{"product_id":"gnosticism-and-the-history-of-religions-9781350137691","title":"Gnosticism and the History of Religions","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): David G. Robertson\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: Gnosticism\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\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. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\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.","brand":"Bloomsbury Academic","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":45083974992023,"sku":"9781350137691","price":12700.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9781350137691.webp?v=1767898315","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/gnosticism-and-the-history-of-religions-9781350137691","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}