Rating: 
Summary: one of the best in gnosticism
Review: As a Gnostic, it was a delight to read this book. Everything I knew and did not know, I found in detail in this book by Jonas.You will find the background on the history of Gnosticism in Alexandria; history on its development; the various contributors (e.g. Babylon, Syria, Greek), the various "systems of thought" (eg Valentinian) and their proponents; and a bit of philosophy on Metaphysics. The excerpts and quotations from ancient Gnostic sources like the Mandaeans tracts and Manichaean books are very helpful and exciting. It is well structured and very easy to follow! A disadvantage is that it tends to overlook the influence of ancient Egyptian mythology of the after-death (regarding the journey of the soul after death), which influeced Gnosticism profoundly! Also it does not mention the Cathars and Catharism. But this should detract nothing from the book, it is a classic and a masterpiece on Gnosticism!
Rating: 
Summary: "A Classic Treatment of the Gnostic Religion"
Review: As an introduction to this insightful work, Hans Jonas opens with one of the most illuminating overviews of the condition of the Greco-Roman and the Orient from times of Alexander the Great to the early centuries of the Christian Era. Then, moving into the Gnostic texts, Jonas discusses the meaning of "gnosis", as the ancient man understood it, along with other terms pervasive throughout Gnostic literature. At last, in part one, Jonas describes the extent of the Gnostic movement, and ultimately sets the stage for his in-depth analysis of the various schools and Gnostic systems of thought in part two, namely those of Simon Magus, Marcion, Valentinian, Hermes Trismegistus, and the infamous Manes. In part three, Jonas deals with the Gnostic cosmology and morality, with some of the new discoveries in the field, and finally, in the epilogue, he closes with a dissertation on Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism. Hans Jonas' work, overall is an excellent, comprehensive study of the multifaceted belief systems of the Mediterranean World. While his treatment may exhaust even the most concentrated of readers, it nevertheless will furnish such a wealth of knowledge that it will act as a superb reference tool and will be a valuable source for religious, cultural, or philosophical studies.
Rating:
Summary: A hard read, but worthwhile
Review: For those of us who study Church history (especially as regards heretical movements), the Gnostic heresies are some of the most important, whether from its appearance in the early centuries of Christianity, to the conflicts with the Manichaeans, even on into the Middle Ages with the Cathars and the Bogomils, and possibly now with the rise of a more feminist-tinged neo-Gnosticism a la "The Da Vinci Code" and Pangels' works. For those of us interested in these topics, this is a must read. Jonas delves into the origins and development of various Gnostic sects and their histories, in themselves and in connection with Christianity. He makes good use of the (at the time) recently discovered Nag Hammadi documents (as much as was available then) and previous histories/documents regarding the Gnostics. The book focuses on the Gnostic sects around the time of the Roman Empire, and does not extend into the Gonstic revivals in times after. Considering the amount of information available on Gnostic mythology, it is understandable that Jonas would keep his focus limited. As a warning, if one is looking for an easy-to-read introduction to the Gnostic sects and heresies, this is not the book to read. It presumes some previous knowledge of the Gnostics, and is most obviously geared towards academics. If you are somewhat familiar with the heresy, and/or are an academic, this is a work to have. Jonas near the end makes some connections between Gnostic thought and that of more modern existentialists. Whether he is correct or not, I leave to the reader. While some of this work is dated, it does provide core insights into the Gnostic history and heresy, and should be read through by those interested in understanding this most tenacious of heretical sects.
Rating: 
Summary: Vastly over-rated
Review: Hans Jonas has done a masterful job in this study. Combining a historical overview of the development of the early Gnostic movement with a wonderful analysis of the systems' underlying belief structures, Jonas manages to bring the history and the thought alive for anyone reading his work. A student of Martin Heidegger's, Jonas also has an extremely intriguing essay at the end of this work titled "Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism" that draws some almost startling parallels between the first few centuries after Christ and the spiritual and intellectual crises that we are confronting in this century. Jonas has a unique ability to combine Germanic thoroughness and rigour with the lucid writing more typical of what comes from scholars and thinkers in the English/American tradition. In short, an indespensable, marvelously engaging work. More than highly recommended reading, it is my favorite book on this subject-- a model of thoughtful and thought-provoking scholarship. If you are "scholastically inclined," and interested in learning about the Gnostics, I can think of no better place to start.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent and incisive overview
Review: Hans Jonas has done a masterful job in this study. Combining a historical overview of the development of the early Gnostic movement with a wonderful analysis of the systems' underlying belief structures, Jonas manages to bring the history and the thought alive for anyone reading his work. A student of Martin Heidegger's, Jonas also has an extremely intriguing essay at the end of this work titled "Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism" that draws some almost startling parallels between the first few centuries after Christ and the spiritual and intellectual crises that we are confronting in this century. Jonas has a unique ability to combine Germanic thoroughness and rigour with the lucid writing more typical of what comes from scholars and thinkers in the English/American tradition. In short, an indespensable, marvelously engaging work. More than highly recommended reading, it is my favorite book on this subject-- a model of thoughtful and thought-provoking scholarship. If you are "scholastically inclined," and interested in learning about the Gnostics, I can think of no better place to start.
Rating:
Summary: Hans Jonas redeemed himself
Review: I admit that the book is hard to follow. Nevertheless, I must give it five stars only because of the last chapter Jonas added which showed the connection between existentialism and gnosticism. Without this chapter, the book merits only one star. With this final chapter, Jonas discovered gold. I am amazed how many scholars today, P.h.D's and all, fail to recognize the common vein of gnosticism circulating and giving life to such movements of thought as phenomenology, deconstructionism and existentialism. Unfortunately, most of the reviewers missed this point.
Rating: 
Summary: Dated, overrated, turgid, surpassed, scholastic, existential
Review: I would not recommend this book as a clear and straightforward introduction to gnosticism. It is outdated, overrated, turgid, and scholastic. It has been surpassed as far as clear introductions go. It distorts the subject matter by forcing it through a lens of mid-20th Century existentialist and academic-styled expression; it converts the gnostics into 1950s existentialist academic dissertationists. Several more recent books have been written to provide a clearer, more straightforward introduction to this subject, including "Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism" by Kurt Rudolph, and "Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing" by Stephan Hoeller.
Rating:
Summary: Exile...Alienation..Mystic Yearning...Nihilism, now and then
Review: Take your basic beautiful Platonism...already
threaded through with anti-worldly bias...a
feeling that the soul (the divine soul) is
trapped in exile in the body's decaying matter...
that the real realm of Reality and Truth exists
in another realm...away from the earth...that
the soul longs after the other realm...that
the soul brims with mystic love and yearning
to return to the Light of True Reality...and you
have the beginnings of Gnosticism... ...add deep grief over the loss of a beloved...
either through actual death...or through
enforced separation which brings on deepest
depression, melancholy, and a kind of
emotional death...in the deepest pit...slow
recovery...and a completely new perspective on
value and meaning...the world is a hell hole
filled with demonic forces and values, using
unwitting humans as their dupes and puppets... The world -- which others accept as their reality
each time they "wake up" (which is actually their sleep-walking...their death-in-life illusion, from
the Gnostic perspective) -- becomes, for the Gnostic,
only an illusion...a deceptive illusion...and not
the true Reality at all...but a lure...and a trap...
for the senses...for pleasure...for sensuality...
for materialism...for consumerism...for mediocrity...
for crassness and mass-mind values and mass-mind "thinking"... The Gnostic can actually, with focused thinking
and control, transcend the worldly programming and illusion...can "opt out" of the rat race and the
mutual delusion generated and perpetuated by the
day-by-day slavish obedience to the values and
lures of the world's messages about money, success,
status, ambition, security, and the world's opiates
of sex, violence, celebrity, gossip, lies, hypocrisy,
and pleasure-seeking as the number one priority for
establishing value and interest... All of this is not stated directly in this
excellent study by Han Jonas...but these are some of the fall-out understandings when the person
truly "wakes up"...of course, they are completely
antithetical to the world's desires and the world's
view of reality...so the Gnostic seems deluded...
"out of it"...cracked...whereas the Gnostic sees
the world and its yay-sayers in the very same way...
so it becomes a metaphysical battle over True
Reality...is it in the world?...or way away from
the world...beyond the cosmos of created, and
thus fallen, matter? Reality...Reality...who's got
the True Reality? The World System becomes the enemy to the Gnostic
Mind...the world system and the instituions which
uphold and buttress and enforce and program the
furtherance and perpetuation of that system...and
man, more often than not, becomes the victim (either
willing...or unwilling) of that system...when he
becomes "hooked" on its lures and narcotic propaganda
and programming...man loses his soul...
his trapped divine spirit...if he dies without
release...perhaps he has to come around again and
again, until he finally truly wakes up, makes
the right choice or renunciation (is "born again"...
or "born renewed") of the world, its system, and its
values...and resists the temptation to fall back
under the world's soporific spell... When such ideas and themes have been secretly used
by authors, the modernists have all too often been
prone to think that those authors are prescient "Existentialists"... but as Jonas, a student of Heidegger and Bultmann,
came to realize...this alienation and nihilism
and view of the absurdity of worldly existence
has a more antique origin...extending far back...
perhaps as far back as Pythagoras...and if there
was a real Orpheus who taught and "preached"...then
back to him...I think it is instructive, too,
that the idea of the necessity of SECRECY
(to avoid detection by the demonic forces --
"The Matrix;" "Dark City") is a large part of Gnosticism and Hermeticism (the *Corpus Hermeticum*
-- which has a dual element of Gnosticism in tandem with
Neo-Platonic theosophy...a "natural" enough yoking...
though Gnosticism denies the affirmation of the
positive aspect of the created world which the
Neo-Platonists sometimes preach)...thus you get
the Neo-Platonist Plotinus denouncing the Gnostics,
rather than embracing them as mirror-reversal
"brothers"...who certainly share some basic
Platonic biases, but have carried them further
in a very determined and no-compromise-with-the-
world alienation than the Neo-Platonists envision... Most Gnostics of this "classic" variety are
determined Truth Tellers...and determined true
value seekers...not glitzy glitter grabbers...most
are "aristocratic" and elitist in their view of
value...but also "democratic" in their understanding
that everyone has the divinity in them...IF they
will ONLY FIND IT...TAP INTO IT...and BE GUIDED BY
IT...rather than continuing to follow in the world's
pathways... These are the ideas Jonas examines through his
exegesis of the various sects, writings, and
"systems" of ancient Gnostic groups... Many Gnostics, especially the Transcendental ones,
opted for a classical Pagan perspective...rather
than embracing any sort of Christian Gnosticism...
though many of them had had a grounding in Christianity,
something about Christianity's doctrinal rigidity
and exclusion of certain aspects of love and longing
alienated them from Christianity...drew them to
Platonism...and with their own initiation to alienation
towards the world...and their ironic if not sarcastic
defiance back towards it...set themselves on the
path towards Pagan Gnosticism and Hermeticism...
* * * * * * * * *
P.S. There are NO perfect or "pure" Gnostics in
the world...alas, they too fall victim to the
desire for books, and CDs, and DVDs...aieee...
the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak...
but we are trying to wean ourselves down...
and pay off our outstanding bills...but
I did choose philosophy...and insight...
wonder if this is for the third time?...
* * *
Rating:
Summary: A hard read, but worthwhile
Review: This is a text that, taken at face value, can destroy the understanding of the period it sets out to explore. A caution is not enough for this book. Its immense learning on a small range of things - useful enough for the specialist - goes with the most spectacular ignorance of the wider area, so that Gnosticism can be taken to embrace both Plotinus and Hermes Trismegistus, in fact anything that is not properly Catholic. Hans Jonas' problem is not specialization; specialization is only his excuse for what is an unconscious but almost deliberate refusal to learn certain categories, a refusal to challenge his own inadequate views on some matters, his unthinkng adhesion to a way of thinking he learned early - or rather, never learned at all, but absorbed as attitudes from the surrounding environment - and never challenged. In particular, he assumes as obvious that heresy is inherently creative and orthodoxy inherently destructive (rather than the reverse), so that all the positive advances in religious history, from mysticism to monasticism, are to be ascribed not to the Christian Church but to his beloved Gnostic rebels. I would guess that it is from this presumption, a fundamental and basic superstition that dominates his entire outlook, that he set out to study the ultimate in heresy, Gnosticism, in the first place. He expected to find spiritual creativity and progress there, and he found - or rather, "found" - what he wanted. It is not that specialization ruined him, but that the already accomplished ruin of his mind governed his choice of specialization. That this sort of presumption in favour of heresy should go with a Bultmannite background - which logically should have no particular reason to go hunting in this particular preserve - only goes to show that sooner or later all heresies meet; if not on logically defensible grounds, at least on the common ground of the common hatred of orthodoxy. And yet there is one last doom to which this sort of person is inevitably put: just as they think that they have taken the struggle against orthodoxy to its climax, they suddenly find themselves outdated and almost reactionary - in this case, by the rise of a new school of anti-orthodoxy associated with the name of Karen L. King, who, far from proclaiming the high merits and unique historical position of Gnosticism, proclaim that no such thing as Gnosticism ever existed - it was all a wicked intellectual construction put on their enemies by the nasty, colonialistic, male-imperialistic Catholics, which, after two millennia of obscurity, has finally been revealed by the lights of feminist, deconstructionist, non-judgemental theory! Ain't life grand?
Rating: 
Summary: Disastrously narrow-minded
Review: This is a text that, taken at face value, can destroy the understanding of the period it sets out to explore. A caution is not enough for this book. Its immense learning on a small range of things - useful enough for the specialist - goes with the most spectacular ignorance of the wider area, so that Gnosticism can be taken to embrace both Plotinus and Hermes Trismegistus, in fact anything that is not properly Catholic. Hans Jonas' problem is not specialization; specialization is only his excuse for what is an unconscious but almost deliberate refusal to learn certain categories, a refusal to challenge his own inadequate views on some matters, his unthinkng adhesion to a way of thinking he learned early - or rather, never learned at all, but absorbed as attitudes from the surrounding environment - and never challenged. In particular, he assumes as obvious that heresy is inherently creative and orthodoxy inherently destructive (rather than the reverse), so that all the positive advances in religious history, from mysticism to monasticism, are to be ascribed not to the Christian Church but to his beloved Gnostic rebels. I would guess that it is from this presumption, a fundamental and basic superstition that dominates his entire outlook, that he set out to study the ultimate in heresy, Gnosticism, in the first place. He expected to find spiritual creativity and progress there, and he found - or rather, "found" - what he wanted. It is not that specialization ruined him, but that the already accomplished ruin of his mind governed his choice of specialization. That this sort of presumption in favour of heresy should go with a Bultmannite background - which logically should have no particular reason to go hunting in this particular preserve - only goes to show that sooner or later all heresies meet; if not on logically defensible grounds, at least on the common ground of the common hatred of orthodoxy. And yet there is one last doom to which this sort of person is inevitably put: just as they think that they have taken the struggle against orthodoxy to its climax, they suddenly find themselves outdated and almost reactionary - in this case, by the rise of a new school of anti-orthodoxy associated with the name of Karen L. King, who, far from proclaiming the high merits and unique historical position of Gnosticism, proclaim that no such thing as Gnosticism ever existed - it was all a wicked intellectual construction put on their enemies by the nasty, colonialistic, male-imperialistic Catholics, which, after two millennia of obscurity, has finally been revealed by the lights of feminist, deconstructionist, non-judgemental theory! Ain't life grand?
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