External links
- Yale University: Bentley Layton curriculum vitae
 | This biography of an American theology academic is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Bentley Layton (born 12 August 1941), is Professor of Religious Studies (Ancient Christianity) and Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (Coptic) at Yale University (since 1983). He is a Harvard-educated scholar who has been central to the late 20th-century Rediscovery of Gnosticism , which was the title of the international conference he hosted at Yale in 1980 and the volume that came of it. His interests lie in the History of Christianity from its origins until the rise of Islam, Gnostic studies and Coptic.
With a summa cum laude thesis on the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Coptic Treatise on the Resurrection, which he presented in a critical edition in 1978, he has moved on to present critical editions of other texts: The Hypostasis of the Archons, Or, The Reality of the Rulers..., serialized in Harvard Theological Review 67 (1974) 351—425 and 69 (1976) 1—71, and others. His most accessible book is The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation with Annotations (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1987), which presents some of the enigmatic literature of gnostic Christianity for nonspecialists. He sets his selection of gnostic scripture, the writings of Valentinus and his followers, and related writings that display gnostic tendencies within the broader context of Early Christianity and Hellenistic Judaism, with generous introductions and plentiful annotations.
For specialists, Layton's Coptic grammar is a standard text. He catalogued all the Coptic manuscripts in the British Library. He is a board member on the Harvard Theological Review and the Journal of Coptic Studies.
| | This biography of an American theology academic is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Gnosticism is a collection of ancient religious ideas and systems which originated in the first century AD among early Christian and Jewish sects. These various groups emphasised personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) over orthodox teachings, traditions, and ecclesiastical authority. Gnostic cosmogony generally presents a distinction between a supreme, hidden God and a blind, malevolent demiurge responsible for creating the material universe. Viewing this material existence as flawed or evil, Gnostics considered the principal element of salvation to be direct knowledge of the supreme divinity in the form of mystical or esoteric insight. Many Gnostic texts deal not in concepts of sin and repentance, but with illusion and enlightenment.
The Gospel of Thomas is a non-canonical sayings gospel. It was discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945 among a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library. Scholars speculate that the works were buried in response to a letter from Bishop Athanasius declaring a strict canon of Christian scripture. Scholars have proposed dates of composition as early as AD 60 and as late as AD 140.
The Nag Hammadi library is a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945.
Valentinus was the best known and, for a time, most successful early Christian gnostic theologian. He founded his school in Rome. According to Tertullian, Valentinus was a candidate for bishop but started his own group when another was chosen.
The Gospel of Philip is one of the Gnostic Gospels, a text of New Testament apocrypha, dated to around the 3rd century but lost in medieval times until an Egyptian man rediscovered it by accident, buried in a cave near Nag Hammadi, in 1945.
The Gospel of Mary is an apocryphal book discovered in 1896 in a 5th-century papyrus codex written in Sahidic Coptic. This Berlin Codex was purchased in Cairo by German diplomat Carl Reinhardt.
The Gospel of Judas is a Gnostic gospel. The content consists of conversations between Jesus and Judas Iscariot. Given that it includes late 2nd century theology, it is thought to have been composed in the 2nd century by Gnostic Christians, rather than the historic Judas himself. The only copy of it known to exist is a Coptic language text that has been carbon dated to 280 AD, plus or minus 60 years. It has been suggested that the text derives from an earlier manuscript in the Greek language. An English translation was first published in early 2006 by the National Geographic Society.
The Letter of Peter to Philip is a Gnostic Christian epistle found in the Nag Hammadi Library in Egypt. It was dated to be written around late 2nd century to early 3rd century CE and focuses on a post-crucifixion appearance and teachings of Jesus Christ to the apostles on the Mount of Olives, or Mount Olivet.
Allogenes is a repertoire, or genre, of mystical Gnostic texts dating from the first half of the Third Century, CE. They concern Allogenes, "the Stranger", a half-human, half-divine capable of communicating with realms beyond the sense-perceptible world, into the unknowable.
The Gospel of Truth is one of the Gnostic texts from the New Testament apocrypha found in the Nag Hammadi codices ("NHC"). It exists in two Coptic translations, a Subakhmimic rendition surviving almost in full in the first Nag Hammadi codex and a Sahidic in fragments in the twelfth codex.
Shenoute of Atripe, also known as Shenoute the Great or Saint Shenoute the Archimandrite (Coptic: Ⲁⲃⲃⲁ Ϣⲉⲛⲟⲩϯ ⲡⲓⲁⲣⲭⲓⲙⲁⲛ'ⲇⲣⲓⲧⲏⲥ; was the abbot of the White Monastery in Egypt. He is considered a saint by the Oriental Orthodox Churches, and is one of the most renowned saints of the Coptic Orthodox Church.
Edwin Masao Yamauchi is a Japanese-American historian, (Protestant) Christian apologist, editor and academic. He is Professor Emeritus of History at Miami University, where he taught from 1969 until 2005. He is married to Kimie Honda.
The Hypostasis of the Archons or The Reality of the Rulers is an exegesis on the Book of Genesis 1–6 and expresses Gnostic mythology of the divine creators of the cosmos and humanity.
Marvin W. Meyer was a scholar of religion and a tenured professor at Chapman University, in Orange, California.
The Acts of the Apostles is a genre of Early Christian literature, recounting the lives and works of the apostles of Jesus. The Acts are important for many reasons, one of them being the concept of apostolic succession. They also provide insight into the valuation of "missionary activities among the exotic races," since some of them feature missionary work done among, for instance, the Cynocephaly.
Birger A. Pearson is an American scholar and professor studying early Christianity and Gnosticism. He currently holds the positions of Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Professor and Interim Director of the Religious Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley.
Robert E. Van Voorst is an American theologian and educator.
Robert A. Kraft is an American Berg Professor of Religious Studies Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. He is known for his pioneering work in the application of computing to the study of ancient literature and for his significant contributions to the study of early Judaism and early Christianity.
Stephen Emmel is a Coptologist and musician.
Robert McQueen Grant was an American academic theologian and the Carl Darling Buck Professor Emeritus of Humanities and of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Chicago. His scholarly work focused on the New Testament and Early Christianity.