The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (The International Edition) Paperback – January 1, 2007

I liked the in depth references and notes. Good book to have in any spiritual/ biblical collection

Well written, definitely worth reading!

This collection contains recent translations of the Gnostic, Christian, and Hermetic writings recovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945. In contrast to what a reviewer below maintained, however, this collection does NOT include all the Gnostic writings. The Books of Jeu, the Pistis Sophia, and various other writings are not here, possibly because they would have tripled the length of this already plentiful book.This collection is one of those splendid combinations of able scholarship with clear and informative writing. The footnotes are also handy, if somewhat difficult to read (small print). Short essays at the end provide an erudite context for understanding the Sethian, Thomasian, Valentinian, and Hermetic sources of the writings in this volume.Those unfamiliar with Gnostic studies might find that these works offer an entirely different perspective on the early Christian movements--because there was not just one. What we now think of as orthodox Christianity represents a legalist-literalist wing of early believers who responded to persecution by attempting to codify Christian doctrine. Irenaeus of Lyons, a prominent opponent of the Gnostics (in part because women left his congregation to join a group where they would be treated as equals), attempted to counter the threat he saw in Gnostic "heretics" by selecting four of perhaps thirty early gospels: namely, the four that generally avoided esotericism while laying out strict codes of behavior for believers. The writings he rejected went literally underground until they began to resurface in the 1700s, with the Nag Hammadi find the most comprehensive to date.Once they did, perceptions of the spiritual legacy of the West began to change forever....

For anyone that is interested in searching through the scriptures, this volume is a must have. The book arrived as advertised but I had to purchase the hardcover version eventually. The hard cover version is bigger, and the quality of the paper is thicker and better than that of the paperback version. Of course, the hardcover version is sturdier and will last longer with proper handling. The font size used in the hardcover is also slightly bigger making the reading a better experience.This is an amazing refence book, very rich in contents.

I've had Robinson's "Nag Hammadi Library" for some years. The paperback cover is all beat up. The pages are dog-eared, and I've scribbled a few notes here and there as I have struggled to understand these obscure texts.Then I noticed this new (2007) edition has come out. I decided to see what sort of progress has been made in the study of these texts.I'm immediately impressed. First of all, this is a hardcover version, as opposed to my old paperback edition of the NHL.Second, the translation and layout of these texts are much more readable.If you get really interested in these texts, you can compare various translations, or even learn Coptic. I think you're more likely to get interested in these texts if you start with readable translations such as those found here.There are places in my old Nag Hammadi Library where it's very difficult to make any sense of what the text says. Seems to me the problem isn't the original writer's inability to write or my inability to read, but something that happened somewhere in between. This new volume reads more clearly in some of these difficult sections. The Second Discourse (Treatise) of the Great Seth, for example, is much more readable in this volume.As another reviewer has said, several texts not found at Nag Hammadi are included in this volume, including the Gospel of Judas. Um, are these all the gnostic texts? I wouldn't say so. "Gnostic" is a pretty hard-to-define category anyway. It's a label stuck on these people by their adversaries in the late second century.

While reading this you will notice that the author- or I should say Meyer, the one responsible for transcribing and translating it- did not add words to areas lost as the Papacy did to the various codices written from the Council of Nicaea and onward. I am very happy that people who transcribed the Nag Hammadi codices or scrolls hid them away in jars by burial- this of course is a good strategy for any scholar who witnesses tyranny in the likeness of the early Papacy, former Nazi Germany, the former USSR, etcetera. God bless the people who wrote this and those who continue to publish it. I might bury myself with this book and a couple others just in case it happens again. I am still studying this bible, and probably will continue studying it for the rest of my life. I will note that there are some dead metaphors and some metaphors that are obscure; however, with a little rest and meditation on such verses one becomes more enabled to grasp at their meaning.

This diligent, well-written translation of the Nag Hammadi scriptures is something everyone who is searching for truth should read. When these scriptures were banned and ordered destroyed in 367 by Athanasius, the archbishop of Alexandria, that truth was taken away from people and hidden. Unable to destroy them, the monks buried them in clay jars at the base of a mountain outside the city of Nag Hammadi, Egypt. Discovered in 1947, these gospels and writings are transforming Christianity as more and more people discover the truth within. When one checks the information contained in these lost gospels against what Jesus himself said in the New Testament, the truth is confirmed. Jesus left many clues behind in his sayings and parables and it is in seeking answers to them (answers which will be found in the Nag Hammadi scriptures)that one comes to the truth at last.The Secret Door: Jesus, the Lost Gospels and the True Nature of Salvation

いわずとしれた『ナグ・ハマディ文書』。ユダヤ教研究にとっての『死海文書』に匹敵する、この初期キリスト教にとってあまりにも重要な資料を、信頼できる英訳と、解説や詳細な索引つきで、簡便な１冊本で、しかも手ごろな値段で簡単に読むことができるなんて、英語圏の読者は幸せだなあと、つくづく思います。日本にも『ナグ・ハマディ文書』の翻訳はありますが、１冊がこれよりはるかに高価なものが、しかも４巻本となれば、「ちょっと興味がある」程度の読者には手が出ませんよね。そういう意味で、英語が読める読者なら、これ買っといたら何かと便利じゃないかと思います。

This book includes all of the texts found at Nag Hammadi in scholarly translation. It is the definitive English language edition, and anybody interested in Gnosticism (and Hermeticism) will want to read it.The quality of this hardback product is excellent, and the price well worth it.Unfortunately, the translators use modern American English. Considering that these are religious texts, that is pretty disappointing. Furthermore, by refusing to translate into Jacobean English, we not only lose all of the original's exaltedness, we also cannot tell whether an adress is in the singular (e.g. thou hast) or plural (ye have) - we are simply given a hodgepodge (you have). The translations are thus politically/linguistically correct, but at the expense of exaltedness and accuracy.Nonetheless, this book is an excellent buy and warmly recommended.