The Gospel of Judas in Finnish.

http://wsoy.fi/yk/products/show/28464

The Definition of “Gnosticism”.

The Definition of “Gnosticism”.

By Dmitry A. Alexeyev, St.-Petersburg.

Melchisedec is an Old Testament’s hero, King of Salem (or Sodom), a priest of the Highest God, mentioned in Gen., 14:17-24. The most important question for us is why one of the Old Testament’s positive heroes, priest of Biblical God, who blessed Abraham, becomes a wearer of a Gnostic revelation? I mean namely Gnostic revelation, because “Gnostic”, or, even more exactly, “Sethianic” character of the tractate, named “Melchisedec”, is evident, even although it is very badly preserved.

More:

http://community.livejournal.com/gnosticism/64689.html

Dear friends, Moscow’s Gnostic scientific group need your help.

Dear friends,
Our scientific group need (for the future links, notes and cites) some pages from the book. ALL these pages can be opened only from the DIFFERENT ip-addresses. This is a specific of so-called “limited access” to the books from the project books.google.com.

Namely, we need following help. You may open the following link - http://books.google.com/books?id=-Py3IGGOZoUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+nag+hammadi+texts+and+the+bible&hl=ru&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false and, with help of “Content” in the left upper corner or with help of option “Search in this book”, you may try to open and to make a “print screen” (by taping CTRL + PRINT SCREEN) of the following pages

276
312
357
374
377
386
388
390
401
403
409
419

and save them on your computers as images of any format. Then you may send them to me on the following e-mail: alex_rainy @ yahoo.com .

I hope on your possible help, because we have a great problem with buying so expensive for us, and geographically hard-accessed edition.

Thanks so much.

Dear Gnostic brothers and sisters,

I wish to congradulate you with Saviour's Incarnation Day. Merry Christmas, and don't forget about our common serving to Gnosis.

Alex Moma, Ecclesia Gnostica Russica.

If somebody didn't read it, I'm recommending to read.

James Robinson (well-known editor of the Nag Hammadi Library in English),
"The Secrets of Judas: The Story of the Misunderstood Disciple and His Lost Gospel". New York, Harper & Collins, 2007.

From the review by Dr. Jonathan Dolhenty, published in http://www.radicalacademy.com :

The original document, designated as "The Gospel of Judas," has been, according to Professor Robinson, "kept under wraps until now, to maximize its financial gain for its Swiss owners. The grand expose is being performed by the National Geographic Society, timed for the greatest public impact, right at Easter. Those on the inside have been bought off (no doubt with considerably more than thirty pieces of silver), and sworn to silence on a stack of Bibles -- or on a stack of papyrus leaves." Robinson's book was obviously rushed into print (there are citations from as late as February of this year) and I suspect this was done to predate National Geographic's "Grand Event" and provide a contextual background for it when it occurs.

----------------

I've just red an official Russian translation of the book and say thank you to Dr. Robinson for this honest research.

My dear Gnostic friends,

I need your help.

Could you scan and send me by e-mail an introduction to the Pistis Sophia edition by George Horner (not G.R.S. Mead!) of 1924 ?

I need this material for the future intro to the Pistis Sophia Russian edition. My attempts to receive it in Russian and Finnish libraries were unsuccessful.

Beforehand thanks, -

Alex Moma,
Translator of the Pistis Sophia into Russian.

My e-mail: alex_rainy @ yahoo.com

The FIRST edition of St. Paul.

the revolutionary work of PAUL-LOUIS COUCHOUD (1928)-----Harnack followed the ecclesiastical authors without critically examining their assertions. He relied on them. If he had been aware of the fact that Irenaeus, Tertullian, Epiphanius could not have thought otherwise than they did without becoming heretic and that their opinion depended completely on their faith, he would have agreed that it made sense to take up the question once again and to handle the question with purely critical method. Yet critical investigation stands against the assumptions of the ecclesiastical authors. It shows as we will see, that the Apostolicon is not a mutilation of the long edition but, on the contrary, that the long edition is nothing but a reworked and extended Apostolicon. In other words, the text reconstructed by Harnack is the genuine edition of the Paulina. It is the oldest version available to us.
-----full text:

http://www.radikalkritik.de/couch_engl.htm
http://www.radikalkritik.de/Couch_engl.pdf


Taken here: http://community.livejournal.com/gnosticism

Thanks to the post' author.

This Saturday

I've baptized in the Thelemic "Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica", as decided in September. Moscow's Thelemites from O.T.O.'s Pan's Asylum Camp and its Church are my good friends, and according to their invites I took part in the Gnostic Masses - during past 2 years every 3-4 weeks. Also I red and heard the lections in Moscow's Colledge "Thelema-93". So, now I'm a spiritual member of O.T.O.

At the same time, I'm staying, of course, a "strict" Gnostic and Gnostic texts' translator and researcher and as a member of classical Gnostic "Ecclesia Gnostica Russica" (created in Saint-Petersburgh not as a branch or a parish, but as a follower-in-common of the "Ecclesia Gnostica"; I was its co-ordinator since January until July, 2007). As I know, there are only two large esoteric organisations of Occultic type - Theosophical Society (including its Russian branch), and O.T.O., those position concerning their adept's membership in and studying of another Occultic and esoteric organisations \ traditions is completely positive.

Full Coptic text of the Pistis Sophia with its Latin translation, published in 1851.

http://books.google.com/books/pdf/Pistis_sophia.pdf?id=YBYGAAAAQAAJ&hl=ru&output=pdf&sig=IAgWQAW2uFG02ZDcYeaKYQ2hasY

Real SCIENTIFIC literature.

Some people published these links for downloads.

Here you may download the most famous books on Gnosticism
http://revelation-online.blogspot.com/2008/03/gnostic-gospels.html

(Elanie Pagels "The Gnostic Gospels")

http://www.mininova.org/det/1101570

(Michael Allen Williams - "Rethinking "Gnosticism"", as a component of a large torrent file)

Link on "Selected bibliography on Gnosticism" (since #98 - in English and other European languages).

There's about 500 titles...

I shall try to renew this content more often (not only once an year, like now).

http://gnosticizm.com/articles/Gnosticbibl.htm

Thank you for the attention.

Old, but important article in the NYT about... no, around Coptic Gnostic "Gospel of Judas".

Gospel Truth

By APRIL D. DECONICK, Houston, Texas.

Published: December 1, 2007

AMID much publicity last year, the National Geographic Society announced that a lost 3rd-century religious text had been found, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. The shocker: Judas didn’t betray Jesus. Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed. Judas’s reward? Ascent to heaven and exaltation above the other disciples.

It was a great story. Unfortunately, after re-translating the society’s transcription of the Coptic text, I have found that the actual meaning is vastly different. While National Geographic’s translation supported the provocative interpretation of Judas as a hero, a more careful reading makes clear that Judas is not only no hero, he is a demon.

Several of the translation choices made by the society’s scholars fall well outside the commonly accepted practices in the field. For example, in one instance the National Geographic transcription refers to Judas as a “daimon,” which the society’s experts have translated as “spirit.” Actually, the universally accepted word for “spirit” is “pneuma ” — in Gnostic literature “daimon” is always taken to mean “demon.”

Likewise, Judas is not set apart “for” the holy generation, as the National Geographic translation says, he is separated “from” it. He does not receive the mysteries of the kingdom because “it is possible for him to go there.” He receives them because Jesus tells him that he can’t go there, and Jesus doesn’t want Judas to betray him out of ignorance. Jesus wants him informed, so that the demonic Judas can suffer all that he deserves.

Perhaps the most egregious mistake I found was a single alteration made to the original Coptic. According to the National Geographic translation, Judas’s ascent to the holy generation would be cursed. But it’s clear from the transcription that the scholars altered the Coptic original, which eliminated a negative from the original sentence. In fact, the original states that Judas will “not ascend to the holy generation.” To its credit, National Geographic has acknowledged this mistake, albeit far too late to change the public misconception.

So what does the Gospel of Judas really say? It says that Judas is a specific demon called the “Thirteenth.” In certain Gnostic traditions, this is the given name of the king of demons — an entity known as Ialdabaoth who lives in the 13th realm above the earth. Judas is his human alter ego, his undercover agent in the world. These Gnostics equated Ialdabaoth with the Hebrew Yahweh, whom they saw as a jealous and wrathful deity and an opponent of the supreme God whom Jesus came to earth to reveal.

Whoever wrote the Gospel of Judas was a harsh critic of mainstream Christianity and its rituals. Because Judas is a demon working for Ialdabaoth, the author believed, when Judas sacrifices Jesus he does so to the demons, not to the supreme God. This mocks mainstream Christians’ belief in the atoning value of Jesus’ death and in the effectiveness of the Eucharist.

How could these serious mistakes have been made? Were they genuine errors or was something more deliberate going on? This is the question of the hour, and I do not have a satisfactory answer.

Admittedly, the society had a tough task: restoring an old gospel that was lying in a box of its own crumbs. It had been looted from an Egyptian tomb in the 1970s and languished on the underground antiquities market for decades, even spending time in someone’s freezer. So it is truly incredible that the society could resurrect any part of it, let alone piece together about 85 percent of it.

That said, I think the big problem is that National Geographic wanted an exclusive. So it required its scholars to sign nondisclosure statements, to not discuss the text with other experts before publication. The best scholarship is done when life-sized photos of each page of a new manuscript are published before a translation, allowing experts worldwide to share information as they independently work through the text.

Another difficulty is that when National Geographic published its transcription, the facsimiles of the original manuscript it made public were reduced by 56 percent, making them fairly useless for academic work. Without life-size copies, we are the blind leading the blind. The situation reminds me of the deadlock that held scholarship back on the Dead Sea Scrolls decades ago. When manuscripts are hoarded by a few, it results in errors and monopoly interpretations that are very hard to overturn even after they are proved wrong.

To avoid this, the Society of Biblical Literature passed a resolution in 1991 holding that, if the condition of the written manuscript requires that access be restricted, a facsimile reproduction should be the first order of business. It’s a shame that National Geographic, and its group of scholars, did not follow this sensible injunction.

I have wondered why so many scholars and writers have been inspired by the National Geographic version of the Gospel of Judas. I think it may stem from an understandable desire to reform the relationship between Jews and Christians. Judas is a frightening character. For Christians, he is the one who had it all and yet betrayed God to his death for a few coins. For Jews, he is the man whose story was used by Christians to persecute them for centuries. Although we should continue to work toward a reconciliation of this ancient schism, manufacturing a hero Judas is not the answer.

April D. DeConick, a professor of Biblical studies at Rice University, is the author of “The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says.”

And this is the answer from her opponents:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9904E4DD113AF934A35751C1A9619C8B63&scp=2&sq=April+Deconick&st=nyt

The New York Times. October, 6, 2007: Save the Gnostics!

By NATHANIEL DEUTSCH

THE United States didn’t set out to eradicate the Mandeans, one of the oldest, smallest and least understood of the many minorities in Iraq. This extinction in the making has simply been another unfortunate and entirely unintended consequence of our invasion of Iraq — though that will be of little comfort to the Mandeans, whose 2,000-year-old culture is in grave danger of disappearing from the face of the earth.

The Mandeans are the only surviving Gnostics from antiquity, cousins of the people who produced the Nag Hammadi writings like the Gospel of Thomas, a work that sheds invaluable light on the many ways in which Jesus was perceived in the early Christian period. The Mandeans have their own language (Mandaic, a form of Aramaic close to the dialect of the Babylonian Talmud), an impressive body of literature, and a treasury of cultural and religious traditions amassed over two millennia of living in the southern marshes of present-day Iraq and Iran.

Read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/opinion/06deutsch.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Although I'm a member of Gnostic CHURCH, I completely agree with the author.

Religion is exoteric and spirituality is esoteric.

Religion focuses on the outer person (appearance or expression), while
spirituality focuses on the inner person (thoughts, feelings, and so
on).

Religion is form and spirituality is substance.

Religion copies and imitates, but spirituality discovers and
originates.

Religion fills; spirituality overflows.

Religion brings routine. Spirituality brings freedom.

Religion values ceremony. Spirituality values meaning.

Religion imposes rules. Spirituality declares universal truths.

Religion says people are bad. Spirituality says they are good.

Religion empowers others. Spirituality empowers oneself.

Religion is the painting. Spirituality is the flower.

Religion looks to the past. Spirituality looks to the future.

Religion takes discipline. Spirituality takes curiosity.

Religion burdens. Spirituality lightens.

Religion persuades. Spirituality explains.

Religion fears. Spirituality seeks.

Religion defines. Spirituality expresses.

Religion teaches longsuffering. Spirituality teaches patience.

Religion takes away. Spirituality affirms.

Religion limits. Spirituality expands.

Religion requires the acceptance of a belief in place of experience;
Spirituality requires the release of beliefs that hinder experience.

Religion is a bandage. Spirituality is the scalpel.

Religion obscures. Spirituality uncovers.

Religion is the haven of the fearful. Spirituality is the playground of

the joyful.

Religion dulls. Spirituality sharpens.

Religion hushes. Spirituality laughs.

Religion cries tears of guilt and shame. Spirituality cries tears of
release and joy.

Copyright 2007 by Steve Baxter


--from the new book Revolutionary Spirituality: Awakening to Your True
Self by Steven E. Baxter

Terrible Situation with small confessions of Iraq. An open letter from the one of American Gnostic bishops.

As many are aware, there is a deeply mystical tradition quite proximal
in many ways to Gnosticism (and has been called as such in the early
church) in the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches. Unfortunately,
those Churches are located in a current war zone.

Father Robert Lyons sent out this message, and I wanted to forward it
to you. Please keep these communities in your prayers.

+Phillip
T. Vincent II



*A Chaldean priest and three deacons killed in Mosul*

Fr Ragheed Ganni, 34, was hit by gunfire in front of the Church of the
Holy Spirit. Three deacons, who served as his aides, were also killed.

An armed group gunned down and killed *Fr Ragheed Ganni and three of
his aides*. The murder took place right after Sunday mass in front of
the Church of the Holy Spirit in Mosul where Father Ragheed was parish
priest. Sources told *AsiaNews* that hours later the bodies were
still lying in the street because no one dared retrieve them. Given
the situation tensions in the area remain high. For some time since
the fall of Saddam Hussein Christians have become victims of what
amounts to an open campaign of persecution often denounced by Chaldean
and Orthodox bishops. Father Ragheed himself had been targeted several
times in previous attacks. The Church of the Holy Spirit has also been
repeatedly attacked and bombed in the last few years, the last time
occurred but a few months ago.

May the souls of Father Ganni and his deacon-aides, through the
infinite mercy of God, rest in peace; and may their senseless deaths
bear fruit. May the blood of these Martyrs nourish the Church in Iraq
to stand firm in her witness against injustice, oppression, and hatred.