{"title":"The Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth (NHC VI,6), the Prayer of Thanksgiving (NHC VI,7), and the Asclepius (NHC VI,8): Hermetic Texts in Nag Hammadi and Their Bipartite View of Man","authors":"L. R. Lanzillotta","doi":"10.1163/2451859X-12340102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2451859X-12340102","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In an article from 2017, I introduced the study of the anthropological framework of Nag Hammadi texts and established the existence in this corpus of two anthropological patterns, the bipartite and tripartite. The present study continues the analysis by means of an exhaustive investigation of the evidence provided by the three Hermetic treatises included in Nag Hammadi Codex VI, namely, the Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth, the Prayer of Thanksgiving, and the fragment of Asclepius. It concludes that, far from presenting a tripartite anthropological framework, “die für die Gnosis typische trichotomische Anthropologie,” in the words of Karl-Wolfgang Tröger, these three Hermetic treatises only include a bipartite of view of the human being.","PeriodicalId":130908,"journal":{"name":"Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies","volume":"243 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124679711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Plato in Bad Company? Plato’s Republic (588b–589b) in the Nag Hammadi Collection: A Re-Examination of Its Background","authors":"P. Ashwin-Siejkowski","doi":"10.1163/2451859x-12340092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2451859x-12340092","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The Coptic translation of a passage from Plato’s Republic (588b–589b) found in the sixth Codex of the Nag Hammadi collection has received very limited academic attention in comparison with other tractates from the same Codex. This paper argues that placing this passage within Clement of Alexandria’s polemic with Christian Platonists Carpocrates and his son Epiphanes, may provide a fresh and insightful comment on the use of Republic, with its anthropology and ethics among various second-century Christian teachers. This passage allegorizes various passions within the human soul and warns against injustice. According to Clement of Alexandria the subject of justice, or righteousness, was one of the subjects which attracted the attention of Epiphanes. I propose that the origin of the Coptic passage goes back to the second-century effort to assimilate Platonic ideas about the human soul into Christian ethics. Although various apologists accused Carpocrates and Epiphanes of sexual immorality, I focus on the possibility that Christians with Platonic tendencies were exploring the nature and power of human passions and considering how they could be controlled. The place of the excerpt in the Nag Hammadi collection is not coincidental but goes along other mythological and didactic treatises within.","PeriodicalId":130908,"journal":{"name":"Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133639767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gnostic Psychedelia","authors":"E. Davis","doi":"10.1163/2451859x-12340078","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2451859x-12340078","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Today 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.","PeriodicalId":130908,"journal":{"name":"Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116087822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The New Age and Gnosticism: Terms of Commonality","authors":"M. Horowitz","doi":"10.1163/2451859x-12340073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2451859x-12340073","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The 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.","PeriodicalId":130908,"journal":{"name":"Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121622082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"American Gnosis: Jesus Mysticism in A Course in Miracles","authors":"S. Joseph","doi":"10.1163/2451859x-12340072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2451859x-12340072","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Since 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.","PeriodicalId":130908,"journal":{"name":"Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies","volume":"86 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124755441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Codex apocryphus gnosticus Novi Testamenti, written by Peter Nagel","authors":"D. Burns","doi":"10.1163/2451859x-12340086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2451859x-12340086","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":130908,"journal":{"name":"Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies","volume":"89 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121895477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Maidens, Magic and Martyrs in Early Christianity. Collected Essays I, written by Jan N. Bremmer","authors":"Anders Kloostergard-Pedersen","doi":"10.1163/2451859x-12340087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2451859x-12340087","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":130908,"journal":{"name":"Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133895725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Know Place: Heaven’s Gate and American Gnosticism","authors":"Cathy Gutierrez","doi":"10.1163/2451859x-12340071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2451859x-12340071","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Bonnie 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.","PeriodicalId":130908,"journal":{"name":"Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies","volume":"34 51","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113934301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Knowing of Knowing","authors":"H. Urban","doi":"10.1163/2451859x-12340070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2451859x-12340070","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This 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.","PeriodicalId":130908,"journal":{"name":"Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies","volume":"112 7 Pt 1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126080834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Concepts of the Divine in the Greek Magical Papyri, written by Eleni Pachoumi","authors":"D. Waller","doi":"10.1163/2451859X-12340084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2451859X-12340084","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":130908,"journal":{"name":"Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies","volume":"75 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121608465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}