David Brakke

Brakke is an unbiased, highly informative guide to the wonder and strangeness of the Apocrypha, bringing a level of insight to these works that exceeds other lecturers I have experienced. He also shows how much of these non-canonical texts has become part of mainstream Christianity, including saints, such as Thecla or the parents of Mary, who don't appear in the canonical gospel at all. Very well done, and the visual presentation is good also. Brakke is an easy to listen to speaker whose delivery is almost perfect.… (mer)

Overall a good survey of the Gnostics as an early Christian/Platonic sect and how the Nag Hammadi texts changed our understanding. Christianity in the 100-200s was still pretty fluid as different communities integrated different ideas and reacted to each other. Gnostic influences continue to affect Christian thought: Gnostics created the monastic movement, the mystic tradition, etc.

Memorable bits: 1) explaining suffering and the old-testament God's temper by as a lower, malformed God that only thinks he's the one God 2) the idea that God / the kingdom is already here but found internally 3) the prodigal son / finding the one lost ship are parables about avoiding the distractions of everyday life in the world and concentrating on the one important thing -- finding God. And the Pharisees and Sadducees were two Judaic parties. The former were about adapting the Law/Torah to contemporary situations. They also started the synagogue movement -- being Jewish wherever you happened to be. The Sadducees where the traditional people following all the laws exactly. Being Jewish mean worshiping at the one temple in Jerusalem under the directions of the Levites -- the priestly caste.… (mer)

This is a fascinating and well-delivered series of lectures about the original Gnostics and other sects that have shared some aspects of gnostic beliefs, mostly as expressed in some of the texts discovered at Nag Hammadi. Brakke is a calm, well-spoken lecturer who brings a deep understanding and seemingly unbiased approach to the subject matter. This is not a course, however, for someone without a decent understanding of the life of Jesus and early Christian history, and I highly recommend Bart Ehrman's "How Jesus Became God" as it provides a good background for subjects such as how the new testament canon was arrived at, something that Brakke doesn't discuss very much.… (mer)