Gnosis: An Introduction
Overview
This introduction to Gnosis by Christoph Markschies combines great clarity with immense learning. In his Introduction, Markschies defines the term Gnosis and its relationship to 'Gnosticism', indicating why Gnosis is preferable and sketches out the main problems. He then treats the sources, both those in the church fathers and heresiologists, and the more recent Nag Hammadi finds. He goes on to discuss early forms of 'Gnosis' in antiquity, Jewish and Christian (New Testament) and the early Gnostics; the main representatives of Gnosis, especially Valentinus and Marcion; Manichaeism as the culmination and end-point of Gnosis; ancient communities of 'Gnostics'; and finally 'Gnosis' in antiquity and the present. A useful chronological table and an excellent select bibliography are also included.
Top Highlights
“Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, Tertullian for short” (Page 37)
“Both pagan and Jewish antiquity valued ‘knowledge’, but their particular concepts of ‘gnosis’ had élitist features. Knowledge was not open to everyone.” (Page 4)
“The previous section on Basilides makes it clear how any reconstruction” (Page 81)
“From the Hellenistic period onwards, the notion begins to spread in Greece that knowledge is not only the consequence of a committed activity of the human mind, or, more precisely, of the reason which indwells the world, the Logos, but a gift of grace by a God who would remain unknowable without this gift.” (Page 3)
“In principle all human beings have the capacity to see through the world perceived by the senses in such a way: those who penetrate to a deeper knowledge of the structures of reality are as like God as it is possible for human beings to be (Plato, Republic 613c).” (Page 2)
Product Details
- Title: Gnosis: An Introduction
- Author: Christoph Markschies
- Publisher: T & T Clark International
- Publication Date: 2003
- Pages: 160
