The Gnostic Bible

This expanded edition of "The Gnostic Bible" includes the "Gospel of Judas" – the recently discovered and translated Gnostic text that was an instant best seller on its original appearance in 2006 – in its most accessible translation yet. Also included in this work are such important and topical texts as the "Gospel of Mary Magdalene" and the "Gospel of Thomas". Religious thinkers engaged in the quest for wisdom and knowledge, the Gnostics proclaimed that salvation could be found through mystical knowledge and intuition. Dating from the first to the thirteenth centuries, the texts in "The Gnostic Bible" represent Jewish, Christian, Hermetic, Mandaean, Manichaean, Islamic, and Cathar forms of Gnostic spirituality, and they derive from Egypt, the Greco-Roman world, the Middle East, Syria, Iraq, China, France, and elsewhere.

Author Biography

Marvin Meyer, PhD, (1948-2012)was Griset Professor of Bible and Christian Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at Chapman University in Orange, California. His books includeThe Gospel of Thomasand, with James Robinson,The Nag Hammadi Scriptures.

Born in Lewiston, Maine,Willis Barnstonewas educated at Bowdoin, Columbia, the Sorbonne, and Yale. He taught in Greece at the end of the civil war (1949-51), and in Buenos Aires during the Dirty War. During the Cultural Revolution he went to China where he was later a Fulbright Professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University (1984-85). Former O’Connor Professor of Greek at Colgate University, he is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Spanish at Indiana University.