Gnostic John the Baptizer: Selections from the Mandaean John-Book - Couverture souple

Mead, G.R.S.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1463528914 ISBN 13 : 9781463528911

Editeur : CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011

Synopsis

George Robert Stowe Mead (Nuneaton, 22 March 1863–28 September 1933) was an author, editor, translator, and an influential member of the Theosophical Society as well as the founder of the Quest Society. THE main materials contained in these pages will certainly be new for the vast majority of readers. Moreover the Mandæan narratives, legends and discourses are not only interesting because of their own distinctive matter and manner, but they are also arresting; for they raise a number of problems, some of which are far-reaching and one is fraught with implications of immense importance. The definite solutions of these problems, however, lie in the future, and the most important of them will perhaps never be reached; for, in the absence of straightforward historical information, general agreement on any subject that concerns Christian origins immediately or even indirectly is now well-nigh a psychological impossibility. The writer's intention in publishing these selections is not to speculate about the problems, for we are not yet in a position to state them with sufficient accuracy, but the very modest undertaking of making accessible for English readers some specimens of narrative and doctrine from one collection only of the traditional gnostic material which the Mandæan scribes have preserved to our own day through centuries of copying, and which hands on an early literature purporting at least in part to go back to times contemporaneous with Christian origins. For I think it will be of service for them, as a beginning, to read for themselves what the Mandæans have conserved from the past of the now legendary story of their great prophet, John the Baptizer, and some of the most characteristic notions and doctrines ascribed directly to him,—and that too in their full native setting and not in the form of brief summaries or isolated sentences, which is practically all they will meet with in the very few articles on the subject which have yet appeared in English,—and in articles only, for of books there are none. - G.R.S. Mead

A propos du livre

Biographie de l'auteur

George Robert Stowe Mead (22 September 1863 – 28 September 1933) was an English author, editor, translator, and an influential member of the Theosophical Society as well as the founder of the Quest Society. When in 1887, Madame Blavatsky settled in London, the young Mead joined the company of her close associates. In Blavatsky's circle he learned of the profound mysteries of the Gnostics and of the votaries of Hermes. Soon he became an indefatigable worker in his capacity of translator of Gnostic and Hermetic writings. He became a member of the Theosophical Society in 1884. He abandoned his teaching profession in 1889 to be Blavatsky's private secretary and also became a joint-secretary of the Esoteric Section (E.S.) of the Theosophical Society. In February 1909, he and some seven-hundred members of the Theosophical Society's British Section resigned in protest at Annie Besant's reinstating of Charles Webster Leadbeater to membership in the society. Mead had been a member for twenty-five years. In March 1909 he founded the Quest Society, composed of 150 defectors of the Theosophical Society and 100 other new members. Very intentionally this new society was planned to be an undogmatic approach to the comparative study and investigation of religion, philosophy, and science.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Date d'édition: 2011
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1463528914
• ISBN 13: 9781463528911
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 108
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible