{"product_id":"9781931498920","title":"Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief","description":"\u003cp\u003eBasing much of \u003cb\u003eNot in His Image\u003c\/b\u003e on the Nag Hammadi and other Gnostic writings, John Lamb Lash explains how a little-known messianic sect propelled itself into a dominant world power, systematically wiping out the great Gnostic spiritual teachers, the Druid priests, and the shamanistic healers of Europe and North Africa. They burned libraries and destroyed temples in an attempt to silence the ancient truth-tellers and keep their own secrets. But as Lash reveals, when the truth is the planet Earth it cannot be hidden or destroyed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eNot in His Image\u003c\/b\u003e delves deeply into the shadows of ancient Gnostic writings to reconstruct the story early Christians tried to scrub from the pages of history, exploring the richness of the ancient European Pagan spirituality—the Pagan Mysteries, the Great Goddess, Gnosis, the myths of Sophia and Gaia—and chronicles the annihilation of this Pagan European culture at the hands of Christianity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLong before the birth of Christianity, monotheism was an anomaly; Europe and the Near East flourished under the divine guidance of Sophia, the ancient goddess of wisdom. The Earth was the embodiment of Sophia and thus sacred to the people who sought fulfillment in her presence. This ancient philosophy was threatening to the emerging salvation-based creed of Christianity that was based on patriarchal dominion over the Earth and lauded personal suffering as a path to the afterlife. As Derrick Jensen points out in the afterword, in Lash's hands Jesus Christ emerges as the agent provocateur of the ruling classes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Chelsea Green Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47057448730864,"sku":"9781931498920","price":17.66,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781931498920_p0.jpg?v=1763638806","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781931498920","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}