This volume in honour of Jan N. Bremmer contains the contributions of numerous students, colleagues, and friends offered to him on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Throughout his career, Bremmer has distinguished himself as an internationally renowned scholar of religion both past and present, including first and foremost Greek and Roman religion, but also early Christianity and post-classical developments in religion and spirituality. In line with these three main areas of Bremmer’s research, the volume is divided into three parts, bringing together contributions from distinguished scholars in many fields. The result is a diverse book which provides a broad spectrum of original ideas and innovative approaches in the history of religions, thus reflecting the nature of the scholarship of Bremmer himself.

This book addresses two central questions in current research on the Gospel of Thomas: what was its original language and which early Christian works influenced it? At present, theories of Thomas as a Semitic work abound. Simon Gathercole dismantles these approaches, arguing instead that Thomas is Greek literature and that the matter of Thomas's original language is connected with an even more controverted question: that of the relationship between Thomas and the canonical New Testament. Rather than being independent of Matthew, Mark and Luke (as in most Western Aramaic theories of Thomas) or thoroughly dependent on the four gospels (as in most Syriac approaches), Gathercole develops a newly refined approach to how Thomas is influenced by the Synoptic Gospels. Thomas can be seen to refer to Matthew as a gospel writer, and evidence is discussed showing that Thomas incorporates phraseology distinctive to Luke, while also extending that special Lukan language.

This volume places in synoptic form parallel texts from Nag Hammadi and from the Bible. This will enable scholars of Coptic Gnosticism, as well as scholars concerned with early Christian biblical interpretation, to make the comparisons necessary to determine relationships and what dependence, if any, there may be between these two bodies of material. This volume should facilitate the discussion concerning the origin, antiquity, and relationship of Gnosticism to Christianity. The volume also contains an extensive bibliography of materials relevant to this topic. Finally, a Scripture index will make it possible for the reader to find quickly any desired passage.

Study of the Gospel according to Philip, an important gnostic Christian text, has been hampered by unresolved questions about the unity, genre, and sectarian contexts of the work. This book argues that terms of self-designation, use of controversial vocabulary, style, hermeneutic strategies, and theological commitments together present persuasive evidence of derivation from multiple sectarian milieux. The document's organizing principles are found to be in accord with the excerpting and collection practices of Late Antiquity. The coherence of the text lies in its compiler's distinctive interests and choices, not in the uniformity of its materials. The persuasive case made by this book will help to advance research on this significant document of early Christianity.

This is the third volume of the immensely useful "Nag Hammadi Bibliography," the first volume of which covered 1948a "1969 and was the first publication in the Nag Hammadi Studies series. The second volume covered 1970a "1994. This third volume provides a complete integration of Supplements II/1a "II/8 to the Bibliography as published in "Novum Testamentum" 1998a "2008, with additions and corrections. This latest update contains 3,063 entries, with the set of three volumes containing 11,580 entries. Nag Hammadi and Gnostic studies continue to be of critical importance for the study of ancient religions in the Graeco-Roman world and for the study of the world of early Christianity, and the present bibliography provides an indispensable reference tool for work in these fields.