Coptic Gnostic chrestomathy

Book excerpt: Layton's Coptic Gnostic Chrestomathy is an essential tool for scholars and students of the Gnostic corpus. This useful and accurate text edition contains a large, representative selection of works in Coptic, ranging from Sethian Gnostic classics such as the Apocryphon of John to Valentinian works like the Gospel of Truth and Gospel of Philip to the Mesopotamian Gospel of Thomas the Contender, all but one from the Nag Hammadi manuscript hoard. Laid out in a readable literary format, the Coptic text is discreetly analyzed into its component morphs, clarifying the grammatical structure at every point. Greek words are annotated in footnotes, and esoteric Gnostic vocabulary in Egyptian Coptic is covered in a separate glossary. A brief introduction to each work points to information on problems of dialect, grammar, manuscript, and scholarly bibliography. Prepared by a leading expert on Gnosticism and the Coptic language, this is the ideal Gnostic text collection, in a single volume, for the use of scholars of religion, Egyptologists, Coptologists, teachers, and students. Contents (in Coptic): Apocryphon of John, Apocalypse of Adam, Hypostasis of the Archons, Thunder-Perfect Mind, Trimorphic Protennoia, Gospel of the Egyptians, Zostrianos, Allogenes, Three Steles of Seth, Gospel of Truth, Prayer of the Apostle Paul, Treatise on Resurrection, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Thomas, Book of Thomas the Contender. Corresponding English translations of all these works can be found in Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures.