This week your professor continues a very brief introduction into the early rivals of Christianity. We know of a great many religious cults which existed in ancient times, most of which have vanished ...

Gnostic Christianity represents a diverse set of beliefs that challenged emerging orthodox traditions. Rather than a unified religion, it functioned more as a school of thought with varying ...

The discovery at Nag Hammadi began with an Arab villager whose name was Mohammed Ali going with his brothers on an ordinary errand. They saddled up their camels and they rode out from their village, a ...

Before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi documents in the 1940s, Gnosticism was considered to be a form of anti-Christian heresy taught by some early church fathers and condemned by others. Modern ...

Purchase this and other timeless New Criterion essays in our hard-copy reprint series. It opens with an account of an Arab peasant’s accidental discovery, in 1945, of a cache of thirteen leather-bound ...