Introduction

This section gathers the heterodox and contemplative streams of Christianity: the Gnostic movements of the second and third centuries, with their myths of a hidden God, a fallen Sophia and an ignorant creator; the Nag Hammadi library discovered in Upper Egypt in 1945; Manichaean and Mandaean religion; the dualist Bogomils and Cathars of medieval Europe; and the apophatic mystical theology that runs from Pseudo-Dionysius through Meister Eckhart, the Cloud of Unknowing, Hesychasm and Jacob Boehme. Each article sets out what the sources say and how modern scholarship reads them.