In these days of the " higher criticism," with its merciless analysis of original Scripture, much light would doubtless be thrown on the New Testament by an unprejudiced study of Gnosticism. This philosophy, which reached a flourishing maturity in the second century of the Christian era, but became virtually extinct in the sixth, taught that all natures — intellectual, moral, spiritual, and material—are successive emanations from Deity. Its professors claimed to have an esoteric and philosophic knowledge of Christian doctrines, and some modern scholars assert that the Gospels are replete with allusions to the Gnostic teaching. Although it is now fashionable to dismiss the Syrian and Egyptian schools as a fantastic combination of Oriental mysticism, Greek philosophy, and Christian theology, yet it is probable that a profound interest will be awakened among reasoning Christians by " Pistis Sophia."

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Pistis Sophia is an important Gnostic text. It relates the Gnostic teachings of the transfigured Jesus to the assembled disciples including his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Martha. Pisti Sophia recounts that Jesus remained on earth after the resurrection for 11 years. In it the complex structures and hierarchies of heaven familiar in Gnostic teachings are revealed.

In The Books of Jeu and the Pistis Sophia as Handbooks to Eternity Erin Evans offers an in-depth examination of the Coptic Books of Jeu and Pistis Sophia, demonstrating their system of cosmology and ritual practice, and their relationship to other contemporary Gnostic myths and ideas.

Excerpt from Pistis Sophia: A Gnostic Miscellany; Being for the Most Part Extracts From the Books of the Saviour, to Which Are Added Excerpts From a Cognate Literature; Englished (With an Introduction and Annotated Bibliography) The schwartze-petermann marginal pagination, which is the usual scheme of reference, and which in the first edition was shown in brackets in the text, is now indicated at the Side of the page. I have also adopted Schmidt's division into chapters as an additional convenience for more general reference, and have numbered the verses of the Psalms and Of the Odes of Solomon for easier comparison with the Repentances and Songs of Sophia. It should, of course, be under stood that the detailed paragraphing does not exist in the original, which runs on for the most part monotonously without break. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.