angellous_evangellous said:
But we must add specific Gnostic qualities from later sources to make the Gnostic reading plausible.
You must understand the Gnostic viewpoint yes, but then that's the whole idea.
Paul tried to teach the early converts gradually, like they were children. If he had thrust the full Gnostic cosmology onto them they would have gone bananas, teach them to trust in Christ first, and once that is established move on. We can see this if his real letters are read in chronological order too, he gets more in depth, uses more obscure terminology etc. Read 1 Thessalonians, the first written, followed by Romans, one of the last written, and see the difference in style, terminology and depth.
angellous_evangellous said:
Then we can evaluate texts one at a time. I've seen more critical errors in identifying Gnosticism in the NT than I can mention. It seems to me like the older schools of finding Gnosticism in the NT are completely wrong.
Maybe they are, we only had the detracters to rely on before Nag Hammadi, you'd have to go into more detail about what you mean before i could really comment.
angellous_evangellous said:
I hate the Harvard school! I think that Elaine and Helmut are wrong, wrong, wrong. I may change my mind, but I'm pretty convinced at this point that the Gospel of Thomas is later.
Well, there you go, i found the argument quite convincing, but then i am biased. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. Unless you fancy started another debate specifially to discuss it?
angellous_evangellous said:
I agree that proto-Gnosticism was as well established as the proto-orthodox. I actually think that the proto-Gnostics used the infrastructure of the early churches to get its message out, and the converted churches imploded due to the new Gnostic disorganization. I don't think that the Gospel of Thomas is that early. There may be some Jesus tradition in Thomas, but it was more than likely redacted in.
I disagree, i think people would have noticed if it had been edited. I mean, some of the texts i have look whole to me, but scholars of Gnosticism have seen where two or three texts have been edited together into one, or where an early Jewish Gnostic text had been edited to make it Christian.
And i think the idea that Gnosticism was like some kind of leech that latched onto orthodoxy and used it to grow is entirely speculative, for all we know it could have been the onther way around, after all, the churches Paul founded were all excommunicated for holding heretical beliefs.
Could Gnosticism have been so powerful as to infect each of those churches? Or could they simply have started out with heretical beliefs to begin with?
I also think the churches were doing just fine with a mixture of beliefs within the congregation, a bit like the UU today, i reckon it was when certain individuals tried to impose their strictly orthodox belief onto churches that trouble began.
angellous_evangellous said:
But not Christian Gnosticism.
I'm not sure what your point is here. The fact that Gnosticism existed prior to Christ just adds to the plausibility that Jesus and Paul had been in contact with it.
angellous_evangellous said:
This would exempt the Gospel of John/Thomas conflict.
Not necessarily. John was written at the end of the first/beginning of the second century, if Thomas were written about the same time then one gospel could quite easily have been written to counter the other. And since John is the one that includes anti-Thomas comments, i have to believe that it was Thomas that was written first.
angellous_evangellous said:
Full-blown Gnosticism is a distinctly Christian phenomenon and the reflection of a long tradition of Christianity, using its writings its organization (which Gnosticism destroyed).
Oooo, talk about controversial statements
. For a start Gnosticism was common in the second century, Irenaeus etc, so i don't know where you got the idea that Gnosticism was some late rewrite of a long established Christian system.
And also, Gnosticism had organisation, bishops, prophets etc, but they were roles full-filled by community, not by individual men.
angellous_evangellous said:
Many Gnostic tendacies are shared with most Christian "heretical" sects and other mystery religions or Greco-Roman groups:
1) Denial of the divinity of Christ
2) Denial of the bodily resurrection of Christ
3) Anti - or non-trinitarian tendacies
4) Emphasis on special knowledge
5) Lack of organization (=no bishop)
6) Belief that the human body is evil - attempt to escape from the body
1) Denial of the divinity of Jesus actually, Christ was alsways seen as being of God. Although there were variaitions in belief between sects.
2. Again, this varied between groups, some were docetic, others adoptionist (like myself, in a way) and others held views similar to the orthodox.
3. Actually there are a couple of Father, Son, Holy Spirit trinities in Gnosticism, one of them being pretty much the orthodox - Father (Monad), Son (logos), Holy Spirit (Sophia).
4. This has always been an error, its not knowledge or special knowledge - its Enlightenment, pretty much identical to the Buddhist view.
5. Different organisation, everyone was equal instead of a hierarchy.
6. Again this differed between groups, some were ascetic because they saw matter as evil. Others simply saw matter as a hinderance and not really important.
angellous_evangellous said:
Full-blown Christian Gnosticism
8) Highly analogous/metaphysical interpretative retelling of the OT stories that justify the complex cosmology (there are no quotations like this in the NT to my knowledge)
9) Highly analogous/metaphysical telling or retelling of the NT stories that justify Gnostic cosmology
8. No, you're right there are not, but that is not really surprising is it? Why would Irenaeus or his followers choose Gnostic books for the canon?
9. Later Gnostic texts do use some NT books as sources, whether they were considered orthodox canon at the time of the Gnostic's writing depends on the book, some like the Gospel of Truth were written before the canon had begun to take shape and others like the Gospel of Philip were written about a century before Nicene.
But since these books were written while the religion was still in a state of great flux, all gospels and works would have been seen as fair game for any group to use as sources, there was no "lets copy the orthodox texts and change them to become Gnostic" malarky going on.
angellous_evangellous said:
I think also (without much critical study) that the proto-Gnostic Jewish groups or otherwise fit only 1-6 without the cosmology.
Actually the cosmology found in Sethian texts is as rich and complex as that found in Valentianian texts. They simply used Seth instead of Jesus as the saviour figure.
