Jung and the Lost Gospels: Insights Into the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library

The "Lost Gospels" refer to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library, both discovered in the 1940s. The Nag Hammadi Library consists of writings found by two peasants who unearthed clay jars in 1945 in upper Egypt. These did not appear in English for 32 years, because the right to publish was contended by scholars, politicians, and antique dealers. The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in clay jars in Palestine by a goatherder in 1947, weathered similar storms. The first team of analysts were mostly Christian clergy, who weren't anxious to share material that frightened church leaders. As Dr. Hoeller shows, they rightly feared the documents would reveal information that might detract from unique claims of Christianity. Indeed, the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi Library both contradict and complement accepted tenets of the Old and New Testaments. As to the connection with Jung, Dr. Hoeller states, "Jung knew that the one and only tradition associated with Christianity that regarded the human psyche as the container of the divine-human encounter was that of the Gnostics of the the first three centuries of our era. For this reason he called for a renewed appreciation of this ancient tradition, and particularly for a return to the Gnostic sense of God as an inner directing and transforming presence." Dr. Hoeller goes on in his preface, "His sympathetic insight into the myths, symbols, and metaphors of the Gnostics, whom by his own admission he regarded as long-lost friends, continues as the brightest beacon of our day.."

268 pages

About the author: Stephan Hoeller was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1931 into a family of Austro-Hungarian nobility. Exiled from his native country as the result of the communist rule subsequent to World War II, he studied in various academic institutions in Austria, Belgium, and Italy. In 1952 he immigrated to the United States and has resided in Southern California ever since. In the early 1970's he became first associate professor and later head of the Department of Comparative Religions at the College of Oriental Studies in Los Angeles, a position he held for fifteen years. He also taught special courses at the Institute for the Study of Religion (East and West) at the University of California at Los Angeles. He is author of five books, all published by Quest Books: The Royal Road; The Gnostic Jung and Seven Sermons to the Dead; Jung and the Lost Gospels; Freedom: Alchemy for a Voluntary Society, and Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing. He has been a frequent contributor to Gnosis Magazine in which he wrote a popular column entitled "Alternative Realities." He has also written for Quest Magazine and for professional journals. Dr. Hoeller has lectured in Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Iceland, Germany, and the United States. Since 1972 he has lectured on a weekly basis at the Philosophical Research Society and teaches at the recently founded Philosophical Research Society University Project. He has been director of studies at the Gnostic Society in Los Angeles since 1963, as well as a bishop of the Ecclesia Gnostica, a church of Gnostic descent. He was ordained to the Gnostic priesthood in 1958 and to the episcopate in 1967. For over twenty years, Dr. Hoeller has been sharing his wisdom in weekly talks recorded at the Los Angeles Gnostic Society. His subjects range over the entire scope of Western inner traditions, emphasizing Jungian psychology and gnosis, the ancient premise that we can experience direct knowledge of transcendent reality. These talks have been recorded onto cassette tapes and made available to the general public for purchase.