Quests Old and New

About this book

What did seekers in antiquity want from a religious mystery? G. R. S. Mead follows that question through Greek philosophy, Gnostic fragments and other neglected writings, then brings it into the debates of his own time.

Mead was an unusually committed interpreter of early esoteric religion. Quests Old and New collects arguments shaped by his reading of surviving texts and by the spiritual questions that drew him to them. His sympathy for the material sometimes guides him beyond what the evidence can establish. The reward is the breadth of the inquiry, from the language of salvation to the older human desire for secret knowledge.