The Finnish scholar of early Christianity, Ismo Dunderberg, has produced this valuable set of essays, most already published, developing perspectives treated in his 2008 monograph, Beyond Gnosticism. Dunderberg, while insisting that all the chapters deal with people and texts which have been classified as ‘Gnostic,’ avoids that term as misleading, preferring to distinguish between the myth-making Valentinians and Sethians and their texts and other non-demiurgical texts, such as the Gospel of Thomas, now understood as Platonic rather than ‘Gnostic’. Indeed, one of the significant contributions of the book is the major emphasis on the moral and practical concerns of ancient philosophy and its influence on texts, both demiurgical and non-demiurgical. The other is Dunderberg's concern to shake the foundations of the wall between the Church and ‘Gnosticism’, between texts considered ‘canonical’ and other texts of the first two centuries, many classed as ‘heretical’, and demonstrate in particular the striking similarity of view between the Valentinians and ecclesiastical writers like Clement and Origen. Dunderberg begins with five non-Valentinian articles, then moves on to three solely devoted to Valentinian themes, concluding with some more general remarks on the study of the New Testament from his own perspective, straddling New Testament and second-century Christian studies. In chapter i he seeks to show how the Platonic imagery of the soul drawn down between mind and matter evolved into two kinds of stories in Nag Hammadi texts, one demiurgical, the other non-demiurgical, noting particularly their moral aspects. In chapter ii he claims that ancient philosophical views about anger and its control, including the idea of ‘morality ladders’, help us better to understand Sethian texts such as the Gospel of Judas. Chapter iii, most clearly questioning the Church-Gnostic divide, demonstrates that there was no uniform ‘Gnostic’ avoidance of persecution or ‘ecclesiastical’ approval of martyrdom. All parties regarded their martyrs as heroes of the faith, devaluing in various ways the martyrdoms of other kinds of Christians. Chapters iv and v relate to the reception-history of the Scriptures, four dealing with ‘Gnostic’ interpretations of Genesis, noting considerable differences, and five with the relations between the Gospels of John, Thomas and Mary. Dunderberg argues that Thomas is independent of John and either prior to or contemporaneous with it, noting how important the theme of fear and its control are in both Mary and John. Chapters vi–viii deal with Valentinian subjects, vi with Stoic themes in Valentinianism, vii with Valentinian theories on the classes of humankind, while viii, on Paul and Valentinian morality, echoes chapter i on the two types of stories on the soul. Chapters ix and x differ from the rest as they are devoted to interpretation of the New Testament, ix on what is the ‘theology’ in New Testament studies, returning to the issue of the canon, which x takes up, treating the recent appeal to the historical reliability of John. Dunderberg's distinctive perspective and his setting of the texts he deals with in the wider context of ancient moral philosophy are both illuminating and stimulating.