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This volume is devoted to an exploration of the relation between Gnosticism and later Platonism in the first four centuries C.E. The essays presented here originated in presentations made during the 1993–1998 meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature’s Gnosticism and Later Platonism Seminar by ranking scholars in the fields of Gnosticism and the history of later Greek, especially Platonic, philosophy. Not only do they represent the cutting edge of this branch of scholarship, but they also introduce the reader to many facets of Sethian and Valentinian texts, ritual, and doctrine, to the metaphysics of Moderatus, the Chaldaean Oracles, Numenius, Amelius, Plotinus, and Iamblichus, and to the nature of negative theology and theurgy.


The Derivation of Matter in Monistic Gnosticism
—Einar Thomassen

Positive and Negative Matter in Later Platonism: The Uncovering of Plotinus’s Dialogue with the Gnostics
—Kevin Corrigan

After Aporia: Theurgy in Later Platonism
—Gregory Shaw

Ritual in Gnosticism
—John D. Turner

Platonism and Gnosticism: The Anonymous Commentary on the Parmenides: Middle or Neoplatonic?
—Kevin Corrigan

The Setting of the Platonizing Sethian Treatises in Middle Platonism
—John D. Turner

Iamblichus, the Sethians, and Marsanes
—John F. Finamore

Ancient Apophatic Theology
—John Peter Kenney

Negative Theologies and Demiurgical Myths in Late Antiquity
—Michael A. Williams

Aseity and Connectedness in the Plotinian Philosophy of Providence
—Frederick M. Schroeder

John D. Turner is Cotner Professor of Religious Studies and Professor of Classics and History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Ruth Majercik is an independent scholar.