Were the followers of John the Baptist only gnostics?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Post Reply
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Were the followers of John the Baptist only gnostics?

Post by Giuseppe »

Assuming John's existence, I doubt that there was a sect of the his followers after the his death, in perfect continuity with the his historical existence.

I think that the so-called Mandean tradition was only a late gnostic tradition, meaning that John became a Gnostic symbol just as James or Mary Magdalene or Paul or Simon Mags or Thomas. The Gnostic modus operandi is the same: take a Gospel character and make him the origin of the your "tradition".

But with John we are said that he was buried by the his followers in Mark. This assumes the existence of a Baptist sect already before the Gospel of Mark. But this is in conflict with the probable fact that John had followers only AFTER the our Gospels.

Therefore the episode of the burial of John wasn't in proto-Mark.

This doesn't resolve the problem: John is also in the incipit of Mark. He is made precursor of Jesus - we are said - for rivarly between the community of Mark and the Baptist community. But again this is a wrong opinion: Baptist followers could be there only after the first Gospel, as result of the identification of the Christ with John (once it was introduced the idea that the Christ had to be a historical being). Hence also Mark 13 is a later addition.

In conclusion, this means that John the Baptist was introduced in the incipit of Mark by Mark himself NOT in order to co-opt Baptist followers who didn't exist yet when
Mark was written.

But for another reason.

The reason, I think, is that John had to be the witness of the man Jesus just as the man Jesus had to be the witness of the spiritual Christ descending on himself. In this way the existence of the man Jesus has the necessary witness of the his historical existence and in the same time he is distinct from the spiritual Christ, of which he is the only witness and recipient.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: Were the followers of John the Baptist only gnostics?

Post by Giuseppe »

The implied question is: why did Mark need to separate Jesus from Christ, given the fact that John figures clearly in the incipit to witness this separation (since he sees only a baptized Jesus who in turn sees - only him - the spiritual Christ)???

Someone was denying the existence of the body of Jesus Christ (seen as an only being) in a radical docetic sense: Jesus's body was only apparent, and he wasn't (a son of) man.

Mark was reacting against this someone.

Therefore the extreme suffering of the human Jesus (he suffers, and not Barabbas, he suffers, and not Simon of Cyrene, he cries, and doesn't call Elijiah, he dies, and not Christ) is evidence of anti-docetism.
Last edited by Giuseppe on Sun Dec 10, 2017 12:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: Were the followers of John the Baptist only gnostics?

Post by Giuseppe »

Hence Mark was written at least after the first evidence of clear docetic Christology (in a Gospel?).

The same Independent Exorcist could be a Docetist: he preaches Christ without to have seen the body of Jesus.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: Were the followers of John the Baptist only gnostics?

Post by Giuseppe »

Mark was the Earliest Anti-Docetic Gospel.

Mark was not the Earliest Gospel.

This is the reason why the proto-catholics preserved Mark.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: Were the followers of John the Baptist only gnostics?

Post by Giuseppe »

This means that in the Earliest Gospel, very probably, a docetic Jesus Christ didn't suffer really on the cross.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
User avatar
MrMacSon
Posts: 8798
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:45 pm

Re: Were the followers of John the Baptist only gnostics?

Post by MrMacSon »

.
Some people have commented that gJohn (+/- other Johannine texts) align with the Hermetica: Egyptian-Greek wisdom texts which are mostly presented as dialogues in which a teacher, generally identified as Hermes Trismegistus ("thrice-greatest Hermes"), enlightens a disciple.


http://gnosis.org/library/hermet.htm -
  • "The Hermetic tradition represents a..lineage of Hellenistic Gnosticism. The tradition and its writings date to at least the first century B.C.E., and the texts we possess were all written prior to the second century C.E. The surviving writings of the tradition, known as the Corpus Hermeticum (the "Hermetic body of writings") were lost to the Latin West after classical times, but survived in eastern Byzantine libraries. (Their rediscovery and translation into Latin during the late-fifteenth century by the Italian Renaissance court of Cosimo de Medici, provided a seminal force in the development of Renaissance thought and culture.) These eighteen tracts of the Corpus Hermeticum, along with the Perfect Sermon (also called the Asclepius), are the foundational documents of the Hermetic tradition."

http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/herm/
  • "The fifteen tractates of the Corpus Hermeticum, along with the Perfect Sermon or Asclepius, are the foundation documents of the Hermetic tradition. Written by unknown authors in Egypt sometime before the end of the third century C.E., they were part of a once substantial literature attributed to the mythic figure of Hermes Trismegistus, a Hellenistic fusion of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth.

    "This literature came out of the same religious and philosophical ferment that produced Neoplatonism, Christianity, and the diverse collection of teachings usually lumped together under the label "Gnosticism": a ferment which had its roots in the impact of Platonic thought on the older traditions of the Hellenized East. There are obvious connections and common themes linking each of these traditions, although each had its own answer to the major questions of the time.

    "The treatises we now call the Corpus Hermeticum were collected into a single volume in Byzantine times, and a copy of this volume survived to come into the hands of Lorenzo de Medici's agents in the fifteenth century. Marsilio Ficino, the head of the Florentine Academy, was pulled off the task of translating the dialogues of Plato in order to put the Corpus Hermeticum into Latin first. His translation saw print in 1463, and was reprinted at least twenty-two times over the next century and a half.

    "The treatises divide up into several groups. The first (CH I), the "Poemandres", is the account of a revelation given to Hermes Trismegistus by the being Poemandres or "Man-Shepherd", an expression of the universal Mind. The next eight (CH II-IX), the "General Sermons", are short dialogues or lectures discussing various basic points of Hermetic philosophy. There follows the "Key" (CH X), a summary of the General Sermons, and after this a set of four tractates - "Mind unto Hermes", "About the Common Mind", "The Secret Sermon on the Mountain", and the "Letter of Hermes to Asclepius" (CH XI-XIV) - touching on the more mystical aspects of Hermeticism. The collection is rounded off by the "Definitions of Asclepius unto King Ammon" (CH XV), which may be composed of three fragments of longer works."
Post Reply