The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo canon, the four major Coptic Gnostic codices, and a handful of older funerary texts — compiled from public-domain English translations and modern editions reproduced for educational and religious commentary.
The oldest written religious literature on earth — Sumerian myths, hymns, laments, and wisdom from Mesopotamia. The flood, the descent, the gods of Eridu and Uruk: the deepest ancestor of every later sacred corpus here.
The Akkadian and Babylonian inheritance of the Sumerian tradition — the Enuma Elish creation, Atrahasis and the Standard-Babylonian Gilgamesh flood, the Babylonian Job (Ludlul), and the Code of Hammurabi. The literary Mesopotamian tradition that fed directly into Genesis, Exodus, and the wisdom books of the Hebrew Bible.
The mortuary corpus of pharaonic Egypt — the spells, hymns, and journey-texts that shaped the religious imagination of the world we inherited.
The śruti and smṛti of the Hindu tradition — the four Vedas, the principal Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gītā, the two great epics (Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa), the Yoga Sūtras, and the major Purāṇas. The longest continuous religious literature on earth, and the deepest non-Western contribution to the great chain of sacred writings.
The Maya, Aztec, and Inca / Andean sacred writings — what survived the Conquest and what was recorded by native scribes and Spanish chroniclers in the colonial period. The Popol Vuh, the books of Chilam Balam, the Annals of the Cakchiquels, the Aztec hymns and Cantares, the Huarochirí manuscript, and the great early ethnohistories. The first New World contribution to the chain of sacred writings on this site.
The Hermetic corpus — the Emerald Tablet, the Corpus Hermeticum, the Kybalion, the Asclepius. The cornerstone of our teaching: mind is the substance of reality, and the inner work mirrors the cosmos.
Plato’s Timaeus, the Neoplatonic core (Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus), the Orphic Hymns, and the Pythagorean Golden Verses. The philosophical stream that runs through everything else here.
The books preserved only in Geʻez — Enoch, Jubilees, and the rest — kept by the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition when other traditions lost them.
The Hebrew scriptures, in canonical English translation. Read with both voices in mind — see "the Inversion" on /what-we-believe.
The four gospels, the letters, the Apocalypse — the canonical Christian witness.
The Coptic library — Gospel of Thomas, Apocryphon of John, Pistis Sophia, and the rest of what was buried, found, and finally translated.
Nag Hammadi Codex XIII,1.
Preserved in three Nag Hammadi codices (II,1; III,1; IV,1) and independently in the Berlin Codex BG 8502,2. The text imported here is the long recension from NHL II,1.
Berlin Codex BG 8502,1. About half of the original text survives; the rest is lost.
The Askew Codex (British Library MS Additional 5114), a 4th-century Coptic manuscript bought from the heirs of Anthony Askew in 1785. Pistis Sophia is the only text in the codex.
Bruce Codex (Codex Brucianus), a 4th–5th century Coptic manuscript brought to Britain in 1769 by James Bruce. Held at the Bodleian Library (Bruce MS 96).
Tchacos Codex CT,3. Discovered in Egypt in the 1970s, conserved 2001–2006, published 2006. The manuscript is heavily damaged; about 85% of the text survives.