Gnostic Religion in Antiquity by Roelof van den Broek (PDF)

Description

Gnostic religion is the expression of a religious worldview which is dominated by the concept of Gnosis, an esoteric knowledge of God and the human being which grants salvation to those who possess it. Roelof van den Broek presents here a fresh approach to the gnostic current of Late Antiquity within its historical and religious context, based on sources in Greek, Latin and Coptic, including discussions of the individual works of preserved gnostic literature. Van den Broek explores the various gnostic interpretations of the Christian faith that were current in the second and third centuries, whilst showing that despite its influence on early Christianity, gnostic religion was not a typically Christian phenomenon. This book will be of interest to theologians, historians of religion, students and scholars of the history of Late Antiquity and early Christianity, as well as specialists in ancient gnostic and hermetic traditions.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Like other books by van den Broek, the writing is of only the highest caliber. It’s not for general readers, so anyone except specialists may find it overly-scholarly. Nonetheless it is one of the only books that takes all of the current scholarship on the Gnostic religion into account, so I highly recommend it. First you should read Jonas, Rudolph and Filoramo, then move on to the Nag Hammadi texts themselves as well as the books published by Brill and books by this author as well as by Pearson, Turner and Thomassen. Thank you for your time.

⭐Disclaimer: I read only the Kindle sample. The information was interesting but the English translation became more and more obtuse as I read making it difficult and irritating to continue reading. I deleted the sample and will not buy the book.

⭐Whilst not being a hugely in-depth work, Roelof van den Broek’s “Gnostic Religion in Antiquity” is a superb introduction to the subject. Approximately the first half of the book consists of relatively short analyses of the full range of known Gnostic texts, before a brief section on anti-gnostic literature. In this latter discussion van den Broek, while laying bare the limitations of these writers, is willing to give a certain level of credence to the reports of Irenaeus, Hippolytus and Epiphanius, unlike the fashionable opinion of most scholars to dismiss them entirely. He also goes outside the Christian sphere here, unlike other scholars, with the anti-gnostic writings of the Neoplatonists Plotinus and members of his school.The next major section approaches a broader analysis of gnosticism and its cosmology and mechanism of salvation as evidenced in Sethianism, Valentinianism and other groups. Van den Broek unlike many writers stresses the magical element present in gnosticism, and drily remarks that “Plotinus had a keener eye for this than many modern investigators”. Finally the author briefly turns to the thorny question of the origins of gnosticism, considering in turn Platonism (finding much in the ideas of Numenius of Apamea, though he is still considerably removed from gnosticism), Judaism and Christianity, before concluding by considering gnosticism as a “spirit of the age”, a desire for supposed ancient knowledge as superior to anything new, an idea not developed by many other writers it seems apart from Filoramo in his excellent

⭐A History of Gnosticism

⭐.

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