Overview

The people we've come to call gnostics were passionate advocates of the view that salvation comes through knowledge and personal experience, and their passion shines through in the remarkable body of writings they produced over a period of more than a millennium and a half. Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer have created a translation that brings the gnostic voices to us from across the centuries with remarkable power and beauty--beginning with texts from the earliest years of Christianity--including material from the Nag Hammadi library--and continuing all the way up to expressions of gnostic wisdom found within Islam and in the Cathar movement of the Middle Ages. The twenty-one texts included here serve as a compact introduction to Gnosticism and its principal ideas--and they also provide an entree to the pleasures of gnostic literature in general, representing, as they do, the greatest masterpieces of that tradition.

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9781590305492

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"""Clear and luminous translations that capture the essence and poetic beauty of these iridescent texts. ""Essential Gnostic Scriptures"" provides further stepping-stones for seekers of wisdom and knowledge beyond the canonical testaments, or for those who are simply moved by great sacred poetry.""--Jeffrey Henderson, Editor, Loeb Classical Library ""Fresh and remarkable readable translations of some of the most important gnostic books discovered in modern times, including the newly released Gospel of Judas. With its clear and up-to-date introduction to gnostics and their religion, ""Essential Gnostic Scriptures"" will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in one of the most important religious movements of the ancient world.""--Bart D. Ehrman, author of ""Jesus, Interrupted"" and ""Lost Christianities"""

Clear and luminous translations that capture the essence and poetic beauty of these iridescent texts. Essential Gnostic Scriptures provides further stepping-stones for seekers of wisdom and knowledge beyond the canonical testaments, or for those who are simply moved by great sacred poetry. --Jeffrey Henderson, Editor, Loeb Classical Library <br><br> Fresh and remarkable readable translations of some of the most important gnostic books discovered in modern times, including the newly released Gospel of Judas. With its clear and up-to-date introduction to gnostics and their religion, Essential Gnostic Scriptures will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in one of the most important religious movements of the ancient world. --Bart D. Ehrman, author of Jesus, Interrupted and Lost Christianities

Clear and luminous translations that capture the essence and poetic beauty of these iridescent texts. Essential Gnostic Scriptures provides further stepping-stones for seekers of wisdom and knowledge beyond the canonical testaments, or for those who are simply moved by great sacred poetry. --Jeffrey Henderson, Editor, Loeb Classical Library Fresh and remarkable readable translations of some of the most important gnostic books discovered in modern times, including the newly released Gospel of Judas. With its clear and up-to-date introduction to gnostics and their religion, Essential Gnostic Scriptures will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in one of the most important religious movements of the ancient world. --Bart D. Ehrman, author of Jesus, Interrupted and Lost Christianities

Author Information

"Born in Lewiston, Maine, Willis Barnstone was educated at Bowdoin, Columbia, the Sorbonne, and Yale. He taught in Greece at the end of the civil war (1949-51), and in Buenos Aires during the Dirty War. During the Cultural Revolution he went to China where he was later a Fulbright Professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University (1984-85). Former O'Connor Professor of Greek at Colgate University, he is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Spanish at Indiana University. His publications include ""Modern European Poetry "" (Bantam, 1967), ""The Other Bible ""(HarperCollins, 1984), ""Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practice "" (Yale, 1993), ""Funny Ways of Staying Alive ""(University Press of New England, 1993), ""The Secret Reader: 501 Sonnets "" (University Press of New England, 1996), the memoir ""With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires "" (University of Illinois, 1993), ""Algebra of Night: Selected Poems--1949-1998 "" (Sheep Meadow, 1999), ""The Apocalypse "" (New Directions, 2000), ""Life Watch ""(BOA Editions, 2003), ""Border of a Dream: Poems of Antonio Machado "" (Copper Canyon, 2003), and ""The Gnostic Bible "" (Shambhala Publications, 2003). A Guggenheim Fellow, his awards include a National Endowment for the Arts award, 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 on the Arts, the Midland Authors Award, three Book of the Month Selections 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."""

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