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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book began long, long ago, as my 1998 doctoral dissertation at Princeton
University under the expert guidance of Elaine Pagels, John Gager, Ted
Champlin and Peter Brown. The combined skills, breadth of knowledge, and
sheer brilliance of these scholars made for perhaps the most intimidating
dissertation committee known to humanity, and I was daily humbled by the
experience. Any successes of this book I owe to them; its shortcomings, on
the other hand, remain entirely my own.
The extraordinarily congenial and interdisciplinary environment of
Princeton’s Program in the Ancient World also brought me into the orbit
of three other outstanding Princeton scholars whom I must thank here.
The first is Martha Himmelfarb, whose excellent work on Jewish pseudepigraphical
and ascent texts undergirds what I learned about second-century
Christian apocalyptic. Over the past decade in particular, I have been so
grateful for what I learned from her as I read early Christian material. Bob
Lamberton deserves credit for actually setting me on the path to this book by
raising the specter of ‘cosmic pessimism’ as a wholly constructed worldview,
and by setting aside the conventional classicist’s biases as limited to a more
normative canon of texts and approaches. Garth Fowden’s expertise in the
Hermetica reminded me to look beyond Christian and Jewish materials to
Graeco-Roman religious materials, providing me with a much wider palette
of texts and ideas than I would have been aware of without his insights.
Within the circles of those who work primarily on Gnosticism, I have
found enduring support. Papers based on this book were presented, over
the years, at the Society of Biblical Literature’s Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
section. Through that section, I have been fortunate to have been
guided, corrected, and inspired by a coterie of outstanding scholars. Chief
among those who must be singled out are John Turner, Michael Waldstein,
Michael Williams, Birger Pearson, Hans-Martin Schenke, Frederik Wisse,
Einar Thomassen, Louis Painchaud, and Paul-Hubert Poirier. I’ve turned
often to April DeConick’s fabulous work on ascent and mysticism in Gnosticism,
and never failed to be revivified by her insights. Her recent congress
on the Judas Codex in Houston (2008)—masterfully executed—reignited
my passion for all things cosmic in the second century. Tuomas Rasimus’s
work on the Ophites pushed me to clarify my own views on ancient ascent
in ways I appreciate. Finally, both Karen King and Ismo Dunderberg have repeatedly
(and occasionally relentlessly) expressed their desire to see this
book in print, as has, most recently, David Brakke. I thank them for having
faith in its value in those darker moments of losing my own sense of direction.
Chapter eight of this book, on sidereal determinism in the Gospel of Judas,
is largely a reprint of my essay “Fate and the Wandering Stars: The Jewish
Apocalyptic Roots of Astral ‘Determinism’ in the Gospel of Judas” that
appeared in April DeConick’s Codex Judas Papers. When I first completed
the manusc
ript of this book, the Gospel of Judas had not yet reached even
the scholarly community. The language of the stars and sidereal enslavement
thoroughly saturates this text, and thus no book on astral fatalism
can be complete without some reference to it. At the same time, the term
heimarmene nowhere appears in the Gospel of Judas, and I remain convinced
that this text draws upon a very different set of conceptual materials
than the others which I discuss throughout this volume. I trust that this
essay’s re-appearance here will clarify how it does and does not relate to
the main argument of this book. I thank Brill for permission to re-publish
the essay here.
Institutionally, I could not have done without the support of Harvard
University’s Committee on the Study of Religion under the direction of
Diana Eck, where, when I was not teaching, I was a Research Associate so as
to luxuriate in the immense riches of Widener Library. At Brown University,
thanks to the delightful combination of Susan Ashbrook Harvey and Ross
Kraemer, I was given another marvelous luxury: a research assistant of my
own; without Robyn Walsh’s help, this project would have languished for
much longer At Brill, I would like very much to thank Einar Thomassen for his sage
advice, and the keen eye and wise observations of the manuscript’s anonymous
reader. I have endeavored to incorporate the suggestions and corrections
which s/he pointed out; needless to say, all errors that remain are my
own.
As ever, I am thankful for the support of my family—particularly my
mother’s insistence that everyone needs to know about this material, however
obscure—and of my wonderful husband, Tal Lewis, whose patience
and intellectual curiosity provide constant inspiration.
Nicola F. Denzey
MsSVig
