Publications [#381889] of Daniel M Herskowitz

Articles in a Collection

1. Herskowitz, DM. "From Gnosis und spätantiker Geist to The Gnostic Religion: The Jerusalem Period in Hans Jonas’ Intellectual Development." Hans Jonas the Early Years. January, 2024, 154-177. [doi]

   Abstract:
   Anyone who reads Jonas’ two major works on Gnostic literature, the early German Gnosis und spätantiker Geist and its later English adaptation, The Gnostic Religion, will no doubt recognize the glaring differences between them. Indeed, the English version is not merely a translation of the original German but constitutes a substantial reworking of its project. An account of this reworking, however, has yet to be offered in the extant scholarly literature on Jonas. The aim of this essay is to contribute to filling this gap and to illuminate some aspects of the transformation of Jonas’ Gnosis study. It delineates, from a conceptual standpoint, some core differences between the two studies and explains, from a historical standpoint, the reasons for them. By examining the transcripts of a lecture series on Gnosticism delivered by Jonas in the Hebrew University in 1938, this essay demonstrates that many of the key differences between his early German study of Gnosticism and his later English version are already present in his Hebrew lectures, thus locating this major shift in Jonas’ work in his pre-war Jerusalem period.