Title: Name of God & the Angel of the LordAnother in Baylor's new Library of Early Christology reprint series, on which more here and links.
Sub-title: Samaritan & Jewish Concepts of Intermediation & the Origin of Gnosticism
Series: (Library of Early Christology Series)
By (author): Jarl E. Fossum
ISBN10-13: 1481307932 : 9781481307932
Format: Paperback
Size: 230x155mm
Pages: 391
Weight: .650 Kg.
Published: Baylor University Press (US) - August 2017
List Price: 38.50 Pounds Sterling
Availability: In Stock Qty Available: 8
Subjects: History of religion : Church history : New Testaments : Biblical studies & exegesis : Christian theology
The relationship among Judaism, Gnosticism, and Christianity perpetually eludes easy description. While it is clear that by the second and third centuries of the Common Era these three religious groups worked hard to distinguish themselves from each other, it is also true that the three religious traditions share common religious perspectives. Jarl Fossum examines this common heritage by proposing that the emergence of an anticosmic gnostic demiurge was not simply Gnosticism's critique of the Jewish God or a metaphysical anti-semitism. The figure of the gnostic demiurge arose from Judaism itself. Fossum demonstrates that the first gnostic versions of the demiurge constituted a subordinated dualism. Fossum then turns to Judaism, in particular Samaritanism's portrayal of a principal angel. In distinction from non-Samaritan Jewish examples -- where the Angel of the Lord bears the Divine Name but is not a demiurge, or examples where the Divine Name is said to be the instrument of creation but is not an angel or personal being -- Fossum discovers a figure who bore God's name, was distinct from God, and was God's instrument for creation. Only in Samaritan texts is God's vice-regent personalised, angelic, demiurgic, and the bearer of God's name. In the end the book reveals that not all gnostic speculation was anti-Jewish and, indeed, emerging gnostic and Christian traditions borrowed as much from Judaism as they criticised and rejected.
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