relevance of Gnosticism and its influence on such writers as Voltaire, Blake, Melville, Yeats, Kerouac, and Philip K. Dick.
Acclaimed by scholars and general readers alike, The Nag Hammadi Library is a work of major importance to everyone interested in the evolution of Christianity, the Bible, archaeology, and the story of Western civilization.
"Opens the secrets of a religion which the Gnostics themselves had hoped would be kept sealed until the Last Day." -The New York Review of Books
"An absolute gold mine of the literature of Gnosticism." -The Los Angeles Times
The OTHER Bible
Edited with introductions by Willis Barnstone
"After the closing of the Old Testament and during the first centuries of the Common Era, inspired authors - Jews, Christians, Gnostics, and Pagans - continued to write sacred scriptures. Many of these texts were of amazing beauty and religious importance and competed with books within the [established] canon...Had events been otherwise and certain of these texts incorporated in our Bible, our understanding of the tradition of religious thought would have been radically altered. Today, free of doctrinal strictures, we can read the 'greater bible' of the Judeo-Christian world." -Willis Barnstone
Gathered together for the first time in one volume are excerpted ancient holy texts from Judeo-Christian traditions that were excluded from the official canon of the Old and New Testaments. This is a unique sourcebook of essential selections from the: Gnostic Gospels, Dead Sea Scrolls, Haggadah, Christian Apocrypha, Jewish Pseudepigrapha, and Kabbalah.
This book provides a rare opportunity to discover the poetic and narrative riches of this long-suppressed literature and experience firsthand its visionary discourses on the nature of God, humanity, the spiritual life, the world around us, and infinite worlds beyond this one.
The Other
Gospels Edited by Ron Cameron
A fascinating collection and study of sixteen ancient texts of which revolve around the life and times of Jesus, with a Foreword by Helmut Koester.
The Secret Teachings of Jesus: Four Gnostic
Gospels Translated by Marvin W. Meyer
Because the Gnostics emphasized an inner quest for spiritual understanding and often challenged the authority of priests and bishops, their teachings were suppressed by the early church and therefore were known largely through the writings of their opponents. These four Gnostic gospels: the Secret Book of James, the Gospel of Thomas, the Book of Thomas, and the Secret Book of John translated here by a scholar long familiar with the Nag Hammadi texts, provides valuable and startling information about the character of the early church and about the Gnostic Christians within the church, during its first, formative centuries.
The Lost Gospel "Q" The Original Sayings
of Jesus Edited by Mark Powelson and Ray Riegert with
Consultation by Marcus Borg
The search for the historical Jesus is one of the most important quests in religion today. The Lost Gospel "Q" - written by Jesus' contemporaries and preserving his original words - brings one closer to the historical Jesus.
A sacred handbook for his earliest followers, "Q" is a window into the world of ancient Christianity. It contains the original Sermon on the Mount, Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer, as well as parables, aphorisms, and Jesus' guidance on living a simple and compassionate life.
"Q" is older than the four traditional Gospels, older than the Christian church itself. Based on sayings in Aramaic, Jesus' own language, it was eventually incorporated into the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. And then it disappeared.
Lost for two thousand years, no copy of this Gospel has ever been found. But for the past 150 years, historians and theologians around the world have been rediscovering the fragments. Working like archaeologists, they have dug through the many layers of the New Testament to finally uncover the original Gospel upon which key elements of the Bible are based.
ServantWORKS
Gospels
http://members.aol.com/FreeWyngz/bible/gospels.html
THE BIBLE: History and Relative Works
Ancient Egyptian
Mythology
and Mystical Teachings
The Gnostic
Gospels
and Other Non-Canonical Texts
Journey onward!
"Abner"
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Center for Missing and Exploited Children
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