12 The didactic letter to Rheginos, also known as the Treatise on the Resurrection, is the fourth text in the Jung Codex. In the New Testament a warning can be found against the gnostic Christians, who believed that their 'resurrection' had happened and was a spiritual reality (2 Timothy 2:16-18). This gnostic idea about the possibility of becoming conscious of the eternal spiritual life was indeed expressed in the Treatise on the Resurrection and in a number of other writings from Nag Hammadi. It is no illusion, it is truth. It is more suitable to say, then, that the world is an illusion, rather than the resurrection which came into being through our Lord the Saviour, Jesus Christ.

13 The most popular text from the Nag Hammadi Library, considering its many editions, is that of the Gospel of Thomas (NHC II.2; here ed. G. Quispel et al., 1959). Also called the fifth gospel, it strictly concerns a collection of sayings and parables (logia) of Jesus - Jesus as an esoteric teacher of wisdom - parallels of which (e.g. on self-knowledge) are not always to be found in the synoptic gospels. The text is dated to 140 C.E. but is based on two older sources, one of which, the Judean source, dates to ca. 40 C.E. The relation of Thomas to the younger reconstructed source text Quelle or 'Q' of the gospels of Matthew and Luke is still a much-debated topic. Prof. Quispel's new edition Het evangelie van Thomas will be published this year (Oct. 2004) by In de Pelikaan, the publishing house of the BPH.

14 Jan van Rijckenborgh: De Egyptische oergnosis en Haar roep in het Eeuwige Nú. Opnieuw verkondigd en verklaard aan de hand van de Tabula Smaragdina en het Corpus Hermeticum van Hermes Trismegistos, Haarlem 1960-1965. For his introductory texts to his translations of the Corpus Hermeticum and the Tabula Smaragdina the Rosicrucian Jan van Rijckenborgh also found inspiration in gnostic source texts such as the Pistis Sophia which, he thought, announced 'the one Salvation in Christ, the Path of transmutation and transfiguration, with impressive purity and in a detailed manner' (he also knew and used Mead's translation). Van Rijckenborgh's publication was meant for the students of the Rosicrucian gnostic-spiritual school, the Lectorium Rosicrucianum. A study on the Pistis Sophia by Van Rijckenborgh appeared posthumously as De gnostieke mysteriën van de Pistis Sophia. Beschouwingen bij boek 1 van de Pistis Sophia with a foreword by Catharose de Petri (1991). The Lectorium also published the complete text of the Pistis Sophia (latest ed. 2002).