Abstract
This carefully structured festschrift for Birger Pearson comprises an introductory section with three tributes written respectively by George W.E. Nickelsburg, Gerald James Larson, and Gregory Shaw, followed by a bibliography of Pearson’s published works. Picking up a keyword from the title, the twenty-three essays in the volume are arranged into five sections: ‘initiatory practices’; ‘recurrent practices’; ‘therapeutic practices’; ‘ecstatic practices’; and ‘philosophic practices’.
In the first section DeConick discusses the ‘Orphian-Christian diagram’ known to both Celsus and Origen. She concludes that both were correct. Celsus knew the diagram as part of an initiatory ritual, whereas Origen was also correct in seeing it as part of an ascent ritual (p. 72). In the same section Evans studies the relatively neglected Books of Jeu to uncover their teachings on initiatory practices as preparation for postmortem ascent (pp. 137-159). In the second section Thomassen’s essay ‘Going to Church with the Valentinians’ builds on his previous work. He concludes that Valentinian ritual sequence ‘shows a certain family resemblance to second-century Christian Sunday worship as described in Justin, 1 Apology 67, though the enthusiastic aspects are clearly more prominent than in Justin’s account’ (p. 196). In the third section, Adamson examines ‘Astrological Medicine in Gnostic Traditions’ (pp. 333-358). He examines ‘iatromathematical texts’, the use of ‘speech and amulets’ and the cosmic understandings that underpin therapeutic rituals. In the section on ‘ecstatic practices’ John Turner looks at Gnostic understandings of baptismal practices that led to mystical union with the divine (pp. 411-431). The baptismal ritual is understood as paralleling emergence from the waters of the womb, and hence ‘immersion and reemergence from such waters is tantamount to rebirth, a reentry and reemergence from the cosmic womb, in which the old self is extinguished and the new self is reborn’ (p. 430). In the final section Mazur discusses the interpretation of Platonic traditions in Sethian writings (pp. 469-493).
This collection of essays is a fitting tribute to Birger Pearson and the topics covered in each section intersect with his own research interests. Many of the essays offer significant new perspectives on various types of Gnostic practices and, as such, the volume will be widely consulted by scholars in the field.