Paul as THE Ektroma: implications

[Giuseppe]

1 Corinthians 15:3-8

3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters[a] at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to THE EKTROMA, he appeared also to me.

Richard Carrier says that it is authentic.


William Bemjamin Smith, the Mythicist author of Ecce Deus (in my view, the best Mythicist of the past) claims that the use of Ektroma by Paul is clearly Gnostic in meaning, because to think otherwise requires by part of Paul more comment about the his description of himself as THE abort (and the absence of a such comment is strongly expected if the Corinthian reader knows already what Paul means by the construct '''THE Ektroma'': i.e. the matter without form and order as created by the Demiurge or by the Sophia).



Why was Paul so negative against himself, by comparing himself to THE Ektroma ?

The answer is surely only one: Paul was THE Ektroma (the negative matter created by the demiurge) insofar he saw the risen Christ ''last of all''. Therefore the negative is referred to his kind of vision, in comparison with the visions of the risen Christ received by who was apostle before him.

Comparing the vision of any apostle with the next emanation (or aeon) from the original Deity, the vision received by Paul would be the last emanation and therefore the more degrading one: THE Ektroma, not worthy even of being called an aeon. Therefore to be a true apostle, in this context, is equivalent to be a perfect (as opposed to ''not degrading'') aeon or emanation.

Therefore Paul is exalting the apostles Peter, James, the 12 and the 500 brothers, as having a more true and perfect vision of the Risen Christ.

Here we have the same Paul who claims that his predecessors ''saw'' the risen Jesus not only before in time, but in a way far better than the one by which Paul himself ''saw'' Jesus.

This says us that the hallucinations of the Pillars were not only similar to these received by Paul, but these were even more strongly visionary in nature.

This interpretation goes against the traditional historicist view according to which the Pillars were not so hallucinated people as Paul was, but had a more realistic (and therefore potentially, in pauline terms, a more ''degrading'') knowledge of the historical Jesus.

No. The Pillars saw the celestial Jesus during hallucinations so extremely powerful that even Paul had to recognize their superior quality of vision.

[Giuseppe]

In other terms, it is not the mere temporal priority that makes the hallucinations received by the Pillars more perfect than these received by Paul, but it is the higher quality of these hallucinations to make the Pillars FIRST - and not only merely temporally - in comparison to Paul.

It may be thought that Paul had the Son only ''in me'' as a little divine seed put in him (in a not-conscious form), while the Pillars saw directly the original thing - the celestial Jesus - in all his greatness.

[Giuseppe]

Carrier is accepting the traditional view about Ektroma, a view that ignores deliberately the presence of the presence of the determinative article: THE Ektroma:

I should also note that Paul does not say ‘one untimely born’ in the sense of ‘born late’–he says he related to Jesus as an abortion [ektrôma], which is a premature birth, not a late one, and in fact worse, as it typically indicated an outright miscarriage. And Paul says he related to Jesus as an abortion not because he was appointed late but “because [Paul] persecuted the church” (1 Cor. 15:9), and for no other reason. The term ektrôma was in antiquity a term of contempt, implying monstrosity or rejection or enfeeblement. Paul thought of himself as a rejected monster because he did awful things to the church he now loved; but Jesus was willing to overlook that, and appear even to a rejected monster (an abortus) such as himself.

(my bold)
http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/4573

It is not only for the persecution of the church that Paul calls himself the abort. The persecution is only a mere corollary of the his being THE ektroma, one who saw the phantasm of Jesus in a more degrading manner compared to all the others apostles before him.

The Pillars were more close to the spiritual essentia of Jesus than Paul himself was.

In short, to be Ektroma is something referred to the received hallucination of the Risen Jesus, not to the person per se. Just as ''kata sarka'' is referred to the knowledge of Jesus in another point of the epistles, not to Jesus per se.

[lsayre]

Perhaps Paul is merely revealing through this correlation that the Ektroma (the demiurge) similarly did not have the full presence (or full knowledge) of the nature of the Christ revealed to him until quite late in the game, post the ascension, and it is this post ascension Christ interface matter which Paul believes he somehow significantly and importantly shares in common with the demiurge. I can see this as the meaning more clearly than I can see Paul declaring himself to be the very Ektroma/demiurge. It may also tie into Paul's ascension to the third heaven somehow.

[Bernard Muller]

1 Cor 15:3-11 is most likely an interpolation: http://historical-jesus.info/9.html

Cordially, Bernard

[Giuseppe]

Perhaps Paul is merely revealing through this correlation that the Ektroma (the demiurge) similarly did not have the full presence (or full knowledge) of the nature of the Christ revealed to him until quite late in the game, post the ascension, and it is this post ascension Christ interface matter which Paul believes he somehow significantly and importantly shares in common with the demiurge. I can see this as the meaning more clearly than I can see Paul declaring himself to be the very Ektroma/demiurge. It may also tie into Paul's ascension to the third heaven somehow.

I think that Paul is saying something in addition. If Paul is the Ektroma, then the his predecessors are emanations of a superior quality in comparison to Ektroma. And the superior quality is a feature of the action of seeing, not of the subject who sees. Something along the lines of 2 cor 5:16:

Therefore from now on we know no one according to the flesh: and even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him no longer.

Therefore the paradox is that Paul/Ektroma (just him!) is seeing Christ according to the flesh (for all the time he is Ektroma), while the Pillars have seen Christ according to the spirit.

[lsayre]

1 Corinthians 15:3-8

3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters[a] at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to THE EKTROMA, he appeared also to me.

Perhaps the original word where you have here highlighted "THE EKTROMA" was written as "Marcion", and a proto-Orthodox redactor thought that since he had heard of Marcion as being the first born of Satan it would be quite fitting (as well as subliminally comical within his circle, while simultaneously subliminally damaging to the so called 'heretical' groups) to change the word "Marcion" into the words "the Ektroma", since to him and his group these words were essentially synonyms.

[Giuseppe]

What you say is right, but if we begin to read Marcion behind Paul, the risk is to move "Paul" entirely in II CE and to recognize the our total ignorance about the Origins.

[DCHindley]

Perhaps Paul is merely revealing through this correlation that the Ektroma (the demiurge) similarly did not have the full presence (or full knowledge) of the nature of the Christ revealed to him until quite late in the game, post the ascension, and it is this post ascension Christ interface matter which Paul believes he somehow significantly and importantly shares in common with the demiurge. I can see this as the meaning more clearly than I can see Paul declaring himself to be the very Ektroma/demiurge. It may also tie into Paul's ascension to the third heaven somehow.

It does not seem to me that any of the "gnostic" writers equated the ektroma with the creation of matter by Sophia, not with the demiurge which came with it as an unconscious projection of some aeon from the pleroma (the timeless, matterless, pure-idea realm of "fullness"), as the material world was an unfinished production modeled on the Ideas of the pleroma, but aborted in mid process when the Aeon Sophia repented of her misguided effort to generate something without a proper consort, so it is formless and void, only to be organized by the projected demiurge.

In Platonic philosophy, the Demiurge is actually one of the eternal principals that govern all reality, which is another principal entity next to Mind and Matter. The Demiurge gave "form" to the eternal unformed matter, by applying the patterns of the Ideas in Mind, but was not an evil being, or ignorant, at all. Platonists did not necessarily think the material world was bad, just imperfect.

When a term like "demiurge" is used, it sometimes requires a good bit of unpacking.

DCH

[lsayre]

It does not seem to me that any of the "gnostic" writers equated the ektroma with the creation of matter by Sophia, not with the demiurge which came with it as an unconscious projection of some aeon from the pleroma (the timeless, matterless, pure-idea realm of "fullness"), as the material world was an unfinished production modeled on the Ideas of the pleroma, but aborted in mid process when the Aeon Sophia repented of her misguided effort to generate something without a proper consort, so it is formless and void, only to be organized by the projected demiurge. ...

DCH

This may be true, but I'm presuming the presence of an orthodox redactors hand here, not the hand of a gnostic redactor.