"Gnosticism asserts that 'direct, personal and absolute knowledge of the authentic truths of existence is accessible to human beings,' and that the attainment of such knowledge is the supreme achievement of human life. Gnosis is not a rational, propositional, logical understanding, but a knowing acquired by experience. The Gnostics were not much interested in dogma or coherent, rational theology -- a fact that makes the study of Gnosticism particularly difficult for individuals with bookkeeper mentalities. One simply cannot cipher up Gnosticism into syllogistic dogmatic affirmations. The Gnostics cherished the ongoing force of divine revelation--Gnosis was the creative experience of revelation, a rushing progression of understanding, and not a static creed."

What is Gnosticism? - The Gnostic Society Library

"For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter.
I am the members of my mother.
I am the barren one
and many are her sons.
I am she whose wedding is great,
and I have not taken a husband.
I am the midwife and she who does not bear.
I am the solace of my labor pains.
I am the bride and the bridegroom,
and it is my husband who begot me.
I am the mother of my father
and the sister of my husband
and he is my offspring.
I am the slave of him who prepared me.
I am the ruler of my offspring.
But he is the one who begot me before the time on a birthday.
And he is my offspring in (due) time,
and my power is from him.
I am the staff of his power in his youth,
and he is the rod of my old age.
And whatever he wills happens to me.
I am the silence that is incomprehensible
and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name."

The Thunder, Perfect Mind - Translated by George W. MacRae

The Nag Hammadi library (popularly known as The Gnostic Gospels) is a collection of early Christian Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. That year, twelve leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local peasant named Mohammed Ali Samman. The writings in these codices comprised fifty-two mostly Gnostic tractates (treatises), but they also include three works belonging to the Corpus Hermeticum and a partial translation / alteration of Plato's Republic. In his "Introduction" to The Nag Hammadi Library in English, James Robinson suggests that these codices may have belonged to a nearby Pachomian monastery, and were buried after Bishop Athanasius condemned the uncritical use of non-canonical books in his Festal Letter of 367 AD.

The contents of the codices were written in Coptic, though the works were probably all translations from Greek. The best-known of these works is probably the Gospel of Thomas, of which the Nag Hammadi codices contain the only complete text. After the discovery it was recognized that fragments of these sayings attributed to Jesus appeared in manuscripts discovered at Oxyrhynchus in 1898, and matching quotations were recognized in other early Christian sources. Subsequently, a 1st or 2nd century date of composition circa 80 AD for the lost Greek originals of the Gospel of Thomas has been proposed, though this is disputed by many if not the majority of biblical matter researchers. The once buried manuscripts themselves date from the 3rd and 4th centuries.

The Nag Hammadi codices are housed in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, Egypt.

Complete list of codices found in Nag Hammadi:

* Codex I (also known as The Jung Foundation Codex):
o The Prayer of the Apostle Paul
o The Apocryphon of James (also known as the Secret Book of James)
o The Gospel of Truth
o The Treatise on the Resurrection
o The Tripartite Tractate
* Codex II:
o The Apocryphon of John
o The Gospel of Thomas a sayings gospel
o The Gospel of Philip a sayings gospel[citation needed]
o The Hypostasis of the Archons
o On the Origin of the World
o The Exegesis on the Soul
o The Book of Thomas the Contender
* Codex III:
o The Apocryphon of John
o The Gospel of the Egyptians
o Eugnostos the Blessed
o The Sophia of Jesus Christ
o The Dialogue of the Saviour
* Codex IV:
o The Apocryphon of John
o The Gospel of the Egyptians
* Codex V:
o Eugnostos the Blessed
o The Apocalypse of Paul
o The First Apocalypse of James
o The Second Apocalypse of James
o The Apocalypse of Adam
* Codex VI:
o The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles
o The Thunder, Perfect Mind
o Authoritative Teaching
o The Concept of Our Great Power
o Republic by Plato - The original is not gnostic, but the Nag Hammadi library version is heavily modified with then-current gnostic concepts.
o The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth - a Hermetic treatise
o The Prayer of Thanksgiving (with a hand-written note) - a Hermetic prayer
o Asclepius 21-29 - another Hermetic treatise
* Codex VII:
o The Paraphrase of Shem
o The Second Treatise of the Great Seth
o Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter
o The Teachings of Silvanus
o The Three Steles of Seth
* Codex VIII:
o Zostrianos
o The Letter of Peter to Philip
* Codex IX:
o Melchizedek
o The Thought of Norea
o The Testimony of truth
* Codex X:
o Marsanes
* Codex XI:
o The Interpretation of Knowledge
o A Valentinian Exposition, On the Anointing, On Baptism (A and B) and On the Eucharist (A and B)
o Allogenes
o Hypsiphrone
* Codex XII
o The Sentences of Sextus
o The Gospel of Truth
o Fragments
* Codex XIII:
o Trimorphic Protennoia
o On the Origin of the World

The so-called "Codex XIII" is in fact not a codex, but rather the text of Trimorphic Protennoia, written on "... eight leaves removed from a thirteenth book in late antiquity and tucked inside the front cover of the sixth." (Robinson, NHLE, p.10) Only a few lines from the beginning of Origin of the World are discernible on the bottom of the eighth leaf.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library