Editorial
Sources & Standards
Ancient texts deserve the same honesty you'd demand of a museum label. These are the rules every page on this site — and every screen in our apps — follows, without exception.
The five rules
1. No invented scripture
Every line of ancient text we publish traces to a manuscript: a Nag Hammadi codex, the Berlin Codex, Codex Tchacos, the Akhmîm fragment, a named papyrus. Where we publish our own renderings, they are labeled as renderings — a living voice, not a literal translation — and the manuscript citation sits beside them.
2. Gaps shown as gaps
The manuscripts are damaged. Pages are missing from the Gospel of Mary; lines are gone from the Gospel of Judas; the Gospel of Peter starts and stops mid-sentence. We print brackets and gap notices exactly where the losses fall. We never smooth a lacuna into continuous prose, and we never adopt another edition's conjecture without marking it as one.
3. Rights-clean translations, credited
We publish only: translations explicitly released into the public domain (Mark M. Mattison's translations at gospels.net); translations in the public domain by age (G.R.S. Mead, M.R. James, R.H. Charles); and our own renderings. Every text page carries its translator's name and the source of its public domain status. We do not reproduce copyrighted translations.
4. Named manuscripts, named scholars
Claims about dates, discoveries, and interpretation cite the manuscripts (NHC II,2; BG 8502; Codex Tchacos; P.Oxy. 1, 654, 655) and name the scholars whose work we summarize — Pagels, King, Layton, Brakke, DeConick, and others. Where scholarship genuinely disagrees, we say so instead of picking a winner quietly.
5. Dates maintained honestly
Every article shows its published and updated dates. When we revise a page, the date changes; when we haven't, it doesn't pretend otherwise.
Our translation sources
- Mark M. Mattison — translations of Thomas, Mary, Judas, Philip, Truth, and Peter from gospels.net, each released into the public domain by the translator.
- G.R.S. Mead (1863–1933) — the Hymn of the Pearl (from The Hymn of the Robe of Glory, 1908) and, forthcoming, Pistis Sophia and Hermetic selections. Public domain by publication date.
- M.R. James (1862–1936) — forthcoming apocryphal acts and apocalypses from The Apocryphal New Testament (1924). Public domain by publication date.
- The Gnostic Library renderings — currently Thunder, Perfect Mind (in progress), made from the Coptic and labeled on every page as a living rendering.
Corrections
If you find an error — a wrong date, a misattributed line, a gap we failed to mark — write to us and we'll fix it and stamp the update date. The first scholar to open this library should find nothing to correct; when they do anyway, we'd rather know.
Who makes this
The Gnostic Library is built by Aquarius Mobile Studios, the maker of Gospel of Thomas Daily. The site and the apps share one corpus, one set of standards, and one promise: no ads, no tracking, no invented scripture.