What does The Da Vinci Code have to do with a letter written by the archbishop of Alexandria in the year 367? As it turns out, quite a lot. Call it part of the Gnostic connection, a long, fine thread ...

For over five centuries, Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper has been interpreted as a dramatic moment frozen in time. The instant when Jesus announces that one of his disciples will betray him. Judas ...

Best described as a devotional, this collection of letters offers 114 meditations corresponding to the verses of the Gospel of Thomas. Malachi, a California-based mystic who founded the Sophia ...

A matter of unusual interest at the moment of writing is the publication of the text and translation of the Gospel According to Thomas. This “Gospel” is the most important of the documents discovered ...

There was a time when scholars of early Christianity labored in anonymity at the bottom of academic pecking orders. Then came Princeton professor Elaine Pagels, whose “The Gnostic Gospels” became 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 ...

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The Church publishes the Monitor ...

It used to be that when I taught class and came to Gnosticism, eyes glazed over and clock-watching began. Mentioning Gnostics in church just never happened. The digital age of niche TV and “History ...

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 ...