The Essential Gnostic Gospels : Including the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary

The Gnostics were early Christians whose beliefs and practices put them at odds with the orthodox Church.

Indeed, orthodox Christian Church leaders considered the Gnostics to be heretics and made a concerted effort after the second century to destroy Gnostic writings.

However, many of their texts survived, and a remarkable accidental discovery in 1945 of a jar containing thirteen papyrus documents at Nag Hammadi, in the Egyptian desert, allowed scholars to examine genuine Gnostic texts, dating back to the fourth century AD, in the original Greek.

These texts were later found to include four gospels which offer accounts of Jesus and his times that are strikingly different from the stories in the New Testament.

Alan Jacobs brings his unrivalled scholarship to bear on the wealth of Gnostic texts and has selected those that are the most relevant and meaningful to contemporary readers, addressing the perennial questions of good and evil, sin and suffering, and the path to salvation.

His inspirational poetic translations capture the uplifting spiritual message and the beauty of the verses.