The Nag Hammadi Library
← all texts · Gnostic & Hermetic · codices c. 350 CE; texts older
What this is
A jar of Coptic codices unearthed in Egypt in 1945 — the Gospel of Thomas, the Apocryphon of John, the Gospel of Philip and more. The primary surviving witness to Gnostic Christianity: the Demiurge, Sophia, and salvation through gnosis.
Companion reading path
What to read alongside it, and why.
The Corpus Hermeticum
Gnostic & Hermetic
The Hermetic strand found alongside it — the two halves of Greco-Egyptian esoteric religion.
The Jewish scriptures the Gnostics radically reinterpreted (their Demiurge is its Creator).
The Apocrypha / Deuterocanon
Christian
The wider field of non-canonical Christian writing these texts sit within.