{"product_id":"gnosticism-and-the-history-of-religions-9781350258594","title":"Gnosticism and the History of Religions","description":"\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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eDavid G. Robertson\u003c\/b\u003e is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University, UK. He is co-founder of the Religious Studies Project, and co-editor of the journal \u003ci\u003eImplicit Religion\u003c\/i\u003e. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eUFOs, the New Age and Conspiracy Theories\u003c\/i\u003e (Bloomsbury, 2016) and co-editor of \u003ci\u003eAfter World Religions: Reconstructing Religious Studies\u003c\/i\u003e (2016) and the \u003ci\u003eHandbook of Conspiracy Theories and Contemporary Religion\u003c\/i\u003e (2018).\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Bloomsbury Academic","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50388706525458,"sku":"9781350258594","price":45.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_bc91fb01-2a6f-4299-b860-58150ba4dd2d.jpg?v=1728906568","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/gnosticism-and-the-history-of-religions-9781350258594","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}