{"product_id":"gnosticism-and-the-history-of-religions","title":"Gnosticism and the History of Religions","description":"\u003cp\u003eBuilding on critical work in biblical studies, which shows how a historically-bounded heretical tradition called Gnosticism was ‘invented’, this work focuses on the following stage in which it was “essentialised” into a \u003ci\u003esui generis\u003c\/i\u003e, universal category of religion. At the same time, it shows how Gnosticism became a religious self-identifier, with a number of sizable contemporary groups identifying as Gnostics today, drawing on the same discourses.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This book provides a history of this problematic category, and its relationship with scholarly and popular discourse on religion in the twentieth century. It uses a critical-historical method to show how and why Gnosis, Gnostic and Gnosticism were taken up by specific groups and individuals – practitioners and scholars – at different times. It shows how ideas about Gnosticism developed in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship, drawing from continental phenomenology, Jungian psychology and post-Holocaust theology, to be constructed as a perennial religious current based on special knowledge of the divine in a corrupt world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDavid G. Robertson challenges how scholars interact with the category Gnosticism, and contributes to our understanding of the complex relationship between primary sources, academics and practitioners in category formation.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Bloomsbury Publishing PLC","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54252394742104,"sku":"9781350258594","price":38.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9781350258594.jpg?v=1770280209","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/gnosticism-and-the-history-of-religions","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}