Gnostic Texts & Scriptures
Knowledge as salvation — the scriptures of the Gnostics.
Gnosticism refers to a diverse family of early religious movements that held saving knowledge (gnosis) of the divine — rather than faith or works alone — to be the path of liberation. Emerging alongside early Christianity, Gnostic teachers described a cosmos fashioned by a lesser creator and a divine spark trapped within the human being, awaiting awakening.
For centuries the Gnostics were known mainly through the hostile reports of their opponents. The 1945 discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices in Egypt restored a library of their own scriptures, including the Gospel of Thomas, transforming modern understanding of the movement.
Essential Texts
Start Here
The Gospel of Thomas — a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus — is the most accessible entry point. Pistis Sophia and G. R. S. Mead’s studies give a fuller picture of the Gnostic worldview.
From the Collection
Agnosticism from a Moral and Spiritual Point of View
Burgess Milne
Discoveries Which Make Mental Therapeutics and the Transmission of Mental Communications an Exact Science: Containing the Discovery of the Exact Mechanical Proof of the Law Underlying All Mind Cures and the Transmission of Mental Communications; Also Showing How to Make Mental Photographic Diagnosis of Diseases Whether the Patient Be Present or Absent
Starrett
Philosophumena, or The Refutation of All Heresies
Hippolytus