The Gnostic Bible

Willis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer

Shambhala Publications, 2006 - Religion - 860 pages

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. For example, some gnostic texts suggest that God should be celebrated as both Mother and Father and that self-knowledge is the route to union with the Divine. 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. The impact of gnosticism upon other religions of the world was considerable, and the influence of gnosticism continues to the present day. 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. The selections are accompanied by introductions and notes, and additional study aids describe gnosticism, elucidate gnostic terms, and suggest further readings.

What people are saying

The gnostic Bible

User Review  - Not Available - Book Verdict

Poet and translator Barnstone and Meyer (Bible & Christian studies, Chapman Univ.) have joined forces to present a large collection of gnostic source literature. The nature and beliefs of gnosticism ...

User Review -

Higgs Boson / "God Particle" -2012 Science news is actually a 150+ year old discovery by a different name ……............Infinite Intelligence….Steve Meyer / New Thought Movement / HolisticDNAThe Sixth Sense Activation Sequence – GROUNDBREAKING New Book in 2012!
"New Thought promotes the ideas that "Infinite Intelligence" or "God" is ubiquitous, spirit is the totality of real things, true human selfhood is divine, divine thought is a force for good, sickness originates in the mind, and "right thinking" has a healing effect..." Wikipedia
Steve Meyer
[e-mail]
www.HolisticDNA.com  

Contents

• II: 1
• III: 21
• IV: 29
• V: 31
• VI: 43
• VII: 70
• VIII: 105
• IX: 107
• X: 119
• XI: 135
• XII: 166
• XIII: 178
• XIV: 189
• XV: 201
• XVI: 212
• XVII: 215
• XVIII: 218
• XIX: 224
• XX: 233
• XXI: 239
• XXII: 257
• XXIII: 299
• XXIV: 307
• XXV: 326
• XXVI: 332
• XXVII: 335
• XXVIII: 340
• XXIX: 351
• XXX: 357
• XXXIII: 386
• XXXIV: 395
• XXXV: 405
• XXXVI: 414
• XXXVII: 438
• XXXVIII: 465
• XXXIX: 477
• XL: 482
• XLI: 495
• XLII: 497
• XLIII: 502
• XLIV: 512
• XLV: 521
• XLVI: 525
• XLVII: 527
• XLVIII: 555
• XLIX: 561
• L: 567
• LI: 569
• LII: 581
• LIII: 593
• LIV: 598
• LV: 616
• LVI: 639
• LVII: 647
• LVIII: 655
• LIX: 657
• LX: 665
• LXI: 727
• LXII: 729
• LXIII: 740
• LXIV: 751
• LXV: 762
• LXVI: 765
• LXVIII: 801
• LXIX: 821
• LXX: 835
• LXXI: 849

About the author

Willis Barnstone was born in Lewiston, Maine. He attended Bowdoin, Columbia, and Yale, earning his doctorate. Barnstone taught in Greece from 1949 to 1951, and in Buenos Aires during the Dirty War. He went to China during the Cultural Revolution, where he was later a Fulbright Professor of American Literature at Beijing Foreign Studies University from 1984 to 1985. Barnstone has authored more than forty books, poetry collections, poetry translations, philosophical and religious texts. He is a former O'Connor Professor of Greek at Colgate University, is a Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and is in the Institute of Biblical and Literary Studies at Indiana University. He has received numerous awards for his work, among them the Emily Dickinson Award, the W. H. Auden Award, and a PEN/Book-of-the-Month-Club Special Citation for translation. Barnstone was also a Guggenheim Fellow and Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry. His titles include The Complete Poems of Sappho,, Translated with an Introduction, Ancient Greek Lyrics, Love Poems, and Café de l'Aube à Paris, Dawn Café in Paris: Poems Composed in French and Their Translation in English.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Gnostic Bible
• Editors: Willis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Shambhala Publications, 2006
• ISBN: 1590301994, 9781590301999
• Length: 860 pages
• Subjects: Religion / Christianity / General