Gnostic Countercultures

Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-90-04-43698-5
Verlag: Koninklijke Brill BV

Buch, Englisch, 332 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 489 g

Reihe: Brill

In Gnostic Countercultures, fourteen scholars investigate countercultural aspects associated with the gnostic which is broadly conceived with reference to the claim to have special knowledge of the divine, which either transcends or transgresses conventional religious knowledge. The papers explore the concept of the gnostic in Western culture from the ancient world to the modern New Age. Contributors trace the emergence, persistence, and disappearance of gnostic religious currents that are perceived to be countercultural, inverted, transgressive and/or subversive in their relationship to conventional religions and their claims to knowledge. The essays represent a selection of the papers delivered at the international congress Gnostic Countercultures: Terror and Intrigue convened at Rice University, March 26-28, 2015. The essays were originally published in Gnosis 1.1-2 (2016) and are available for the first time under separate cover.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

DeConick, April

Roig Lanzillotta, Lautaro

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

Introduction

Part 1: Antiquity

The Countercultural Gnostic: Turning the World Upside Down and Inside Out

April D. DeConick

“I Turned away from the Temple”: Sethian Counterculture in the Apocryphon of John

Grant Adamson

Transgressing Boundaries: Plotinus and the Gnostics

John D. Turner

Forbidden Knowledge: Cognitive Transgression and “Ascent Above Intellect” in the Debate Between Plotinus and the Gnostics

Zeke Mazur

The Apocalypse of Paul (NHC V,2): Cosmology, Anthropology, and Ethics

Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta

Gnosis Undomesticated: Archon-Seduction, Demon Sex, and Sodomites in the Paraphrase of Shem (NHC VII,1)

Dylan M. Burns

Gnostic Self-Deification: The Case of Simon of Samaria

M. David Litwa

Demon est Deus Inversus: Honoring the Daemonic in Iamblichean Theurgy

Gregory Shaw

The Coming of the Star-Child: The Reception of the Revelation of the Magi in New Age Religious Thought and Ufology

Brent Landau

Part 2: Modernity

The Great God Pan

Sarah Iles Johnston

Alan Moore’s Promethea: Countercultural Gnosis and the End of the World

Wouter J. Hanegraaff

Children of the Light: Gnostic Fiction and Gnostic Practice in Vladimir Sorokin’s Ice Trilogy

Victoria Nelson

Symbolic Loss, Memory, and Modernization in the Reception of Gnosticism

Matthew J. Dillon

Gnostic and Countercultural Elements in Zora Neale Hurston’s “Hoodoo in America”

Margarita Simon Guillory

Index 317

Über Autor(innen)

April D. DeConick, Ph.D. (1994, University of Michigan), is the Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Rice University. She has published extensively on early Christianity, esotericism, mysticism, and Gnosticism, including The Gnostic New Age: How a Countercultural Spirituality Revolutionized Religion from Antiquity to Today (Columbia University Press, 2016).

Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta, Ph.D. (1997, University Complutense; 2004, University of Groningen) is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Groningen. He is the author of numerous studies on Greco-Roman Philosophy; Early Christianity, Early Christian Apocrypha, Gnosticism, and Plutarch of Chaeronea.