Ebook: Essential gnostic scriptures

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 entrEe to the pleasures of gnostic literature in general, representing, as they do, the greatest masterpieces of that tradition.;The gospel of Thomas -- The gospel of Mary -- The gospel of Judas -- The secret book of John -- On the origin of the world -- Thunder -- The gospel of Philip -- The gospel of truth -- The secret book of James -- The round dance of the cross -- The book of Baruch -- The song of the pearl -- The songs of solomon -- Poimandres -- The ginza -- Songs from the mandaean liturgy -- The coptic manichaean songbook -- The great song to Mani -- The mother of books -- The gospel of the secret supper -- A nun's sermon.