Histories of the Hidden God

Concealment and Revelation in Western Gnostic, Esoteric, and Mystical Traditions

Edited by April D. DeConick and Grant Adamson. Gnostica Series. Durham: Acumen 2013

In Western religious traditions, God is conventionally conceived as a humanlike creator, lawgiver, and king, a being both accessible and actively present in history. Yet there is a concurrent and strong tradition of a God who actively hides. The two traditions have led to a tension between a God who is simultaneously accessible to humanity and yet inaccessible, a God who is both immanent and transcendent, present and absent. Western Gnostic, esoteric, and mystical thinking capitalizes on the hidden and hiding God. He becomes the hallmark of the mystics, Gnostics, sages, and artists who attempt to make accessible to humans the God who is secreted away.

Histories of the Hidden God explores this tradition from antiquity to today. The essays focus on three essential themes: the concealment of the hidden God; the human quest for the hidden God, and revelations of the hidden God.

Reviews

“An exciting collected volume arranged around the topic of concealment and revelation in theological discourses, with a focus on Gnosticism, esotericism, and mysticism across the Abrahamittic religions. The diversity of the topics and diachronic span from antiquity to contemporary times makes this volume truly one of a piece.” – Heterodoxology blog

The Table of Contents

Introduction: In Search of the Hidden God, April D. DeConick

PART I: Concealment of the Hidden God

1. Who is hiding in the Gospel of John? Reconceptualizing Johannine Theology and the Roots of Gnosticism, April D. DeConick
2. Adoil Outside the Cosmos: God Before and After Creation in Enochic Tradition, Andrei A. Orlov
3. The Old Gods of Egypt in Lost Hermetica and Early Sethianism, Grant Adamson
4. Hidden God and Hidden Self: The Emergence of Apophatic Anthropology in Christian Mysticism, Bernard McGinn
5. God’s Occulted Body: On the Hiddenness of Christ in Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus, Claire Fanger

PART II: The Human Quest for the Hidden God

6. Obscured by the Scriptures, Revealed by the Prophets: God in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, Kelley Coblentz Bautch
7. How Hidden was God? Revelation and Pedagogy in Ancient and Medieval Hermetic Writings, David Porreca
8. From Hidden to Revealed in Sethian Revelation, Ritual and Protology, John Turner
9. Shamanism and the Hidden History of Modern Kabbalah, Jonathan Garb
10. Dreaming of Paradise: Seeing God in Islam, David Cook

PART III: Revelations of the Hidden God

11. Revealing and Concealing God in Ancient Synagogue Art, Shira Lander
12. The Invisible Christian God in Christian Art, Robin Jensen
13. On the Mothman, God, and Other Monsters: The Demonology of John A. Keel, Jeffrey Kripal
14. Hidden Away: Esotericism and Gnosticism in Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam, Stephen Finley
15. Conscious Concealment: The Repression and Expression of African American Spiritualists, Margarita Simon Guillory
16. Occulture in the Academy? The Case of Joseph P. Farrell, John Stroup

Afterword: Mysticism, Gnosticism, and Esotericism as Entangled Discourses, Kocku von Stuckrad
Bibliography

April D. DeConick

Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity since 2006

Chair of the Department of Religion at Rice University 2013-2019

Figure Foundation Book Award for The Gnostic New Age: How a Countercultural Spirituality Revolutionized Religion From Antiquity to Today (New York: Columbia University Press 2016)

Grant Recipient with James McGrath and Charles Häberl, National Endowment for the Humanities, The Mandaean Book of John: Critical Edition, Translation, and Commentary, 2012-14

Co-Founder and Executive Editor of GNOSIS: Journal of Gnostic Studies (Leiden: Brill) since 2015

Editorial Board of Journal of the American Academy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press) since 2019

Editorial Board for Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies (Leiden: Brill) since 2008

Grant recipient and Faculty Leader of Andrew W. Mellon Graduate Research Seminar, Emerging Religions 2017-2019

Chair, Society of Biblical Literature, Committee for the Status of Women in the Profession, 2016-2018

Research Fellow in the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious 2014-2015

Associate Editor for Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks on Religion, ten-volumes, 2016

Faculty in the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, Rice University, since 2006

Grant recipient and Faculty Leader of Andrew W. Mellon Graduate Research Seminar, Mapping Death, 2010-2012

Associate Editor for Vigiliae Christianae, Journal and Monograph series (Leiden: Brill) 2014-2015

Co-chair of Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism Section, Society of Biblical Literature, 2012-2018

Founding Chair and Member of Steering Committee of Mysticism, Esotericism and Gnosticism in Antiquity Section, Society of Biblical Literature since 1996

Member of Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession, Society of Biblical Literature, 2012-2018

Founder of the Cognition and Culture in the Humanities Workshop, Rice University, 2011-2013

29th Annual Loy Witherspoon Lecturer, University of North Carolina 2013

Centennial Lecturer for Rackham School of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan 2012

Edgar and Dorothy Davidson Annual Lecturer, Carleton University 2009

Member of Phi Kappa Phi Honors Society since 2002

Member of Phi Beta Kappa Honors Society since 1988

Affiliated with the Society of Biblical Literature since 1987

Affiliated with the International Association for Coptic Studies since 2006

Affiliated with the North American Patristics Society since 2006

Affiliated with the American Academy of Religion since 2007

Affiliated with the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism since 2016