In December 1945, two Egyptian fellabin digging for natural fertilizer in the Nile River valley unearthed a sealed storage jar. The jar proved to hold treasure of an unexpected sort: a collection of some fifty-two ancient manuscripts, most of which reflect the teachings of a mystical religious movement we call Gnosticism (from the Greek word gnosis, "knowledge"). The texts are also, with few exceptions, Christian documents, and thus they provide us with valuable new information about the character of the early church, and about the Gnostic Christians within the church. In this volume, Marvin W. Meyer has produced a new English translation for general readers of four of the most important and revealing of these early Christian texts the Secret Book of James, the Gospel of Thomas, the Book of Thomas and the Secret Book of John. Dr. Meyer, a scholar long familiar with the Nag Hammadi texts, offers here a fresh and lively translation that anyone intrigued to learn more about these texts will welcome." -- Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels