Lexicon of Gnostic Mythologoumena

Basic data for this project

Description

The Lexicon of Gnostic Mythologumena will provide a research tool for the study of "Gnostic" texts that will make it possible to study the mythological elements in their context. It will be an inventory of the individual mythological elements that one encounters in these texts. The lexicon is analytic and does not aim primarily at a synthesis, even though it should facilitate possible later syntheses. Alongside the"Lexicon" there will also be a "Concordance," that is thematically organized. The alphabetically arranged lemmata of the lexicon also include cross-references to material that is treated in the concordance in thematic context. Thus the lexicon can also be used as an index to the concordance. The corpus will consist of the(non-Hermetic) texts from the Nag Hammadi Codices and the other known "Gnostic" codices (BG 8502, Codex Askewanius, Codex Brucianus, Codex Tchacos). It is not intended to construct a kind of genealogy of the "Gnostic" myths. The starting point is the mythological elements as they are found in the transmitted texts. Here there will be no attempt to discover an "original unity" or the later revised "Urmyth." Because no existing (ancient or modern) "heresiological" classification will be followed here, but rather the elementsof the texts will be arranged according to their literary agreements and variations, this lexicon will be able to contribute to the discussion of the classification of the "Gnsotic" materials from a new perspective.