The Library

The Texts

19 texts, 83,705 words, free to read: the actual public domain translation or our own labeled rendering, with the source manuscript and translator named on every page, and the manuscripts' gaps shown as gaps. Where a work survives only in part, or where we publish only part of it — Pistis Sophia, twelve of its 148 chapters — the page says so. These are the primary sources — not summaries of them.

Text	Date	Manuscript	Translation	Length
Pistis Sophia (Selections)	3rd–4th century CE	Askew Codex (British Library Add. MS 5114), Coptic, 4th century	G.R.S. Mead	5,824 words
Poimandres, the Shepherd of Men	1st–3rd century CE	Corpus Hermeticum I	G.R.S. Mead	3,007 words
The Apocalypse of Peter	first half of the 2nd century CE	Ethiopic manuscripts of the Books of Clement (text published 1910)	M. R. James	5,657 words
The Egerton Gospel	early-to-mid 2nd century CE (papyrus copied c. 200 CE)	Egerton Papyrus 2 (British Library), three fragments	Mark M. Mattison	425 words
The Gospel of Judas	2nd century CE (attested by Irenaeus, c. 180 CE)	Codex Tchacos 3 (pp. 33–58)	Mark M. Mattison	3,116 words
The Gospel of Mary	early 2nd century CE	Berlin Codex (BG 8502,1)	Mark M. Mattison	1,107 words
The Gospel of Nicodemus, or Acts of Pilate	4th century CE (Acts of Pilate); the Descent attached perhaps in the 5th century	Acts of Pilate: Greek Recension A (Tischendorf, from eight manuscripts), with Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Latin versions	M. R. James	15,401 words
The Gospel of Peter	mid-2nd century CE	Akhmîm fragment (P.Cair. 10759), discovered 1886–87	Mark M. Mattison	1,568 words
The Gospel of Philip	3rd century CE	Nag Hammadi Codex II,3 (pages 51–86)	Mark M. Mattison	8,805 words
The Gospel of Q	c. 40–70 CE (hypothesized)	Scholarly reconstruction from the Matthew–Luke double tradition	Mark M. Mattison	4,663 words
The Gospel of Thomas	1st–2nd century CE	Nag Hammadi Codex II,2	Mark M. Mattison	4,718 words
The Gospel of Truth	mid-2nd century CE	Nag Hammadi Codex I,3 (pp. 16–43)	Mark M. Mattison	5,004 words
The Hymn of the Pearl	c. 2nd–3rd century CE	Acts of Thomas 108–113	G.R.S. Mead	1,429 words
The Infancy Gospel of James	2nd century CE	Papyrus Bodmer V (papyrus codex, late 3rd/early 4th century), the earliest of over 140 Greek manuscripts	Mark M. Mattison	5,737 words
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas	2nd century CE	Hagios Saba 259 (11th century), the earliest near-complete Greek manuscript	Mark M. Mattison	2,962 words
The Secret Book of James	early 2nd century CE	Nag Hammadi Codex I,2 (pages 1–16), also known as the Apocryphon of James	Mark M. Mattison	3,099 words
The Secret Book of John	2nd century CE (before c. 180); this copy 4th century	Nag Hammadi Codex II,1 (pages 1–32), the long version, with readings from Codex IV,1	Samuel Zinner	8,451 words
The Secret Gospel of Mark	disputed — letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria (c. 200 CE) if authentic; possibly a modern composition	Mar Saba letter (Clement to Theodore), manuscript photographed 1958, now lost	Samuel Zinner	945 words
Thunder, Perfect Mind	2nd–3rd century CE (Coptic copy c. mid-4th century)	Nag Hammadi Codex VI,2 (pages 13–21)	The Gnostic Library	1,787 words

The Gospels

early-to-mid 2nd century CE (papyrus copied c. 200 CE)

The Egerton Gospel

The Egerton Gospel is an otherwise unknown gospel surviving in four papyrus fragments acquired by the British Museum in 1934 — among the oldest Christian manuscripts in existence, copied around the late second century.

Mark M. Mattison · 4 sections 2nd century CE (attested by Irenaeus, c. 180 CE)

The Gospel of Judas

The Gospel of Judas is a second-century Sethian text in which Jesus laughs at his disciples' piety and gives private teaching to Judas Iscariot — the only disciple who understands who Jesus really is.

Mark M. Mattison · 8 sections early 2nd century CE

The Gospel of Mary

The Gospel of Mary is an early Christian text in which Mary Magdalene comforts the frightened disciples after the resurrection and teaches them what the Savior told her privately — until Peter and Andrew challenge her right to speak.

Mark M. Mattison · 6 sections mid-2nd century CE

The Gospel of Peter

The Gospel of Peter is a second-century passion narrative that survives as a single dramatic fragment: the trial, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus told with details found nowhere else — including a walking, talking cross and a Christ whose head reaches above the heavens.

Mark M. Mattison · 14 sections 3rd century CE

The Gospel of Philip

The Gospel of Philip is a Valentinian anthology of reflections on sacraments, marriage, resurrection, and the names of Christ, preserved in Nag Hammadi Codex II.

Mark M. Mattison · 19 sections 1st–2nd century CE

The Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus, preserved complete in Coptic in Nag Hammadi Codex II and in three Greek fragments from Oxyrhynchus.

Mark M. Mattison · 116 sections mid-2nd century CE

The Gospel of Truth

The Gospel of Truth is a Valentinian meditation on the good news that the Father is not unknowable after all — error and forgetfulness, not sin, are the human problem, and knowledge of the Father is their cure.

Mark M. Mattison · 16 sections disputed — letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria (c. 200 CE) if authentic; possibly a modern composition

The Secret Gospel of Mark

The Secret Gospel of Mark survives only as two short excerpts quoted in a letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria, discovered by Morton Smith at the Mar Saba monastery in 1958 — a manuscript later lost, photographs aside.

Samuel Zinner · 5 sections

Revelations & Acts

first half of the 2nd century CE

The Apocalypse of Peter

The Apocalypse of Peter is a second-century vision in which the risen Christ shows Peter the fates of the dead: the blessedness of the saved and, in unforgettable detail, the punishments of the wicked — the first guided tour of heaven and hell in Christian literature, and an ancestor of everything from medieval doom paintings to Dante.

M. R. James · 19 sections 4th century CE (Acts of Pilate); the Descent attached perhaps in the 5th century

The Gospel of Nicodemus, or Acts of Pilate

The Gospel of Nicodemus is a two-part work: the Acts of Pilate, an expanded account of Jesus' trial in which the standards bow to him and the healed testify for the defense, and the Descent into Hell — the Harrowing of Hell — in which Christ breaks the gates of Hades and frees Adam and the imprisoned righteous.

M. R. James · 30 sections 2nd century CE

The Infancy Gospel of James

The Infancy Gospel of James (the Protevangelium) is a second-century narrative of Mary's own miraculous birth, her childhood in the temple, her betrothal to the widower Joseph, and the birth of Jesus in a cave outside Bethlehem.

Mark M. Mattison · 29 sections 2nd century CE

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is a second-century collection of stories about Jesus between the ages of five and twelve: he forms sparrows from clay and claps them to life, withers a boy who spoils his pools, strikes dead a child who bumps him — and gradually learns to bless instead.

Mark M. Mattison · 19 sections early 2nd century CE

The Secret Book of James

The Secret Book of James (Apocryphon of James) is a second-century text framed as a letter from James the Just, recording what the risen Jesus taught James and Peter privately, 550 days after the resurrection, before ascending.

Mark M. Mattison · 12 sections 2nd century CE (before c. 180); this copy 4th century

The Secret Book of John

The Secret Book of John is the fullest surviving telling of the gnostic myth: the unknowable Monad, the first thought Barbelo, Sophia's solitary act, the blind creator Yaltabaoth, and the making of Adam and Eve.

Samuel Zinner · 21 sections

Wisdom & the Deep Teachings

3rd–4th century CE

Pistis Sophia (Selections)

Pistis Sophia is the longest gnostic work to survive from antiquity: a 148-chapter Coptic text in which the risen Jesus, eleven years after the resurrection, teaches the disciples the mysteries of the light — with Mary Magdalene asking most of the questions, and the fall and repentance of Sophia sung at the center.

G.R.S. Mead · 12 sections 1st–3rd century CE

Poimandres, the Shepherd of Men

Poimandres is the opening treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum: a vision in which a cosmic Mind — Poimandres, 'the Shepherd of Men' — reveals to Hermes Trismegistus how the cosmos unfolded from Light, how the divine Human fell into nature, and how the soul ascends back through the seven spheres to God.

G.R.S. Mead · 32 sections c. 40–70 CE (hypothesized)

The Gospel of Q

The Gospel of Q is not a discovered manuscript but a scholarly reconstruction: the collection of Jesus' sayings that Matthew and Luke apparently shared beyond what they took from Mark — the Beatitudes, the Lord's Prayer, 'love your enemies.' If the two-source hypothesis is right, Q was compiled in the 40s–60s CE, earlier than any surviving gospel.

Mark M. Mattison · 18 sections c. 2nd–3rd century CE

The Hymn of the Pearl

The Hymn of the Pearl is a poem embedded in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas: a prince is sent from the East to Egypt to recover a pearl guarded by a serpent, forgets who he is, and is awakened by a letter from home.

G.R.S. Mead · 22 sections 2nd–3rd century CE (Coptic copy c. mid-4th century)

Thunder, Perfect Mind

Thunder, Perfect Mind is a poem from Nag Hammadi Codex VI in which a female divine voice proclaims herself in relentless paradox: 'I am the first and the last.

The Gnostic Library · 11 sections

The library grows

This library expands on a public roadmap. The Secret Book (Apocryphon) of John is now on the shelf.Thunder, Perfect Mind is now complete, all nine manuscript pages. Coming next: the Hypostasis of the Archons, On the Origin of the World, further Hermetic tractates, and the rest of Pistis Sophia beyond the twelve chapters we serve. New texts arrive on this site and in the app — free for everyone on the web, and free forever for All Access owners in the app. See the complete list of every recovered text to watch the library fill in, or the glossary if a word in these pages is new to you.