Gnostic and Related Material:
Nag Hammadi Library
Gnostic Scriptures
Valentinus & His Tradition
GRS Mead Collection
Polemical Works
Christian Apocrypha
Corpus Hermeticum
Manichaean Writings
Mandaean Writings
Cathar Writings
Alchemical Writings
Modern Gnostic Texts
Other Material in the Library:
Dead Sea Scrolls
Old Testament Apocrypha
Web Lectures
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THE GNOSTIC
SOCIETY LIBRARY
Archive | Bookstore | Search | Web Lectures | Ecclesia Gnostica | Gnostic Society
About using the Library. . .
The Gnostic Society Library contains a vast collection of primary documents relating to the Gnostic tradition as well as a selection of in-depth audio lectures and brief archive notes designed to orient study of the documents, their sources, and the religious tradition they represent.
The library includes over a thousand documents related to the Gnostic tradition, including all major Gnostic writings and anti-Gnostic patristic texts. Using the Archive search function, students and researches can easily find just about any anything relating to the Gnostic tradition.
Lectures provided in the library are from the audio archives of BC Recordings and The Gnostic Society in Los Angeles; they are presented in RealAudio or MP3 format and run about 75 minutes in length. As you visit the library, set aside time to listen to a lecture. Another feature of the library is the ability to search across all the texts in our collection using the Gnosis Archive Index search engine -- give it a try. Remember to also visit the Gnostic Society Bookstore for a collection of the best current works on Gnosis and Gnosticism.
New in the Library - The Secret Book of John: Among the several dozen ancient Gnostic manuscripts rediscovered in modern times, the Secret Book of John (also known as the Apocryphon of John) is widely considered to be the most important. It is the preeminent “Gnostic Gospel”, a sacred reservoir for the defining essence of Gnostic myth and revelation. Recognizing the importance of this text, we have now added a large section to the Library dedicated to the Secret Book of John -- included in collection you will find introductory materials and several translations of the Secret Book of John, including Prof. Stevan Davies' excellent new "reader's edition". If you are interested in reading a "Gnostic Gospel", this is a good place to start.
Recently updated in the Library: The Gospel of Mary of Magdala section, one of the most popular pages on our site, has been augmented and updated. We have also updated and enlarged the Mandaean Scriptures section. We have edited and updated our library copy of Jung's Seven Sermons to the Dead (Septem Sermones ad Mortuos). The Seven Sermons form a summation of Jung's Red Book visions.
We have also recently added a huge digital collection of the works of G. R. S. Mead. Mead was perhaps the most important early scholar of Gnosticism and his writings remain an invaluable resource. This collection contains twelve volumes of Mead's works, several essays from The Theosophical Review, and a bookstore offering of Mead's works in print.
We continue to express gratitude for the initial work of our friend Terje Dahl Bergersen of Oslo, Norway who first collected material for this library in 1994.
The Nag Hammadi Library
- The Nag Hammadi Library, a collection
of thirteen ancient codices containing over fifty texts, was discovered in
upper Egypt in 1945. This immensely important discovery includes a large
number of primary Gnostic scriptures -- texts once thought to have been
entirely destroyed during the early Christian struggle to define
"orthodoxy" -- scriptures such as the
Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Truth. The
discovery and translation of the Nag Hammadi library has provided impetus
to a major re-evaluation of early Christian history and the nature of
Gnosticism. (Readers unfamiliar with this history may wish to review the
brief introduction to Gnosticism and the
Nag Hammadi library, and an excerpt from Elaine Pagels'
excellent popular introduction to the Nag Hammadi texts,
The Gnostic Gospels.) We have also recently incorporated an
extensive resource on Valentinus
and the Valentinian Tradition.
The Nag Hammadi materials in the Gnostic Society Library were completely corrected and re-edited in 1997. Multiple authoritative translations of several texts are now included. Essentially all versions of the Nag Hammadi Library available on the internet have been directly copied from these text provided here in the Gnosis Archive.
Gnostic Writings and Related Texts
- While the Nag Hammadi Library represents our richest source of classical Gnostic texts, many other primary Gnostic documents were discovered in the century prior to the Nag Hammadi find. These are cataloged in the Classical Gnostic Scriptures and Fragments section -- included here you will now find G.R.S. Mead's complete translation of the Pistis Sophia. Of associated interest is Christian Apocrypha and Early Christian Literature, a section containing other important Christian texts surviving outside canonical tradition, some of which manifest Gnostic influence. We have also recently incorporated an extensive resource specifically on Valentinus and the Valentinian Tradition.
- The G.R.S Mead Collection contains eleven complete volumes written by G. R. S. Mead (1863-1933). These works provide an invaluable review of materials relating to Gnostic tradition available before discovery of the Nag Hammadi collection.
- Until students began uncovering original documents and re-examining Gnosticism, opinion about the tradition was primarily based on the very negatively biased Polemical Works Against the Gnostics by the Church Fathers. In this section we present all the major documents by the patristic heresiologist.
- Beyond the bounds of classical Christian Gnosticism -- represented by the above materials -- there are several other traditions of clearly Gnostic character. The Hermetic tradition represents a non-Christian form of Gnosticism; included in the library are the principal Hermetic writings of The Corpus Hermeticum.
- With an interest in Gnosticism awakened by the Nag Hammadi materials, scholars are now re-examining Manichaeism and beginning a more serious consideration of the many Manichaean writings discovered just in the last century. A large sample of these is presented in the Manichaean Writings collection. Also included in the library is a section devoted to Mandaean Texts and this still living Gnostic tradition.
- The Cathars represented a medieval resurgence of Gnosticism, and we have a small collection of Cathar Texts. Alchemy was recognized by C. G. Jung as another strand of Gnosticism; the library here provides links to a comprehensive collection of Alchemical Writings. And, finally, we have on file a small but growing collection of Texts from Modern Gnosticism
Other Material in the Library
- The Dead Sea Scrolls - now one of the most referenced Dead Sea Scroll resources on the internet.
- Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
Related Library Resources
- No resource on the Internet is a substitute for a good library of books. Students of Gnosticism will find our Annotated Bibliography of Books on Gnosticism to be a useful aid for further research.
- A complete collection of patristic writings, all carefully and recently reedited, is available at the CECL Early Church Fathers collection. This site offers the entire Ante-Nicene Fathers and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers collections (about 38 volumes in the print edition), and includes a search function.
- The St. Pachomius Library offers a comprehensive collection of early Christian writings with emphasis on sources of the Orthodox Christian tradition.
- An excellent collection of Apocryphal and other non-canonical texts is found at the Wesley Center - Noncanonical Literature page.
- The Ecole Intiative offers an encyclopedic collection of materials relating to early Church history (but gives little notice to Gnostic materials).
- Another site with a good collection of texts and commentary is the Early Christian Writings site.
An Important Note on Internet Text Collections
Almost all of the several dozen internet sites with collections of texts similar to our own obtained their material by directly or indirectly copying files present at the Gnosis Archive. Ours was perhaps the first major collection of such texts to appear on "the web" (in 1994), and thus has served as a source for others creating "their own" collections.
Unfortunately several transcription errors present in the massive amount of material added to the Gnosis Archive in our first years have in this repeated process of "copying" been very widely propagated. Over the years, we have made many corrections. Unfortunately, it appears that very few of the sites copying texts from this collection have taken the time to read, edit and correct the texts! This is of course exactly how the manuscript tradition has propagated errors in the past centuries, though with vastly different "technologies" of reproduction.