Gnostic John the Baptizer

Gnostic John the Baptizer is a book by George Robert Stowe Mead, first published in 1924. In it, Mead gathers and translates selections from the Mandaean John-book and pairs those texts with careful studies that place John the Baptist in the wider matrix of Gnostic and early Christian traditions. The volume presents Mandaean material—narrative fragments, hymnic passages and ritual glimpses—that foregrounds an alternative, non-canonical portrait of John and the communities that venerated him. Readers will find both edited primary texts and Mead’s interpretive essays that aim to make sense of these unusual sources for the English reader. Measured and comparative in tone, Mead’s commentary traces how the Mandaean tradition, the Slavonic account of Josephus, and the proem of the Fourth Gospel each preserve different memories and literary layers about John and his circle. The book is useful for anyone researching Gnosticism, Mandaean religion, or the problem of early Christian origins: it balances text-presentation with discussion of historical context, source-criticism and the theological distinctives that separate Mandaean belief from mainstream Christian narratives. Accessible to the curious reader yet substantive enough for specialists, this work showcases Mead’s longtime engagement with Gnostic and hermetic literature.