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    The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion
    The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion
    The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion
    Ebook228 pages6 hours

    The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion

    By Jeffrey J. Kripal

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    “Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field.” With those words in Genesis, God condemns the serpent for tempting Adam and Eve, and the serpent has shouldered the blame ever since. But how would the study of religion change if we looked at the Fall from the snake’s point of view? Would he appear as a bringer of wisdom, more generous than the God who wishes to keep his creation ignorant? 

    Inspired by the early Gnostics who took that startling view, Jeffrey J. Kripal uses the serpent as a starting point for a groundbreaking reconsideration of religious studies and its methods. In a series of related essays, he moves beyond both rational and faith-based approaches to religion, exploring the erotics of the gospels and the sexualities of Jesus, John, and Mary Magdalene. He considers Feuerbach’s Gnosticism, the untapped mystical potential of comparative religion, and even the modern mythology of the X-Men. 

    Ultimately, The Serpent’s Gift is a provocative call for a complete reorientation of religious studies, aimed at a larger understanding of the world, the self, and the divine.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateSep 15, 2008
    ISBN9780226453828
    The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion
    Author

    Jeffrey J. Kripal

    Prof. Jeffrey J. Kripal is the associate dean of the Faculty and Graduate Programs in the School of the Humanities and the J. Newton Rayzor chair in philosophy and religious thought at Rice University. He is also the associate director of the Center for Theory and Research and the chair of the Board at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Jeff is the author of eight books, including, most recently, The Flip: Who You Really Are and Why It Matters (2020), where he envisions the future centrality and urgency of the humanities in conversation with the history of science, the philosophy of mind, and our shared ethical, political, and ecological challenges. He is presently working on a three-volume study of paranormal currents in the sciences, modern esoteric literature, and the hidden history of science fiction for the University of Chicago Press collectively entitled The Super Story: Science (Fiction) and Some Emergent Mythologies. There he intuits and writes out a new emerging spectrum of superhumanities (in both senses of that expression). The website jeffreyjkripal.com contains his full body of work.

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