Jewish Lights Publishing Secret Book of John

From the bestselling author of The Gospel of Thomas: Annotated and Explained comes this lucid presentation of another early ?gospel? of Jesus that will surprise you. The Secret Book of John is the most significant and influential text of the ancient Gnostic religion. Written in Greek during the early second century CE by an unknown author, it became the source for a host of other Gnostic texts, myths, and cosmic systems. In Greek its title is ?Apocryphon Johannis? and it is known in scholarship as the ?Apocryphon of John?; the word apocryphon means ?secret? or ?hidden.? The Secret Book of John tells the story of the devolution of God from perfect Oneness down to imprisonment in the material world. In some sections it seems Christian; it seems to be a version of Platonic philosophy in other sections; frequently it reads like a book of Jewish commentary on Moses's Torah?it is all of these things in ways that the authorities of orthodoxy in Christianity, Platonism, and