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• W2576123048 abstract "Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewsVan den Broek, Roelof. Gnostic Religion in Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. ix+255 pp. $99.99 (cloth); $32.99 (paper).David BrakkeDavid BrakkeThe Ohio State University. Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreIn the sixth and final chapter of this learned and thorough introduction to ancient Gnosticism, Roelof van den Broek considers the difficult question of origins. He finds that gnostic religion includes elements of Platonism, Judaism, and (only sometimes) Christianity, but could not have originated in any single one of these traditions. Citing classic works of M. P. Nilsson and E. R. Dodds, van den Broek attributes Gnosticism to “an increasing conjunction of individualization and feelings of uncertainty” in the Mediterranean world of the second through fourth centuries CE, thanks to globalization and the decline of the city-state (228). In other words, “the age of anxiety” is back, or in his words, “the gnostic mood was in the air” (226). This remarkably, even refreshingly old-school conclusion sets aside a large body of scholarship, dating back to Peter Brown’s influential The Making of Late Antiquity (1978), that eschews a single zeitgeist of alienation in the second and third centuries in favor of a variety of religious and philosophical projects that drew on diverse traditions to address questions of God, the cosmos, and humanity’s relationship to them, especially as these were raised by authoritative writings like Genesis.Van den Broek chooses not to discuss Manichaeism or Mandaeism because they “originated outside the Graeco-Roman world” and their sources are “later than almost all the authentic hermetic and gnostic documents” (4–5), but his book still provides one of the most comprehensive introductions to the topic available. Successive chapters discuss the definitions of “gnosis” and “gnostic religion” (chap. 1), the Greek and Coptic traditions that preserve the sources (chap. 2), gnostic literature (chap. 3), antignostic literature (chap. 4), and gnostic experience and teachings (chap. 5), before the concluding chapter on origins. Van den Broek does not believe in a single gnostic religion with its own social structure and distinctive rituals; rather, the term refers to a variety of movements that share a set of characteristics and that reflect the experience of gnosis, defined as “an esoteric, that is partly secret, spiritual knowledge of God and of the divine origin and destination of the essential core of the human being which is based on revelation and inner enlightenment, the possession of which involves a liberation from the material world which holds humans captive” (2–3). The emphasis on experience in van den Broek’s synthesis of gnostic religion is especially welcome, and scholars and advanced students will benefit considerably from the lengthy chapter 2, which surveys a large number of ancient gnostic (and non-gnostic) works and offers an abundance of judicious and insightful observations.Any introduction reflects the distinctive historical claims and theoretical commitments of its author, but this one does so even more than most, for van den Broek is little interested in or affected by much recent scholarship in the field. For example, the challenging arguments of Michael Williams and others that the term “Gnosticism” should be abandoned are characterized as a “radical outlook” and set aside in a single paragraph (7–8). Because the only people in antiquity who called themselves “gnostics” or who were called such by others were Christians, some scholars now integrate “gnostic” movements into early Christian history; but here these developments “reflect the perspective and interests of church historians, not those of historians of religion in general” (10). Even Hans-Martin Schenke’s Sethian hypothesis, which may be the most widely accepted major proposal of the post–Nag Hammadi era, is rejected as “questionable” (28–29). Van den Broek frequently invokes his identity as an objective historian of religion in contrast to theologians and others with partisan interests, and he claims that as such he can use terms like “gnosis,” “gnostic,” and “heresy” in neutral, disinterested ways (e.g., 3, 7–8, 10, 220). “Magic” is another term that the historian of religion can easily use, for it appears frequently as an important analytical category for understanding gnostic religion, without any of the hesitation, careful definition, or theoretical caveats that one might expect. At some points “magic” seems to mean “coercive”: “the magician can, as it were, ‘force’ the invoked deity to manifest himself and render his assistance” (144). At others it seems to function as the opposite of “symbolic”: “the sacraments in the early Church had an almost magic [sic] significance: baptism really washed away previously committed sins and the Eucharist really allowed people to share in the body of Christ and thus in his resurrection. … We are taking too modern a view if we see these sacraments as only ‘symbolic’” (145). In any case, the magical character of gnostic religion appears in its use of names that appear also in the magical papyri, its concern for malevolent powers, and the belief that its rituals were actually effective.Scholars who work regularly on Gnosticism will want this book for its numerous insights into specific texts and problems and for its statement of a still-influential approach to “the gnostic vision” as a product of “Hellenistic religious syncretism” (230). Students and general readers looking for an introduction that better reflects current scholarly trends should consider an alternative, such as Nicola Denzey Lewis’s Introduction to “Gnosticism”: Ancient Voices, Christian Worlds (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 97, Number 1January 2017 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/689016 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article." @default.
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• W2576123048 title "Van den Broek, Roelof. Gnostic Religion in Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. ix+255 pp. $99.99 (cloth); $32.99 (paper)." @default.
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