Meera Lester - The Everything Gnostic Gospels Book: A Complete Guide to the Secret Gospels

Dear Reader,

I would like to share with you what I have learned about the mystical Gnostics and the roles they played in the birth of Christianity.

After converting to Catholicism in my teens, I devoured books saints, especially the mystics. I marveled at their reverence for Jesus a spiritual realm that they could fathom only through their hearts, and imaginations. Though I felt a particular fondness for Mother also have been deeply interested in Mary Magdalene as a spiritual model. Recently, her name has been as sociated with references Gnostics, mystics belonging to diverse sects but sharing some common beliefs. The ancient Gnostic Christians exalted Mar y Magdalene and mentioned her with respect and admiration in their sacred manuscripts. discovered that a gospel was named after her.

The Gnostic texts had all but disappeared until a peasant at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945, discovered an earthenware jar buried in the Inside the jar were fifty-two, mostly Gnostic, sacred writings, some gospels. Scholars have now translated and published these Web sites and an extensive bibliography for reading contributions to primitive Christianity. I hope you'll find their myths and stories as fascinating as I have.

TheSeries

EditorialPublisherGary M. KrebsDirector of Product DevelopmentPaula MunierManaging EditorLaura M. DalyAssociate Copy ChiefSheila ZwiebelAcquisitions EditorLisa LaingDevelopment EditorJessica LaPointeAssociate Production EditorCasey EbertTechnical ReaderDan Schowalter

ProductionDirector of ManufacturingSusan BealeAssociate Director of ProductionMichelle Roy KellyPrepressErick DaCosta Matt LeBlancDesign and LayoutHeather Barrett Brewster Brownville Colleen Cunningham Jennifer OliveiraSeries Cover ArtistBarry Littmann

Visit the entire Everything Series at www.everything.com

A complete guide to the secret gospels

Meera Lester

Avon, Massachusetts

Copyright 2007, F+W Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

Author's Note:

Great effort was made to verify the facts in this work; however, scholars sometimes disagree, and whenever such discrepancies arose in the information for the Gnostic Gospels, interpretation of a majority of the sources was the one used in this book.

The quotations in this book were taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

An Everything Series Book.

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Published by Adams Media, an F+W Publications Company 57 Littlefield Street, Avon, MA 02322 U.S.A.

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ISBN 10: 1-59869-156-2

ISBN 13: 978-1-59869-156-6

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