Research Catalog

Title

The serpent's gift : gnostic reflections on the study of religion / Jeffrey J. Kripal.

Author

Kripal, Jeffrey J. (Jeffrey John), 1962-

Publication

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, c2007.

Supplementary Content

• Contributor biographical information
• Publisher description

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiv, 223 p.; 23 cm.

Subjects

• Religion > Philosophy
• Gnosticism

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [211]-216) and index.

Contents

Introduction: the serpent's gift. Faith, reason, and gnosis ; The premodern, the modern, and the postmodern ; Toward a gnostic (post)modernity ; Medi(t)ations ; Writing as hissing ; Autobiographical and pedagogical contexts ; The essays -- The apocryphon of the beloved. Invocation ; The quest for the heretical Jesus ; "One will know them by their roots" ; From the womb ; Sexual healings: dispelling the demons of abuse ; Sexual teachings ; The man Jesus loved ; The woman Jesus loved ; The secret -- Restoring the Adam of light. The Adam of light awakened by her ; The fiery brook ; The sacrilegious secret of Christian theology ; Implications of the method ; The historical and intellectual contexts ; "Man is God to man" : the virtues of pluralism and polytheism -- Completing the incarnation of love (and sex) : embodiment in Feuerbach's thought ; The sexuality of numbers ; The cancer and the cure ; Toward a mystical humanism: a gnostic rereading -- Comparative mystics. The rebuke of the gnostic and the oriental Renaissance ; Comparative mystics ; Ramakrishna: colonialism, universalism, mysticism ; Doctrinal and historical-critical analysis ; Ramakrishna and the comparativist ; The critical study of religion as a modern mystical tradition ; The scandal of comparison ; Professional heresy: the gnostic study of religion -- Interlude: Logoi mystikoi; or how to think like a gnostic -- Mutant marvels. Educational and sexual allegory ; On puberty and powers ; Denying the demiurge ; Toward a more radical empiricism ; Dissociation and the release of nonordinary energies ; On death as dissociation ; Real X-Men ; On x-clusions and x-ceptions ; Political allegory; or, how (not) to be an X-Man -- Conclusion: return to the garden. The other tree ; The forbidden fruit ; "When He becomes troubled, He will be astonished" ; The flaming sword and the bridal chamber.

Call Number

JFE 07-1455

ISBN

• 0226453804 (cloth : alk. paper)
• 9780226453804 (cloth : alk. paper)
• 0226453812 (pbk. : alk. paper)
• 9780226453811 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

• 2006003044
• 9780226453804
• 9780226453811

OCLC

63390591

Author

Kripal, Jeffrey J. (Jeffrey John), 1962-

Title

The serpent's gift : gnostic reflections on the study of religion / Jeffrey J. Kripal.

Imprint

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, c2007.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (p. [211]-216) and index.

Connect to:

Table of contents only

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description

Other Standard Identifier

9780226453804

9780226453811

Research Call Number

JFE 07-1455