The Gnostic Bible Gnostic Texts Of Mystical Wisdom Form The Ancient And Medieval Worlds Revised And Expanded Edition Marvin W Meyer by Marvin W. Meyer, Willis Barnstone instant download after payment.

Gnosticism was a wide-ranging religious movement of the first millennium CE—with earlier antecedents and later flourishings—whose adherents sought salvation through knowledge and personal religious experience. Gnostic writings offer striking perspectives on both early Christian and non-Christian thought. For example, some gnostic texts suggest that god should be celebrated as both mother and father, and that self-knowledge is the supreme path to the divine. Only in the past fifty years has it become clear how far the gnostic influence spread in ancient and medieval religions—and what a marvelous body of scriptures it produced.

The selections gathered here, in poetic, readable translation, represent Jewish, Christian, Hermetic, Mandaean, Manichaean, Islamic, and Cathar expressions of gnostic spirituality. Their regions of origin include Egypt, the Greco-Roman world, the Middle East, Syria, Iraq, China, and France. Also included are introductions, notes, an extensive glossary, and a wealth of suggestions for further reading.

WILLIS BARNSTONE, PhD, is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University, where he is also a member of the Institute of Biblical and Literary Studies. His many books include The Poetics of Translation, The Other Bible, The New Covenant, With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires, The Complete Poems of Sappho, and The Restored New Testament . A Guggenheim Fellow, his awards include a National Endowment for the Humanities award, an Emily Dickinson Award of the Poetry Society of America, a W. H. Auden Award of the New York State Council of the Arts, the Midland Authors Award, and four Pulitzer Prize nominations for poetry. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Doubletake, Harper’s, New York Review of Books, Poetry, Paris Review Poetry, Partisan Review, the New Yorker, and the Times Literary Supplement .

MARVIN MEYER, PhD, (1948–2012) was Griset Professor of Bible and Christian Studies at Chapman University.