Gnosticism and the History of Religions

Description

Gnosticism, as a category in religious studies - and public discourse - is inexorably entangled with the phenomenological ‘History of Religions’ school. Building on critical work in biblical studies, which shows how a historically-bounded heretical tradition called Gnosticism was ‘invented’, this work focuses on the following stage in which it is ‘essentialised’ into a sui generis, universal category of religion. At the same time, Gnosticism became a religious self-identifier, with a number of sizable contemporary groups identifying as Gnostics today, drawing on the same discourses. This book provides a history of this problematic category, and its relationship with scholarly and popular discourse on religion in the twentieth century. It uses a critical-historical method to show how and why Gnosis, Gnostic and Gnosticism were taken up by specific groups and individuals - practitioners and scholars - at different times. It shows how ideas about Gnosticism developed in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship, drawing from continental phenomenology, Jungian psychology and post-Holocaust theology, to be constructed as a perennial religious current based on special knowledge of the divine in a corrupt world. David Robertson challenges how scholars interact with the category Gnosticism, and contribute to our understanding of the complex relationship between primary sources, academics and practitioners in category formation. Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Contents Figures Acknowledgements Introduction: A strange charm 1 Against all heresies: Gnosticism before modern scholarship 2 The era of gnosis restored: Nineteenth-century Gnostics 3 The alien god: Gnosticism as existentialism 4 A crack in the universe: Jung and the Eranos circle 5 No texts, no history: Nag Hammadi 6 A revolt against history: Gnostic scholarship, after Nag Hammadi 7 Tongues and misunderstandings: Messina 1966 8 Takes a Gnostic to find a Gnostic: Contemporary gnostic groups 9 The third way: Gnosticism in Western esotericism 10 Knowledge of the heart: The gnostic New Age 11 The greatest heresy: Jeffrey Kripal’s gnostic scholarship 12 Elite knowledge: Gnosticism and the study of religion Notes Introduction: A strange charm 1 Against all heresies: Gnosticism before modern scholarship 2 The era of gnosis restored: Nineteenth-century Gnostics 3 The alien god: Gnosticism as existentialism 4 A crack in the universe: Jung and the Eranos circle 5 No texts, no history: Nag Hammadi 6 A revolt against history: Gnostic scholarship, after Nag Hammadi 7 Tongues and misunderstandings: Messina 1966 8 Takes a Gnostic to find a Gnostic: Contemporary gnostic groups 9 The third way: Gnosticism in Western esotericism 10 Knowledge of the heart: The gnostic New Age 11 The greatest heresy: Jeffrey Kripal’s gnostic scholarship 12 Elite knowledge: Gnosticism and the study of religion Bibliography Index