Gnostic Apocalypse

Gnostic Apocalypse PDF Author: Cyril O'Regan
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791489507
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
Jacob Boehme, the seventeenth-century German speculative mystic, influenced the philosophers Hegel and Schelling and both English and German Romantics alike with his visionary thought. Gnostic Apocalypse focuses on the way Boehme's thought repeats and surpasses post-reformation Lutheran thinking, deploys and subverts the commitments of medieval mysticism, realizes the speculative thrust of Renaissance alchemy, is open to esoteric discourses such as the Kabbalah, and articulates a dynamic metaphysics. This book critically assesses the striking claim made in the nineteenth century that Boehme's visionary discourse represents within the confines of specifically Protestant thought nothing less than the return of ancient Gnosis. Although the grounds adduced on behalf of the "Gnostic return" claim in the nineteenth century are dismissed as questionable, O'Regan shows that the fundamental intuition is correct. Boehme's visionary discourse does represent a return of Gnosticism in the modern period, and in this lies its fundamental claim to our contemporary philosophical, theological, and literary attention.

Gnostic Apocalypse

Gnostic Apocalypse PDF Author: Cyril O'Regan
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791489507
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Get Book Here

Book Description
Jacob Boehme, the seventeenth-century German speculative mystic, influenced the philosophers Hegel and Schelling and both English and German Romantics alike with his visionary thought. Gnostic Apocalypse focuses on the way Boehme's thought repeats and surpasses post-reformation Lutheran thinking, deploys and subverts the commitments of medieval mysticism, realizes the speculative thrust of Renaissance alchemy, is open to esoteric discourses such as the Kabbalah, and articulates a dynamic metaphysics. This book critically assesses the striking claim made in the nineteenth century that Boehme's visionary discourse represents within the confines of specifically Protestant thought nothing less than the return of ancient Gnosis. Although the grounds adduced on behalf of the "Gnostic return" claim in the nineteenth century are dismissed as questionable, O'Regan shows that the fundamental intuition is correct. Boehme's visionary discourse does represent a return of Gnosticism in the modern period, and in this lies its fundamental claim to our contemporary philosophical, theological, and literary attention.

As Below, So Above

As Below, So Above PDF Author: Glen J. Fairen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781593330828
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
After questioning the scholarly assumptions regarding the "heretical" Nag Hammadi Library and the "apocalyptic" Dead Sea Scrolls, Fairen will argue that they were not diametrically opposed, but represent a scribal reconfiguration of an Enochic worldview as a critique of foreign rule.

Gnostic Return in Modernity

Gnostic Return in Modernity PDF Author: Cyril O'Regan
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791450215
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Gnostic Return in Modernity demonstrates the possibility that Gnosticism haunts certain modern discourses. Studying Gnosticism of the first centuries of the common era and utilizing narrative analysis, the author shows how Gnosticism returns in a select b

Apocalypse of the Alien God

Apocalypse of the Alien God PDF Author: Dylan M. Burns
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812245792
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
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.

The Nag Hammadi Library in English

The Nag Hammadi Library in English PDF Author: James McConkey Robinson
Publisher: Brill Archive
ISBN: 9789004071858
Category : Gnostic literature
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description


From Apocalypticism to Gnosticism

From Apocalypticism to Gnosticism PDF Author: Ithamar Gruenwald
Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
This collection of papers and articles brings together the results of over 10 years of research in the field of Jewish esoteric literature. The major subjects dealt with in the book are: the nature of Jewish esoteric literature; the development of Jewish Apocalypticism and Merkavah Mysticism from Scriptural Prophetism; the major qualities of Apocalypticism; the relationship between Judaism and Gnosticism; Judaism and Manichaeism; and the problem of a Jewish type of Gnosticism.

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

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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.

Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam

Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam PDF Author: Todd Lawson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136622888
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Of the several works on the rise and development of the Babi movement, especially those dealing with the life and work of its founder, Sayyid Ali Muhammad Shirazi, few deal directly with the compelling and complex web of mysticism, theology and philosophy found in his earliest compositions. This book examines the Islamic roots of the Babi religion, (and by extension the later Baha’i faith which developed out of it), through the Qur’anic commentaries of the Bab and sheds light on its relationship to the wider religious milieu and its profound debt to esoteric Islam, especially Shi'ism. Todd Lawson places the two earliest writings of the Bab within the diverse contexts necessary to understand them, in order to explain why these writings made sense to and inspired his followers. He delves into the history of the tafsir (Qur’an commentary) genre of Islamic scholarship, situates these early writings in the Akhbari, Sufi and most importantly Shaykhi traditions of Islam. In the process, he identifies both the continuities and discontinuities between these works and earlier works of Shi’i tafsir, helping us appreciate significant elements of the Bab’s thought and claims. Filling an important gap in the existing literature on the Babi movement, this book will be of greatest interest to students and scholars of Qur'an commentary, Mysticism, Shi'ism, the modern history of Iran and messianism.

The Apocalypse of Peter

The Apocalypse of Peter PDF Author: Jan N. Bremmer
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
ISBN: 9789042913752
Category : Apocalypse of Peter
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
The Apocalypse of Peter is the first modern collection of studies on this intriguing Early Christian book, that has mainly survived in Ethiopic. The volume starts with a short survey of the Forschungsgeschichte and a discussion of the old question regarding its eventual inspiration: Greek or Jewish. It is followed by a new look at the circumstances of its finding, the composition of the codex and its character, and also by a new edition of the Bodleian and Rainer fragments. The major part of the book studies various aspects and passages of the Apocalypse the nature of the Ethiopic pseudo-Clementine work that contained the Apocalypse, false prophets, the Bar Kokhba hypothesis, Paradise, the post-mortem 'baptism' of sinners, the grotesque body, the pattern of justice underlying our work, the Old Testament quotations and the reception of the Apocalypse in ancient Christianity. The book concludes with a study of the Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter. As has become customary, the volume is rounded off by a bibliography and a detailed index.

The Cambridge Companion to Apocalyptic Literature

The Cambridge Companion to Apocalyptic Literature PDF Author: Colin McAllister
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108422705
Category : Bibles
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
Apocalytic literature has addressed human concerns for over two millennia. This volume surveys the source texts, their reception, and relevance.