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Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism AUTH. Kurt Rudolph PUB. Harper San Francisco ISBN 0060670185 CAT. Non-Fiction MISC: Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing AUTH. Stephan A. Hoeller PUB. Quest Books ISBN 0835608166 CAT. Non-Fiction MISC: From the description at Gnosis.org: There has long been need for a comprehensive introductory guide to the Gnostic tradition. Hoeller supplies just such a book with this new offering. This delightful study gives clear voice to the essential message of Gnosticism; it is an invaluable introduction to the history and import of Gnosticism in the Western tradition. Jesus and the Lost Goddess : The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians AUTH. Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy PUB. Three Rivers Press ISBN 1400045940 CAT. Non-Fiction MISC: From the book description: Drawing on modern scholarship, the authors of the international bestseller The Jesus Mysteries decode the secret teachings of the original Christians for the first time in almost two millennia and theorize about who the original Christians really were and what they actually taught. In addition, the book explores the many myths of Jesus and the Goddess and unlocks the lost secret teachings of Christian mysticism, which promise happiness and immortality to those who attain the state of Gnosis, or enlightenment. This daring and controversial book recovers the ancient wisdom of the original Christians and demonstrates its relevance to us today. Jung and The Lost Gospels: Insights into the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library AUTH. Stephan A. Hoeller and June Singer PUB. Quest Books ISBN 0835606465 CAT. Non-Fiction MISC: From the description at Gnosis.org: With a psychological perspective drawn from the work of C. G. Jung, this book provides an excellent introduction to Gnosticism and its relationship to the spiritual quest of our own age. Several key mythic motifs of Gnosticism are explored both in a religious and psychological context. Mary Magdalene, The First Apostle : The Struggle for Authority AUTH. Ann Graham Brock PUB. Harvard University Press ISBN 0674009665 CAT. Non-Fiction MISC: From Harvard University Press: "Why did some early Christians consider Mary Magdalene to be an apostle while others did not? Some Christian texts, underlining her role as one of the very first witnesses to the resurrection, portray Mary Magdalene as the "apostle to the apostles," while other sources exclude or replace her in their resurrection accounts. This book examines how the conferral, or withholding, of apostolic status operated as a tool of persuasion in the politics of early Christian literature." The Allure of Gnosticism: The Gnostic Experience in Jungian Psychology and Contemporary Culture AUTH. by Robert Alan Segal (Editor), June Singer (Editor), Murray Stein (Editor) PUB. Open Court Publishing Company ISBN 0812692772 CAT. Non-Fiction MISC: From the Midwest Book Review: "The Gnostic Experience in Jungian Psychology and Contemporary Culture is a collection of sixteen essays illuminating gnosticism in its relation to such issues as Jungian thought, the nature of evil, the place of the feminine, communism and fascism, existentialism, Christian scriptures, and Buddhism." Magdalene.org note: There is an entire chapter devoted to Mary Magdalene and The Gospel of Mary. The Gnostic Gospels AUTH. Elaine Pagels PUB. Vintage (reissue) ISBN 0679724532 CAT. Non-Fiction MISC: Magdalene.org: This is the book that first introduced many people to the Gnostic Mary Magdalene. Book description: A provocative study of the gnostic gospels and the world of early Christianity as revealed through the Nag Hammadi texts. The Gospel of Mary Magdalene AUTH. Jean-Yves Leloup PUB. Inner Traditions ISBN 0892819111 CAT. Non-Fiction MISC: The Gospel of Mary Magdalene was discovered over 100 years ago, but precious little has been written about it for the general reader. Jean-Yves Leloup's French work has been translated into English... Read a full review! The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle AUTH. Karen L. King PUB. Polebridge Press ISBN 0944344585 CAT. Non-Fiction MISC: Lost for more than fifteen hundred years, the Gospel of Mary is the only existing early Christian gospel written in the name of a woman. Karen L. King tells the story of the recovery of this remarkable gospel and offers a new translation. This brief narrative presents a radical interpretation of Jesus' teachings as a path to inner spiritual knowledge. It rejects his suffering and death as a path to eternal life and exposes the view that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute for what it is - a piece of theological fiction. The Gospel of Mary of Magdala offers a fascinating glimpse into the conflicts and controversies that shaped earliest Christianity. (Full review coming soon!) The Gospels of Mary : The Secret Tradition of Mary Magdalene, the Companion of Jesus AUTH. Marvin W. Meyer PUB. Harper San Francisco ISBN 0060727918 CAT. Non-Fiction MISC: Book description: The Gospels of Mary presents English translations of the earliest and most reliable texts that shed light on Mary Magdalene, collected here for the first time. As Marvin Meyer states in his Introduction, these texts unveil her importance as Jesus' beloved disciple and an apostle and evangelist in her own right, a figure whose importance for Christianity is only now emerging from the shadows of history. Included are selections from the New Testament Gospels and from Gnostic Gospels and other texts, including the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Philip. Esther de Boer, a widely respected expert on Mary Magdalene and the Gospel of Mary, sets Meyer's translations in the context of the latest scholarship. She analyzes the role Mary plays in each of the gospels in which she appears, showing her to be a capable, strong woman who poses a distinct threat to the male-dominated early Church. Cumulatively, these texts reveal a vibrant oral tradition in which Mary Magdalene is not only a follower of Jesus but his companion and closest disciple. The Jesus Mysteries : Was the AUTH. Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy PUB. Three Rivers Press ISBN 0609807986 CAT. Non-Fiction MISC: During the time when Christianity was forming, mystery religions were commonplace throughout the Hellenistic world. A common theme in many of them was the myth of the "dying godman," in which a god comes to earth in human form, dies, and then is resurrected. The thesis presented in this book is that Jesus as a historical figure is very unlikely, and that Christianity was likely started as a mystery religion based on Jesus, a Dionysian figure representing the death and resurrection of the soul to higher spiritual awareness. The Nag Hammadi Library in English AUTH. James M. Robinson PUB. Harper San Francisco ISBN 0060669357 CAT. Non-Fiction MISC: Review: If you're going to start anywhere with Mary Magdalene, this is probably the best place. This edition of the Nag Hammadi Library does contain the Gospel of Mary, and the various references to her in other texts. The only downside to this edition is that there is no index. I have to use the index in my old edition and then look them up in the new one. The Secret Magdalene AUTH. Ki Longfellow PUB. Eio Books ISBN 0975925539 CAT. Fiction MISC: Book description: "Detailed, poetic, and fully human, this is a thrilling novel, a powerful evocation of a Mary Magdalene who was in her own right a philosopher, a traveler, a teacher, and a prophet. This Mary Magdalene was much more than a wife, much more than a favored follower, more even than the Beloved Disciple. Mariamne Magdal-eder "knew the All." And while the popular view of the Magdalene has lately begun to change its shape from repentant sinner to Beloved Disciple, few speak of what "knowing the All" actually means. KNOWING THE ALL is the heart of the Christ's original Gnostic teaching. It was the Apostle Paul's message, his "revelation of the Lord" that blinded him on the road to "Damascus." It was the very heart of early Christianity. Still beating, Gnosis, or "knowing," was cut out of the body of the Church more than sixteen hundred years ago—and was then buried so deeply and for so long, all involved lived and died in the belief it could never come again. But it has. With the discovery in 1945 of the Nag Hammadi codices, perhaps the last of their kind, Mary Magdalene has returned to us in the full splendor of her original form. The Secret Magdalene is not only a painstakingly researched portrait of a great woman who was wise beyond her time and her place, it is a portrait of the search for GNOSIS—the individual's direct experience of God." The Secret Teachings of Jesus: Four Gnostic Gospels AUTH. Marvin Meyer PUB. Vintage ISBN 0394744330 CAT. Non-Fiction MISC: Book description: 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 Thong, and the Secret Book of John. The Woman Jesus Loved : Mary Magdalene in the Nag Hammadi Library and Related Documents AUTH. Antti Marjanen PUB. Brill Academic Publishers ISBN 9004106588 CAT. Non-Fiction MISC: Review: This book was a fantastic find for me. The only downside is the high cost of a hardcover published by an academic press, but if you take your research seriously, this is not a book to be without. Published in 1996, this is a fairly recent look at the way Mary Magdalene is present in Gnostic texts, and includes direct translations from the original Coptic, rather than basing an interpretation on a translation as occurs so frequently with secondary scholarship. As someone who doesn't read Coptic, it presents a way to get into the original texts much deeper than previously able. What Is Gnosticism? AUTH. Karen L. King PUB. Belknap Press ISBN 067401071X CAT. Non-Fiction MISC: From the book description: A distinctive Christian heresy? A competitor of burgeoning Christianity? A pre-Christian folk religion traceable to "Oriental syncretism"? How do we account for the disparate ideas, writings, and practices that have been placed under the Gnostic rubric? To do so, Karen King says, we must first disentangle modern historiography from the Christian discourse of orthodoxy and heresy that has pervaded--and distorted--the story.