This volume brings together a rich and varied collection of essays by Gilles Quispel (1916-2006), Professor of the History of the Early Church at Utrecht University from 1951 until his retirement in 1983. During his illustrious career, Professor Quispel was also visiting Professor at Harvard University in 1964/65, and visiting Professor at the Catholic University of Leuven from 1969 until 1974. The fifty essays collected in this volume testify to most of the prominent themes from Professor Quispel’s scholarly career: the writings of the Nag Hammadi library in general and the Gospel of Thomas in particular; Tatian’s Diatessaron and its influences; the Hermetica; Mani and Manichaeism; the Jewish origins of Gnosticism; and Gnosis and the future of Christianity. This volume also makes a number of his less known earlier publications (mainly presented under the heading ‘Catholica’) available to the international community. Until shortly before he died, Professor Quispel remained active in his study of the Gospel of Thomas. He had been one of the first to acquire the Coptic text of the Gospel of Thomas, of which he published the first translation in 1959 and his final translation in 2005. He was also active in researching the Diatessaron, and Valentinus ‘the Gnostic’. One of his most recent essays – published for the first time in this volume – is on ‘the Muslim Jesus.’

"In this work, Andrei A. Orlov examines the apocalyptic profile of the angel Yahoel as the mediator of the divine Name, demonstrating its formative influence not only on rabbinic and Hekhalot beliefs concerning the supreme angel Metatron, but also on the unique aural ideology of early Jewish mystical accounts."--Back of dust jacket.

In a day fascinated with questions of historiography and with explicating a distinctive Christian philosophy of time and history, Henri-Charles Puech’s (1950s) work on Gnosis and time found an audience. Studying four second-century texts he marked as Gnostic, he argued for the Gnostic, anti-cosmic, anti-historical pessimism about existence within the tyrannical temporal world of bondage and error. Bliss and truth were otherworldly and atemporal. This book reassesses Puech’s argument by analysis of the writings undergirding his sample and a wide array of second-century Christian and Gnostic-Christian texts that display not the Gnostic view, as if there were one, but a broader second-century theological discussion regarding time, world and knowledge manifesting a spectrum of perspectives. A review of past and present scholarly discourse that evoked discussions of Gnosticism and anti-cosmism, and informed Puech’s thesis begins the volume along with study of his own thesis. A discussion of the academy’s reception of Puech then follows. The close reading of early pertinent texts forms the heart of the work arguing for eight discernible models of history, time, and world that arose within the second-century intellectual debate.

"Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott offer a sustained argument for the monastic provenance of the Nag Hammadi Codices. They examine the arguments for and against a monastic Sitz im Leben and defend the view that the Codices were produced and read by Christian monks, most likely Pachomians, in the fourth- and fifth-century monasteries of Upper Egypt. Eschewing the modern classification of the Nag Hammadi texts as “Gnostic,” the authors approach the codices and their ancient owners from the perspective of the diverse monastic culture of late antique Egypt and situate them in the context of the ongoing controversies over extra-canonical literature and the theological legacy of Origen. Through a combination of sources, including idealized hagiographies, travelogues, monastic rules and exhortations, and the more quotidian details revealed in documentary papyri, manuscript collections, and archaeology, monasticism in the Thebaid is brought to life, and the Nag Hammadi codices situated within it. The cartonnage papyri from the leather covers of the codices, which bear witness to the monastic culture of the region, are closely examined, while scribal and codicological features of the codices are analyzed and compared with contemporary manuscripts from Egypt. Special attention is given to the codices’ scribal notes and colophons which offer direct evidence of their producers and users. The study ultimately reveals the Nag Hammadi Codices as a collection of books completely at home in the monastic manuscript culture of late antique Egypt."--

This volume offers new approaches to some of the biggest persistent challenges in the study of esotericism and beyond. Commonly understood as a particularly "Western" undertaking consisting of religious, philosophical, and ritual traditions that go back to Mediterranean antiquity, this book argues for a global approach that significantly expands the scope of esotericism and highlights its relevance for broader theoretical and methodological debates in the humanities and social sciences. The contributors offer critical interventions on aspects related to colonialism, race, gender and sexuality, economy, and marginality. Equipped with a substantial introduction and conclusion, the book offers textbook-style discussions of the state of research and makes concrete proposals for how esotericism can be rethought through broader engagement with neighboring fields.

"A certain king built himself a palace and summoned two persons to decorate it for him. The king divided his palace into two parts, putting one person in charge of one half and the second in charge of the other. One of the persons decorated his part of the palace with beautiful paintings of birds and animals. But the second person painted his half of the palace with black dye which was reflecting everything like a mirror. When the king came to judge the two decorations, everything he had seen in the first person's part he also saw in the second's part, since it was reflected in its black dye like in a mirror. Not only that, but even all the king could wish to put in the first half of his palace appeared in the second half. This found favor in the eyes of the king"--

Pagan rhetor, (Neo-)Platonist philosopher, Christian theologian This collection of essays is devoted to the rhetoric, Neoplatonic philosophy, and Christian theology of Marius Victorinus, a mid-fourth-century professor of rhetoric and philosopher who converted to Christianity late in life. Scholars from eight different countries, some of whom have not previously published in English, reflect on debates about his writings and theological development. These topics include Victorinus's deployment of philosophical sources for trinitarian theology, possible connections in his work to Origen, Augustine, Plotinus, Porphyry, and Gnosticism, as well as his contributions to Latin rhetoric and dialectic. Contributors include Jan Dominik Bogataj, Michael Chase, Nello Cipriani, Stephen A. Cooper, Volker Henning Drecoll, Lenka Karfíková, Josef Lössl, Václav Němec, Thomas Riesenweber, Guadalupe Lopetegui Semperena, Miran Špelič, Chiara O. Tommasi, John D. Turner, and Florian Zacher. The chapters in this volume are of great interest to students of late antique philosophy, Christian theology, and Latin rhetoric.