Gerard Luttikhuizen, born in Schoorl, the Netherlands, in 1940. Ph.D. from the University of Groningen. Professor of Early Christian Literature and New Testament Studies at the University of Groningen.
Fellow (1 September 2001 – 30 June 2002)
The first half of my research year at NIAS I studied elements of Aristotelian thought in Middle Platonisme and the possible influences of this type of Platonism on the theological, cosmological, and anthropological ideas of the intellectuals behind Gnostic mythological writings, in particular The Apocryphon of John. This investigation resulted in an article, “Traces of Aristotelian Thought in The Apocryphon of John” that will appear in July of this year.
The second half of the year I wrote several chapters of a book entitled “Biblical Narrative in Gnostic Revision. The Greek-Philosophical Thought Pattern of Gnostic Mythopoets and their Use of Biblical Traditions” (Brill, Leiden, spring 2003). In addition, I prepared a Dutch book, De pluriformiteit van het vroege christendom [Early Christian Pluriformity]. This book is scheduled to appear in the autumn of 2002. In both books I suggest that the authors of demiurgical-Gnostic texts were Gentile Christians with an ideological background in Hellenistic philosophy, and that their critical interpretations of biblical and Jewish traditions was caused by the fact that they evaluated these traditions in the light of a non-Jewish philosophical frame of reference.