{"product_id":"loa-authoritative-teaching","title":"Authoritative Teaching","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA feast, heavy wine, a hidden trap: what keeps the soul from remembering her home?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAuthoritative Teaching is a short sermon by an unknown author that pictures the soul as a woman far from home. According to the text, she comes from a higher realm but falls into the body and its desires. Around her, pleasures distract, passions cloud her thought, and an adversary waits with bait.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis ancient Christian text explores spiritual struggle through the concrete images of feasts, merchants, hunters, and sleep. Its central concern is how the soul forgets who she is—and what might wake her. Knowledge and the spiritual word offer a path toward rest within a vision shaped by ideas about divine origin and earthly attachment.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eWhat you'll discover\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eA soul far from home\u003c\/strong\u003e – Meet the sermon’s central figure, a woman whose forgotten origin gives her struggle its urgency.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDesire as a snare\u003c\/strong\u003e – Explore how the text pictures bodily passions as forces that pull the soul from clear thought.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe hunter’s hidden bait\u003c\/strong\u003e – Follow the adversary’s traps through images of hunting and fishing that make spiritual danger concrete.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe call to wake\u003c\/strong\u003e – Consider the sermon’s appeal to recover self-knowledge and take up the spiritual word.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eAn ancient spiritual struggle\u003c\/strong\u003e – Encounter an early Christian vision of attachment, ignorance, and the soul’s longing for rest.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cp\u003ePerfect for readers of early Christianity, Gnostic thought, and ancient ideas about the soul, especially those drawn to sermons built on strong images.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOpen the first page now and enter this vivid meditation on the soul’s struggle to remember her home.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Library of Alexandria Press","offers":[{"title":"eBook","offer_id":58111221694812,"sku":"LOA-68-EB","price":0.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Audiobook","offer_id":58111221727580,"sku":"LOA-68-AU","price":0.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":58113778483548,"sku":"LOA-68-PB","price":5.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1027\/9442\/8764\/files\/loa-forbidden-00068-en.png?v=1792190257","url":"https:\/\/libraryofalexandria.com\/de\/products\/loa-authoritative-teaching","provider":"The Library of Alexandria","version":"1.0","type":"link"}