Hippolytus, Refutatio 7.27
My thesis on the Egyptian Gnostics is posted here in its entirety. I felt it important to make it available before I find an eventual publisher for those interested in a perspective upon the origins of Gnostic thought, one only marginally indebted to the current Christian Origins appropriation of the field. This thesis firmly grounds the rise of Gnosis in ancient emanationist theologies, preeminently Egyptian and, furthermore, presents a socio-historic perspective for the rise of Gnostic thought in Alexandria. Presented here, as well, are a number of original Gnostic tractates, translated by the author.
THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT
Thesis Abstract:
I use "foundations" advisedly in the title of this thesis, foundations being usually hidden below ground, or concealed beneath the stratifications of the edifice they support. Hiddenness in this study is a hermeneutic issue, one that requires an interdisciplinary orchestration of philosophy, comparative religious studies, and social-historical research in order to unearth the ancient and tenacious precepts of Egyptian emanationist thought, and to reveal them as a pre-eminent contributor to Graeco-Roman Gnosis. Behind the surfeit of aeonial detail is to be found the hidden gestalt, the synergy of the theogonic, the emanationist substructure. It is the method of this study to step back from these particulars in order to chart the overall pattern, and to define it as substantively Egyptian, both in textual content and historical process.
Without wishing to idealise Alexandria it is difficult to overstate the centrality of this city in these times, both for its centuries-long tradition of textual appropriation by the time the Gnostics appeared, as well as its stubborn independence in the face of Roman ideologies, both pagan and Christian. I shall demonstrate that the antinomianism, the pronounced individualism, the rise of female spiritual leaders, the artistic traditions, the "libertinism", and the elitist predilections associated with the very broad and diverse Gnostic movement, find their philosophical, political, and geographical centre in the anarchic ferment of first and second centuries C.E. Alexandria. Alexandria, in turn, had extended its roots ever deeper into the Egyptian religious substrata through its close political and spiritual links with Memphis. A fusion occurred between an Egypto-Greek literati and the long-standing, and at this point long-suffering Egyptian priesthood, now disposed to deal with the acute problem of evil in the world. The Gnostic movement was indeed more than Alexandria and Memphis in the distinct local species of thought it produced, but the root of the eclectic Alexandrian/Memphite genius clearly pervades the genus of Gnostic expression. Equally, the Egyptian emanationist view, one handed down from the first instances of human time as a recorded phenomenon, became the great inescapable architectonic of Gnostic thought.
Photo used in title is of Dush oasis in the Western Desert in Egypt
All photos on this site by the author
Background image used on this page is of a Gnostic magical papyri written in Coptic
