Gnosticism Books

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene

Jean-Yves Leloup

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 53 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Restores to the forefront of the Christian tradition the importance of the divine feminine.
* The first complete English-language translation of the original Coptic Gospel of Mary, with line-by-line commentary.
* Reveals the eminence of the divine feminine in Christian thought.
* Offers a new perspective on the life of one of the most controversial figures in the Western spiritual tradition.

Perhaps no figure in biblical scholarship has been the subject of more controversy and debate than Mary Magdalene. Also known as Miriam of Magdala, Mary Magdalene was considered by the apostle John to be the founder of Christianity because she was the first witness to the Resurrection. In most theological studies she has been depicted as a reformed prostitute, the redeemed sinner who exemplifies Christ's mercy. Today's reader can ponder her role in the gospels of Philip, Thomas, Peter, and Bartholomew--the collection of what have come to be known as the Gnostic gospels rejected by the early Christian church. Mary's own gospel is among these, but until now it has remained unknown to the public at large.

Orthodox theologian Jean-Yves Leloup's translation of the Gospel of Mary from the Coptic and his thorough and profound commentary on this text are presented here for the first time in English. The gospel text and the spiritual exegesis of Leloup together reveal unique teachings that emphasize the eminence of the divine feminine and an abiding love of nature over the dualistic and ascetic interpretations of Christianity presented elsewhere. What emerges from this important source text and commentary is a renewal of the sacred feminine in the Western spiritual tradition and a new vision for Christian thought and faith throughout the world.

The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle

Karen L. King

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Gospel of Mary of Magdala 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

As with anything Karen L. King has written about Mary, it is a great read. Opens up a whole different scenario for women in the church.

interesting 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

very inetersting and informative - well wriiten - easy to follow with many historical references -loved learning something new - highly recommended -thank you.

King on the Gospel of Mary 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The Gospel of Mary offers an intriguing insight into an early church community. King, a scholar at the Harvard Divinity School, compares its theology to other Gnostic works (she says it doesn't necessarily fit well in the presumed template of Gnosticism), to the canonical New Testament, and to Hellenic thought. She sketches how this work sheds light on the historical development of Christianity prior to the settling of orthodoxy. King also discusses the implied prominent role of women in emerging Christianity. While Mary herself was not the author of the gospel bearing her name (it almost surely dates to the second century), and we can't even be sure that a woman wrote it, it likely reflects theology developed at least in part by women.

Of all the wild and crazy stuff in Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, I think you can take away one grain of truth: The crucial role of Mary in the canonical gospels (as the first discoverer of the truth of the resurrection) together with the implications from the Gospel of Mary point to an early Christian milieu where Mary in particular and women in general were more prominent than the later orthodoxy would have one believe.

Editorial Review:

Lost for more than fifteen hundred years, the Gospel of Mary is the only existing early Christian gospel written in the name of a woman. Karen L. King tells the story of the recovery of this remarkable gospel and offers a new translation. This brief narrative rejects Jesus' suffering and death as a path to eternal life and exposes the view that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute for what it is--a piece of theological fiction. "The Gospel of Mary of Magdala offers a fascinating glimpse into the conflicts and controversies that shaped earliest Christianity.

The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus: The Definitive Collection of Mystical Gospels and Secret Books about Jesus of Nazareth

Marvin Meyer

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Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

For all those readers curious to read the actual texts of the Gnostic Gospels, here is the definitive collection of all the Gnostic Gospels and Gospel–like texts.

o Marvin Meyer, premier scholar of Gnostic and other Christian literature outside the New Testament, presents every Gnostic Gospel and Jesus text with a brilliant overall introduction, introductions to each text, and notes that explain everything the reader needs to know to understand the text. He includes his latest translations of not only the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Mary, but other texts such as the Secret Book of John, which some scholars regard as the second part of the New Testament Gospel of John. The material is largely from the discovery at Nag Hammadi, freshly translated and introduced, but also includes texts found elsewhere. The texts, especially taken together, present an image of Jesus as the ultimate wisdom teacher, a kind of mysterious Jewish Zen master, who scandalized listeners by his radical egalitarianism (regarding women, slaves, the poor, the marginalized as of equal status, or more, with establishment male believers) and his insistence on living the message, spiritual experience, vs. outer observance only.

o For those wanting to learn more after reading The Da Vinci Code. This book provides the definitive next book for those looking for expert presentation of the alternative Gnostic stream of Christianity, in which there is no talk of crucifixion and Mary Magdalene is presented as the disciple that Jesus loved best. "Marv is one of the original secret gospels scholars who has done an enormous amount of work to bring these texts to light. All of his research on the Nag Hammadi texts is having an incredible impact on our knowledge of early Christian history––it is virtually redefining it." ––Dr. Elaine Pagels, Princeton University

The Gnostic Gospels: Including the Gospel of Thomas The Gospel of Mary Magdalene (Sacred Wisdom)

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Content/ Packaging 5 out of 5 stars.
27 of 32 people found this review helpful.

Been wanting this material for nearly 20 years and in this form it is the more easily picked up and put down as time allows. Excellent edition and extremely well-packed.

Editorial Review:

In 1945 several secret gospels, hidden since the first century, were discovered in the Egyptian Desert at Nag Hammadi. They caused a sensation in the religious world as they revealed the mysteries of Gnostic Christianity. The gospels selected for this volume reveal intimate conversations between Jesus and his disciples and shed new light on his relationship with Mary Magdalene. The Gospel of Thomas, also included, consists of symbolic mini-parables, many of which are not in the New Testament.

55. St. Irenaeus of Lyons: Against the Heresies Book 1(Ancient Christian Writers)

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Unger's Intricate Piece of Work 5 out of 5 stars.
30 of 30 people found this review helpful.

With an excellent array of notes explaining his decisions in translating the thirty-one chapters of Book One of Irenaes's Against the Heresies, Unger has produced an admirable and accessible scholarly edition. Any translation is simultaneously an interpretation, and Unger has elucidated his choices in a minute and clear manner. Moreover, his introduction is quite helpful in setting the scene regarding Irenaeus's audience, style, and purpose.

This Is Only the First Book 3 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

St. Irenaeus wrote five volumes of Against the Heresies. This is only book one. If you're looking for anything in subsequent volumes (I was looking for material in book 3, for example), you won't get it in this volume. St. Ireneaus is cogent, clear, and brilliant, of course. Just be forewarned that this isn't the entire work.

Editorial Review:

This work, which establishes Irenaeus as the most important of the theologians of the second century, is a detailed and effective refutation of Gnosticism, and a major source of information on the various Gnostic sects and doctrines.

The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom

Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy

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Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Found the flaws in the scholarship yet? 1 out of 5 stars.
7 of 15 people found this review helpful.

The first flaw is in their misunderstanding of the Gnostics. Gnostics did not exist before about the middle of the 2nd century. And even then, they were never a centralized religion. On the contrary, there were various schools of Gnosticism, none of which agreed with one another, but all of whom believed in very, very strange things. My all-time favorite Gnostic quote (from the Gospel of Thomas): Women do not deserve to live.

Most of the Gnostic schools were anti-flesh, anti-woman, anti-earth. They believed there were two Gods, one evil, and it was the evil one who created the world. Thoroughly elitist, they were very small in number. As for those so-called gospels they wrote, ever wonder why they titled them with Christian names? Not because they thought they were Christian. Nor was anyone else under the misapprehension that they were Christian. The Romans never once mistakenly tossed a Gnostic to the lions. No, only the Christians were persecuted, and the Gnostics, who were perfectly happy with the pagan myths and emperor worship, would have been baffled by Freke and Gandy's claims that they were somehow Christian, just not literalists.

So why did the Gnostics steal apostles's titles for their gospels? It was because by now the Christians were arguing loudly, drawing huge numbers of people into their religion, and therefore calling their gospels "The Gospel of the apostle so and so" added gloss and a flavor of sophistication to their works. After all, we have a letter from Pliny circa 110 AD (long before the Gnostics came) complaining that all the pagan temples had been deserted, and cheerfully offering to kill Christians.

Freke and Gandy's claims about the Gnostics are simply, flat-out, untrue. Here is a book considered the single best book on Gnosticism: A Separate God by Petrement. Reading it, or anything else scholarly, will prove that Freke and Gandy simply know nothing about the subject.

They claim Jesus never lived, but was merely a complication of pagan myths. Actually, this was a very popular theory among biblical scholars--in the years 1880-1930. By that time, some thousand, or perhaps five thousand books later, the issue was considered dead and b buried. It was untrue. Today, not a single biblical scholar in the world, Christian or atheist, will do anything but roar with laughter if you bring up the subject. Look it up in your library under the "History of Religions" theory.

The most thorough book on Amazon about the "History of Religions" school and why it has been refuted, is "The Jesus Legend" by Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd. Or you can read "The Gospel and the Greeks" by Nash, which is a very well written, popular overview of the subject. For deeper scholarship, try "Son of God" by Martin Hengel and "Pauline Baptism and the Pagan Mysteries" by Gunter Wagner.

So many, many of their statements are flat-out lies that it is hard to choose, but here is one that is especially funny: "Literalists do all they can to portray the Gnostics as fringe heretics and themselves and the Catholic, or 'universal' Church, but but is actually a complete reversal of the truth. For the first three centuries AD Literalist Christianity was the fringe sect and Gnostic Christianity was far more popular" (p 67).

Pick up any book by any biblical scholar (a biblical scholar is somebody with a PhD and years of school studying the bible, it's history and social situation, and someone who usually knows ancient Aramaic, Greek, Latin, etc.). Any one, Christian or atheist, and you will discover this is a lie. It's the complete reverse of the truth, in fact. A good book on the numbers of Christians during each of the first three centuries would be the classic "The Early Church" by Frend.

Since they have clearly never read a single work on the Gnostics, the entire last fourth of the book in which they go on and on about a Gnostic church they wish to found, is bizarre and funny at the same time.

Freke has a master in philosophy and Gandy a masters in the classical history. And, very clearly, neither has ever taken a single class in anything to do with biblical scholarship. At the least, even a very, very basic class would have covered the History of Religions theory and the Gnostics. If they didn't want to take classes, why didn't they read anything on the subject???

How did this book get published??

Editorial Review:

An Incendiary Wake-Up Call to the World

What if the Old Testament is a work of fiction, Jesus never existed, and Muhammad was a mobster?

What if the Bible and the Qur'an are works of political propaganda created by Taliban-like fundamentalists to justify the sort of religious violence we are witnessing in the world today?

What if there is a big idea that could free us from the us-versus-them world created by religion and make it possible for us to truly love our neighbors—and even our enemies?

What if it is possible to awaken to a profound state of oneness and love, which the Gnostic Christians symbolized by the enigmatic figure of the laughing Jesus?

Discover for Yourself Why the Gnostic Jesus Laughs

The Gnostic Bible

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Editorial Review:

A landmark work of scholarship and literary translation, The Gnostic Bible presents the most significant and beautiful sacred texts of gnostic mysticism. The gnostics were religious thinkers who believed that salvation is found through mystical knowledge and personal religious experience. Gnostic writings offer striking perspectives on both early Christian and non-Christian thought. Dating from the first to the thirteenth centuries, the selections in this volume represent Jewish, Christian, Hermetic, Mandaean, Manichaean, Islamic, and Cathar forms of gnostic spirituality, and their sources include Egypt, the Greco-Roman world, the Middle East, Syria, Iraq, China, and France. These texts show that gnosticism was a world religion that sought truths in a wide variety of traditions and expressed those truths in powerful and provocative mystical poetry and prose. This is the first time that such a diverse collection of ancient gnostic texts has been published in a single volume, and many of the texts have never before been translated into English.