This article examines whether biblical descriptions of death as sleep imply unconsciousness until the resurrection. Through close readings of Ecclesiastes, Daniel, John, Paul’s letters, Luke, and Revelation, it considers the strongest arguments for soul sleep and conscious fellowship with Christ after death. Historical…
Valentinian Christianity remains one of the most sophisticated and contested forms of second-century Christian thought. Its cosmological language - Pleroma, aeons, Sophia, Demiurge, spiritual seed, and bridal chamber - has often been compressed into a simple story of a fallen Wisdom and an…
This article examines the Carpocratians and the followers of Prodicus as heterodox micro-movements within second-century Christianity. Because neither community left a surviving body of literature in its own voice, their teachings must be reconstructed primarily from the hostile accounts of Irenaeus, Clement of…