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Tag: Gnosticism
Summary of Jared C. Calaway, “From Ignorant to Inspired: Moses in Gnostic Literature,” Gnosis 6 (1, ʼ21) 1-30. DOI: 10.1163/2451859X-12340100.
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Summary of Cindy Dawson, “Assaulting Sophia, Protecting Sophia: The Female Body as a Symbolic Artifact in Gnostic Mythology,” Gnosis 5 (2, ʼ20) 149-171. DOI: 10.1163/2451859X-12340091.
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Monographs on Marcion
When studying Marcion today, where should one begin? For a basic introduction, one can turn to my book Found Christianities (2022, pp. 160-172). For understanding Marcion’s New Testament, one should turn to Jason Beduhn, The First New Testament (2013). Other scholarly monographs are as follows.
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Review of John Knox, Marcion and the New Testament: An Essay in the Early History of the Canon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942).
- Marcion’s canon was the first “closed” canon of distinctively Christian writings. “No one before Marcion said of a restricted number of documents ‘These and these alone among Christian books are to be accepted in the church.’” 19.
- Marcion set his collection over against the Jewish scriptures and thought of his canon as having the same relation to the God of Christ as the Jewish-Christian Bible had to the Creator God. It would thus have been for him, in very truth, a new (even if the only true) ‘testament,’ whether Marcion used that phrase or not.” 21.
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Review of David Trobisch, On the Origin of Christian Scripture: The Evolution of the New Testament Canon in the Second Century (2023).
In this fascinating book, Trobisch proposes that the canonical edition of the 27-book New Testament had a single, mid-2nd century editor who used a consistent system of nomina sacra (8) and who divided the 27 books into four volumes (a 4-gospel volume, an Acts-Catholic epistles section, 14 letters of Paul, and Revelation). 82. It was a collection using first-century “apostolic” voices for second-century concerns. 58.
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Review of A Lost Edition of the Letters of Paul: A Reassessment of the Text of the Pauline Corpus Attested by Marcion (1989).
Once one considers the textual affinities of the Pauline Corpus reflected by Marcion, “it becomes far more likely that Marcion’s role was not the creation of a new text but the adaptation of an already existing Pauline Corpus which began with Galatians; it called Ephesians ‘Laodiceans’; it had the fourteen-chapter form of Romans; and it contained a great number of variants which scholars have wrongly assumed were created by Marcion.” 4.
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Review of Markus Vinzent, Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels 2014
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Summary of Gerhard Luttikhuizen, Gnostic Revisions of Genesis Stories and Early Jesus Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 2006).
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More Awesome Book Recs (New Testament/Gnosis)
I have focused on books that are (1) recent, (2) scholarly (i.e. not apologetic), and (3) reasonably priced. If a book is expensive, but worth the price, I’ve put a dollar sign ($) in front of it.
*This document uses affiliate links, which may provide me a small commission. Using these links is just one more way to support me.*
Happy reading!
New Testament
- Michael Boler, Introduction to Classical & New Testament Greek: A Unified Approach (2020). https://amzn.to/4b6tswA
- Michal Beth Dinkler, Literary Theory and the New Testament (2019). https://amzn.to/3yg9kd6
- Andrew P. Wilson, Critical Entanglements: Postmodern Theory and Biblical Studies (2020). https://amzn.to/3QyCri4
- Matthew D. C. Larsen, Gospels Before the Book (2018). https://amzn.to/4bsiuRW
- M. David Litwa, How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths (2019). https://amzn.to/3QF2YtT
- Kara J. Lyons-Pardue, Gospel Women and the Long Ending of Mark (2020). https://amzn.to/4ba2zrK
- Candida R. Moss, Divine Bodies: Resurrecting Perfection in the New Testament and Early Christianity (2019). https://amzn.to/3y9MWC7
- $ Max Whitaker, Is Jesus Athene or Odysseus? Investigating the Unrecognisability and Metamorphosis of Jesus in his Post-resurrection Appearances (2019). https://amzn.to/3UCipV1
- $ Lorne R. Zelyck, The Egerton Gospel (2019). https://amzn.to/3JURLSa
Paul
- Bryan Blazosky, The Law’s Universal Condemning and Enslaving Power (2019). https://amzn.to/3wwaGQf
- $ Marlene Crüsemann, The Pseudepigraphal Letters to the Thessalonians (2019). https://amzn.to/4b9U2VM
- Joseph R. Dodson and David E. Briones, ed. Paul and the Giants of Philosophy: Reading the Apostle in Greco-Roman Context (2019). https://amzn.to/3JPS0y5
Gnosis
- $ Nils A. Pedersen, et al. The Old Testament in Manichaean Tradition (2017). https://amzn.to/4dwl8YI
- Peter Schäfer, Two God’s In Heaven: Jewish Concepts of God in Antiquity (2020). https://amzn.to/4dwOKVI
- $ Markus Vinzent, ed. Marcion of Sinope as Religious Entrepreneur (2018). https://amzn.to/3WAnPT8
- Joseph Tyson, Marcion and Luke-Acts: A Defining Struggle (2006). https://amzn.to/4buANWF
M. David Litwa, Ph.D. 