"A prized edition to any personal, seminary, and academic reference collection." -- Midwest Book Review

Contents: The World of Gnosticism; Gnosis and gnosticism; Gnosis and faith; The True Gnostic; Gnosis and revelation; Gnosis and experience; Gnosis and initiation; Presenting gnosis; Gnostic Communities: Origins and History; The east and gnosis; The Iranian experience; Hellenism; The Jewish dimension; Apocalyptic writings; Gnosticism and the Dead Sea Scrolls; Gnosticism in the early Christian centuries; Why did gnosticism disappear?; Bogomil; Cathars; Jacob Boehme (1575--1624); Goethe's Faust; William Blake (1757--1827); Carl Gustav Jung (1875--1961); Gnosticism and its Literature; The Church Fathers; Apocryphal works; Mandaean literature; Manichaean literature; Hermetic literature; The Bruce Codex and Codex Askew; The Nag Hammadi texts; Censorship and tolerance; Beliefs and Practices; Deity; Christology; Anthropology; Cosmology; Soteriology; Eschatology; Practices; Orthodoxy and Heresy; Simon Magus, Father of Heresy; Cerinthus, gnostic teacher; Marcion, gnostic reformer; Valentinus, gnostic poet and visionary; Basilides, gnostic mythologist; Irenaeus, defender of the faith; Hippolytus, refuter of heresy; Gospel and the Gnostic Gospels; Interpreting the gospel; The Gospel of Mary; The Gospel of Philip; The Gospel of Thomas; The Gospel of Truth; The Gospel of the Egyptians; Gnosticism and the Gospel of John; Interpreting the gospel; The prologue; The sacrament of geography; Dualism; The gnostic redeemer; Conclusion.