Gnostic Religion in Antiquity

Gnostic Religion in Antiquity PDF Author: R. van den Broek
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107031370
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Get Book

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

Gnostic Religion in Antiquity

Gnostic Religion in Antiquity PDF Author: R. van den Broek
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107031370
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Get Book

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

Gnostic Religion in Antiquity

Gnostic Religion in Antiquity PDF Author: Roelof van den Broek
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113962041X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book

Book Description
Gnostic religion is the expression of a religious worldview which is dominated by the concept of Gnosis, an esoteric knowledge of God and the human being which grants salvation to those who possess it. Roelof van den Broek presents here a fresh approach to the gnostic current of Late Antiquity within its historical and religious context, based on sources in Greek, Latin and Coptic, including discussions of the individual works of preserved gnostic literature. Van den Broek explores the various gnostic interpretations of the Christian faith that were current in the second and third centuries, whilst showing that despite its influence on early Christianity, gnostic religion was not a typically Christian phenomenon. This book will be of interest to theologians, historians of religion, students and scholars of the history of Late Antiquity and early Christianity, as well as specialists in ancient gnostic and hermetic traditions.

The Gnostic New Age

The Gnostic New Age PDF Author: April D. DeConick
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231542046
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 515

Get Book

Book Description
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.

Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times

Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times PDF Author: R. van den Broek
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791436110
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Get Book

Book Description
This volume introduces what has sometimes been called "the third component of western culture". It traces the historical development of those religious traditions which have rejected a world view based on the primacy of pure rationality or doctrinal faith, emphasizing instead the importance of inner enlightenment or gnosis: a revelatory experience which was typically believed to entail an encounter with one's true self as well as with the ground of being, God. The contributors to this book demonstrate this perspective as fundamental to a variety of interconnected traditions. In Antiquity, one finds the gnostics and hermetics; in the Middle Ages several Christian sects. The medieval Cathars can, to a certain extent, be considered part of the same tradition. Starting with the Italian humanist Renaissance, hermetic philosophy became of central importance to a new religious synthesis that can be referred to as Western Esotericism. The development of this tradition is described from Renaissance hermeticists and practitioners of spiritual alchemy to the emergence of Rosicrucianism and Christian theosophy in the seventeenth century, and from post-enlightenment aspects of Romanticism and occultism to the present-day New Age movement.

Gnostic Religion in Antiquity

Gnostic Religion in Antiquity PDF Author: R. van den Broek
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781139622271
Category : Gnosticism
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book

Book Description
"Gnostic religion is the expression of a religious worldview which is dominated by the concept of Gnosis, an esoteric knowledge of God and the human being which grants salvation to those who possess it. Roelof van den Broek presents here a fresh approach to the gnostic current of Late Antiquity within its historical and religious context, based on sources in Greek, Latin and Coptic, including discussions of the individual works of preserved gnostic literature. Van den Broek explores the various gnostic interpretations of the Christian faith that were current in the second and third centuries, whilst showing that despite its influence on early Christianity, gnostic religion was not a typically Christian phenomenon."--

Gnosticism and the History of Religions

Gnosticism and the History of Religions PDF Author: David G. Robertson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350137715
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Get Book

Book Description
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.

Gnostic Religion in Antiquity

Gnostic Religion in Antiquity PDF Author: Roelof Van den Broek
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781139616690
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Get Book

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

Gnosticism and Christianity in Roman and Coptic Egypt

Gnosticism and Christianity in Roman and Coptic Egypt PDF Author: Birger Albert Pearson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 9780567026101
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Get Book

Book Description
This book provides significant insights into the rise of early Christianity in Egypt and its impact on Christianity in Palestine.

What is Gnosticism?

What is Gnosticism? PDF Author: Karen L. King
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674017627
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Get Book

Book Description
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.

Valentinian Christianity

Valentinian Christianity PDF Author:
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520297466
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Get Book

Book Description
Valentinus, an Egyptian Christian who traveled to Rome to teach his unique brand of theology, and his followers, the Valentinians, formed one of the largest and most influential sects of Christianity in the second and third centuries. But by the fourth century, their writings had all but disappeared suddenly and mysteriously from the historical record, as the newly consolidated imperial Christian Church condemned as heretical all forms of what has come to be known as Gnosticism. Only in 1945 were their extensive original works finally rediscovered, and the resurrected “Gnostic Gospels” soon rooted themselves in both the scholarly and popular imagination. Valentinian Christianity: Texts and Translations brings together for the first time all the extant texts composed by Valentinus and his followers. With accessible introductions and fresh translations based on new transcriptions of the original Greek and Coptic manuscripts on facing pages, Geoffrey S. Smith provides an illuminating, balanced overview of Valentinian Christianity and its formative place in Christian history.