A book I co-wrote on the Coptic poem, Thunder: Perfect Mind, is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com or you favorite book distributor.
I co-wrote it with Hal Taussig, who works on ancient meals and just wrote a new book on sociology of ancient meals, and my friends Maia Katrosits, Justin Lasser, and Celene Lillie.
Here is the blurb:
What do Toni Morrison, Umberto Eco and Ridley Scott have in common? All of them have been fascinated by an ancient poem from the Nag Hammadi codices, The Thunder: Perfect Mind, and have evoked its words in their work. This poem of provocative self-declarations by a mostly female, sometimes divine figure has already had a full life in the contemporary public imagination. Yet scholarship on Thunder has been limited, and has paid too little attention to the powerful and puzzling I at its center. What might this poem have meant to its ancient audience? How does it complicate and change contemporary images of early Christianity? What are the poem's possibilities for meaning now? In this fresh, post-gnostic translation, and the first book-length treatment in English devoted to Thunder, the history, social world and literary composition of the poem gain new attention and significance, as do the compelling twists and turns of gender and status that the voice of Thunder takes.
I was responsible for tracing its poetic qualities (the longest chapter in a fairly short book).
1 comment:
Wow-- exciting! Congrats to you and to Hal (I don't know the other folk but I'm sure they're lovely too).
Such an interesting document.
But why am I not surprised that you wrote a long chapter? :-)
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