Gnostic Religion Book

Gnostic religion is not a commonplace nor mediocre subject in which to delve for anything termed as casual reading. The etymon of γνωστικός or gnostikos means “having knowledge.” Such is a set of archaic systems and intimations harmonized in the first century. Gnosticism is to a seeing divine on the right and on the left a blind demiurge.

Hans Jonas (student of Martin Heidegger/Rudolf Bultmann) taught at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem giving “ostendo” via texts, students and literary offspring in his “The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity.” Movement and flow heralds “the one” lack of such announces necrosis.

“Having once strayed into the labyrinth of evils, the wretched [Soul] finds no way out...You see, O child, through how many bodies [elements? ], ...ranks of demons, ... concatenations and revolutions of stars, we must work our way in order the hasten to the one and only God. What Marcion...called haec cellula creatoris---into which or out of which life may move.”
---Hans Jonas

Donning an un-occluded lens, we may compare Gnosticism as a war between the red vs. blue pill depicted in “The Matrix.” Red pill equates reality and the blue pill is the ever-fleeting placebo. Hans Jonas is brilliant in his methodology to engage the reader and cause erudition in modern terminology, ideas and examples.

Plentiful and symphonic in its use of cadence to indulge the senses of a presumed forgotten religion. Authoritative and detailed account of the vast spatial anomalies between the “rot und blau” theories of Gnosticism. Jonas blends the doctrines of the East and West, thus giving us sarkic, hylic and pneumatic examples of the soul. Read.