The Gnostic Dialogue:
Wilkens, Robert L.
THE GNOSTIC DIALOGUE. THE EARLY CHURCH AND THE CRISIS OF GNOSTICISM. By Pheme Perkins. Paulist Press, $6.95, 250 pp. In the wake of the publication of an English translation of the ancient Gnostic...
...The book concludes with a very brief epilogue on modern writers and thinkers who have drawn on Gnostic themes...
...Pheme Perkins, associate professor of theology at Boston College, is not uninterested in these larger questions, but her book is primarily a careful analysis of a segment of Gnostic literature, the so called "revelational dialogues," i.e...
...In her reading, Gnosticism appears as an esoteric' and elitist movement, which emphasized the radical otherness of God from the world, and was quite out of step not only with the mainstream of Christianity but also other religious movements of its time...
...The heart of the book is a scholarly treatment of the literary character of these writings, the kinds of stories included in them, the topics discussed, and the polemical intention of the authors...
...those works which portray a dialogue between a heavenly re-vealer and gnostic hero...
...In this view, the claim that the Gnostics were early champions of individual creativity, recently popularized by Pagels's The Gnostic Gospels, has little foundation and is seen largely as a projection of modern thought onto the ancient sources...
...ROBERT L. WILKEN...
...In the wake of the publication of an English translation of the ancient Gnostic writings from Nag Hammadi in Egypt several years ago, it has been tempting for historians and religious thinkers to set forth comprehensive and arresting interpretations of this famous ancient religious movement...
Vol. 108 • September 1981 • No. 16
