What is Gnosticism?

A distinctive Christian heresy A competitor of burgeoning Christianity A pre Christian folk religion traceable to Oriental syncretism How do we account for the disparate ideas, writings, and practices that have been placed under the Gnostic rubric To do so, Karen King says, we must first disentangle modern historiography from the Christian discourse of orthodoxy and heresy that has pervaded and distorted the story.Exciting discoveries of previously unknown ancient writings especially the forty six texts found at Nag Hammadi in 1945 are challenging historians of religion to rethink not only what we mean by Gnosticism but also the standard account of Christian origins The Gospel of Mary and The Secret Book of John, for example, illustrate the variety of early Christianities and are witness to the struggle of Christians to craft an identity in the midst of the culturally pluralistic Roman Empire King shows how historians have been misled by ancient Christian polemicists who attacked Gnostic beliefs as a dark double against which the new faith could define itself Having identified past distortions, she is able to offer a new and clarifying definition of Gnosticism Her book is thus both a thorough and innovative introduction to the twentieth century study of Gnosticism and a revealing exploration of the concept of heresy as a tool in forming religious identity. New Download [ What is Gnosticism? ] Author [ Karen L. King ] For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr The title of this book, What is Gnosticismis a trick question Gnosticism doesn t exist other than as a concept that was reified as scholars projected a working construct back onto the ancient world In short, Gnosticism is amodern and acceptable and scholarly sounding term for heresy Hairesis, the Greek basis for our word heresy, referred to a coherent doctrine or tendency, a school of thought,and had a generally positive connotation It was for the early Christian heresiologi The title of this book, What is Gnosticismis a trick question Gnosticism doesn t exist other than as a concept that was reified as scholars projected a working construct back onto the ancient world In short, Gnosticism is amodern and acceptable and scholarly sounding term for heresy Hairesis, the Greek basis for our word heresy, referred to a coherent doctrine or tendency, a school of thought,and had a generally positive connotation It was for the early Christian heresiologists which for Karen King is synonymous with polemicists that heresy became pejorative.The early centuries CE were the wild, wild west of Christian theology There was not yet a canon There was not yet an established authority There was no common creed Instead there were diverse groups, each claiming to be based on the revelation of Jesus Christ and all jockeying for position and power The major aim of crying heresy was t...This is sort of wonderful King follows the ancient polemical and modern scholarly views of Gnosticism down through the ages Her main point is that the late 19th early 20th century scholars for the most part accepted and reinforced the views of the early church polemicists Irenaeus, Tertullian, etc She gives detailed example after detailed example We look at the work of Harnack, Reitzenstein, Bousset, Bultmann, Bauer, Jonas and others She then undertakes a review of shifting scholarly pos This is sort of wonderful King follows the ancient polemical and modern scholarly views of Gnosticism down through the ages Her main point is that the late 19th early 20th century scholars for the most part accepted and reinforced the views of the early church polemicists Irenaeus, Tertullian, etc She gives detailed ex...Very academic Very, very academic Yet, at the same time, helped me understand that the popular presentations of gnosticism and some of the reasons I became attracted to it tend to be by people with agendas having little to do with the actual historic records Gnosticism doesn t redeem Christianity but it doesn t refute it either But I ll tell you, Christianity is not the tidy little bundle we were all...Despite the seemingly simplistic title, this is not exactly a primer on the subject, but it does serve as a useful introduction nevertheless King essentially spends the book denoting the trouble with defining the term gnosticism and then covering the history of its definition.Gnosticism, in its earliest variety, was simply heresy If...Karen King has with this opus dealt a death blow to historic takes on the gnostic heresy Thanks in large part to the Nag Hammadi find over seven decades ago, the models of gnostic belief and genealogy developed over the past 1700 years have to be discarded They have developed from the anti heresy campaigns of several church fathers, and have been in essence...A good review of what scholars have debated in terms of the religious climate of the first couple centuries of the common era It does a great job of pointing out the ways that the language of heresy and orthodoxy color our understanding of the texts that we call gnostic In some ways, it has to open up the question of what it is that we call christian during that period as well So yeah, when you hear someone use the term gnosticism , typically what they are doing is relating to a power st A good review of what scholars have debated in terms of the religious climate of the first couple centuries of the common era It does a great j...This book presents a history of scholarship on Gnosticism It is a critique of the major trends is scholarship and not an introduction to the texts or traditions commonly called Gnostic It s a great history critique of scholarship, essential reading for all in the field of ancient Christ...don t let the number of pages fool you a third of it is bibliography and footnotes haha suckers and the other two thirds is about well, what the title pretty much spells out for you literallyThis is an truly fantastic and sweeping examination of the idea of Gnosticism.Well, I read the book and can say that I still don t know what Gnosticism is, but I sure know what it is not

• English
• 07 November 2018
Karen L. King
• Paperback
• 368 pages
• 0674017625
• Karen L. King
• What is Gnosticism?