This book demonstrates that ancient Christian Gnosticism was an ancient form of cultural criticism in a mythological garb. It establishes that, much like modern forms of critical theory, ancient Gnosticism was set on deconstructing mainstream discourses and cultural premises. Strains of critical theory dealt with include the Frankfurt School, queer theory, and poststructural philosophy. The book documents how in both ancient Gnosticism and modern critical theories issues that used to serve as premises for discussion or as concepts relegated to the realms of the "natural" and the "given" in their respective historical contexts, are transformed into objects of contention. The main aim of this book is to salvage the historical category of Gnosticism from its present scholarly disavowal, if only because Gnosticism, when read as a cultural, and not only a religious phenomenon, presents us an ancient form of culture criticism which would be hard to parallel until (post) modernity. While Hans Jonas remarked many years ago that "something in Gnosticism knocks at the door of our Being and of our twentieth-century Being in particular," by the 21st century global world this something has already entered and lives with us. We can thus still benefit from another perspective, even if it comes from Mediterranean people who lived almost 2,000 years ago.

And Moricario said: "Let this work be performed as in a dream." It is said that the eon Moricario was united with a book through music and the sound of a clock. And as the clock gave its final sound, the work was fulfilled. An eternity was comprised between the pages of a tome. This book was then given to a Sethian monk living as a councilor in the House of Abel, and he was the first to read this book to his children and instructing them in its customs and curiosities. This third book is called The Cabinet: Sethian Gnosticism in the post modern world, even though the material presented in this volume is taken from The Moricario.

A new translation and commentary on the extracanonical Coptic text that describes Judas' special status among Jesus' disciples Since its publication in 2006, The Gospel of Judas has generated remarkable interest and debate among scholars and general readers alike. In this Coptic text from the second century C.E., Jesus engages in a series of conversations with his disciples and with Judas, explaining the origin of the cosmos and its rulers, the existence of another holy race, and the coming end of the current world order. In this new translation and commentary, David Brakke addresses the major interpretive questions that have emerged since the text's discovery, exploring the ways that The Gospel of Judas sheds light on the origins and development of gnostic mythology, debates over the Eucharist and communal authority, and Christian appropriation of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology. The translation reflects new analyses of the work's genre and structure, and the commentary and notes provide thorough discussions of the text's grammar and numerous lacunae and ambiguities.

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.

This third volume in the new series of supplements to the Journal of Semitic Studies is a survey of the historical and religious problems involved in the interconnection between the Sabians of the Qur'an, the Mandeans of southern Iraq, and the "Sabians" of Harran in northern Mesopotamia. It offers an important examination of traditional assertions by some that the Mandaeans and by others that the Harranians should be recognized as the "Sabians" of the Qur'an, the people granted protected status in Islamic law.

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.

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.

This book provides an anthology of sources highlighting Manichaeism, a gnostic religion which flourished largely clandestinely in the Near East, Central Asia, and China until the beginning of the seventeenth century. It translates and discusses the importance of a number of Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew testimonies for a proper understanding of the cultural importance of what most scholars consider to be the first 'world religion.' Many of these sources are translated here into English for the first time.

In the second century, Platonist and Judeo-Christian thought were sufficiently friendly that a Greek philosopher could declare, "What is Plato but Moses speaking Greek?" Four hundred years later, a Christian emperor had ended the public teaching of subversive Platonic thought. When and how did this philosophical rupture occur? Dylan M. Burns argues that the fundamental break occurred in Rome, ca. 263, in the circle of the great mystic Plotinus, author of the Enneads. Groups of controversial Christian metaphysicians called Gnostics ("knowers") frequented his seminars, disputed his views, and then disappeared from the history of philosophy-until the 1945 discovery, at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, of codices containing Gnostic literature, including versions of the books circulated by Plotinus's Christian opponents. Blending state-of-the-art Greek metaphysics and ecstatic Jewish mysticism, these texts describe techniques for entering celestial realms, participating in the angelic liturgy, confronting the transcendent God, and even becoming a divine being oneself. They also describe the revelation of an alien God to his elect, a race of "foreigners" under the protection of the patriarch Seth, whose interventions will ultimately culminate in the end of the world. Apocalypse of the Alien God proposes a radical interpretation of these long-lost apocalypses, placing them firmly in the context of Judeo-Christian authorship rather than ascribing them to a pagan offshoot of Gnosticism. According to Burns, this Sethian literature emerged along the fault lines between Judaism and Christianity, drew on traditions known to scholars from the Dead Sea Scrolls and Enochic texts, and ultimately catalyzed the rivalry of Platonism with Christianity. Plunging the reader into the culture wars and classrooms of the high Empire, Apocalypse of the Alien God offers the most concrete social and historical description available of any group of Gnostic Christians as it explores the intersections of ancient Judaism, Christianity, Hellenism, myth, and philosophy.

2013 Reprint of 1906 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Three Volumes bound into one. Volume contents are: Vol. 1. Prolegomena. -- Vol. 2. Sermons. -- Vol. 3. Excerpts and fragments This work exemplifies all that is best in Mead's dedicated, scholarly, but eminently readable studies of the spiritual roots of Christian Gnosticism and, more generally, of personal religion in the Greco-Roman world. His work encompassed much more than this; Mead was equally at home with Sanskrit texts, Patristic literature, Buddhist thought, and the problems of contemporary philosophy and psychical research. He devoted his intellectual energy to the complex interplay of Gnosticism, Hellenism, Judaism, and Christianity. This three volume set presents his insights into the formation of the Gnostic world-view and establishes him as an outstanding translator of these Hermetic books, and as the first modern scholar of Gnostic tradition.

This expanded edition of "The Gnostic Bible" includes the "Gospel of Judas" - the recently discovered and translated Gnostic text that was an instant best seller on its original appearance in 2006 - in its most accessible translation yet. Also included in this work are such important and topical texts as the "Gospel of Mary Magdalene" and the "Gospel of Thomas". Religious thinkers engaged in the quest for wisdom and knowledge, the Gnostics proclaimed that salvation could be found through mystical knowledge and intuition. Dating from the first to the thirteenth centuries, the texts in "The Gnostic Bible" represent Jewish, Christian, Hermetic, Mandaean, Manichaean, Islamic, and Cathar forms of Gnostic spirituality, and they derive from Egypt, the Greco-Roman world, the Middle East, Syria, Iraq, China, France, and elsewhere.