The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Gnostic Gospels [Paperback]

I like to make up my own mind about things, and I knew early on in my life I'd one day read the so-called "Gnostic Gospels". What fanned the fires of my curiosity were all the occasions as I was growing up when my teachers in religious school would tell us there was "nothing of any value" in those books, and that was why the Church excluded them from its canon. So, naturally, I gravitated toward this pseudo-forbidden reading list.

The Gnostic Gospels tell stories that are at once familiar to those modern individuals who have some background in the books included in the Bible, but there is also a lot that represents challenges to the supposed accepted version of Biblical events. After poking around over the years in the subject of the Gnostic writings, I found little of deep interest there and moved on to other areas. When I happened across this Idiot's Guide to the topic, I pounced on it and found it to be a fine overview that could teach almost anyone about these writings that date to some of the earliest decades of Christianity.

Are the Gnostic Gospels valid? If the question is "are they authentic?" then the answer would be yes. They are writings from antiquity. They contain many of the same figures from Sunday School classes and offer plenty of good-natured parables and anecdotes, histories and grains of hard-won wisdom. They, do, however, at times offer claims that stand in direct contradiction to much of what is taught as ecclesiastical truth in nearly all present-day branches of the Christian faith. Who is right? Who knows. Is that even really important?

I found this Guide to be colloquial, authored by contributors with solid knowledge of the field, and it informed me about probably all I need to know regarding this subject, whether or not I ever again go on to read the actual Gnostic works.

In addition to details on individual Nag Hammadi texts as well as some other Gnostic texts, Matkin presents keys players within early Chistianity on the orthodox and on the gnostic side. He also discusses those early times, later gnostic movements, and modern interests in gnosticism.

The book is nicely chunked: twenty chapters each divided into sections and subsections that makes it easy to finish one piece, put the book down, and return to it later so as not to be overwhelmed by all the complex mythologies of the Gnostics.

Matkin steers a middle road, neither a proponent of Gnosticism nor eager to dismiss it. While acknowledging Elaine Pagel's contribution to making the early Gnostics accessible, he doesn't refrain from criticizing her. While open to what made the Gnostics tick, he presents critics. For example, he he includes the comment of Frederica Mathewes-Green, an Eastern Orthodox writer, that Gnostic schemes to directly experience God were "so wacky".

The one real problem I face after reading this book is that it leaves me with no excuse not to read the Nag Hammadi texts again themselves ( The Nag Hammadi Library ) which, without Matkin's guidance, may overwhelm me, as they did the first time I read them. Even the second time I read them (in 2005), I can see now I missed a lot due to less preparation. I am rereading Matkin's summary of each Nag Hammadi text as I read the texts themselves. Along with other background reading in Gnosticism, Matkin has prepared me for what I hope to be a really inspiring reading of the Nag Hammadi Library. So I am grateful to Matkin for his efforts and delivery.

If you are looking for a great book to understand the who what when where and why about these gospels, this is a good book for you. If you're needing a Cliffsnotes version of what goes on in the books and what they could be alluding to, this is NOT the book for you. But, I found the research good, intelligent and at times, humorous. This is a great read if you are curious about the gnostic gospels and want to know more, in a general sense, about what the gnostics were all about.

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