(^8) INTRODUCTION
The term gnostic is derived from the ancient Greek word gnosis, "knowl-
edge." Gnosis is a common word in Greek, and it can designate different types
of knowledge. Sometimes, as in the sacred texts included in this volume, gno-
sis means personal or mystical knowledge. Understood in this way, gnosis
may mean acquaintance, that is, knowledge as personal awareness of oneself
or another person or even god, or it may mean insight, that is, knowledge as
immediate awareness of deep truths. These ways of understanding gnosis are
not mutually exclusive, for knowledge may entail the immediate awareness
of oneself or of another, in a personal union or communion that provides
profound insight into the true nature of everything. As we have already
noted, the Gospel of Thomas has Jesus articulate just such a mystical per-
sonal knowledge.
The gnosis sought by the authors of these texts is hardly ordinary knowl-
edge. A text from the Nag Hammadi library, the Exegesis on the Soul (included
in this volume), declares that the restoration of the soul to a state of wholeness
"is not due to rote phrases or to professional skills or to book learning." Indeed,
mystics commonly have emphasized, in many books, that mystical knowledge
cannot be attained simply by reading books. Other texts describe this sort of
gnosis by listing questions that need to be addressed if one is to be enlightened
by knowledge. In the Secret Book of John the savior or revealer announces that
she or he will teach "what is, what was, and what is to come," and in the Book
of Thomas the revealer commands, "Examine yourself and understand who
you are, how you exist, and how you will come to be." To attain this knowl-
edge—to become a gnostic—is to know oneself, god, and everything. Or, in the
words of the maxim from the ancient oracular center dedicated to Apollo at
Delphi, Greece, a maxim cited frequently in the texts in this volume: gnothi
sauton, "know yourself." According to many of these sacred texts, to know one-
self truly is to attain this mystical knowledge, and to attain this mystical knowl-
edge is to know oneself truly. Gnostic knowledge, then, relies on lived mystical
experience, on knowledge of the whole timeline of the world, past, present, and
future, and on knowledge of the self—where we have come from, who we are,
where we are going—and of the soul's journey.
Thus, the Greek word gnosis was used extensively by people in the world of
Mediterranean antiquity, including the people who wrote the texts in this vol-
ume, but among the heresiologists the word was employed in a particularly
polemical fashion. The heresiologists were heresy hunters who, as the
guardians of truth and watchmen on the walls of Zion, were trying to expose
people judged to be dangerous to the masses, especially the Christian masses.
elliott
(Elliott)
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