Zeke Mazur’s University of Chicago PhD thesis (2010) argued for a Sethian Gnostic background to much of the ‘participative metaphysics’ found in Plotinus’ discussions of ascent to and union with the first principle of reality. Tragically, Zeke died some years ago, the thesis still unpublished. Since then, a stellar array of scholars have been working to edit and bring to posthumous publication a number of his works.

This volume, available from Brill, has been realised under the editorial care of the NSEA’s own Dylan Burns, of the late John Turner, and of a number of other top scholars in the field. It should be essential and provocative reading for anyone interested in the more radical end of Platonising Gnosticism as exemplified by the Apocryphon of John, the Allogenes, and related texts from Nag-Hammadi, and all those working on Plotinus’ higher metaphysics (including, or especially, Plotinian ‘mysticism’).

(Update by DMB, 11 December 2020): For an interview by Brill with Dylan Burns regarding Dr Mazur, this volume, and the editorial work on it, see here.