Rudolph the East German scores a touchdown on the zero yard line with this important expose of gnostics living and dead. While Hans Jonas tends to dwell on the myth of the pearl and the e-mail to soul trapped in Egypt, Rudolph crosses the line, and suffice it see his marshland journal of the Mandeans and the spread of the Manichees which reached the Pacific and installed gnosticism as a state relion in Uighurstan knows no equal. There are also pictures for the kids to color in.

[from Boating on the Catawba...in the
"Musketaquid"]
"The hidden significance of these fables
which is sometimes thought to have been
detected, the ethics running parallel to
the poetry and the history, are not so
remarkable as the readiness with which they
may be made to express a variety of truths.
As if they were the skeletons of still older
and more universal truths than any whose
flesh and blood they are for the time made
to wear. *** But what signifies it? In the
mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the
unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its
hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the
history of the human mind, these glowing and
ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of
men, as Aurora [does]the sun's rays. The matutine
intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the
glare of philosophy, always dwells in this
auroral atmosphere."
-- Henry David Thoreau; *A Week on the
Concord and Merrimack Rivers*.
* * * * * * * * *
This work by Kurt Rudolph is the most
clearly defined, cross-referenced, and
helpfully labeled (in the margins) guide to
understanding Gnosticism which I have so far
encountered.
His explanations and numerous excerpts
are concise and clear, as are his numerous
guides to other places in the text which
are also relevant. Rudolph also includes
an excellent discussion of the discovery
and significance of the Nag Hammadi Coptic
gnostic texts, including an excellent and
clear outline of the Codices and their
contents. The book also contains remarkable
photographs of the places of discovery as
well as of some individual pages. In other
parts of the book there are photographs and
drawings related to other expressions
of Gnostic experience.
To explain the concept and the understanding,
one might borrow this quote from Elaine Pagels
in her remarkable work, *The Gnostic Gospels*:

"As the gnostics use the term, we could
translate it as *insight,* for gnosis
involves *an intuitive process of knowing
oneself.* And to know oneself, they claimed,
is to know human nature and human destiny."
* * * * * * * * *
As Rudolph so well puts it:
"They were not aiming at any ideal philosophical
knowledge nor any knowledge of an intellectual
or theoretical kind, but a knowledge which had
at the same time -- a liberating and redeeming
effect. *** All gnostic teachings are in some
form a part of the redeeming knowledge -- which
gathers together -- the object of knowledge
(the divine nature), the means of knowledge (the
redeeming gnosis), and the knower himself. The
intellectual knowledge which is offered as
revealed wisdom -- has here a direct religious
significance, since it is at the same time
understood as otherworldly, and is the basis
for the process of redemption." * * *
"There was no gnostic canon of scripture, unless
it was the *holy scriptures* of other religions,
like the Bible -- or Homer [sic], which were
employed and interpreted for the purpose of
authorising the gnostics' own teachings. ***
The gnostics seem to have taken particular
delight in bringing their teachings to
expression in manifold ways, and they handled
their literary producitons with great skill.
*** ...everywhere one notes a masterful practice
of the method of extracting as much as possible
out of the thoughts and expressing it in ever
new ways. In this process, the interpretive
method of *allegory and symbolism,* widely
diffused in the ancient world, was freely
employed."
* * * * * * * * *
Excellent in many ways...

This is a comparatively easy read (if compared to someinsufferable history books I read in college), and it is also veryinformative. No new age [stuff] -- just scholarship and very goodanalysis. This survey is much better than Hans Jonas in that itincorporates Nag Hammadi findings, and is not as hostile. The selectbibliography at the end is a jewel ...