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There has been an increasing appreciation of Manichaeans' capability for certain optimistic expressions about the created cosmos, in spite of their reputation for obsessing about the evil agents of darkness. This present study reviews some of the supporting evidence and explores possible implications for day-to-day life experience among Manichaeans. In spite of a cosmology conveying an ostensibly very dark worldview, could a Manichaean ever have enjoyed life in this world? The second part of the essay turns to implications for mythologies such as those represented among Nag Hammadi tractates and some related cosmologies. In spite of some similarities in mythology, Manichaean tradition is often distinguished from these other cosmologies as a tradition with greater potential for reconciling the role of dark forces in the cosmogony with rather ordinary social and even political life. This essay questions why the same must be denied the authors and ancient fans of cosmogonies like those among Nag Hammadi writings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Mani in his Epistula Fundamenti , many stories have been told about Adam and Eve, but only his version is correct and leads to salvation. This article first explores various Jewish and Christian narratives and ideas about the first humans with which Mani likely engaged. It then shows how he radicalized Gnostic accounts to proclaim the fundamental role of violent, demonic sexuality in the creation of Adam and Eve, as a counter-strategy to prevent the release of trapped light, in support of his strongly anti-reproductive ethic. Finally, it analyzes Mani's story of the first human generations as an implicit critique of Zoroastrian anthropogonic narratives which provided an etiology for next-of-kin marriage. Mani's dialogue with these different traditions situates him at the Roman-Sasanian frontier, engaging with Jewish and Christian teachings, as well as Iranian ones, and resisting simplistic genealogies, whether heresiological or scholarly. Indeed, Mani functions as an interpreter (hermeneutes) between Mediterranean and Iranian cultures: Manichaean doctrine and practice do not represent a final flowering of Gnosticism, nor a fundamentally Iranian system, but a new movement that weaves Christian, Gnostic, Zoroastrian, and other traditions in complex and unexpected ways, combining his foundational critique of sexual reproduction with a hopeful call for struggle against the darkness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A passage from Ps.-Basil of Caesarea's ep. 366 contains verbatim parallels with a quotation of Valentinus given in Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 3.7.59.3. These parallels have rarely been recognized by scholars. Völker and Markschies have argued that Ps.-Basil was excerpting from Clement, but this paper argues that Ps.-Basil was independent of Clement and was likely Clement's source. Overlooked evidence includes (i) the coherence of the parallel passages in the context of ep. 366 and their relative incoherence in the context of Strom. 3.7.59.3; (ii) Valentinian theology that is found throughout ep. 366, including the notions of spiritual bodies and Charis as God's protological consort; (iii) grammatical errors in Clement that are not present in Ps.-Basil; and (iv) further textual evidence suggesting that ep. 366 has the original version of the passage. A plausible explanation of the evidence, this paper will argue, is that ep. 366 comes from the pen of Valentinus himself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, I examine Susan Taubes's criticism of Heidegger's Seinsdenken that pivots around her contention that he absolutized the nothingness of being in a manner that is analogous to but yet significantly different than the role assigned to the Godhead on the part of many mystical visionaries. The common denominator is in Heidegger's insistence on being to the neglect of fully engaging with the rhythms of life. As a consequence, there is no purchase on the chaotic, which falls outside the purview of what can be signified, and in the absence of the unsignifiable, there can be no signification. Every attempt to reconstruct the broken world into a totality contains the flaw of an ontological untruth. The effort at totalization is not only the methodological weakness of tragedy and mysticism, but it is also the nihilistic basis of the role accorded to the nothingness of being in Heidegger's Seinsdenken. The erroneous nature of the world is not denied by Susan, but she struggled to uphold the ontological untruth that what is most wrong in our existence is what is most precious. The paradoxical retrieval of the truth of this untruth affords the poetic soul the opportunity to confront the limit by breaking it, an infringement of boundary that is redolent equally with the enduring transience of love and the transient endurance of death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article surveys the reception of the Gnostic text Pistis Sophia in esoteric milieus in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe. The first part of the article contains an overview of the text and scholarship on it. Then follows a study of the reception of Pistis Sophia in a broader array of esoteric circles. It becomes clear that the text was hailed as an example of ancient and great spiritual wisdom, although seldom discussed in detail theologically. Next, this is compared to the academic reception at the same time where it was, as previous scholars have made clear, discarded due to what was understood as a discrepancy with "Gnostic" characteristics. This article shows that Pistis Sophia was not discarded in esoteric circles but rather read in light of already established esoteric trajectories, for example Blavatsky's, Krumm-Heller's, or Papus' particular spiritual evolutionary perspectives. Lastly, it is argued that the understanding of Gnosticisms that both these receptions reflect is still very much active today: academics and esoteric groups are guided by similar trajectories vis-à-vis Gnosticism, seeing it as a representative of a "universal religious essence" associated with progressive attitudes (for example regarding sex and gender), which allows/forces them to renegotiate the ancient sources themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applying cognitive theories about human creativity, this paper theorizes how the Gnostic as an identity is an idealization of a discrete metaphysics or spirituality forged by the human imagination and diversified as radical imaginaries and social imaginaries. The emergence of Gnostic spirituality was made possible because a novel cognitive script had developed that theorized religion in kinfolk terms, rather than conventional slave, vassal, or client terms. This script allowed people to understand their true selves as God's offspring who had become separated from their divine parent(s), lost, and in need of rescue by their divine kin. This new spirituality came to be associated with the word Gnostic which was used to identify religious people in the Roman world who claimed to have knowledge (gnosis) of the true God, the true pathway home, and their true selves as God's offspring. Once this idealization of the Gnostic was framed, it functioned as the cognitive structure upon which a variety of constellations of the ideal were then ratcheted. These constellations are radical imaginaries built using concrete images, stories, and legends to make sense of the human predicament and authorize certain practices and moral codes. When a radical imaginary is shared collectively it can become a social imaginary which serves to legitimate group behavior as happened, for instance, in the case of the Valentinian, Basilidian, and other Gnostic imaginaries. This paper considers the ideological and social implications of the distribution of radical imaginaries, especially those offloaded onto artifacts which circulate beyond any single social situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most scholars currently tend to see a biblical or "Gnostic" Sophia-Eve figure as the true identity of the enigmatic feminine self-revealer pronouncing the "I am" statements in Thunder: Perfect Mind (NHC VI,2). At an early stage of research, the similarities with the aretalogies of Isis, also framed as "I am" self-predications, were pointed out, but Isis has largely been left behind as a possible identity of Thunder, because of the latter's ambiguous status, combining both elevated and lowly epithets (whore and matron, honored and despised, etc.). The present contribution reevaluates the Egyptian background of Thunder: Perfect Mind and considers the text as a demythologized, Platonic-Stoic, performative epiphany of a self-begotten, female, divine mind, similar in many respects to the Egyptian goddess Isis-Neith. Furthermore, it will be proposed that Thunder: Perfect Mind lies behind the common source of the self-predicative passage of On the Origins of the World (NHC II,5; XIII,2) and its parallel in the Hypostasis of the Archons (NHC II,4), likely mediated by the Gospel of Eve mentioned by Epiphanius of Salamis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims at reconstructing Kierkegaard's reception of Schopenhauer's philosophy with the purpose of discussing the pessimism of Kierkegaard's late writings. The thesis of the article is that the theology of the late Kierkegaard that lies behind his attack on the so-called 'Christendom' and, in a wider perspective, on Protestantism in general, must be characterized as 'pessimistic,' insofar as it considers the mundane world as fundamentally 'wicked' or 'wretched.' Accordingly, a certain tendency toward asceticism and denial of the world becomes a distinctive feature of Kierkegaard's late works and of his interpretation of Christianity. Kierkegaard's pessimism is, however, limited to his view of the mundane world, and he does not, like Schopenhauer, consider human existence fundamentally meaningless and purposeless. On the contrary, it is the aim of life for the true Christian, according to Kierkegaard, to obtain eternal salvation through self-chosen suffering and negation of his or her own desires for temporal gratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Initiated almost 200 years ago, the accusation that G.W.F. Hegel's philosophy qualifies as Gnostic has stood the test of time. Beginning with Ferdinand Christian Baur's 1835 Die christliche Gnosis , thinkers have attempted to inextricably bind Hegel's philosophical endeavors to the ancient form(s) of religious knowledge production known as 'Gnosticism'. Two additional figures have surfaced more recently who also champion the Gnostic accusation, namely Eric Voegelin and James Lindsay. Voegelin's 1968 Science, Politics, and Gnosticism as well as his 1972 'On Hegel: A Study in Sorcery' seek to justify and legitimize the Gnostic accusation in unequivocal terms. Lindsay's 2022 best-seller, Race Marxism , further perpetuates the charge of Gnosticism against Hegel. I aim to deal with each of these figures and their respective accusations in reverse chronological order, demonstrating how each of them must artificially construct Hegel as a Gnostic in order to successfully defend their accusations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a survey of the development of Manichaean studies over the past 450 years. Since the last few decades in particular, one may speak of "Manichaeology" as a new and rapidly developing new discipline of the human sciences. This survey and critical assessment aims to introduce into the discipline, at the same time stressing the recurrent discussion about the importance of Iranian and/or (Jewish-)Christian elements as the core of Mani's message that became a unique Gnostic world religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the novel argument that John Milton's Paradise Lost shows clear evidence of Gnostic influence. While the potential influence of gnostic concepts on Milton has been noted before, previous work has been partial, suggestive, and/or limited to other of Milton's works. Here, we build on the case made by Michael Bryson regarding Milton's Paradise Regained by providing our own reading of four core themes in the prior Paradise Lost through a gnostic lens: (1) the manner of creation through the Son, (2) Milton's understanding of materialism, (3) the Son's attitude orientation toward outward displays of power, and (4) the parallels between Milton's Eve and the gnostic Sophia. We ground this argument around Milton's Gnosticism by presenting the historical case that Milton had access to, and was likely persuaded by, key aspects of ancient Gnosticism found within both Christian heresiologists (e.g., Irenaeus, Tertullian) and Neoplatonism (Plotinus). We then survey our core themes of Paradise Lost , presenting evidence around where ancient Gnosticism – in concert with other, often overlapping influences such as Neoplatonism and parabiblical literature – seems to provide the best framework for understanding certain, distinct elements of Milton's conceptual and poetic frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a reassessment of the Gnostic Apocalypse of Paul by focusing on genre, intertextuality, and structure as well as recurrent motifs. It argues that the Apocalypse situates the mission of Paul negatively in relation to a prison-like cosmos and positively in relation to the twelve apostles and that its form and objectives are best compatible with a fourth-century date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A close look at a very unusual instance of how gnosis, and specific concepts from early Christian-era Gnosticism, appear directly in the numerous late works of a recent Chilean author, Miguel Serrano (1917–2009), and of how his work and thought exemplifies cosmological gnosis. Many international readers knew Serrano as author of unusual fictional works, and as an ambassador for Chile to several countries. During his time abroad, he met, and in many cases befriended, famous figures of the day, including Carl Jung, Herman Hesse, Ezra Pound and the fourteenth Dalai Lama. But fewer are aware of his works promoting a grand cosmological synthesis of many world religious traditions with esoteric Hitlerism expressed in gnostic terms. His syncretic system includes references to a demiurge and to gnosis, as well as to many other esoteric traditions from Europe, India, Tibet, and elsewhere, largely in a Gnostic context. This article by Arthur Versluis is the first to explore this aspect of Serrano's work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vernacular magical, divinatory, and healing practices associated with the Afro-American Gulf South, alternately called "Hoodoo" or "Conjure," offer a window into an intriguing world of "everyday esoterica." Practitioners envision a world of competing human desires, which move and are moved by an array of malign and benign spiritual forces. They cope with this world with a pharmacopeia of symbolically powerful physical substances, but also through works of bodily discipline, prayer, meditation, and other practices aimed at the cultivation of will, self-awareness, and self-regard. These latter tools and techniques comport closely with Michel Foucault's concept of technologies of the self. Exploring Hoodoo ritual through Foucault's lens offers opportunities to re-imagine American Hoodoo as an esoteric system that enables practitioners to manipulate and transform themselves as well as their circumstances. This examination serves to increase our appreciation for the sophistication of these traditions, while simultaneously enlarging and enriching Foucault's paradigm – offering new ways to consider the techniques by which one might come to know and understand oneself. This inquiry addresses a lacuna in the scholarship of Hoodoo and Conjure and also situates these traditions more firmly (and accurately) within the wider corpus of Gnostic Studies and Western Esotericism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article examines the ways in which gnostic ideas of spiritual growth, enlightenment, and transcendence resonate with the "cyber-gnostic" ideology presented through the viral "Cicada 3301" internet mystery. The content of the mystery situates traditionally spiritual enlightenment in the libertarian concerns of freedom of information and privacy, and in the tiered cosmology of the "surface/deep/dark" web. Additionally, this article evaluates the potential for classifying the Cicada 3301 mystery and its surrounding community as an online form of religious expression. Ultimately, it is argued that the mystery offers an insight into how philosophical notions of identity and communication interface with spiritual notions of enlightenment and transcendence through the experience of cybertechnology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly addressing the religious dimension of Cormac McCarthy's work, critics have frequently rooted it in a Gnosticism which holds, first, that the world is a place of evil and suffering and, second, that salvation is attained through knowledge made available only to the elect. The Stonemason , however, seems intent on refuting just such a thesis. Focusing on Ben and his grandfather Papaw, a centenarian stonemason, the play presents Ben as seeking, through mastery of the mason's secrets, to become custodian to knowledge that will unlock the mysteries not just of a trade but of the cosmos. Yet this Gnostic quest fosters in him a moral negligence that leads to the deaths of two family members. Indeed, Ben's tragedy stems precisely from his Gnostic prizing of secret lore and indifference to the Christian lessons Papaw himself most values—lessons not in god-like knowledge but in the practice of faith, humility, and love. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite Franz Rosenzweig's unequivocal condemnation of Gershom Scholem, his own view of the world and the possibility of human redemption therein is in some respect very close to the nihilistic sensibility and its gnostic underpinning. Although Rosenzweig obviously did not consider himself either a nihilist or a gnostic, the latter term can well be applied even to Rosenzweig's mature speculation in The Star of Redemption and other writings from the 1920s. In spite of his initial rejection of negative theology in the Star , the swerve of Rosenzweig's path winds its way to an apophasis of the apophasis, a turn that is encapsulated in the astounding statement, "That God is nothing becomes just as much a figurative sentence as the other one, that he is truth." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first part of the paper, I will provide an overview of Eric Voegelin's early thesis about Gnosis which he formulated in The New Science of Politics (1952) and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (1968). A special attention will be paid to the idea of the immanentization of the eschaton which remains in the center of his argument. In the second part of the paper, I will analyze two Hollywood films in the light of Voegelin's thesis: Dark City (1998) and Pleasantville (1998). Firstly, I will argue that the main characters depicted in the films can be classified as Gnostics in Voegelin's sense. Secondly, I will demonstrate that their revolutionary acts reflect the idea of the immanentization of the eschaton. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the construction and function of the female body in four Gnostic texts: Pistis Sophia, On the Origin of the World, Hypostasis of the Archons, and Apocryphon of John. In these texts' accounts of the mythological origin of the cosmos, the exposed bodies of Sophia and her daughters are consistently depicted as objects of excessive, often gratuitous sexual violence. Yet in the midst of this violence appears another, equally consistent motif: the Gnostic writers protected their female characters through a variety of narratival techniques, such as transforming the female body into a tree or a strenuous insistence on the violence's ultimate failure. This article accounts for this curious pairing of violence and protection by evaluating the female body as a symbolic artifact embedded with the values of the patriarchal culture which constructed it, a culture which valued the female body as a reliable, untainted conduit of progeny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Divine anthropomorphisms are prevalent in the Old Testament. Authors of Old Testament works seemingly had no reservations with using human qualities to describe God. During the Second Temple period Greek philosophy began to influence the interpretation of texts that describe God using anthropomorphisms. This shift in understanding God is evidenced in translation tendencies in the Septuagint and in Philo's reading of Hebrew Scripture. The elements of proto-Gnosticism found in Philo's writings are at times closely related to his interpretation of anthropomorphism. Since Philo's understanding of such figures of speech has been the historic majority view, it is important to evaluate his method of interpretation to determine whether this understanding of divine anthropomorphism is rooted in Scripture or his philosophical tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of esoteric currents cannot be intrinsically closed to scholarly research and query. Here, we shall examine just one question: that of methodology in examining the sources of esoteric systems. We shall take but one case study: that of Tobias Churton's recent book-length efforts to "deconstruct" George Ivanovich Gurdjieff and his teaching. Like others before him, he traces diverse aspects of Gurdjieff's teaching to different sources, viewing Gurdjieff as a synthesiser, who disguised his debt to Western Esotericism and presented it as his "Fourth Way". How can such a theory be evaluated? Is it possible to draw up a canon of principles for assessing borrowing? In evaluating borrowing, does the whole of a teaching possess a significance over and above the parts? What is the significance of the phenomenon of borrowing? After noting some results of research on inter-cultural borrowings in ancient mythology, I make suggestions for sound methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around 1970 in graduate school, I wrote a paper on the Gospel of Thomas , one of the documents discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945. The debate over its gnosticizing elements was alive and well, and I weighed in with an argument that its thorough oblivion to history rendered it Gnostic—in the capital-"G" sense. I published a revised version of the paper in an academic journal in 1976. Then in 1986, I began to practice macrobiotics. As I studied the teachings of Michio Kushi, its foremost American teacher, I began to suspect religion. With longtime political interests in world government, Kushi elaborated on a cosmological spiral, with humans descending from a "unique principle" as it divided into yin and yang. Finding balance with yin and yang energies through diet and lifestyle would lead to alignment and peace, even as the earth itself wobbled on its axis through cycles that lasted thousands of years—the earth's particular location influencing humans for good or ill. Even so, if macrobiotic principles were followed, what lay ahead was "one peaceful world." Somewhere on the road to one peaceful world, Kushi discovered the Gospel of Thomas. He began to use it regularly in his popular "spiritual" seminars. This article leverages an account of the gnostic (here small-"g") content of macrobiotics on Michio Kushi's commentary on the Gospel of Thomas —The Gospel of Peace (1992)—and also on related works. The paper explores the gnosticism of macrobiotic foodways and a peaceful world in terms of American culture, looking for lines of connection and viewing them as encrypted signs—in the twenty-first century still—of the gnostic in us all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today the clinical return of research into psychedelic medicine has been accompanied by a model of religious experience that stresses the healing effects of unitive, immanent experiences. This paper instead unearths a counter-narrative of psychedelic religiosity: a more suspicious and critical sense of spiritual encounter that I illuminate through the classic gnostic mythology of the archons. In a number of movement texts from the 1960s through the 2000s, I trace the appearance of archon-like figures—both explicitly linked to gnostic traditions and not—and how their appearance motivates social critique and a more engaged politics of consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the reception of the ancient Gnostic archons, or rulers, in contemporary conspiracy theories. In the classical Gnostic myth these nefarious beings rule the cosmos, mold primordial matter into a prison for Adam and Eve, and blind the Elect to their divine nature. These archons send cataclysms to earth and serve as celestial gatekeepers that keep the divine light trapped in their creation. Contemporary conspiracy theorists such as John Lamb Lash, David Icke, and Carol Reimer read the archons not as allegories or metaphors, but as real beings at work in contemporary politics, media and religion. Utilizing Michael Barkun's concept of "superconspiracies," this article examines how conspiracists Lash, Icke, and Reimer weave disparate conspiratorial discourses together through the classical Gnostic myth. The article concludes that the vast gulf between the anticosmic and anthropic dualism of the classical myth and the generally pro-cosmic and humanist thrust of modern esoterica leads these authors into paradoxical understands of cosmos, mind and eschatology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In The Rebel (1951) Albert Camus assigns ancient Gnosticism an important place in the history of human revolt. In his interpretation, Gnostics incarnate the spirit of proud rebellion and protest against a God deemed responsible for human suffering and death. For Camus these are the roots of metaphysical rebellion in Western history that, beginning in the eighteenth century, culminated in the fascist and socialist utopian experiments in the twentieth century. After assessing Camus's view of Gnosticism, this article claims that modern cinema shows the impact of The Rebel on the way several recent films conceive of their rebellious protagonists. The controlled character of the revolts they promote shows that modern cinema follows Gnosticism in their analysis both the modern sentiments of alienation in contemporary society and the ways to break free in order to attain a life worthy of its name. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

April DeConick's The Gnostic New Age demonstrates that scholarship of Gnosticism is still entrenched in an Eliadian phenomenological paradigm which essentializes an ahistorical sui generis "Gnosis". This approach is traceable to the Eranos Circle, particularly Carl G. Jung and Gilles Quispel, and builds certain philosophical and psychoanalytical affinities into an ahistorical religious current. DeConick' comparison with New Age is tenuous, and misses the important fact that Gnosticism and New Age share specific genealogical antecedents. Interdisciplinary work needs to pay more attention to the theological and colonial implications of categories, or such problematic categories will continue to take root in the gaps between academic specialisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author uses three examples from contemporary New Age culture to demonstrate that popular alternative spirituality, while having no direct connection with ancient Gnosticism, reflects some of the core concerns and ideals found in Gnostic writing and liturgy, including mystical experience, radical ecumenism, and expanded human consciousness. This intersection demonstrates that the modern New Age itself indirectly comports with key elements of Gnostic tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its publication in 1975, A Course in Miracles (ACIM) has continued to grow in popularity as a major feature of New Age spirituality. While the text of the Course is not a direct imitation of any particular form of ancient Gnosticism, A Course in Miracles represents an example of the emergence, reception, and popularity of gnosticizing trajectories of thought in the New Age movement. As a modern-day neo-Gnostic text, A Course in Miracles reflects significant trends in contemporary Western religiosity, especially the quest for alternative forms of esoteric, spiritual, and mystical knowledge and experience in a nominally Christian or post-Christian Western world increasingly disillusioned with traditional orthodox theology, Christology, and ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the idea of neo-Gnosticism in a series of occult and new religious movements from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Specifically, the article examines the links between two controversial groups that both described themselves as modern forms of Gnosticism: first, the European esoteric group, the Ordo Templi Orientis, and second, the American new religion, the Church of Scientology. Founded by Theodor Reuss in Germany in the 1890s, the O.T.O. described itself as a form of "Gnostic Neo-Christian Templar" religion, with sexual magic as its primary ritual secret. Its most infamous leader, British occultist Aleister Crowley, also developed a full scale "Gnostic Mass" for the group. Many elements of the O.T.O. and Crowley's work were later picked up by none other than L. Ron Hubbard, the eclectic founder of Scientology, who also called his new church a "Gnostic religion," since it is the "knowing of knowing" (scientia + logos). To conclude, I will discuss the ways in which these Gnostic and occult elements within Scientology later became a source of embarrassment for the church and were eventually either obscured or denied altogether—in effect, obfuscated by still further layers of secrecy and concealment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bonnie Nettles and Marshall Applewhite, the founders of the millenarian movement Heaven's Gate, began teaching at a retreat they called Know Place, where one came to "know thyself" in the "no-place of Utopia." This initial phase set the stage for a process of self-recognition that would become the hallmark of conversion to the movement, much as Gnosticism employed in the first centuries of the common era. The parallels between late antique Gnosticism and Heaven's Gate are remarkable. Both posited two breeds of humans, one a material husk and the other an enlightened soul temporarily trapped on earth. Both proposed radical gender equality and maintained a rigorous ascetic regime. Both proffered death as a return to a prior state of gnosis rather than a disjuncture into a new life and afterlife. This paper examines the rhetoric of self-verification employed by both movements as it relates to a modified monotheism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines treatments of Jerusalem, including its temple and first-century demise, in Testimony of Truth (NHC IX,3) and the First Apocalypse of James (NHC V,3; Cod. Tch. 2). Among Nag Hammadi writings, these texts are relatively unusual in their attention to the historical, Roman presence in the city. Informed by contemporary apocalyptic traditions, Testim. Truth and 1 Apoc. Jas. cast foreign domination not as a crisis, but as a clue, specifically to seek revelation elsewhere. In this spatial sense, revelation is "relocated" in each text, yet in different ways. The article further shows how each presentation of Jerusalem aligns with other interests of Testim. Truth and 1 Apoc. Jas., including their engagement in intra-Christian debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The word "gnosis" is widely used in contemporary scholarship in a range of fields including not only the study of the historical phenomenon of Gnosticism, but also in more unexpected areas like translations of Buddhist texts, where the term has taken on a fairly specific collectively understood meaning. Broadly speaking, in the developing consensus visible both in scholarship and in popular culture, gnosis refers to knowledge that transcends ratiocinative, discursive, or dualistic forms of knowledge. Gnosis, broadly understood both in scholarship and to some extent in popular culture, refers to knowledge understood as the transcendence of self/other dualism. Authors discussed include Edward Conze, Theodore Roszak, Carl Jung, Andrew Newberg, April DeConick, Peter Carroll, Andrieh Vitimus, Ken Wilber, and Christopher Bache. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper owes debt to the field of study known as sociology of knowledge, which is interested in the social location of groups and their constructions of knowledge and reality. This project, however, is not about ordinary knowledge, but how gnosis, the direct knowledge of a transcendent God beyond the traditional Gods, became the foundation of a new form of spirituality in antiquity, and how this form of Gnostic spirituality has reemerged in modern America, impacting traditional religious communities and fostering new religious movements. Several social factors are involved in the emergence of Gnostic spirituality, including the dislocation of the founders and collaborators of Gnostic movements, the prominence of the seeker response, the revelatory milieu in which they find themselves, their reliance on revelatory authority, their push for alternative legitimation, and their flip-and-reveal and do-it-yourself constructions of new knowledge. Gnostic countercultures arise when Gnostic spirituality is mobilized. Much of religion and society are overturned so that we find constructions of the counter-self, calls for counter-conduct, the establishment of counter-cult, the deployment of counter-media, and the emergence of modes of Gnostic esoterization. The final section turns to the awakening, transport, and occulturation of Gnostic spirituality into modernity in America via artifact migration and alpha channels like Blavatsky. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to redefine what we mean by "gnosis." It begins with a critique of scholars who—in order to maintain their supposed objectivity—avoid wrestling with the subjective experience of gnosis. They reduce gnosis to its literary, political, and religious contexts, and their explanation of these influences passes for our scholarly understanding of gnosis. Yet gnosis remains unknown to them. Once we dare to explore gnosis as a transforming experience , we can recognize it outside of the historical context of the late antique world. What, then, is the gnostic experience? Following Frances Yates, I suggest that there are two kinds of gnosis: the pessimistic, dualist, and anti-cosmic gnosis, and the optimistic, non-dual gnosis that sees the material cosmos as divine. I trace the lineage of this non-dual gnosis from Neoplatonic theurgists who speak of an "innate gnosis" that allows us to see the world as theophany, to its expression in our own American Gnostic, Ralph Waldo Emerson. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will present new evidence to resolve a long-standing problem in the biography of Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, who lived in Sasanian Iran during the third-century A.D. There are a number of important early references to Armenia in Manichaean texts. These include a Sogdian account of how Mār Gabryab brought the religion to Armenia and contains the earliest known literary reference to the name of the capital city of Erevan; and various notices of Mani's own Letter to Armenia in Arabic, Middle Persian and Sogdian. But the principal focus for this paper is to resolve the question as to whether Mani himself travelled to Armenia in the early/mid 270s A.D. The account of his final travels, before his imprisonment and death under King Bahrām I in Gondēšāpūr, has been the subject of sustained debate since late antiquity. The early Christian polemical tradition represented by the Acts of Archelaus (ca. 330 A.D., extant in Latin, with parallels and elaborated traditions in Greek, Syriac etc.) placed him in the mysterious Castellum Arabionis near the border of the Roman Empire, and in the 19th-century it was common to locate this in Armenia. However, discoveries of primary Manichaean texts in Coptic and Middle Iranian languages in the 20th century turned attention to sites in Mesopotamia. This paper aims to reconcile these accounts and will utilise a newly-edited Coptic source to demonstrate that Mani did, indeed, travel to Sasanian Armenia in the company of a local nobleman named Baat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part One of this investigation problematized the use by numerous scholars of an untenably broad definition of “Gnosticism” to support the inference that 2 Clement 12 criticizes gnostic Christ-believers. Part Two completes the analysis of 2 Clement 12 and examines 2 Clement 13, which casts further doubt upon the notion that 12:5-6 calls for sexual renunciation. It is argued that 12:1-13:4 is not polemical and does not censure any distinctively gnostic views or praxes. By shedding both the supposedly gnostic background of the dominical logion about “the two” becoming “one,” about the “outside” being like the “inside,” and about “neither male nor female” (12:2b, 6b) and an antignostic agenda for the interpretations of the logion (12:3-5), scholarship has a better chance of opening up promising avenues for interpreting 12:1-13:4. In particular, the call to cultivate thinking that does not take into account a Christian’s gender (12:5) and the notion that the kingdom’s arrival depends on believers’ moral development (12:6) merit further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While scholars have long recognised Irenaeus’s acquaintance with rhetorical theory, the role of rhetorical theory in Irenaeus’s scriptural exegesis has only recently come to light. In the last few years, Lewis Ayres (2015) and Anthony Briggman (2015, 2016) have argued for the central importance of Greco-Roman literary and rhetorical theory to Irenaeus’s approach to scripture. This paper will build on the work of Ayres and Briggman by exploring Irenaeus’s engagement with rhetorical theory in his interpretation of the Johannine prologue in AH 1.8.5-9.3. In this paper, I will argue that Irenaeus’s exegetical strategy in AH 1.8.4-9.3 is best understood in light of the question of authorial intent as formulated in rhetorical handbooks. Specifically, I will argue that Irenaeus presents his argument as a defence of the scriptum of the prologue, and so follows the conventions laid out in rhetorical handbooks for a dispute between scriptum et voluntas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The acquaintance of Origen with Aristotle and Peripatetic tradition is still unexplored in scholarship due to both the lack of documentation concerned with the Peripatetic school in the early imperial period and to the equivocal and complex approach of the early Christians to the classical philosophy. The chief aim of this study is to contribute to the understanding of Origen’s knowledge of Aristotelian thought by investigating his explicit references to Aristotelian texts and doctrines. In this respect, the analysis will focus on Origen’s references to the biography of Aristotle, to the doctrines explicitly attributed to Aristotle and the Peripateticians, finally to some specific Peripateticians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article first explores Augustine’s conspicuous references to ‘God’s Hand’ in his Confessions by presenting a fresh translation and brief commentary of the relevant texts. In the commentary special attention is given to the possible signifiance of these texts to (former) Manichaean readers. It is concluded that Augustine’s eye-catching imagery is not only inspired by biblical language and—in all likelihood—by predecessors in the Christian tradition such as Irenaeus and especially Ambrose, but also strikingly coincides with an essential metaphor of the Manichaeans. This feature once again underlines the importance of the Manichaean element in Augustine’s Confessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article problematizes the widespread use of an untenably broad definition of Gnosticism to support claims that 2 Clement 12 is antignostic. Several conclusions about the writing's aims and opponents must therefore be reconsidered. It is argued that 2 Clement 12 is not polemical and does not censure any distinctively gnostic views or praxes. By shedding both the supposedly gnostic background of the dominical logion about "the two" becoming "one," about the "outside" being like the "inside," and about "neither male nor female" (12:2b, 6b) and an antignostic agenda for the interpretations of the logion (12:3-5), scholarship has a better chance of opening up promising avenues for interpreting this saying of Jesus and its interpretation in 2 Clement 12. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay meets at the crossroads of religion and literature, insofar as it concerns the extent to which fictional characters can articulate religious viewpoints. The subject here is D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love with particular focus on the novel’s main character, Rupert Birkin. This essay argues that Birkin’s particular worldview, and the source of the strangeness with which it is encountered, is due to its location outside Judeo-Christian frameworks and inside a fundamentally “Gnostic” one. To prove this argument, I first adumbrate essential features of the Gnostic myth and then proceed to show how Birkin both reflects and departs from them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Polish literary-historical criticism, the concept of Gnosticism has been used most frequently as a hermeneutical category that makes it possible to understand better the oeuvre of authors from Central and Eastern Europe. Polish scholars have successfully identified (neo)gnostic ideas present in the works of Jerzy Hulewicz, Tadeusz Miciński, and Franz Kafka. By referring to the works of Hans Jonas, Kurt Rudolph, and Jerzy Prokopiuk, many of them, unfortunately, have reproduced stereotypes on Gnosticism. In light of more recent studies on Gnosticism, the conclusions of their inquiries have become problematic. The main goal of this paper, therefore, is to highlight the most common errors present in the examination of Polish literary scholars from the perspective of Gnostic studies, as well as the inaccuracies in their methodology that stem from outdated scholarly materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John 8:44 has been a source of concern because of its ambiguity. Is it to be read "of (your) father, the devil" or "of the father of the devil"? This article contends that the former, traditional reading is not ungrammatical as suggested in the grammars and more recently by DeConick and that accordingly the verse cannot be considered pro-gnostic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]