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Melchizedek (text)
Melchizedek is the first tractate from Codex IX of the Nag Hammadi Library. It is a Gnostic work that features the Biblical figure Melchizedek. The text is fragmentary and highly damaged. The original text was 750 lines; of these, only 19 are complete, and 467 are fragmentary. The remaining 264 lines have been lost from the damage to the text. Like much of Nag Hammadi, the text was likely used by Gnostic Christians in Roman Egypt. It makes reference to Seth, suggesting it may have been used in Sethianism, a school of Gnosticism. The date it was written is unknown; all that can be said is that it was created during the period of early Christianity, presumably at some point during the 3rd century. Content The main character and purported author is Melchizedek, who was the king of Salem and priest of ''El Elyon'' (the "most high God") in the Hebrew Bible. The text identifies Melchizedek with Jesus Christ; whether this was as a precursor or earlier equivalent, or as exactly t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nag Hammadi Library
The Nag Hammadi library (also known as the Chenoboskion Manuscripts and the Gnostic Gospels) is a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. Thirteen leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local farmer named Muhammed al-Samman. The writings in these codices comprise 52 mostly Gnostic treatises, but they also include three works belonging to the '' Corpus Hermeticum'' and a partial translation/alteration of Plato's ''Republic''. In his introduction to ''The Nag Hammadi Library in English'', James Robinson suggests that these codices may have belonged to a nearby Pachomian monastery and were buried after Saint Athanasius condemned the use of non-canonical books in his Festal Letter of 367 A.D. The Pachomian hypothesis has been further expanded by Lundhaug & Jenott (2015, 2018) and further strengthened by Linjamaa (2024). In his 2024 book, Linjamaa argues that the Nag Hammadi l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gamaliel (Qliphah)
Yesod (Hebrew: יְסוֹד ''Yəsōḏ'', Tiberian: ''Yăsōḏ'', "foundation") is a sephirah or node in the kabbalistic Tree of Life, a system of Jewish philosophy. Yesod, located near the base of the Tree, is the sephirah below Hod and Netzach, and above Malkuth (the kingdom). It is seen as a vehicle allowing movement from one thing or condition to another (the power of connection). Yesod, Kabbalah, and the Tree of Life are Jewish concepts adopted by various philosophical systems including Christianity, New Age Eastern-based mysticism, and Western esoteric practices. Jewish Kabbalah According to Jewish Kabbalah, Yesod is the foundation upon which God has built the world. It also serves as a transmitter between the sephirot above, and the reality below. The light of the upper sephirot gather in Yesod and are channelled to Malkuth below. In this manner, Yesod is associated with the sexual organs. The masculine Yesod collects the vital forces of the sephirot above, and tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sethian Texts
The Sethians (Greek: Σηθιανοί) were one of the main currents of Gnosticism during the 2nd and 3rd century AD, along with Valentinianism and Basilideanism. According to John D. Turner, it originated in the 2nd century AD as a fusion of two distinct Hellenistic Judaic philosophies and was influenced by Christianity and Middle Platonism. However, the exact origin of Sethianism is not properly understood. History Mentions The Sethians (Latin ''Sethoitae'') are first mentioned, alongside the Ophites, in the 2nd century, by Irenaeus (who was antagonistic towards Gnosticism) and in Pseudo-Tertullian (Ch. 30). According to Frederik Wisse, all subsequent accounts appear to be largely dependent on Irenaeus. Hippolytus repeats information from Irenaeus. According to Epiphanius of Salamis (c. 375), Sethians were in his time found only in Egypt and Palestine, but fifty years earlier, they had been found as far away as Greater Armenia. Philaster's (4th century AD) ''Catalogue of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
3rd-century Texts
The 3rd century was the period from AD 201 (represented by the Roman numerals CCI) to AD 300 (CCC) in accordance with the Julian calendar. In this century, the Roman Empire saw a crisis, starting with the assassination of the Roman Emperor Severus Alexander in 235, plunging the empire into a period of economic troubles, barbarian incursions, political upheavals, civil wars, and the split of the Roman Empire through the Gallic Empire in the west and the Palmyrene Empire in the east, which all together threatened to destroy the Roman Empire in its entirety, but the reconquests of the seceded territories by Emperor Aurelian and the stabilization period under Emperor Diocletian due to the administrative strengthening of the empire caused an end to the crisis by 284. This crisis would also mark the beginning of Late Antiquity. While in North Africa, Roman rule continued with growing Christian influence, particularly in the region of Carthage. In Persia, the Parthian Empire was suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gnostic Apocrypha
Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek: , romanized: ''gnōstikós'', Koine Greek: �nostiˈkos 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among early Christian sects. These diverse groups emphasized personal spiritual knowledge (''gnosis'') above the proto-orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of religious institutions. Generally, in Gnosticism, the Monad is the supreme God who emanates divine beings; one, Sophia, creates the flawed demiurge who makes the material world, trapping souls until they regain divine knowledge. Consequently, Gnostics considered material existence flawed or evil, and held the principal element of salvation to be direct knowledge of the hidden divinity, attained via mystical or esoteric insight. Many Gnostic texts deal not in concepts of sin and repentance, but with illusion and enlightenment. Gnosticism likely originated in the late first and early second centuries around Alexandria, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Athinganoi
The ''Athinganoi'' (, singular ''Athinganos'', , Atsinganoi) were a Manichaean sect regarded as Judaizing heretics who lived in Phrygia and Lycaonia but were neither Hebrews nor gentiles. They kept the Sabbath but were not circumcised. They were '' shomer negiah''. Other sources indicate that the Athinganoi were associated with the Simonians and had no connection to the Manichaean or Paulician sects. They settled in Byzantium in 1054: the year of the East-West Schism. The Athinganoi married Byzantine women, adopted Greek Orthodox Christianity, and eventually assimilated into the Slavic and Greek populations. In some studies, the Athinganoi are described as remnants of the Indo-Greeks who left India in 400 AD during the Migration period. Name The etymology of the word is not certain, but a common determination is a derivation in Greek for "(the) untouchables"derived from a privative alpha prefix and the verb (, , "to touch"). The Manichean sect is mentioned in Soghdian sour ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epiphanius Of Salamis
Epiphanius of Salamis (; – 403) was the bishop of Salamis, Cyprus, at the end of the Christianity in the 4th century, 4th century. He is considered a saint and a Church Father by the Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox, Catholic Churches, and some Presbyterians. He gained a reputation as a strong defender of orthodoxy. He is best known for composing the ''Panarion'', a compendium of eighty Heresy, heresies, which included also pagan religions and philosophical systems. There has been much controversy over how many of the quotations attributed to him by the Byzantine Iconoclasts were actually by him. Regardless of this, he was clearly strongly Aniconism in Christianity, against some contemporary uses of images in the church. Life Epiphanius was either born into a Romaniote Jews, Romaniote Christian family or became a Christians , Christian in his youth. Either way, he was a Romaniote Jew who was born in the small settlement of Besanduk, near Bayt Jibrin, Eleutheropolis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hippolytus Of Rome
Hippolytus of Rome ( , ; Romanized: , – ) was a Bishop of Rome and one of the most important second–third centuries Christian theologians, whose provenance, identity and corpus remain elusive to scholars and historians. Suggested communities include Rome, Palestine, Egypt, Anatolia and other regions of the Middle East. The best historians of literature in the ancient church, including Eusebius and Jerome, openly confess they cannot name where Hippolytus the biblical commentator and theologian served in leadership. They had read his works but did not possess evidence of his community. Photios I of Constantinople describes him in his ''Bibliotheca (Photius), Bibliotheca'' (cod. 121) as a disciple of Irenaeus, who was said to be a disciple of Polycarp, and from the context of this passage it is supposed that he suggested that Hippolytus so styled himself. This assertion is doubtful. One older theory asserts he came into conflict with the popes of his time and seems to have heade ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Incarnation Of Jesus
In Christian theology, the incarnation is the belief that the pre-existent divine person of Jesus Christ, God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, and the (Koine Greek for 'word'), was "made flesh" by being conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of a woman, the Virgin Mary, who is also known as the (Greek for "God-bearer" or "Mother of God"). The doctrine of the incarnation then entails that Jesus was at the same time both fully God and fully human. In the incarnation, as traditionally defined by those Churches that adhere to the Council of Chalcedon, the divine nature of the Son was united but not mixed with human nature in one divine person, Jesus, or according to those adhering to the Council of Ephesus, the divine and human natures of Christ are fully united into one composite nature "without mixing, confusion, or separation". This is central to the traditional faith held by most Christians. Alternative views on the subject (see Ebionites and t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christology
In Christianity, Christology is a branch of Christian theology, theology that concerns Jesus. Different denominations have different opinions on questions such as whether Jesus was human, divine, or both, and as a messiah what his role would be in the freeing of the Jewish people from foreign rulers or in the prophesied Kingdom of God (Christianity), Kingdom of God, and in the Salvation in Christianity, salvation from what would otherwise be the consequences of sin. The earliest Christian writings gave several titles to Jesus, such as Son of Man, Son of God, Messiah, and , which were all derived from Hebrew scripture. These terms centered around two opposing themes, namely "Jesus as a Pre-existence of Christ, preexistent figure who Incarnation (Christianity), becomes human and then Session of Christ, returns to God", versus adoptionism – that Jesus was a human who was "adopted" by God at his baptism, crucifixion, or resurrection. Prior to 2007, the scholarly consensus was tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Docetic
In the history of Christianity, docetism (from the ''dokeĩn'' "to seem", ''dókēsis'' "apparition, phantom") was the doctrine that the phenomenon of Jesus, his historical and bodily existence, and above all the human form of Jesus, was mere semblance without any true reality. Broadly, it is taken as the belief that Jesus only seemed to be human, and that his human form was an illusion. The word ''Dokētaí'' ("Illusionists") referring to early groups who denied Jesus's humanity, first occurred in a letter by Bishop Serapion of Antioch (197–203), who discovered the doctrine in the Gospel of Peter, during a pastoral visit to a Christian community using it in Rhosus, and later condemned it as a forgery. It appears to have arisen over theological contentions concerning the meaning, figurative or literal, of a sentence from the Gospel of John: "the Word was made Flesh". Docetism was unequivocally rejected at the First Council of Nicaea in 325. and is regarded as heretical by th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aeon (Gnosticism)
In many Gnosticism, Gnostic systems, there are various emanationism, emanations of God, who is known by such names as One, Monad (Gnosticism), Monad, ''Aion teleos'' (αἰών τέλεος "The Broadest Aeon"), Bythos (, "depth" or "profundity"), ''Arkhe'' (, "the beginning"). In Gnosticism these emanations of God are named as ''ARKHIRES'' (, "''before'' the beginning") and as Aeons (which are also often named and may be paired or grouped). In different systems these emanations are differently named, classified, and described (but emanation is common to all forms of 'Gnosticism'). In Basilidian Gnosis they are called sonships (υἱότητες ''huiotetes''; sing.: υἱότης ''huiotes''); according to Marcosians, Marcus, they are numbers and sounds; in Valentinianism they form male/female pairs called syzygies (, from σύζυγοι ''syzygoi'': lit. "yokings together"). This source of all being is an Aeon, in which an inner being dwells, known as ''Ennoea'' (, "thought, in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
