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.
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