The book examines the critical use of biblical and early Christian traditions in such Christian-Gnostic texts as the Apocryphon of John, The Nature of the Archons, The Apocalypse of Adam, The Testimony of Truth, The Apocalypse of Peter, The Letter of Peter to Philip, and the apocryphal Acts of John.

This volume is a selection of papers presented to the Society of Biblical Literature Thomasine Traditions Group from 1996 to 2001. The papers focus on the early Christian writings attributed to the apostle Thomas with particular emphasis on the Gospel of Thomas. The collection offers an extensive discussion of the social and cultural world of the gospel, particularly examining its relationship to other contemporary Christian writings and Graeco-Roman literature. The essays give a helpful survey of recent developments and discussions in the field of Thomasine studies. Among many...

This book is a comprehensive study of "Valentinianism," the most important Gnostic Christian movement in Antiquity. It is the first attempt to make full use of the Valentinian documents from Nag Hammadi as well as the reports of the Church Fathers. The book discusses the difference between the Eastern and the Western branches of Valentinianism, and argues that individual sources must always be understood in the context of the historical development of Valentinian doctrines. It also analyses the ideas about the incarnation, protological theories, and initiation practice, as well as the dynamic...

This is the third volume of the immensely useful Nag Hammadi Bibliography, the first volume of which covered 1948-1969 and was the first publication in the Nag Hammadi Studies series. The second volume covered 1970-1994. This third volume provides a complete integration of Supplements II/1-II/8 to the Bibliography as published in Novum Testamentum 1998-2008, with additions and corrections. This latest update contains 3,063 entries, with the set of three volumes containing 11,580 entries. Nag Hammadi and Gnostic studies continue to be of critical importance for the study of...

Taking as their common subject the key early Christian anti-Manichaean work, the Acts of Archelaus (Acta Archelai), the contributors to this volume offer a systematic exploration of what the text has to tell us about inter-religious contact, conflict, and comprehension at a crucial moment in religious history: the encounter between Christianity and Manichaeism along the political and cultural frontier zone of West Asia in the early fourth century CE. The contributions examine the text's structure, apologetic and polemical strategies, and possible sources, and through these analyses...

Book I of Epiphanius' "Panarion" or "Medicine Chest" describes the Gnostic and Jewish Christian groups known to him and gives refutations of their teachings. It deals with materials also found inNag Hammadi and other Gnostic documents.

Discovered in 1929, the Manichaean Kephalaia have opened up an important window on the early development of Manichaean doctrine. This study identifies a significant redactional tendency whereby the compilers of the text sought to clarify ambiguities in "canonical" Manichaean tradition by means of five-part numerical series. This discovery challenges the conventional wisdom of Manichaean scholarship, which has long maintained that, since Mani recorded his own teachings in a series of what later became canonical writings, Manichaean doctrines were transmitted relatively unchanged from...

Offers the latest discoveries and insights into the Manichaean religion from leading scholars in the field, including new reconstructions of literary and artistic sources and analyses of the religion's origins and development across North Africa and West, Central, and East Asia.

This volume reproduces nineteen chapters and articles published between 1991 through 2008, on Manichaeism, and its contacts with Augustine of Hippo, its most famous convert and also best-known adversary. The contents are divided into four parts: perceptions of Mani within the Roman Empire, select aspects of Manichaean thought, women in Manichaeism, and Manichaeism and Augustine. Though these chapters and articles reproduce their originals, adjustments have been made to include cross-referencing, newer editions, and the like, all with the aim of rendering them more accessible to a new...

This book offers a new understanding of Sethianism and the origins of Gnosticism by examining the mythology in and social reality behind a group of texts to which certain leaders of the early church occasionally attached the label 'Ophite.' In the unique Ophite mythology, which rewrites the Genesis paradise story and is attested, for example, in Irenaeus' Adversus haereses 1.30, The Apocryphon of John and On the Origin of the World, the snake's advice to eat of the tree of knowledge is considered positive, the creator and his angels are turned into demonic beasts and the...