The Apocryphon of John Collection
(The Secret Revelation of John - The Secret Book of John)
“I have come to teach you about what is, and what was, and what will be
in order for you to understand the invisible world, and the world that is visible,
and the immovable race of perfect humanity.”
Among the several dozen ancient Gnostic manuscripts rediscovered in modern times, the Secret Book of John is generally agreed to be the most important. It has been called the locus classicus for the Gnostic mythological system – in sum, it is the preeminent “Gnostic Gospel”, a sacred reservoir for the defining essence of Gnostic myth and revelation. It breathes with the life of vision that vitalized early Christianity, a life suppressed and then largely forgotten in later ages. From a modern reading of this crucially important and recently rediscovered "Gospel", we are granted fundamental insights into the lost foundations of Christian tradition.
Apocryphon of John – is the title that appears on the original manuscripts, and by this title the text has been known in scholarly circles over the last fifty years. In Greek, apocryphon literally means “hidden” or “secret”, thus in recent popular literature the title is usually translated as either the Secret Book of John or The Secret Revelation of John.
By its own declaration, the Secret Book of John is a sacred text intended to be shared only with individuals properly prepared to receive its revelation. In second-century Christian communions circulation of the text probably remained restricted. Amazingly, despite limited circulation and the effective later efforts by evolving Christian orthodoxy to destroy all such “heretical” scriptures, four separate manuscripts of the Seceret Book of John have survived into our own age. Three of these were found among the Nag Hammadi codices discovered in 1945, while a fourth copy was independently recovered fifty years earlier from another site in Egypt. All four versions date to the fourth century. Three of the four appear to be independently produced Coptic translations of an original text in Greek.
To put in context the uniqueness of finding four complete copies of a document of this extreme antiquity, note that we possess only two fairly complete manuscripts of the canonical gospels of equal age (the Codex Vaticanus and Sinaiticus). Only a few fragments of canonical texts with dates of creation earlier than the fourth century have survived. These four manuscripts of the Apocryphon of John represent some of the oldest known surviving books. From the ancient sands of Egypt, they come to our modern age bearing a timeless message.
The Secret Book of John is the one Gnostic text every student seeking to understand the roots of ancient Christianity must read. At first reading it will seem unlike anything encountered in the New Testament – excepting perhaps the Apocalypse of John. Like the Apocalypse, this too is a revelation text, a secret and sacred vision. It is the story of God, and by reflection, the story of Humankind – a penetrating psychological reflection on the source of consciousness and the existential predicament of an eternal light indwelling life. It is not an intellectual curiosity, nor is it a text to be "surfed", in the perverse sense of modern internet reading. As Prof. Karen King notes:
In antiquity, readers studied the Secret Revelation of John in order to perfect the divine image of their souls; it was composed, translated, and distributed largely to further salvation—or to refute its claims to aid in salvation. In the modern world, however, it has rarely been read with such goals in mind. It usually finds its place either in the theology of orthodox Christianity as a chapter on Gnostic heresy or in disputes about the historical origins and definition of Gnosticism. Within the academy more narrowly its value largely has to do with intellectual production and prestige, including concerns about tenure and promotion—salvati
