"The Gnostic Jesus," lecture by Rev. Dr. Bruce Chilton, presented by the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard College. "The discovery of an ancient library of diverse writings at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, together with associated finds, has transformed the study of Christian origins," says Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Bard. "The diversity of belief, the complexity of controversy, the passion of divergent commitments, have all become plain in ways they were not before. Strangely, however, scholarship has not yet explored the connection between these texts and Jesus himself. Yet if the sources of Gnosticism are read as what they present themselves to be, reflections of religious experience rather than literal history, they illuminate a world of visionary practice that helped shape Christianity and the whole religious environment of late antiquity."
