Hip gnosticsThe article also surveys some key scholarship about Gnosticism during this period.
MICHAEL KALER
Globe and Mail Update
April 10, 2009 at 5:41 PM EDT
If there ever was one unified Christian movement, it probably died with Jesus at the first Easter. Ever since, Christianity has been a collection of any number of diverse groups.
Some – such as the Roman and Egyptian churches – have survived for millennia; others have vanished. Over a period of several centuries, the men we now call church fathers (the leaders of several of the factions of early Christians) fought opposing factions in the battle to define and control this new religion. Polemics were waged, books were destroyed, history was rewritten, all in the hope of eliminating “heresies” such as gnosticism.
It didn't work. Gnosticism is everywhere these days, in the movies, in the headlines and on bestseller lists. And this year marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Elaine Pagels's The Gnostic Gospels, the book that more than any other brought knowledge of gnosticism back into the mainstream.
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Monday, April 13, 2009
THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS by Elaine Pagels gets a thirty-year retrospective by Michael Kaler in the Globe and Mail: