The "library" of Nag Hammadi, found incidentally in 1945, constitutes, together with the Qumran manuscripts, the greatest discovery of ancient texts of the modern era. Most of the writings found in the thirteen books that comprise this library are Gnostics. Today it is known that gnosis and gnosticism form the nucleus of one of the ideological phenomena that dominated the religious and philosophical thought of the Mediterranean basin during the centuries I to IV.
The texts of Nag Hammadi shed an important light not only on Gnosticism but on several areas and epochs: the world of philosophical and religious speculation (Jewish, Christian and pagan) in the Greek language from the 1st to 4th centuries, and the scope of the Coptic, Egyptian culture of the fourth century, in which varied interests existed, not only Gnostics, but also hermetic, Christian and Manichean.
With this work the first complete version of these manuscripts is presented, following the best critical editions of the Coptic text. In addition to the general introduction to the gnosis with which the first volume starts, in the three volumes that make up the series each text is accompanied by a brief introduction and notes that help to better understand it. This first volume brings together the writings of theological, philosophical, cosmogonic and anthropological speculation.