Geo Widengren was a Swedish professor of
comparative religion. One of his books was “Religionens värld”, also available
in a German translation as “Religionsphänomenologie”. This is a translation of
one particular chapter from that book, a chapter which apparently is considered
particularly important by scholars in the field. The chapter does contain some
interesting angles, but it's difficult to read and hardly for the general reader.
It also lacks context. For instance, why does Widengren suddenly start quoting
Swedish poet Eric Johan Stagnelius?
Widengren believes that Gnosticism has Indian and
Iranian roots. He sees parallels between the New Testament, Gnosticism and
Zoroastrianism. Less controversially, he sees similarities between Gnosticism,
Zurvanism and various forms of Hinduism. Widengren believes that the Gnostic
redeemer figure should be seen as a personification of an impersonal deity
(such as Brahman). The redeemer is also the “heavenly twin” of the earthly
prophet preaching the Gnostic message. Thus, Mani received revelations from his
“twin”, which in Widengren's interpretation is Mani's Atman, which in turn is
identical to Brahman. He also claims that Zoroaster was seen as a “Son of God”,
which would have obvious implications for later Christology (especially if the
Son of God is actually a manifestation of Brahman). The author sees traces of
Gnostic influence in Ephesians.
Widengren describes various Hindu and Iranian myths in
which the soul of the accomplished mystic is seated on the throne of a personal
creator-deity and *becomes* this deity, by putting on his “world garment”. The
author apparently believes that this should be interpreted symbolically,
presumably as a merger of the soul with the World-Soul. However, it's easy to
see parallels to Jewish “throne mysticism”, the idea that Enoch became Little
Yahweh, ancient Israelite coronation rituals, and Jesus Christ. These are not
intended to be interpreted as allegories for pantheist merger with the
Impersonal Beyond!
The main take away from this text is that Christian
(and Gnostic) notions have a long pre-history. Combine this with the idea of a
suffering, dying and resurrecting god (also very old) and some interesting
theological discussions might follow…
If not, I suppose you could always read Birger
Pearson's inspired translations of Eric Johan Stagnelius!
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