Gnostisizm Tarihi

by Giovanni Filoramo, Selma Aygül Baş (Çevirmen), Bilal Baş (Çevirmen)

Gnostisizm Tarihi
A History of Gnosticism
Giovanni Floramo
Çevirmenler: Selma Aygül Baş - Bilal Baş

İçindekiler:

-kısaltmalar,
-giriş, s.13
-gnosis ve modern kültür,
-gnostisizmin yeniden keşfi,

-kayıp bir inancın parçaları, s.31
-buluş,
-gnostikler ve maskeleri,
-heresiolojik kaynaklar problemi,
-kavram arayışı: gnostisizm ve yorumları,
-çölden bir ses: nag hammadi (nec hammadi) kütüohanesi,

-şeytanlar ve tanrılar arasında: bir vahiy dönemi, s.65
-iki başlı janus: antonilerin yüzyılı,
-yeni dini ufuklar,
-kurtuluşa giden yollar,
-vecd ve vahiy,
-yeni bir kimlik arayışı,

-gnostik muhayyile, s.97
-gnostik bilginin tabiatı,
-mit, düşünce ve toplum,
-gnostik mitin mahiyeti,

-pleromanın dünyasında, s.121
-gnostik düalizm,
-cennetteki başlangıç,
-arketip androjini sırrı,
-ilahi hiyerarşiler: pleromatik ailenin yapısı,
-sofianın günahı,

-yarı-tanrının (demiurge) kibri ve dünnyanın yaratılışı, s.153
-sofianın bozguncu davranışı,
-'kadından doğan kadın': yarı-tanrının doğumu,
-sethian ve valentinyen kozmogoniler,
-kozmogonik temalardaki gnostik çeşitlilik,

-ve atnrıdedi: 'suretimizde, bize benzeyen insan yaratalım', s.177
-sunuş,
-adem ve havvanın yaratılışı,
-sarsılmaz ırk: şit ve torunları,
-valentinyen okulun antropogonisi,

-birliğin gizemi: gnostik kurtarıcı, s.199
-bilgi,
-poimandres meselesi,
-kurtarıcı şit,
-valentinyen İsa,
-diğer gnostik kristolojiler,

-son için bekleyiş, s.243
-gnostik eskatolojinin mahiyeti,
-kilise çağı,
-gnostiklerin ruhun semaya yükseliş tasvirleri,

-simon magus ve gnostiklerin menşei, s.267
-gnosis ve gnostisizm,
-menşe araştırmasında simon magus ve helen miti,

-kahinler, peygamberler ve azizler: bir gnostisizm tarihine doğru, s.285
-vecd, fena ve vahiy,
-ikinci asır gnostik düşünürler,
-direniş ve teslimiyet,

-zahitler ve libertinistler, s.319
-gnostisizmin bir sosyolojisine doğru,
-dini ayin süreçleri,
-zahitler ya da libertinistler: gnostik etiğin ikilemi,

-kaynakça, s.347
-dizin, s.365.

İlk olarak Hümanizmin, daha sonra da Rönesansın gelişiyle Kabalistik düşünce modlarıyla birleşen ve Hermetizm'in yeni ateşiyle iyice ısıtılan kompleks Gnostik düşünce geleneği antik nihilizmini terk etmiş ve kendisini meydana getiren çekirdeğini yeniden biçimlendiren düalist elbisesini bir kenara atmış ve kendini oluşturan özü yeniden şekillendirmiştir ki bu öz artık 'çağın yeni gereksinimlerine uygun bir şekilde benlikle karşılaşma bilinci olarak kendini bilmek' olarak tanımlanmaktaydı.

Böylece Gnostik düşünce Kabalistik Hıristiyanların düşüncesine ilham vermiş, Rosicrucian hareketinin merkezini oluşturmuş, sır toplulukları (occult) oluşturmayı hedefleyen birçok macerada çiçek açmış ve büyük mistiklerin, ruhani düşünürlerin ve simyacıların, özellikle de onsekizinci yüzyıl Almanlarının düşüncelerini tamamıyla etkisi altına almıştır.

Genres: History, Gnosticism, Religion, Christianity, Nonfiction, Occult, Spirituality

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Giovanni Filoramo è un accademico e storico delle religioni italiano.

Reviews

[Mesoscope · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book, Filoramo orients his reader to the essential landscape of some of the key varieties of Gnostic Christianity that have come down though the Nag Hammadi scriptures and the writings of the heresiologists, particularly those of the Sethian and Valentinian traditions. It is a daunting task to survey these elaborate and somewhat baffling systems, with their fever-dream paranoia of demonic forces and their ornate, many-tiered cosmologies of salvation.

It is no less daunting to follow along on the ride - to this reader, at least, this book seemed very long, even coming in at just under 200 pages. I came away exhausted but deeply informed. And I am glad to have done so, although I'm profoundly ambivalent about their system, which is as much schizotypal metaphysical speculation as profound psychology.

No wonder the Gnostics imagined themselves to be imprisoned in the material world, cut off from the remote creative power and spiritual source of their being. Their appetite for spewing forth and hypostasizing layer after layer of ideation was endless. The more they strangled the life out of their spiritual insight by concretizing it as literal cosmology, the more they cut themselves off from their own center. This sense of estrangement in turn led them to elaborate yet more dimensions of aeons, emanations, and symbols of imprisonment, in a terrible vicious circle. It all gets rather tedious.

But this is key stuff, vital to understanding the history of early Christianity and esotericism in late antiquity, and touches neatly on Judaism and Neoplatonism.

This book is rumored to be the great academic survey of Gnosticism, and that's what I'd found, but it's not for the feint of heart. A word of praise goes out to Anthony Alock, who undertook what must have been the incredibly difficult task of rendering this book into English.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book does not have an accurate title, but I do not know if that if the book had an accurate title if it would be any more enjoyable to read. At least some parts of this book, mostly towards the end, try to create the basis of a history of Gnosticism, but most of the book seems like the author's attempt to spread the good news of Gnosticism through a very sympathetic reading of the corpus of materials that one finds from various religious traditions of the late classical world that are associated with that religious movement. This book was written by an Italian religious scholar and is translated from the German, and it is perhaps inevitable given the material included that this book is a particularly academic portrayal of Gnosticism from a point of view which has a high degree of sympathy with Gnostic thinkers as well as their Neoplatonist critics (like Plotinus) but without a high degree of understanding or appreciation for the biblical perspective. Given my own perspective, it is perhaps inevitable that I would find a lot of fault with this book, and in all honesty this book is not written for someone like me, but rather is written for someone who has more sympathy with the perspective of the Gnostic and certainly a lot more interest in what aristocratic Academics of the contemporary era as well as the past think about mass movements that leave them in the dust.

This book is a bit less than 200 pages of text, along with a lengthy set of endnotes, but despite its modest size, the book is a pretty tough slog in some respects. The book begins with Abbreviations and then with an introduction that looks at Gnosis and modern culture as well as the rediscovery of Gnosticism from the writings of Nag Hammadi. After this the book proper begins with a chapter on the fragments of a lost faith in Gnosticism that we get from the writings of anti-Gnostic writers of the early Catholic/Orthodox tradition as well as the writings of those within that tradition (1). This is followed by a chapter about the second century AD as an age of religious revelation in the world of late antiquity (2). The author then looks at the Gnostic imagination (3), as well as examining the world of the Pleroma (fullness) and its structure and supposed order (4). After this the author writes about the supposed arrogance of the Demiurge and the resulting creation of the world (5), as well as the way that Gnostics examined the problem of making mankind in the image and likeness of God (6), a problem that, it should be noted, does not adhere closely to biblical truth. This is followed by chapters that examine the Gnostic savior in both Sethian and Valentinian sources (7) as well as the nature of Gnostic eschatology (8). It is at this point, some 140 or so pages into a book that is only 190 pages, that the author actually begins writing about the history and not the theology of Gnosticism. First, the author explores the role of Simon Magus and his disciples as a way into the problem of the relationship between Gnosis and Gnosticism (9), then looks at the connection between various beliefs on ecstatic religion and various Gnostic teachers as well as the period of resistance and surrender to the dominant faith that followed the second-century beginning of the movement in later centuries (10), and then finally a discussion of ascetic and libertarian Gnosticism (11) before the book ends with notes, a select bibliography and suggestions for further reading and an index.

In reading a book like this, there is a great gulf that separates the author from this reader, a gulf that prevents me from wholeheartedly enjoying a book like this. If I am far from a sympathetic reader of this book, there are at least a few aspects of this book that are worth praise. For one, the author strives to understand Gnostics on their own terms, and is quick to recognize that the anti-heresy writers of the philosophical and Christian traditions did often have a good idea of what they were talking about when they criticized certain failings within particular Gnostic beliefs. The author recognizes that hidden within the hostility of many writers towards heretics was some sort of simultaneous attraction to it and susceptibility to the influence of heresy, which is something that one must always be careful of. Also, the author is also wise to point out that certain elements of the ascetic tradition that became important within Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity springs from roots that are not far from Gnosticism itself. Ultimately, though, this book is written by a friend of Gnosticism, someone who considers there to be truths within the batty and contradictory and imaginary cosmology of Gnosticism, and that is several bridges further than the facts and reality of the situation would warrant.

[James Henderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gnosticism (from gnostikos, "learned", from Greek: γνῶσις gnōsis, knowledge; Arabic: الغنوصية‎) is the thought and practice, especially of various sects of late pre-Christian and early Christian centuries, distinguished by the conviction that matter is evil and that emancipation comes through gnosis (knowledge). Filoramo's text explicates the nature of gnostic knowledge, the dualistic world view, and expands upon the the details of Gnosticism based on original texts. Gnosticism was primarily defined in a Christian context. Some scholars have claimed that Gnosticism pre-dated Christianity. Such discussions have included pre-Christian religious beliefs and spiritual practices argued to be common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism (especially Zurvanism), and Neoplatonism. The discussion of gnosticism changed radically with the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library and led to revision of older assumptions. Although some scholars still postulate pre-Christian Gnosticism, no evidence has been found to date. It is now generally accepted that Gnosticism developed into a coherent movement only in the second century. It is this movement whose history the author successfully narrates in his economical tome.

[Rick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting facts, poorly organized and written.