M. David Litwa

The Hermetic corpus is a spiritual and intellectual treasure stemming from ancient Egyptian sages who could write and think in Greek. Since the Renaissance, this corpus has appeared in an order that does not fit the path of spiritual initiation suggested by the corpus itself.

In this volume, David Litwa offers a fresh introduction to the 'gnostic Bible,' arguably the most significant and widely read of all gnostic Christian texts ever written.

This book examines the origins of the evil creator idea chiefly in light of early Christian biblical interpretations. It is divided into two parts. In Part I, the focus is on the interpretations of Exodus and John. Firstly, ancient Egyptian assimilation of the Jewish god to the evil deity...

Did the early Christians believe their myths? Like most ancient—and modern—people, early Christians made efforts to present their myths in the most believable ways....

Perhaps no declaration incites more theological and moral outrage than a human's claim to be divine. Those who make this claim in ancient Jewish and Christian mythology are typically represented as the most hubristic and dangerous tyrants.

What does it mean for Jesus to be “deified” in early Christian literature? Litwa’s samples take us beyond the realm of abstract theology to dwell in the second- and third-century imagination of what it meant to be a god and shows that the Christian depiction of Christ was quite at home there.

Late Revelations introduces a revolutionary model for understanding the creation of the gospels in the New Testament and beyond.

This book presents the life, thought, and work of Marcion in its historical, theological, ethical, and liturgical contexts. It distinguishes itself from its competitors by employing a new method: rigorously critiquing heresy reports by means of the testimony of Marcion's own scriptures.

Carpocrates, Marcellina, and Epiphanes is the definitive study of the early Christian theologian Carpocrates, his son Epiphanes, and the leader of the Carpocratian movement in Rome, Marcellina.

Alexandria was the epicenter of Hellenic learning in the ancient Mediterranean world, yet little is known about how Christianity arrived and developed in the city during the late first and early second century CE. In this volume, M. David Litwa employs underused data from the Nag Hammadi codices...

There is not just a desire but a profound human need for enhancement - the irrepressible yearning to become better than ourselves. Today, enhancement is often conceived of in terms of biotechnical intervention: genetic modification, prostheses, implants, drug therapy - even mind uploading. The...

This volume offers an accessible investigation of the Naassene discourse embedded in the anonymous Refutation of All Heresies (completed about 222 CE), in order to understand the theology and ritual life of the Naassene Christian movement in the late second and early third centuries CE. The work...