Gnosticism and the History of Religions

Gnosticism and the History of Religions
Author: David G. Robertson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2021-08-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1350137715

Building on critical work in biblical studies, which shows how a historically-bounded heretical tradition called Gnosticism was 'invented', this work focuses on the following stage in which it was “essentialised” into a sui generis, universal category of religion. At the same time, it shows how Gnosticism became a religious self-identifier, with a number of sizable contemporary groups identifying as Gnostics today, drawing on the same discourses. This book provides a history of this problematic category, and its relationship with scholarly and popular discourse on religion in the twentieth century. It uses a critical-historical method to show how and why Gnosis, Gnostic and Gnosticism were taken up by specific groups and individuals – practitioners and scholars – at different times. It shows how ideas about Gnosticism developed in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship, drawing from continental phenomenology, Jungian psychology and post-Holocaust theology, to be constructed as a perennial religious current based on special knowledge of the divine in a corrupt world. David G. Robertson challenges how scholars interact with the category Gnosticism, and contributes to our understanding of the complex relationship between primary sources, academics and practitioners in category formation.

The Interruption of Eternity

The Interruption of Eternity
Author: Carl A. Raschke
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publications
Total Pages: 296
Release: 1980
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780882293745

What is Gnosticism?

What is Gnosticism?
Author: Karen L. King
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2003
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780674017627

A study of gnosticism examines the various ways early Christians strove to define themselves in a pluralistic Roman society, while questioning the traditional ideas of heresy and orthodoxy that have previously influenced historians.

The Gnostic New Age

The Gnostic New Age
Author: April D. DeConick
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 515
Release: 2016-09-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0231542046

Gnosticism is a countercultural spirituality that forever changed the practice of Christianity. Before it emerged in the second century, passage to the afterlife required obedience to God and king. Gnosticism proposed that human beings were manifestations of the divine, unsettling the hierarchical foundations of the ancient world. Subversive and revolutionary, Gnostics taught that prayer and mediation could bring human beings into an ecstatic spiritual union with a transcendent deity. This mystical strain affected not just Christianity but many other religions, and it characterizes our understanding of the purpose and meaning of religion today. In The Gnostic New Age, April D. DeConick recovers this vibrant underground history to prove that Gnosticism was not suppressed or defeated by the Catholic Church long ago, nor was the movement a fabrication to justify the violent repression of alternative forms of Christianity. Gnosticism alleviated human suffering, soothing feelings of existential brokenness and alienation through the promise of renewal as God. DeConick begins in ancient Egypt and follows with the rise of Gnosticism in the Middle Ages, the advent of theosophy and other occult movements in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and contemporary New Age spiritual philosophies. As these theories find expression in science-fiction and fantasy films, DeConick sees evidence of Gnosticism's next incarnation. Her work emphasizes the universal, countercultural appeal of a movement that embodies much more than a simple challenge to religious authority.

Gnostic Religion in Antiquity

Gnostic Religion in Antiquity
Author: R. van den Broek
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2013-01-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107031370

An examination of Gnostic religion in Late Antiquity within its historical and religious context, using Greek, Latin and Coptic sources.

The Gnostic Bible

The Gnostic Bible
Author: Willis Barnstone
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Total Pages: 874
Release: 2006
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1590301994

The most comprehensive collection of gnostic literature ever published, this volume is the result of a unique collaboration between a renowned poet-translator and a leading scholar of early Christian texts.

The Essence of the Gnostics

The Essence of the Gnostics
Author: Bernard Simon
Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2005-03-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1848584040

For what is it that the All lacked, if not the knowledge of the Father?' - Gnostic text from the Gospel of Truth Long before there was a system of belief called Gnosticism there were those who reached for a special intimate knowledge of God and His mysterious ways. The possession of such knowledge, they believed, would bring salvation from suffering. All religious traditions acknowledged that the world is imperfect. Where they differ is in the explanations they offer for this imperfection - and in what they suggest might be done about it. While many religionists hold that humans are to be blamed for these imperfections, the Gnostics believed that the world is flawed because it was created in a flawed manner, thereby implicating the creator. Such a perspective was regarded as blasphemous by fellow-Christians at the dawn of the new religion, and led to the sect's persecution. Equally concerning were the Gnostics' liberal views regarding sex, the role of women, and toleration of other faiths. In The Essence of the Gnostics Bernard Simon offers a fascinating insight into this ancient and yet in many ways surprisingly contemporary faith, and explores the reasons for its current renaissance.

The Gnostic World

The Gnostic World
Author: Garry W. Trompf
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 833
Release: 2018-10-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317201841

The Gnostic World is an outstanding guide to Gnosticism, written by a distinguished international team of experts to explore Gnostic movements from the distant past until today. These themes are examined across sixty-seven chapters in a variety of contexts, from the ancient pre-Christian to the contemporary. The volume considers the intersection of Gnosticism with Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Indic practices and beliefs, and also with new religious movements, such as Theosophy, Scientology, Western Sufism, and the Nation of Islam. This comprehensive handbook will be an invaluable resource for religious studies students, scholars, and researchers of Gnostic doctrine and history.