Marvin W. Meyer Libri

For 1600 years, its message lay hidden until scholars unlocked the meaning of a lost gospel. This remarkable text, unseen since the early days of Christianity and thought by few to exist, presents the story from the perspective of Judas Iscariot, often labeled history's ultimate traitor. However, this gospel reinterprets Judas as a hero rather than a villain; he is depicted as a role model for disciples of Jesus. In a striking twist, Jesus asks Judas to betray him, suggesting that Judas is the only apostle who truly comprehends Jesus' mission. This volume marks the first publication of the gospel since it was condemned as heresy by early Church leaders, particularly Irenaeus, in 180. Discovered by farmers in a cavern in Middle Egypt during the 1970s, the codex containing the gospel was subsequently bought, sold, and hidden, suffering damage that left much of it in fragments. In 2001, experts reassembled and restored the text. The Gospel of Judas has been translated from its original Coptic into clear prose, accompanied by commentary that contextualizes its history within the early Church, offering a fresh perspective on the message of Jesus.

The Nag Hammadi Scriptures, edited by Marvin Meyer, is the most complete, up-to-date, one-volume, English-language edition of the renowned library of Gnostic manuscripts discovered in Egypt in 1945, which rivaled the Dead Sea Scrolls find in significance. It includes the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and the recently discovered Gospel of Judas, as well as other Gnostic gospels and sacred texts. This volume also includes introductory essays, notes, tables, glossary, index, etc. to help the reader understand the context and contemporary significance of these texts which have shed new light on early Christianity and ancient thought. The compilation of ancient manuscripts that constitute The Nag Hammadi Scriptures is a discovery that challenges everything we thought we knew about the early Christian church, ancient Judaism, and Greco-Roman religions.

Meyer provides an overview of the Nag Hammadi texts and their contents, and discusses their meaning and significance for us today.

A collection of Gnostic texts spanning centuries, geographical locations, and cultural traditions—“a wonderful achievement” (Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels) 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.

The best English translations of forty sacred texts describing the mystery religions of the ancient Mediterranean world.

The gnostics were religious thinkers who believed that salvation was found through mystical knowledge and personal religious experience. Their scriptures, composed over more than a millennium, are texts of remarkable beauty. Now you can experience that beauty directly by listening to the texts in poetic readings by the translators. For their audio reading, Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer have chosen the most captivating poetry from their larger collection, The Gnostic Bible. Included with the audio program is a book, The Gnostics and Their Scriptures, which serves as the perfect short introduction to the gnostic movement.

In December 1945, two Egyptian fellahin, digging for natural fertilizer in the Nile River valley unearthed a sealed storage jar. The jar proved to hold treasure of an unexpected sort: a collection of some fifty-two ancient manuscripts, most of which reflect the teachings of a mystical religious movement we call Gnosticism (from the Greek word gnosis, "knowledge"). The texts are also, with few exceptions, Christian documents, and thus they provide us with valuable new information about the character of the early church, and about the Gnostic Christians within the church. In this volume, Marvin W. Meyer has produced a new English translation for general readers of four of the most important and revealing of these early Christian texts -- the Secret Book of James, the Gospel of Thomas, the Book of Thomas, and the Secret Book of John.

Kniha vyplňuje mezeru na českém knižním trhu, neboť nabízí nejen nový překlad Tomášova evangelia, ale poprvé také jeho koptský text a řecké fragmenty. Je proto určena nejen laikům, ale i odborníkům z řad teologů a religionistů. Kniha je opatřena úvodem a výkladovými poznámkami Marvina Meyera a dopněna gnostickým kázáním známého literárního kritika Harolda Blooma.