Talking about Religious Experience at Nag Hammadi

Authors

  • Michael Kaler York University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/bsor.v42i1.2

Keywords:

gnosticism, religious experience, Nag Hammadi, the Gospel of Truth

Abstract

In this article Michael Kaler notes the emphasis found in gnostic texts on transcendent religious experience and argues that this emphasis needs to be taken more into account in modern research than has tended to be the case.

Author Biography

  • Michael Kaler, York University

    Michael Kaler is currently a doctoral candidate in ethnomusicology at York University, studying the history of rock music, with particular focus on musical and spiritual aspects of the rock improvisational tradition.He received his first doctorate from Laval University in religious studies, did post-doctoral work in that field at McMaster University, and has published numerous articles and two books on gnosticism and early Christian heterodoxy.

References

Barnard, William. 1997. Exploring Unseen Worlds: William James and the Philosophy of Mysticism. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Couliano, Ioan.1992. The Tree of Gnosis: gnostic mythology from early Christianity to modern nihilism. San Francisco: Harper.

Desjardins, Michel. 1990. Sin in Valentinianism. Atlanta: Scholars Press.

Grobel, Kendrick. 1960. The Gospel of Truth: A Valentinian Meditation on the Gospel. New York: Abingdon.

Hedrick, Charles. 1980. “Gnostic Proclivities in the Greek Life of Pachomius and the Sitz im Leben of the Nag Hammadi Library.” Novum Testamentum 22:78–94.

Krizmanic, Dorothy. 2008. A Christian Gnostic Initiation Homily: The Gospel of Truth (NHC I,3 [XII,2]). MA thesis, University of Toronto.

Layton, Bentley. 1987. The Gnostic Scriptures. Garden City: Doubleday.

Lewis, James. 2003. Legitimating New Religions. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Meyer, Marvin W., and Wolf-Peter Funk. 2007. The Nag Hammadi Scriptures. New York: HarperOne.

Pearson, Birger. 2007. Ancient Gnosticism: Traditions and Literature. Minneapolis: Fortress.

Taves, Anne. 2009. Religious Experience Reconsidered : A Building Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Thomassen, Einar. 2006. The Spiritual Seed: The Church of the “Valentinians.” Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 60. Leiden: Brill.

Williams, Jacqueline. 1988. Biblical Interpretation in the Gnostic Gospel of Truth from Nag Hammadi. Atlanta: Scholars Press.

Published

2013-03-08

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Kaler, M. (2013). Talking about Religious Experience at Nag Hammadi. Bulletin for the Study of Religion, 42(1), 2-7. https://doi.org/10.1558/bsor.v42i1.2