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RR 2011/257
The Gnosis Archive
Lance Owens
1995
URL: http://gnosis.org/welcome.html
Last visited March 2011
Gratis
Keywords Electronic media, Religion
Review DOI 10.1108/09504121111155950
The Gnosis Archive is an online collection of primary texts and related sources on Gnosticism and the Gnostic tradition, both ancient and modern. The Archive is maintained by Lance Owens, a physician in clinical practice in the USA, whom, according to information provided on the web site, writes and lectures on subjects related to mythology, creative imagination, and psychology. The site was created in 1995 and is updated on a regular basis. Use of the Archive is free of charge and does not require user registration.
Gnosticism is a term of relative modern origin used to describe a historically diverse assortment of religious and philosophical trends of thought arising within various sects during late antiquity. Despite their many differences, these sects all claimed possession of a secret revealed knowledge (gnosis in Greek) about the origin and composition of the universe, the nature of evil, and salvation. Most commonly, the term is used to describe beliefs of so-called Christian Gnostic groups routinely denounced as heretical by the Orthodox Christian Church during the second through fourth centuries. For years, much of what scholars knew of these groups was through refutations written by Christian authors, such as Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Epiphanius, and Augustine. The discovery of a number of texts during the past century, such as the Berlin Codex, the Nag Hammadi Library, and the Gospel of Judas, provided scholars, not only with direct access to...