Antiquitopia

If anyone who reads this blog has somehow does not also read Larry Hurtado's or April DeConick's blogs, please check into the discussion they're having about Gnostics as Christian Intellectuals. Hurtado's first post ; DeConick's  response ; Hurtado's  response to DeConick's response. Hurtado's posts predominantly raise the question of definition: what is an intellectual (and, by the way, most scholars would not fall under his definition because you have to be public - and therefore counts only those engaged in apologetics or who can draw a Greco-Roman response)?  This definition of intellectual, relying on the old distinction between a scholar and an intellectual, raises some questions for early Christian thinkers (a term I will use to cover both scholars and intellectuals). So was Origen merely a scholar - not an intellectual - until he wrote Contra Celsum ?  How truly "public" are apologetic writings?  Though Justin's apologies are...

I will be giving a public talk about some of the research I worked on this summer sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Mississippi a week from today (September 18).  If anyone is around Oxford, MS, please come by! Here are the details: From Ignorant to Inspired: Moses in Gnostic Literature Abstract: How did various early Christians groups understand Moses?  How did they interpret his prophetic authority and his divine visions?   Why did it matter?  Of all Christian groups, Gnostic Christians supposedly have at first glance the most negative view of Moses, treating him as the ignorant prophet of his equally ignorant master, the Demiurge or Creator of this world.  A closer look at the evidence produced by both Gnostics themselves and their enemies, however, demonstrates a much greater diversity of perspectives.  Far from always being the puppet of the ignorant Demiurge, some Gnostics portrayed Moses as the ...

Christopher Skinner offers a brief review of Nicola Denzey Lewis's new introductory textbook, Introduction to "Gnosticism": Ancient Voices, Christian Worlds  (OUP, 2013) on his blog Peje Iesous .  It is quite a glowing review for the book's potential usefulness in a classroom setting.  I have been thinking I need to read (and order) the book for my "Forbidden Scriptures" course for a while now.  I recently read her monograph, Cosmology and Fate in Gnosticism and Graeco-Roman Antiquity: Under Pitiless Skies (Brill, 2013 ), which I thought was a very good study of pronoia and heimarmene (and shockingly short).

I have just heard of the passing of Marvin Meyer from a melanoma.  He was an influential scholar on those religious movements that so often fall through the cracks of history (most notably "Gnosticism" and "magic"), popularizing and publicizing them to make them more widely known in several scholarly and trade publications.  Several people more intimate with Marvin Meyer have noted his passing.  Please see their comments here , here , and, here .