The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity

«It may be said that in this century Gnosticism, which is bound up with the development of Early Christianity, matured or graduated from a field for church historians, and mainly as an object of stern criticism on the part of the Church Fathers, to a topic that has drawn into its orbit more scholars of different fields.» — según Jonas, el gnosticismo dejó de ser en el siglo XX un asunto de historiadores de la Iglesia y objeto de crítica patrística para volverse tema de estudiosos de campos diversos

«It is now difficult to define which field, which particular section of scholarship, is the true home of research in Gnosticism.» — Jonas señala que ya no puede decirse a qué disciplina pertenece propiamente la investigación del gnosticismo

«It touches in its own essence on so many issues and predicaments of modern man, i.e., on questions of which the nineteenth century was completely unaware, happily so, and of which we of necessity must be aware in the dislocated century in which we live.» — Jonas deriva esa dispersión disciplinar del contenido mismo: el gnosticismo toca cuestiones del hombre moderno que el siglo XIX ignoraba y que el suyo, dislocado, no puede ignorar

«There is an empathy with Gnosticism, an element of topicality to it, which it has not had since the time when the Church Fathers fought it as a danger to the Christian creed.» — Jonas nombra esa cercanía como empatía y actualidad, y la data: no la había desde que los Padres lo combatían como peligro para el credo

«To reminisce is a dangerous matter, as everyone knows. When one looks back, things have somehow been edited in one's mind, unintentionally but inevitably.» — la reserva con que Jonas abre el relato autobiográfico: la memoria edita sin querer y sin remedio

«Since I am not a philologist or a theologian (and certainly not a Christian theologian) or a historian, but entered university with the intent of studying philosophy in the hope of becoming a philosopher,» — Jonas declara su lugar: ni filólogo ni teólogo ni historiador, sino alguien que entró a la universidad para ser filósofo

«In my later school years, when one begins to choose one's own intellectual food somewhat independently of what the teachers in "Secunda" and "Prima" tell one, I had three decisive reading experiences of an intellectual, moral and emotional nature.» — Jonas fecha en sus últimos años de escuela las tres lecturas que llama decisivas, intelectual, moral y emocionalmente

«First, the Prophets of Israel, whom I read at that time not in Hebrew, but in a translation provided by the Protestant text-critical school. The translators were H. Gressmann, H. Gunkel and others.1 It was through their historical rendering and their text-critical notes, connected with a commentary, that I discovered the Prophets of Israel; not through the Jewish Religionsunterricht of my childhood, but through the Protestant rendering of that school.» — la primera de las tres: los Profetas de Israel leídos no en hebreo ni en la enseñanza religiosa judía de su infancia, sino en la traducción y las notas texto-críticas de la escuela protestante de H. Gressmann y H. Gunkel

«Second, Imanuel Kant, of whom I first read Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, which begins with this immortal sentence that thunders through my life similarly to the words of the Prophets: "Es ist uberall nichts in der Welt, ja auch ausserhalb derselben zu denken moglich, was ohne Einschrankung konnte fur gut gehalten werden, als einzig ein guter Willie."2» — la segunda: la Grundlegung de Kant, cuya primera frase Jonas cita en alemán y dice que le retumba en la vida como las palabras de los Profetas; el escaneo imprime Imanuel por Immanuel y Willie por Wille, y pierde los diacríticos de uberall, konnte, fur y Einschrankung

«And third, there was Martin Buber. At that time I read Buber's famous Drei Reden uber das Judentunv1 and Die Legende des Baalschem, the beginnings of his great work on Chassidism,» — la tercera: Buber, con los Drei Reden über das Judentum —que el escaneo rinde Judentunv— y Die Legende des Baalschem, comienzo de su obra sobre el jasidismo

«It was a blending which could probably not stand a rigorous critique of compatibility, but somehow it fused in my own mind.» — Jonas consigna la incompatibilidad de la mezcla sin resolverla: Profetas, Kant y Buber no aguantarían una crítica rigurosa de compatibilidad y aun así se fundieron en él

«Thus, when I entered university, two things were clear for me. One was that I wanted to study philosophy. The other was that religion is an essential aspect of humanity, and that no study of philosophy is possible without somehow being joined with a study of the religious phenomena.» — de esas lecturas Jonas deriva su programa: estudiar filosofía, y sostener que la religión es un aspecto esencial de lo humano, de modo que no hay estudio de la filosofía sin estudio de los fenómenos religiosos

«that also somewhat explains why I thought and still think that Gnosticism, apart from the challenge it poses to philologians, historians, theologians and so on, also poses a challenge to philosophers.» — según Jonas, el gnosticismo no solo interpela a filólogos, historiadores y teólogos: interpela también a los filósofos

«Among philosophers I am still, it seems, the only one who has acted on that belief; in spite of everything I have always been something of an outsider, because my interest was not quite the same as that of the real workers with the texts, i.e., those who read Iranian, Coptic, Turkish, and so on, and who know the whole field at first hand.» — y acota esa posición declarándose el único filósofo que obró en consecuencia, y a la vez un outsider frente a quienes leen iranio, copto o turco y conocen el campo de primera mano

«I wanted to take up the question: Why did the Church reject Gnosticism? Apart from the obvious reason that many of its teachings were fantastic and not in agreement with the Gospels, why was Gnosis as such from Paul on rejected as a possible option? Why was Pistis chosen instead? This I wanted to explain to my own satisfaction and probe into the meaning of that momentous decision, for Pistis and against Gnosis.» — la pregunta con que Jonas dice haber empezado: por qué la Iglesia rechazó el gnosticismo y por qué eligió Pistis en lugar de Gnosis, más allá de que muchas doctrinas gnósticas fueran fantásticas

«It turned out to be very different from that of theoretical knowledge in philosophy and science, and the religious thinkers themselves were aware of the difference. As an example I refer to the Genesis sentence "and Adam knew Eve his wife." There, "to know" stands for the sexual union, and already the Church Fathers used the sentence exegeticaily for denoting a knowledge that terminates in a reciprocal union with its object—namely God—as opposed to the "distancing" theoretical knowledge of the Greeks.» — según Jonas, el conocer religioso difiere del teórico y los propios pensadores religiosos lo sabían: la frase del Génesis sobre Adán que conoció a Eva sirvió ya a los Padres para nombrar un conocimiento que termina en unión recíproca con su objeto, frente al conocer distanciado de los griegos; el escaneo imprime exegeticaily por exegetically

«Clearly, to "know God" in the Hebrew sense is different from the knowledge of the Divine in the Aristotelian sense. Yet neither of the two is "gnostic." But there is a third sense: Gnosis as mystical knowledge, and the Genesis passage is particularly apt to represent this when given that turn (from which patristic exegesis on the whole refrained).» — Jonas distingue tres sentidos y niega que los dos primeros sean gnósticos: el conocer hebreo, el conocer aristotélico y un tercero, la gnosis como conocimiento místico, sentido del que la exégesis patrística en general se abstuvo

«I suddenly glimpsed, as in a blinding light, the possible, nay, persuasive hypothesis that what the Gnostics understood by "Gnosis" is by no means confined to them in the environment of declining antiquity: rather, that what the later Platonists— Plotinus, Porphyry and others—had to say about the highest form of knowledge, about the union with the One, is another, more refined version of this same type of knowledge that goes beyond the knowledge of "logos" and of "theory" in the Greek tradition.» — la hipótesis que Jonas llama persuasiva y no probada: lo que los gnósticos entendían por gnosis no se limita a ellos, y lo que los platónicos tardíos —Plotino, Porfirio y otros— dicen de la unión con el Uno es otra versión más refinada de ese mismo conocimiento, más allá del logos y de la theoria griegos

«difficult to say whether it is philosophy in the sense of Plato and Aristotle, or whether it is mysticism. It is, of course, both.» — Jonas se niega a elegir entre filosofía y misticismo para ese pensamiento fronterizo: dice que es las dos cosas

«Something in Gnosticism knocks at the door of our Being and of our twentieth-century Being in particular. Here is humanity in a crisis and in some of the radical possibilities of choices that man can make concerning his view of his position in the world, of his relation to himself, to the absolute and to his mortal Being.» — según Jonas, lo que hace interesante al gnosticismo no es la masa de documentos hallados: es que llama a la puerta de nuestro ser, y en particular del ser del siglo XX, con una humanidad en crisis y con opciones radicales sobre la posición del hombre en el mundo, su relación consigo mismo, con lo absoluto y con su ser mortal

«And there is certainly something in Gnosticism that helps one to understand humanity better than one would understand it if one had never known of Gnosticism.» — Jonas sostiene que el gnosticismo ayuda a entender a la humanidad mejor de lo que se la entendería sin él

«But to see it in this strange and even shocking form of an extreme option about the meaning of Being, the situation of man, the absolute importance of selfhood and the wrestling with the saving of this selfhood from all the powers of alienation that impinge on man—to live in the company of this kind of thinking and imagery (in this case the most congenial vehicle of thought) is, I think, of interest not merely to the historian of religion.» — Jonas acota esa tesis: la forma extraña y aun chocante de una opción extrema sobre el sentido del ser, la situación del hombre y el rescate de la mismidad frente a los poderes de alienación no interesa solo al historiador de las religiones

«I still confess to a primary philosophical interest in the subject of Gnosticism and that is, in my own eyes, the true apologia for my life as a scholar, for my having spent so many years (with so many others forcibly diverted to non-contemplative pursuits) on the exploration of a field of which my fellow philosophers do not know a thing and of which most of them could not care less.» — Jonas declara su interés primariamente filosófico y lo llama la apología verdadera de su vida de estudioso, en un campo del que sus colegas filósofos no saben nada

«Thus, I like to think that even in my present philosophical project, which is technology and ethics, I can still profit from what Gnosticism has taught me.» — Jonas enlaza su proyecto filosófico de entonces, tecnología y ética, con lo aprendido del gnosticismo

«One may say that one link between the study of Gnosticism and that of the modern situation of man is provided by dualism as such, which figures very prominently in the story of what leads to a philosophy of organism.» — Jonas propone el dualismo como el vínculo entre el estudio del gnosticismo y la situación moderna del hombre, y lo liga a lo que conduce a una filosofía del organismo

«Gnosticism has been the most radical embodiment of dualism ever to have appeared on the stage of history, and its exploration provides a case study of all that is implicated in it. It is a split between self and world, man's alienation from nature, the metaphysical devaluation of nature, the cosmic solitude of the spirit and the nihilism of mundane norms; and in its general extremist style it shows what radicalism really is.» — la tesis mayor del epílogo, anticipada aquí: el gnosticismo es la encarnación más radical del dualismo que haya aparecido en la historia —escisión entre yo y mundo, alienación del hombre respecto de la naturaleza, devaluación metafísica de la naturaleza, soledad cósmica del espíritu y nihilismo de las normas mundanas— y su exploración es un caso de estudio de todo lo que ese dualismo implica

«The analogical modernity of ancient Gnosticism, or the hidden Gnosticism in the modern mind, has struck me early and was expounded in my essay "Gnosticism and Modern Nihilism." So in the gnostic paradigm we have all these things with the sharpness of unblushing naivete, and that proves an enlightening help.» — Jonas nombra modernidad analógica del gnosticismo antiguo, o gnosticismo oculto en la mente moderna, lo que dice haberle llamado la atención temprano y haber expuesto en Gnosticism and Modern Nihilism

«I could go on arguing an analogy between things gnostic and things modern, or a relevance of things gnostic to things modern and of Gnosticism to philosophy. But it would be possible that what I would really be doing is trying to persuade myself of some continuity in my life's intellectual journey—and of that, one's own biased self is the last judge to be trusted.» — y ahí pone su propia reserva: podría seguir argumentando la analogía, pero acaso solo estaría persuadiéndose de una continuidad en su trayectoria, y de eso el yo sesgado es el último juez fiable

«Great changes have taken place in the field of Gnosticism since this book was first published. Only the barest beginnings of information on the famous Nag Hammadi documents were then in the public domain. Of the about fifty-three or more tractates, only the Gospel of Truth had been published and could just be inserted with a few quotations into my text. It was evident from the first, and has become ever more so, that the stunning chance discovery of 1946 marks a turning point in our knowledge of things Gnostic. Never before has a single archaeological find so radically altered the state of documentation for a whole field.» — según Jonas, el hallazgo casual de 1946 marca un punto de inflexión: ningún otro hallazgo arqueológico había alterado tan radicalmente el estado de la documentación de un campo entero

«From great scarcity we were overnight catapulted into great wealth with regard to original sources uncontaminated by secondary tradition. Yet circumstances conspired to make the opening up of this treasure to international scholarship frustratingly slow.» — Jonas consigna a la vez la abundancia repentina de fuentes originales no contaminadas por tradición secundaria y la lentitud exasperante con que se abrieron a la investigación internacional

«A summing up of the new knowledge and its import for the gnostic image as a whole will be a prime necessity some day, but must wait.» — Jonas declara que la síntesis de lo nuevo es necesaria y que hay que esperarla; entretanto llama a la época el día de los coptólogos

«Out of the mist of the beginning of our era there looms a pageant of mythical figures whose vast, superhuman contours might people the walls and ceiling of another Sistine Chapel. Their countenances and gestures, the roles in which they are cast, the drama which they enact, would yield images different from the biblical ones on which the imagination of the beholder was reared, yet strangely familiar to him and disturbingly moving. The stage would be the same, the theme as transcending: the creation of the world, the destiny of man, fall and redemption, the first and the last things.» — la imagen con que Jonas abre el prefacio de la primera edición: un cortejo de figuras míticas que podrían poblar otra Capilla Sixtina, con el mismo escenario y los mismos temas que la Biblia —creación, destino del hombre, caída y redención, las primeras y las últimas cosas— y con imágenes distintas

«Almost all the action would be in the heights, in the divine or angelic or daimonic realm, a drama of pre-cosmic persons in the supranatural world, of which the drama of man in the natural world is but a distant echo. And yet that transcendental drama before all time, depicted in the actions and passions of manlike figures, would be of intense human appeal: divinity tempted, unrest stirring among the blessed Aeons, God's erring Wisdom, the Sophia, falling prey to her folly, wandering in the void and darkness of her own making, endlessly searching, lamenting, suffering, repenting, laboring her passion into matter, her yearning into soul; a blind and arrogant Creator believing himself the Most High and lording it over the creation, the product, like himself, of fault and ignorance; the Soul, trapped and lost in the labyrinth of the world, seeking to escape and frightened back by the gatekeepers of the cosmic prison, the terrible archons; a Savior from the Light beyond venturing into the nether world, illumining the darkness, opening a path, healing the divine breach: a tale of light and darkness, of knowledge and ignorance, of serenity and passion, of conceit and pity, on the scale not of man but of eternal beings that are not exempt from suffering and error.» — la sinopsis del drama gnóstico que Jonas resume ahí: la divinidad tentada, la inquietud entre los Eones, la Sabiduría errante —la Sophia— presa de su locura, un Creador ciego y arrogante que se cree el Altísimo, el Alma perdida en el laberinto del mundo y espantada por los arcontes carceleros, y un Salvador que viene de la Luz de más allá a abrir camino

«The tale has found no Michelangelo to retell it, no Dante and no Milton. The sterner discipline of biblical creed weathered the storm of those days, and both Old and New Testament were left to inform the mind and imagination of Western man. Those teachings which, in the feverish hour of transition, challenged, tempted, tried to twist the new faith are forgotten, their written record buried in the tomes of their refuters or in the sands of ancient lands. Our art and literature and much else would be different, had the gnostic message prevailed.» — Jonas fecha ahí la derrota: el credo bíblico aguantó el temporal, las enseñanzas rivales quedaron sepultadas en los tomos de sus refutadores o en la arena, y el arte y la literatura de Occidente serían otros si el mensaje gnóstico hubiera prevalecido

«This resuscitation is of more than antiquarian interest: with all its strangeness, its violence to reason, its immoderateness of judgment, that world of feeling, vision, and thought had its profundity, and without its voice, its insights, and even its errors, the evidence of humanity is incomplete.» — Jonas justifica la reconstrucción: sin esa voz, sus intuiciones y aun sus errores, la evidencia de lo humano queda incompleta, con toda su extrañeza, su violencia contra la razón y su desmesura de juicio

«Rejected as it was, it represents one of the possibilities then offered at the crossroads of creeds. Its glow throws light upon the beginnings of Christianity, the birth pangs of our world; and the heirs of a decision made long ago will better understand their heritage by knowing what once competed with it for the soul of man.» — y la sitúa como una de las posibilidades ofrecidas en la encrucijada de credos, cuya luz alumbra los comienzos del cristianismo

«The investigation of Gnosticism is almost as old as Gnosticism itself. Chiefly by its own choosing—being the aggressor—it was an embattled cause from the beginning and thus came under the scrutiny of those whose cause it threatened to subvert. The investigation, carried on in the heat of conflict, was that of a prosecutor.» — según Jonas, la investigación del gnosticismo nació con él y en calor de conflicto: fue la de un fiscal, porque quien lo estudió primero fue aquel a quien amenazaba

«Attorneys for the prosecution were the Fathers of the early Church, stating its case against the heresies in lengthy works (we have no record of the defense, if there was any); and they inquired into the spiritual ancestry of Gnosticism as part of their undertaking to expose its error. Their writings, therefore, provide not only our main—until recently, our sole—source of knowledge of gnostic teaching itself, but also the earliest theory about its nature and origin. To them, their finding that Gnosticism, or what in it distorted the Christian truth, hailed from Hellenic philosophy, amounted to an indictment: to us, it must still count as a hypothesis, among alternative ones, relevant for the historical diagnosis of the phenomenon, and must be considered on its merits.» — Jonas consigna el doble carácter de los Padres como fuente: son la vía principal —hasta hace poco la única— de conocimiento de la doctrina gnóstica y a la vez la teoría más antigua sobre su naturaleza, y su hallazgo de un origen en la filosofía helénica, que para ellos era acusación, para nosotros es una hipótesis entre otras, que se pesa por sus méritos; añade que no hay registro de la defensa, si la hubo

«The last of the major heresiologists to deal extensively with the gnostic sects, Epiphanius of Salamis, wrote in the fourth century A.D. From then on, with the danger past and the polemical interest no longer alive, oblivion settled down on the whole subject, until the historical interest of the nineteenth century returned to it in the spirit of dispassionate inquiry.» — Jonas data el silencio: Epifanio de Salamina escribe en el siglo IV y desde entonces, sin peligro y sin interés polémico, el asunto queda en olvido hasta que el interés histórico del siglo XIX vuelve a él

«But the Protestant theologians (mostly German) who engaged in the new investigation approached their task as historians who are no longer party to the conflict, though intellectual trends of their own time might way their sympathies and judgments.» — y acota a quienes retomaron la investigación: teólogos protestantes, en su mayoría alemanes, que se acercaron como historiadores ya no partes del conflicto, aunque las corrientes intelectuales de su tiempo pudieran inclinar sus simpatías

«Hans Jonas (1903-1993) was born and educated in Germany, where he was a pupil of Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Bultmann.» — la solapa biográfica del editor, no voz del cuerpo, presenta a Jonas como discípulo de Heidegger y de Bultmann

«He left in 1933, when Hitler came into power, and in 1940 joined the British Army in the Middle East.» — sigue la solapa con el exilio de 1933 y el alistamiento de 1940

«After the war he taught at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Carleton University in Ottawa, finally settling in the United States.» — la solapa cierra el itinerario académico: Jerusalén, Ottawa y los Estados Unidos

«He was the Alvin Johnson Professor of Philosophy on the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science at the New School for Social Research in New York.» — la cátedra que la solapa le adjudica en la New School for Social Research

«Professor Jonas was also author of, among other books, The Phenomenon of Life (1966). He died in 1993» — la solapa remite a *The Phenomenon of Life* y fecha la muerte en 1993; el escaneo cierra esa línea con un guion donde el impreso lleva punto

«Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.» — la plana de derechos declara bajo qué auspicios publica Beacon Press

«The talk on which this preface is based was given in free improvisation, without notes, and inspired by the atmosphere of intimacy which the preceding days of the International Colloquium on Gnosticism (1974) had created between the speaker and that particular small and close-knit audience. It is this intimacy bound to the occasion more than the rambling due to improvisation that made me hesitate to let the tape-recorded talk become part of the official proceedings, thereby making the personal outpourings of the moment a lasting statement to an anonymous wider public. My eventual consent owes most to the sensitive editing of the transcript by Mr. David Hellholm, to whom I express my sincere thanks for his dedicated and ingenious labors. The transcribed text was reviewed by me once more, and I now release it, still not without a sense of embarrassment, but in the comforting knowledge that among the now enlarged audience are the friends who were the original and so kindly responsive recipients of these autobiographical indulgences. ("A Retrospective View," Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Gnosticism, 1977)» — la nota al pie con que Jonas explica el origen del prefacio a la tercera edición: una charla improvisada del Coloquio Internacional sobre Gnosticismo de 1974, grabada, transcrita y editada por David Hellholm, revisada después por él mismo

«Without certain teachers, influences and tasks set at one time or another, without a certain combination of circumstances, which in my case were mainly focused in the two names of Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Bultmann, I would not have become what I am, and the study of Gnosticism would have, for better or for worse, gone without the participation of Hans Jonas.» — Jonas atribuye al azar y al encuentro con Martin Heidegger y Rudolf Bultmann que el estudio del gnosticismo lo tuviera a él dentro; el escaneo parte partici-pation por el salto de renglón

«There was the powerful figure of Edmund Husserl in Freiburg, the founder of the phenomenological school in philosophy, and there was his disciple, a young, impressive and disturbing Privatdozent, Heidegger, who in some manner transferred the phenomenological method, i.e., the careful description of phenomena of the mind, from the purely cognitive field to which Husserl had confined it (perception, thinking, knowing, conceptualization and so on) to the phenomena of existence, i.e., the individual enmeshed in the concerns of life, being more than an ego cogitans, being engaged in the business of living and dependent on the "facticity" of his being which he had not chosen himself.» — Jonas describe la situación filosófica alemana de los años veinte: Husserl en Friburgo funda la fenomenología y Heidegger, su discípulo, traslada el método descriptivo del campo cognitivo a los fenómenos de la existencia y a la facticidad de un ser que uno no eligió

«Kierkegaard, in addition to Husserl, stood behind Heidegger: not the theologian Kierkegaard or Kierkegaard the Christian thinker, but Kierkegaard the discoverer of "existential" thought as such. In other words, in the person of Heidegger "existentialism" had entered the sacrosanct domain of the strictly objective, descriptive style of Husserlian phenomenology.» — Jonas nombra a Kierkegaard —no el teólogo ni el pensador cristiano, sino el descubridor del pensamiento existencial— como el segundo antecedente de Heidegger, y data ahí la entrada del existencialismo en la fenomenología de Husserl

«Quite soon, in 1924, I was an active member of Bultmann's New Testament seminar together with another Jewish student of Heidegger, to whom a lifelong friendship has bound me since: it will be fifty years next year that we have been friends. She is Hannah Arendt, whose name is known as that of a political philosopher.» — Jonas data en 1924 su entrada al seminario neotestamentario de Bultmann junto a la otra estudiante judía de Heidegger, Hannah Arendt

«Let me offer a few words on the importance of the Gospel of John to Bultmann, In his New Testament work he felt more and more attracted to this Gospel for reasons which, I would say, belong to the nonarguable ones, a kind of decision about which it is entirely inappropriate to ask: Is it correct or incorrect? I never followed him there, since I personally never liked the Fourth Gospel particularly. To me, the epistles of Paul, which I also learned to know through Bultmann, became the most essential, the most interesting, the historically and philosophically decisive documents in the New Testament.» — Jonas consigna su desacuerdo con Bultmann sin armonizarlo: para el maestro el cuarto Evangelio era decisivo por razones que Jonas llama no argumentables, y él prefería las epístolas de Pablo

«But Bultmann's love was the Fourth Gospel, and through its medium came the point of contact with Gnosticism: especially with the newly discovered Mandaean documents that came out of the masterhand of Lidzbarski4 and were first, if I remember rightly, treated in their possible importance for the Gospels by Reitzenstein in Das Mandaische Buch des Herrn der Grosse und die Evangelienuberlieferung.5 It was the possible bearing of the Mandaean nomenclature, of their vocabulary and their imagery on the problem of authorship and the whole meaning and spirit of the Gospel of John, which brought Bultmann into the realm of gnostic studies.» — según Jonas, lo que llevó a Bultmann al campo gnóstico fue el peso posible del vocabulario y la imaginería mandeos —publicados por Lidzbarski y tratados primero por Reitzenstein— sobre la autoría y el sentido del Evangelio de Juan

«For the first time I studied the Mandaean writings in Lidzbarski's translation. I studied Reitzenstein. I read Norden's Agnostos Theos, which had come out in a second edition about that time. It was a powerful book, which I think was subtitled Untersuchungen zur Formengeschichte religioser Rede.» — las lecturas con que Jonas preparó el informe del seminario: Lidzbarski, Reitzenstein y el Agnostos Theos de Norden en su segunda edición

«Bultmann, who had said only a few words at the end, talked to me afterwards and said, "Jonas, this was really important! You must go on with it! This is only a beginning!» — la frase con que, según Jonas, Bultmann le pidió seguir con el asunto tras el informe del seminario

«He told Heidegger, who was my main teacher and under whom I was supposed to write my doctoral dissertation, about my performance, including its unfinished character. Heidegger talked to me about it and said, "If you want to, I am willing to accept a dissertation in philosophy on that topic or something connected with it. I have Bultmann's assurance that he will serve as a Korreferent for that kind of dissertation.» — y la oferta con que, según Jonas, Heidegger aceptó dirigirle una tesis de filosofía sobre el tema con Bultmann de correferente

«So I "conceived a conception," to use gnostic language, and brought forth an emanation, so to speak, a still formless fruit, and its name was to be "Pistis and Gnosis."» — Jonas nombra en lenguaje gnóstico —concebir una concepción, dar a luz una emanación— el proyecto informe que llamó Pistis and Gnosis

«At this point, the vastness of the subject took matters out of my hands and relegated "Pistis," the original matching mate of my twin-topic, to an indefinite "later." "Pistis and Gnosis" shrank to "Gnosis" pure and simple.» — Jonas consigna el recorte: la magnitud del asunto relegó Pistis a un después indefinido y el proyecto gemelo quedó reducido a la sola Gnosis

«And this I decided to attack from the end rather than from the beginning,» — el método que Jonas declara: atacar la gnosis por el final y no por el principio; el tramo se corta ante el encabezado corrido y el folio romano

«from Plotinus and the Neoplatonists after him, even as late as Dionysius Areopagita, i.e., from the philosophic-mystical elaborations of that "knowing" which is at the same time a union with the divine reality. My aim in this was not a record of its history but a hermeneutics of its phenomenology as it manifested itself in those testimonies.» — el remate tras el encabezado corrido: desde Plotino y los neoplatónicos hasta Dionisio Areopagita, es decir desde las elaboraciones filosófico-místicas de ese conocer que es a la vez unión con la realidad divina, y no como historia sino como hermenéutica de su fenomenología

«However, for future publication, I had to write a historical introduction to that, namely on the mythological Gnosis of the second century, which more and more I realized presented the real flesh-and-blood form of what appeared in such a spiritualized, conceptually rarefied form in the later mystical thinkers who tried to keep as much as possible within the Greek tradition. That introduction, once the dissertation itself lay behind me, grew into the first volume of Gnosis und spatantiker Geist.» — según Jonas, la introducción histórica exigida para publicar la tesis creció hasta volverse el primer tomo de Gnosis und spätantiker Geist; ahí sostiene que la gnosis mitológica del siglo II es la forma de carne y hueso de lo que los místicos posteriores presentan espiritualizado y enrarecido

«And so, what my position in your field of scholarship rests on is the fragment of a fragment of my original plan. From Pistis and Gnosis, it focused upon Gnosis, and from Gnosis it focused on the mythological Gnosis mainly of the second century.» — Jonas acota su propio lugar en el campo: lo que lo sostiene es el fragmento de un fragmento del plan original

«Reitzenstein, whom I mentioned above, was a strange kind of force, one who gave me a push in one direction and after some time revised himself, after he had come under some other influence, or some other light had dawned on him, and gave me a push in another direction. I first studied the Poimandres7, and Gnosticism was mainly of Egyptian origin. Then he discovered Iran, and the "Urmensch-Gayomart" traditions.8 Each time he managed to have an expert in the field as his advisor and translator of the texts.» — según Jonas, Reitzenstein empujaba en una dirección y luego se revisaba a sí mismo: primero el Poimandres y un origen egipcio del gnosticismo, después Irán y las tradiciones del Urmensch-Gayomart, con un experto distinto como asesor y traductor cada vez

«It was, of course, Harnack who at first so strongly emphasized the Greek background with his thesis that Gnosis is "die akute Hellenisierung des Christentums.» — la tesis de Harnack que Jonas registra en su formulación alemana: la gnosis como helenización aguda del cristianismo

«The Turfan fragments, which had been discovered at the beginning of the century, began slowly to be published step by step, a process which I think is still going on.10 Then the Coptic Mani-library was discovered in Egypt, which Schmidt and Polotsky started to edit.11 Furthermore, Lidzbarski, as I mentioned earlier, brought out the Mandaean documents.» — el inventario de los hallazgos que rompieron esa comodidad: los fragmentos de Turfán, la biblioteca copta maniquea editada por Schmidt y Polotsky y los documentos mandeos de Lidzbarski

«Little did I dream that twenty years later the floodgates would open. Nobody anticipated the Nag Hammadi.» — Jonas declara que nadie anticipó Nag Hammadi

«Meanwhile I had advanced in my work in spite of these handicaps, the greatest of which was that my language knowledge was restricted to Greek, Latin, Hebrew and a bit of Aramaic. I knew enough Aramaic to understand Mandaean terms, but I never went on to learn Coptic.» — Jonas declara el límite de su propio equipo filológico: griego, latín, hebreo y algo de arameo, sin copto

«So far, all my direct teachers and the indirect teachers, i.e., authors of the books that had instructed me, were German: Reitzenstein, Bousset13, the whole "Religionsgeschichtliche Schule," and the orientalists too (Cumont14 excepted).» — Jonas nombra alemana toda su formación —Reitzenstein, Bousset, la Religionsgeschichtliche Schule y los orientalistas—, con Cumont como excepción

«I got back a letter, to the effect: I have read your manuscript with interest, but I must tell you frankly that with this kind of view of the matter, which is completely in the German vein, you cannot hope to cut any ice here. I even remember the sentence, "Of what audience are you thinking? Who should read that here?» — la respuesta de Burkitt tal como Jonas la recuerda: con esa visión, del todo alemana, no había nada que hacer allí

«It was not an encouraging letter to a young emigre scholar, but it opened my eyes for the first time to how nationally determined the different views of one and the same subject were at that time. I think it is no longer that way, but at that time, to come from the German school, meaning Reitzenstein and Bousset and Schaeder and Bultmann and so on, was a bad thing. It gave one a bad name, but incidentally so and certainly not politically at that time. This is no longer the spirit of international scholarship today.» — de esa carta Jonas deriva un dato historiográfico: hacia 1933 las visiones de un mismo asunto estaban determinadas nacionalmente, y venir de la escuela alemana —Reitzenstein, Bousset, Schaeder, Bultmann— daba mala fama, aunque no por razones políticas

«Gershom Sholem in Jerusalem, the great scholar of Jewish mysticism, had become interested in my work since he had read parts of the manuscript. When he heard that I was gong to London, he said, "You must visit an old friend of mine, Evelyn Underhill, an internationally renowned authority on mysticism. She will surely be interested in what you are doing," and he wrote me a letter of introduction to her.» — la presentación que, según Jonas, le dio Scholem para Evelyn Underhill; el escaneo imprime Sholem

«Underhill, a frail old lady of noble features, poured the tea, and then she addressed the seated guests in turn with the proper polite questions. When my turn came, she said, "Dr. Jonas, I understand you are working on Gnosticism?" I replied eagerly, "Yes, I am." She said, "That must be interesting!"—and passed on to the next.» — el desenlace del té con Underhill que Jonas cuenta como el final de su intento de entrar al medio británico

«In 1934 the first volume of Gnosis und spatantiker Geist came out in Germany, with that remarkable foreword by Bultmann.» — Jonas data en 1934 la salida en Alemania del primer tomo, con prólogo de Bultmann

«But it was a difficult situation for German reviewers. How does one review the work of a Jewish emigre scholar? If you praise it, that may be dangerous, and if you blame it, you come under the suspicion that you have not been objective for political reasons. The way out of the dilemma was mostly no reviews.» — según Jonas, reseñar en Alemania la obra de un emigrado judío era un dilema y la salida habitual fue el silencio

«Gnomon brought a long and searching review, in English, by A. D. Nock16: the one extensive review in Germany of Gnosis und spatantiker Geist was in the English language and by a British scholar living in America.» — la excepción que Jonas registra: la única reseña extensa aparecida en Alemania fue en inglés, de A. D. Nock, británico residente en América

«I will not bother with the war years, in which I served as a volunteer in the British Army, except to say that, cut off from books and from all the paraphernalia of scholarship, I was forced to suspend all work—research and writing, even thinking—on Gnosis and its halfborn second part. Instead, I undertook a thorough revision of my philosophical views, and I came back from the war with the decision to work out a philosophical program which would take me far afield from historical studies, from Late Antiquity, from Gnosticism and so on: namely the philosophical understanding of our organic Being, and not only ours, but of life in general.» — Jonas fecha en la guerra —servida como voluntario en el ejército británico y sin libros— la suspensión del trabajo y la decisión de pasar a la comprensión filosófica del ser orgánico

«In 1945 I decided to say goodbye to Gnosticism. I also thought that twelve years of a philosopher's life devoted to the inquiry of a historical subject was enough of an apprenticeship that now I should directly attack» — la despedida que Jonas fecha en 1945 y su razón: doce años de vida de filósofo dedicados a un asunto histórico bastaban de aprendizaje; el tramo se corta ante el encabezado corrido y el folio romano

«philosophical problems not connected with particular historical situations.» — el remate tras el encabezado corrido: quería atacar ya directamente problemas filosóficos no ligados a situaciones históricas particulares

«However, I made the experience that many a "goodbye" may in fact be an "Auf Wiedersehen," and somehow I had from that time on to live a double life rather than be in one area of work.» — y la corrección inmediata: el adiós resultó un hasta luego, y desde entonces dice haber llevado una doble vida de trabajo

«At this wrapped book Bultmann pointed and asked, "Darf ich hoffen, dass dies der zweite Band der Gnosis ist?" ("May I hope that this is the second volume of the Gnosis?» — la pregunta con que, según Jonas, Bultmann lo recibió en 1945, doce años después, y que él traduce en el mismo renglón