Gnostic Gospels

Resources for Studying the Gnostic Gospels

Evangelical Resources

• Darrell L. Bock, The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities (Nelson, 2006).
  Especially valuable for evaluating the theological nature of the Gnostic and other apocryphal materials.
  
  
• Gary Burge, “Jesus Out of Focus,” Christianity Today 50.6 (June 2006): 24-29, with a sidebar, “The Lapsed Evangelical Critic (Bart Ehrman),” p. 26.
  An insightful overview recent Gnostic phenomena in the light of broader issues related to modern scholarship.
  
  
• J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus: What the Da Vinci Code and Other Novel Speculations Don’t Tell You (Kregel, 2006).
  A wide-ranging discussion for informed laypersons of modern Jesus scholarship, canonicity of the gospels, the deity of Christ, and history of religions in the light of the Gnostic writings.
  
  
• Michael J. Wilkins and J.P. Moreland, eds., Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus (Zondervan, 1995).
  Particularly focuses on critiquing the Jesus Seminar and its use of the Gospel of Thomas to deny the historicity of Jesus’ sayings and activities.
  
  
• Edwin M. Yamauchi, Pre-Christian Gnosticism: A Survey of the Proposed Evidences (Eerdmans, 1973).
  A scholarly, evangelical treatment of the history of Gnosticism.

Primary Sources

• Hans-Josef Klauck, The Apocryphal Gospels: An Introduction (T&T Clark, 2004).
  One of the most recent introductions to the apocryphal gospels, including the Gnostic gospels.
  
  
• James M. Robinson, gen. ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English, 3rd rev. ed. (HarperSanFrancisco, 1990).
  The standard, scholarly presentation of the Gnostic writings from a mostly critical perspective.
  
  
• Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., New Testament Apocrypha, Volume One: Gospels and Related Writings, rev. ed., trans. R. McL. Wilson (Westminster/ John Knox, 1991).
  An older, standard scholarly discussion of the apocryphal gospels, from a broadly critical perspective.
  
  
• Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst, eds., The Gospel of Judas: From Codex Tchacos (National Geographic, 2006).
  The first publication of the Gospel of Judas, with an overly appreciative acceptance of the writing from a critical perspective.