The Gospel of Thomas preserves a core of authentic Aramaic sayings of Yeshua older than the earliest Christian writings. When they are isolated from the second-century Gnostic framework, they reveal many of Yeshua's inner-circle kabbalistic teachings. Scholars can restore much of the pre-kabbalistic tradition of Yeshua's era through sources like the Sepher Yetzirah, Sepher Ha-Razim, and the haggadah preserved in the Mishna, Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, Philo of Alexandria, and the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. These were the Holy Scriptures of Essenes, Zadokites, and other messianic Jews of the period, including Yeshua and his disciples. The Psalms they chanted in worship and Shabbat Seder were not just those of our Old Testament, but the messianic Odes of Solomon and others preserved in Enochian and apocalyptic scripture. A study of this forgotten sacred literature allows modern scholars to understand and reconstruct the oral Kabbalah of Yeshua embedded in the Gospel of Thomas.

All of the extant authentic sayings and teachings of Yeshua remembered in the earliest oral Jesus traditions and collections compiled by his Jewish disciples A.D. 30-50 before they were rendered into Greek, misunderstood, and Christianized in the later Gospels. •Translated in terms of the original Hebrew/Aramaic vocabulary and idioms used by Yeshua •Explained in the context of Second Temple messianic haggadah, Merkabah, prophetic, and wisdom traditions •Organized and presented as a coherent body of exquisite spiritual teaching that was lost and forgotten in Christianity.

Stunning revelations about the mysteries of creation, the soul, and God The noble idea of the Christian Kabbalah is not so much the worship of Jesus Christ, but rather a conscious evolution toward a divine or super-humanity. In this regard, Christian Kabbalah is quite different from its Jewish roots, and Gnostic Christianity is very different from orthodox Christianity. Both are about experiencing God and evolving toward God, rather than just studying theology. This groundbreaking work is the first to present the Christian Gnosis of the Kabbalah in a practical and deeply esoteric way. It takes the reader from the basic ideas of the Kabbalah to in-depth explorations of the Tree of Life. Gnostic legends and myths of the Holy Mother, St. Lazarus, St. Mary Magdalene, and Jesus are woven into the study of the Holy Sefirot as well as commentaries on the Ten Commandments and The Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount.

The only narrative about Jesus by eyewitnesses, this is also one of the world's greatest literary works. The unfinished text was spirited off to Sinope when the author was sent into exile. Even there the hand of Rome nearly destroyed it. Rescued 35 years later, the author's spiritual heirs published it. While in Sinope some pages got lost or disordered. After publication various editors changed the manuscript repeatedly to suit the changing doctrines of early Christianity, even adding spurious new material. Thus the standard text is an inspiring mess, but still a mess. This translation restores not the unfinished original text, but the masterpiece the author sought to compose: a first-hand account of a real man sent to urge humanity to accept God's will, set down before doctrine repackaged him as an incarnate deity. Volume One contains the carefully restored text and a history of the gospel. Volume Two includes commentaries that burnish this masterpiece for the modern reader.

"The Secret Book of John: The Gnostic Gospel - Annotated & Explained decodes the principal themes, historical foundation, and spiritual contexts of this challenging yet fundamental Gnostic teaching. Drawing connections to Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, kabbalistic Judaism, and Sufism, Davies focuses on the mythology and psychology of the Gnostic religious quest. He illuminates the Gnostics' ardent call for self-awareness and introspection, and the empowering message that divine wholeness will be restored not by worshiping false gods in an illusory material world but by our recognition of the inherent divinity within ourselves."--BOOK JACKET.

The Gnostic World is an outstanding guide to Gnosticism, written by a distinguished international team of experts to explore Gnostic movements from the distant past until today. These themes are examined across sixty-seven chapters in a variety of contexts, from the ancient pre-Christian to the contemporary. The volume considers the intersection of Gnosticism with Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Indic practices and beliefs, and also with new religious movements, such as Theosophy, Scientology, Western Sufism, and the Nation of Islam. This comprehensive handbook will be an invaluable resource for religious studies students, scholars, and researchers of Gnostic doctrine and history.

This is the second volume in the series of books published under the title ‘Self Empowering Wisdom –Through Deeper Interpretations of Mythologies, Sciences and Spiritual Texts.’ It contains 85 short articles on various spiritual and existential themes aimed at the elevation of human consciousness to a higher level. The purpose of this book is to collate the wisdom, which is increasingly revealing itself in our lives, as the consciousness of Homo Sapiens is being peeled open like the opening of a bud into a fragrant flower or the metamorphosis of the pupae into a lovely butterfly. This is an ongoing journey of human consciousness ascending through the wisdom of the ancients which was enclosed in mythological narrations, then through the deep insight of spiritual masters more explicitly expressed in sacred texts and now, in the present age, through scientific discoveries unravelling the cosmic dimension and the nature of our existence. The content of each article is to bring to light the interconnectivity so that the esoteric and mystical dimensions of mythologies and scriptures are made easy for grasping through current knowledge in the area of sciences, psychology and arts. I am sure that this book will be an empowering tool for all seekers as to the true purpose of our creation and the multiverse in which we live.

Jesus was murdered by the Jewish religious leaders whose power base was the temple of Jerusalem. Saul of Tarsus—later the Paul of Christianity—was one of these, and his brand of faith theology mirrored their theology of covenantal entitlement. Thus, Christianity’s basic theological principles derive from those who killed Jesus. This is just one of many challenging propositions backed with strong evidence that appear in this book. Jesus, like most Jews, was attuned to faithfulness rather than pure faith, to ethical behavior based on human empathy rather than metaphysical beliefs and rituals. The central focus of Jesus was hesed, the heart of the Jewish covenant with God which linked God’s mercy to human compassion and forgiveness, making both mutually interactive. This hesed forgiveness was anathema to the temple’s faux forgiveness and threatened its very existence. Therefore, Jesus came not to save us, but to show us how to save ourselves. Reinterpreting a key parable of Jesus in this light, the Parable of the Tares, Jesus can be most plausibly understood as an incarnation of Adam, the original prototype human who God, in Genesis, appointed to oversee his creation and guide our spiritual evolution. His mission was not about any sacrificial death, but about establishing the spiritual humanism of Judaic hesed as the central purpose of human existence.

A translation from Coptic and Greek texts of the Gospel of Thomas, with an in-depth study of the intellectual and historical circumstance of the text, including mystic Jewish and early Christian sources.