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RELIGION

THE GNOSTIC RELIGION, BY HANS JONAS

IN ANY conflict it is the victorious party that writes the history, and, particularly if the issue is religion, the

Moses Hadas 1959-01-01

Moses Hadas / Jan. 1, 1959

0 A Famous Heresy
The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity.
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A Beacon. 302 pp. $6.00.

In any conflict it is the victorious party that writes the history, and, particularly if the issue is religion, the record of the
opposition is either wholly effaced or survives only in the aspect given it by its enemies. So it has been with the Gnostics, whose
doctrines could be reconstructed only from attacks made upon them by certain Church Fathers who wrote while Gnosticism
was a present danger. After the 4th century when victory was complete the movement was ignored, until 19th-century scholars
began to study it, mainly from the viewpoint of Protestant apologetics. In the 20th century new discoveries have made a fuller
and more objective appreciation possible. Particularly valuable is the extensive Manichaean library in Coptic found in Egypt in
1930 and not yet fully published. Barring the Dead Sea Scrolls, Professor Jonas writes, this find is easily the greatest event
for the history of religion which archaeology has provided within this generation.
In any major conflictand Gnosticism was not, like other heresies, a localized or ephemeral phenomenon but widespread and
persistentthe ideology of the vanquished is likely to infect the victors, and so it was in this case. Study of Gnostic teachings is
therefore not merely the intellectual pastime of solving a particularly knotty puzzle but relevant to a fuller understanding of
the orthodoxies which rejected it. But knowledge has been difficult to come by. The ancient sources are elusive passages in
esoteric books the ordinary student never encounters, and secondary treatments are fragmentary and recondite. Professor
Jonass synoptic book, well organized and beautifully written, is therefore a pioneer effort, unrivaled and indispensable. It is at
once a work of original scholarship by an acknowledged authority in its field, and so lucid in its presentation that the
enormous learning which it exploits is never obtrusive. It is a feat of imaginative scholarship to combine scattered and tangled
threads into a unified texture with patterns clearly revealed in their dark side and in their light, and it is no less a feat to clarify
the strange patterns by relating them to more familiar ones.

Gnosis means knowledgenot knowledge in our normal sense of what is knowable, but paradoxically a knowledge of God
who is by definition unknowable. Actually only a few groups called themselves Gnostics, but the complex of ideas which
characterized these groups were characteristic also of many other groups, and the Church Fathers and modern scholars after
them have correctly applied the term gnostic to the ideas wherever they occurred. The most striking element in the system was
a stark dualism, so radical that it regarded everything outside the unknowable and alien God as the realm of the adverse
forces. This meant that not only the world and man but the teachers and scriptures of current orthodoxies were devices to
keep sparks of the divine in perpetual bondage. There is a fascination in the ruthlessness of the central conception and the
uncompromising consistency of some of its ramifications, and there is a welter of fabricated and therefore absurd mythology.

_____________

It is easy to be swept away by the stark purity of the central conception, and it is easy to profess amused superiority to the
essential irrationality of striving to know what is by definition unknowable and to the obfuscating imagery in which the
irrationality is swathed. Professor Jonas wishes neither to praise nor to condemn but to facilitate understanding. He opens his
book with a discussion of the intellectual and religious climate of the Hellenistic and imperial Roman world, with particular
attention to modes of thought, East and West, and to the basis of their fusion in gnosis. He then proceeds systematically to a
survey of the sources, definition of terms and tenets, clarification of Gnostic imagery and symbolic language, and analysis of
Gnostic systems of thought according to Simon Magus, the Hymn of the Pearl, Marcion, Valentinianism, and (most fully and
sympathetically) Mani. A final section pinpoints the distinctive Gnostic views by contrasting them with traditional classical
theory in such items as the cosmos, virtue, and the soul.

It is here that Professor Jonass own innovation becomes clear. Earlier scholars had agreed with Harnack in seeing Gnosticism
as an acute Hellenization of Christianity. Jonas allots a larger share in the amalgam to Eastern, including Jewish, thought.
There can be no question that Judaism was in fact involved, both in cause and effect. If nevertheless the Gnostics expressed
hostility to orthodox Judaism, so they did to orthodox Christianity also, and so did Christianity (whose debt to Judaism is
indubitable) express hostility to Judaism. But precise distribution of credit or debit in such a matter as this is, in the judgment
of this reviewer, footless. Influence between East and West in the Hellenistic age worked like a pendulum; at each swing, as
can be demonstrated in fields other than religion, the pendulum received in altered form matter which it had itself brought in
on the previous swing. Indeed from one point of view Gnosticism is another instance of the centripetal forces of society which
are purposefully made centrifugal by organized authority. But the disparate fragments of what was once an amalgam may still
be traced, whether in the Cabbala or in the legend of Perceval and the Holy Grail.

_____________

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JUDAISM

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Jewish Commentary

Meir Y. Soloveichik 2017-06-14

Meir Y. Soloveichik / June 14, 2017

111
I
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t can be said that the Book of Samuel launched the American Revolution. Though antagonistic to traditional faith, Thomas
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A pamphlet Common Sense is a biblical argument against British monarchy, drawing largely on the text of Samuel.

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Noah Rothman

Three attacks in Britain highlight the Wests inability to see the threat clearly

Jonathan Foreman 2017-06-14

Jonathan Foreman / June 14, 2017

56T he real lesson of the recent terrorist attacks in the UK is not that all open Western societies are frighteningly vulnerable. It is
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not that our homegrown terrorists have finally realized that low-tech attacks using vehicles and knives are easy to carry out
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our population is impressively courageous in the face of such attacks. The real lesson is that
A the British state and the British political class are, and have long been, fundamentally unserious about the dangers presented
by Islamist terrorism.

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 Review of 'White Working Class' By Joan C. Williams

Kay Hymowitz 2017-06-14

Kay Hymowitz / June 14, 2017

(AP Photo/Eric Gay)

26I n her new book, White Working Class, Joan Williams scolds her fellow professors, lawyers, and other professional types for
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their indifference and intolerance toward their less educated white fellow-citizens. She relates the story of a friend who tells
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A working class. Williamss response: A few days paid leave aint gonna support a family. Nor is minimum wage. Later on in
the book, she writes, When I hear some environmentalists talk, I feel like Im listening to my German Jewish grandmother
calling Russian Jews peasants.

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When music could not transcend evil

Terry Teachout 2017-06-14

 Terry Teachout / June 14, 2017

Berlin Philharmonic

133
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he story of European classical music under the Third Reich is one of the most squalid chapters in the annals of Western
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complaisance that all but beggars belief. Without exception, all of the well-known musicians
A who left Germany and Austria in protest when Hitler came to power in 1933 were either Jewish or, like the violinist Adolf
Busch, Rudolf Serkins father-in-law, had close family ties to Jews. Moreover, most of the small number of non-Jewish
musicians who emigrated later on, such as Paul Hindemith and Lotte Lehmann, are now known to have done so not out of
principle but because they were unable to make satisfactory accommodations with the Nazis. Everyone elseincluding Karl
Bhm, Wilhelm Furtwngler, Walter Gieseking, Herbert von Karajan, and Richard Straussstayed behind and served the
Reich.

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Media Commentary

Matthew Continetti 2017-06-14

Matthew Continetti / June 14, 2017

15James Brien Comey Jr. is a former prosecutor, U.S. attorney, deputy attorney general, director of the Federal Bureau of
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Investigation, and a top-notch, expert, Grade-A, one-of-a-kind manipulator of the American press.
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 SYMPOSIUM:
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Noah THREAT IN THE UNITED
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Symposium 2017-06-14
Symposium , Floyd Abrams , Ayaan Hirsi Ali , Lee C. Bollinger , Richard A. Epstein , David French , Pamela Geller , Jonah
Goldberg , KC Johnson , Laura Kipnis , Eugene Kontorovich , Nicholas Lemann , Michael J. Lewis , Heather Mac Donald ,
John H. McWhorter , Kate Bachelder Odell , Jonathan Rauch , Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz , Ben Shapiro , Judith Shulevitz ,
Harvey Silverglate , Christina Hoff Sommers , John Stossel , Warren Treadgold , Matt Welch , Adam J. White , Cathy Young ,
Robert J. Zimmer / June 14, 2017

Floyd
In April,
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COMMENTARY asked a wide variety of writers,
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thinkers,
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Ali broadcasters to respond to this question: Is free speech under threat in the United States? We received twenty-
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responses. We publish them here in alphabetical order.
Richard A. Epstein
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Harvey Silverglate
Christina Hoff Sommers
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Matt Welch
TURKEYJ. White
Adam.
Cathy Young
AMERICAN SOCIETY POLITICS & IDEAS POLITICS & IDEAS
CAN TURKEY
Robert J. Zimmer BE TRUSTED WITH F-35S?
Choose your plan and pay nothing for six Weeks!
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Are the warplane's secrets safe?
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A Michael Rubin / July 20, 2017 Noah Rothman

AP Photo/Michel Euler

14The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the newest generation air platform for the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marines. Lockheed-
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Martin, which builds the F-35, describes it as a 5th Generation fighter, combining advanced stealth with fighter speed and
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program partnersAustralia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Denmark, for exampleare consistent U.S. allies.
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Turkey, however, is also part of the nine-nation consortium producing the plane, which gives Turkey access to the F-35s
technology. As a program partner, Turkish industries are eligible to become suppliers to the global F-35 fleet for the life of the
program. In total, F-35 industrial opportunities for Turkish companies are expected to reach $12 billion, the warplanes
website explained. Turkey plans to purchase 100 of the F-35A Conventional Takeoff and Landing variant. Its unsurpassed
technological systems and unique stealth capabilities ensure that the F-35 will be the future of Turkish national security for
decades to come.

But is the F-35 safe with Turkey? In recent years, the Turkish government has leaked highly-classified information to
Americas adversaries in fits of diplomatic pique. Back in 2013, for example, Turkey leaked to the Iranians the identities of
Israeli spies in Iran. Danny Yatom, former head of the Mossad, told USA Today that the incident would damage U.S.
intelligence efforts, because we will be much more reluctant to work via Turkey because they will fear information is leaking
to Iran We feel information achieved [by Israel] through Turkey went not only to Israel but also to the United States.

On July 19, the Pentagon criticized Turkeys state-controlled news agency for exposing ten covert U.S. bases in Syria in a way
that can enable both the Islamic State and Iranian-backed forces to target Americans. Bloomberg reported that the leak also
detailed aid routes and equipment stored at each base.

Both these incidents raise serious questions about whether Turkey can be trusted with the F-35, especially given Turkeys
growing military and diplomatic ties to Russia, and the wayward NATO states recent cooperation with China as well. The
United Kingdoms Ministry of Defense is rightly concerned about the security implications of a plan to service its F-35s in
Turkey, but such concern should only be the tip of the iceberg.

Should Turkey even receive F-35s and, to the extent the program relies on Turkish factories, is it time to stand up quickly a
Plan B? To do otherwise might squander the billions of dollars already spent on the program, risk increasing President Recep
Tayyip Erdoans ability to blackmail the West, and potentially land Americas latest military technology on Kremlin desks.

filed under:Recep Tayyip ErdoganTurkey

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THE GNOSTIC RELIGION, BY HANS JONAS
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Moses Hadas
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DAVID, WE HARDLY KNEW YE
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Meir Y. Soloveichik
THE 3GNOSTIC RELIGION, BY HANS JONAS
TERROR AND THE FAILURE OF THE LIBERAL
IMAGINATION

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DEPLORABLES FOR DUMMIES

Kay Hymowitz
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ORCHESTRAS AND NAZIS

Terry Teachout
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COMEYS PEOPLE

Matthew Continetti
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SYMPOSIUM: IS FREE SPEECH UNDER THREAT IN

THE UNITED STATES?

Symposium
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CAN TURKEY BE TRUSTED WITH F-35S?

Michael Rubin