Brought to you by Altrusian Grace Media (altrusiangrace. com) and human-narrated by Matthew Schmitz. A collection of all three of G. R. S. Mead's comprehensive surveys of the literature attributed to the legendary Egyptian sage, Hermes Trismegistus. The Hermetic writings have been known to Christian writers for many centuries. The early church Fathers quote them in defense of Christianity. Stobaeus collected fragments of them. The Humanists knew and valued them. They were studied in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in modern times have again been diligently examined by many scholars.

G. R. S. Mead has issued a translation of the whole body of extant literature, with extended prolegomena, commentary, etc. There is a wide difference of opinion as to the date at which this literature was produced. Mead believes that some of the extant portions of it are at least as early as the earliest Christian writings, while von Christ assigns them to the third Christian century, and thinks that they show the influence of neo-Platonism. To affirm that they influenced New Testament usage would be hazardous, but they perhaps throw some light on the direction in which thought was moving in New Testament times.

This work exemplifies all that is best in Mead's dedicated, scholarly, but eminently understandable studies of the spiritual roots of Christian Gnosticism and, more generally, of personal religion in the Greco-Roman world. His work encompassed much more than this; Mead was equally at home with Sanskrit texts, Patristic literature, Buddhist thought, and the problems of contemporary philosophy and psychical research. He devoted his intellectual energy to the complex interplay of Gnosticism, Hellenism, Judaism, and Christianity.

This three volume set presents his insights into the formation of the Gnostic world-view and establishes him as an outstanding translator of these Hermetic books, and as the first modern scholar of Gnostic tradition.