Egyptian Gnostics of the early centuries of the Christian era created doctrines that were profoundly different from Christian beliefs today. Even in their time the Church declared their doctrines heretical and burned their books. But a few copies, carefully hidden away in the Egyptian desert, were preserved and discovered in modern times. These texts have previously only been available in difficult translations. Howard Bream has made the clearest translations to date of several of these documents and his commentary on The Apocryphon of John probably resembles the lost explanation given to the Gnostic initiates.