What Is Gnosticism?

Almost 2000 years ago the Christian church was in its founding stage. The people had experienced Jesus. After his execution by the Romans, people experienced Him in a variety of ways. The church formed from a variety of roots including the Jewish community and its sub-groups including;actual followers of Jesus (the Way), the Essenes (dead sea scrolls), temple gentiles (non-Jews but followers), Jews displaced by the Temple destruction, Hellenistic Spiritualists, followers of John the Baptist and Roman citizens. They mainly came from poor, dispossessed people with poor education. However there were also highly educated people who were able to write and carry on the experiences as the original observers died due to age and some persecution by the state supported Caesar worship.There were those whose different experiences with Jesus and their understanding collided with others. Some of this early salade of belief wanted to have a literal interpretation of their memory while others, influenced by the mythology tradition of religion, from a variety of sources preferred a more spiritual interpretation from myth.Hellenistic spiritual followers tended to be better educated and abstract in their thinking and embraced an equality of women and men in leadership while others with less education often craved and followed a literal interpretation of the memory. There was an almost 300 year struggle between these two basic streams of interpretation. The male centered, literalist group won out due to the support of Constantine, this group became the state church, the Roman Catholic Church. Quickly, the writings of the other group were destroyed, their members scattered and in some cases murdered. The dominant group had already branded the mythos group as heretic and labelled them Gnostic.Their beliefs and understanding was then defined only by those who mocked them until 1945 when a cache of their early writings were found in Egypt. This library was translated from Coptic into English and published in English in 1977. Dr. King lifts the veil in this work and takes us on a journey of deeper understanding allowing the Gnostics to speak for themselves.If you are interested in spirituality, myth and co-equal female-male spiritual leadership as well as history, this book is for you. It will shine a light on a broader foundation of Christian understanding and practice. It is worth the read and then a critical reflection. We now live in an age of Spirit. " What is Gnosticism" will speak greatly into this new world that has moved beyond correct belief to one of post-modern spiritual understanding.

Oh man, this book is difficult to wade theough. Not the content, that is easy to comprehend, but the delivery by Karen King, which is replete with academic speak and almost incomprehensible sentences, making reading like walking through thick mud. These instances are alternated with ones exhibiting clarity, however. She said she had an editor, so what happened? Otherwise very informative book.

Excellent copy and service.

This book is for doctors. Not your casual read. I have read all of Elain Pagels books and loved them. I found this book absolutely unreadable for the reader who does not have a PHD. I am fascinated by early Christianity and I found this book boring. I read the first chapter and put it down. It did not keep my interest and I do not recommend it . I will try to pick it up again to see if I am mistaken but if I am not I will be selling this on ebay. Two words Boring and Unreadable.

This author always delivers a digestible message.

The book arrived in very good conditions, more than expected!! It was so cheap and the shipping fast. Very satisfied with this product

Read this for my Theories and Methods class at Harvard. This book is revolutionary.

This is the one

Having recently read King's  The Secret Revelation of John , I was impressed to, just for once, read a scholar who didn't find it necessary to analyse Gnosticism purely in terms of rubbishing  Irenaeus  and the other heresiologists and say that Gnosticism is everything that the heresiologists say it isn't. So I was eager to read her analysis of wider Gnosticism as opposed to that of a single work.It wouldn't be at all facetious however to say that King's answer to the question posited in the title is "I don't know". So what does she give us instead?Firstly she begins with a different question, "What is heresy?". Then most of the rest of the book is taken up with the history of study of Gnosticism, from Harnack and his definition of Gnosticism as "acute Hellenisation of Christianity", through to the present day. Nag Hammadi has not cleared anything up at all, if anything it has just made the matter worse.In the final chapter King argues that the current methods of study are not able to help us arrive at our destination of defining Gnosticism. Even supposedly radical works such as Williams'  Rethinking Gnosticism  are still attempting to view Gnosticism through the framework of categories derived from the ancient heresiologists, and not getting us anywhere. So we need new methods, and we are still no closer to the answer.A valuable contribution to Gnostic studies indeed, but you won't find Gnosticism defined. If you really want to get closer to an answer to the question from King's viewpoint, I recommend going to her somewhat more readable later work, the aforementioned Secret Revelation of John. The Secret Revelation of JohnIrenaeusRethinking Gnosticism