An Aberrant Gnostic

 Roughly one week after the initial report by The Guardian , a second update was given by the newspaper regarding the Nag Hammadi Library .  Published on June 24, 1949, this article gives, what I can only imagine, a summation of what these works represent per the initial translations made by M. Dorresse at the time.  To quote the paper, the worldview of the Gnostics per the then newly translated Gnostic scriptures is that : [Gnostisicm and said scriptures] will turn out to be the product of provincial and rather humble intellectuals out of touch with the big cultural centres.  [The library] will cast light on the feelings and aspirations of educated men, small officials, merchants, and the like in the smaller towns of Egypt and the Near East during the first century BC and the first centuries AD. No mention of the documents giving hope of enlightenment or hinting at the true religion of the world...this article states that the ancient texts were simply the dreams and...

  Or whenever in the past...it doesn't really matter what the exact date is.   One brain thought I've had over the past year is based on a passage I read about regarding Phillip K. Dick.  If you are reading this blog, you need to have no introduction to the author… One if his past life memories/dreams was that of being a persecuted Christian Gnostic in the ancient world.  On the run from whatever authority existed at the time, his past life lived in terror for the beliefs his past persona held regarding the Universe. Well, I’m not fortunate enough to be aware of any past lives, let alone have that type of dream.  Still, I wonder what the world would look like to me if I could travel back in time to the ancient Middle East, and hold a Gnostic worldview. What would be familiar to me? Well, I’d still be on Earth; the sun would be above me.  The stars, at night, would most certainly shine more brightly.  The moon would also be a constant monthly cog o...

  One of the main reasons I wanted to start this blog was to document and "stack" newspaper articles regarding the Nag Hammadi Library that I've found on Newspapers.com.  The Nag Hammadi Library, or NHL , is the source material for most things 20th century and on Gnosticism.  So what it is?  Let's let an article from The Guardian , June 18, 1949, help us define such a thing. The article wastes no time in introducing us to a young French scholar, M.J. Doresse, and his presentation at The Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in Paris, June 17, 1949.  The presentation focused on the preliminary findings and translations regarding a 1000-page set of scriptures found in Egypt.  The article mentions that the documents were found by a group of fellahin some thirty miles north of Luxor, along the east bank of the Nile.  The find was mentioned to have been made in early 1946. So, in case you might not know, what is so special about this set of papers k...

Good question.  I don't know!  I guess one of the things that I've thought about for the past year or so is getting back into blogging.  I could go the route of the Khatib stuff again, but let's face it; that was a dead end and decent clickbait for others looking to make a buck (or two).  Happy to have obliged, but that's not something I want to do any longer. I don't need to go down that route, and I'd rather spend more time writing about stuff I'm actually interested in learning.  You know, the stuff that deep down you feel that you can potentially grasp and apply to one's own worldview.  Maybe it will make me a better person, too, while I'm at it. So this isn't going to be a blog that says, "Hey, look at me everyone, I'm really smart.  And I'm smarter than you.  And now I'm going to tell you exactly how it is.  Because I like to hear myself talk (and I know I'm really smarter than you)"  There are plenty of those folk...