This is a bold statement. What do you have to back it up?Birger A. Pearson writes, "The Teachings of Silvanus is the only non-Gnostic tractate in Nag Hammadi Codex VII and one of the few non-Gnostic tractates in the corpus as a whole.
Because "Abolish every childish time of life, acquire for yourself strength of mind and soul, and intensify the struggle against every folly of the passions of love and base wickedness, and love of praise, and fondness of contention, and tiresome jealousy and wrath, and anger and the desire of avarice. Guard your (pl.) camp and weapons and spears. Arm yourself and all the soldiers, which are the words, and the commanders, which are the counsels, and your mind as a guiding principle." is a veeeeery Gnostic thing to write.
Yes. The form is that of a wisdom text. The contents, however, make a mockery of faith in exactly the same way Apocryphon of John does.In form, it is a wisdom writing similar to classical Jewish wisdom compendia such as the biblical book of Proverbs or the deuterocanonical Ecclesaisticus (Sirach). In such literature a teacher offers instruction and admonition to a pupil whom he refers to as his 'son.' The tractate also utilizes two other literary genres common in early Hellenistic Judaism, the 'diatribe' form, derived from popular Stoic and Cynic philosophy, and the 'Hellenistic hymn,' in which praises are offered up to God or to personified Wisdom. Pagan examples of the latter are the hymns or aretalogies associated with the cult of the Greco-Egyptian goddess Isis." (The Nag Hammadi Scriptures, p. 499)
"Listen, my son, to my advice! Do not show your back to enemies and flee, but rather, pursue them as a strong one. Be not an animal, with men pursuing you; but rather, be a man, with you pursuing the evil wild beasts, lest somehow they become victorious over you and trample upon you as on a dead man, and you perish due to their wickedness."
Don't turn the other cheek, dude. Be a MAN.
"My son, listen to my teaching, which is good and useful, and end the sleep which weighs heavily upon you. Depart from the forgetfulness which fills you with darkness, since if you were unable to do anything, I would not have said these things to you. But Christ has come in order to give you this gift. Why do you pursue the darkness when the light is at your disposal? Why do you drink stale water, though sweet wine is available for you? Wisdom summons you, yet you desire folly. Not by your own desire do you do these things, but it is the animal nature within you that does them.
Wisdom summons you in her goodness, saying, "Come to Me, all of you, O foolish ones, that you may receive a gift, the understanding which is good and excellent. I am giving to you a high-priestly garment which is woven from every (kind of) wisdom." What else is evil death except ignorance? What else is evil darkness except familiarity with forgetfulness? Cast your anxiety upon God alone. Do not become desirous of gold and silver, which are profitless, but clothe yourself with wisdom like a robe; put knowledge on yourself like a crown, and be seated upon a throne of perception. For these are yours, and you will receive them again on high another time."
A Catholic might recognize some of these words as affirmation of his own faith. Don't be fooled, though. The gift Mind brings is perception, not faith.
"For a foolish man usually puts on folly like a robe, and like a garment of sorrow, he puts on shame. And he crowns himself with ignorance, and takes his seat upon a throne of nescience. For while he is without reason, he leads only himself astray, for he is guided by ignorance. And he goes the ways of the desire of every passion. He swims in the desires of life and has sunk. To be sure, he thinks that he finds profit when he does all the things which are without profit. The wretched man who goes through all these things will die, because he does not have the mind, the helmsman. But he is like a ship which the wind tosses to and fro, and like a loose horse which has no rider. For this (man) needed the rider, which is reason. For the wretched one went astray because he did not want advice. He was thrown to and fro by these three misfortunes: he acquired death as a father, ignorance as a mother, and evil counsels - he acquired them as friends and brothers. Therefore, foolish one, you should mourn for yourself."
Wicked men have no mind and no reason. Father is death (on a cross), mother is ignorance (blind faith, fallen Sophia), their counsels (instructions) are evil.
"From now on, then, my son, return to your divine nature. Cast from you these evil, deceiving friends! Accept Christ, this true friend, as a good teacher. Cast from you death, which has become a father to you. For death did not exist, nor will it exist at the end."
Accept your mind and trust it, as you did as a child. No reason in getting all worked up over a dead guy who is supposed to be the Father now.
"But since you cast from yourself God, the holy Father, the true Life, the Spring of Life, therefore you have obtained death as a father and have acquired ignorance as a mother. They have robbed you of the true knowledge."
Yup.
"But return, my son, to your first father, God, and Wisdom, your Mother, from whom you came into being from the very first in order that you might fight against all of your enemies, the Powers of the Adversary."
The Father is actually cool. We're talking about the gnostic Father here, of course. The guy who is the All because he is the first living being that spawned all else. The dude you're really close to when you're still a child and the world is all fun and games.
"Listen, my son, to my advice. Do not be arrogant in opposition to every good opinion, but take for yourself the side of the divinity of reason. Keep the holy commandments of Jesus Christ, and you will reign over every place on earth, and will be honored by the angels and archangels. Then you will acquire them as friends and fellow servants, and you will acquire places in heaven above."
Divinity of reason. This is where the local church-goers laugh when I read this to them in Slovene.
"Do not bring grief and trouble to the divine which is within you. But when you will care for it, will request of it that you remain pure, and will become self-controlled in your soul and body, you will become a throne of wisdom, and one belonging to God's household. He will give you a great light through it (wisdom)."
Sin and punishment and bad deeds have no place in the divine. Take care of the divine within and you will sin no more, because that's what common sense makes you do: play straight.
"But before everything (else), know your birth. Know yourself, that is, from what substance you are, or from what race, or from what species. Understand that you have come into being from three races: from the earth, from the formed, and from the created. The body has come into being from the earth with an earthly substance, but the formed, for the sake of the soul, has come into being from the thought of the Divine. The created, however, is the mind, which has come into being in conformity with the image of God. The divine mind has substance from the Divine, but the soul is that which he (God) formed for their own hearts. For I think that it (the soul) exists as wife of that which has come into being in conformity with the image, but matter is the substance of the body, which has come into being from the earth."
You're not spawns of two people exiled from Paradise. Since mind conforms with the image of God himself, they are equal. Matter has nothing to do with any of this.
... I could go on and on
This is reading through the spectacles of Catholicism. Redemption takes place through the acquisition of liberating knowledge that is brought by Mind. It enables those living an enslaved existence to free themselves from the bondage of fixations of thought (monsters) through asceticism and mortification and to return to oneself's common sense and trust in their own mind. There is no outside God to trust here, just mind from the Father.P. Bruns writes, "A Coptic treatise in the Nag Hammadi library (NHC 7, 4) contains the teachings of a certain Silvanus. It contains a hortatory address with sapiental teachings of Jewish-Egyptian provenance and a gnostic anthropology and christology. Redemption takes place through the acquisition of a liberating knowledge that is brought by Christ the redeemer and enables those living an enslaved existence to free themselves from the bondage of the material through asceticism and mortification and to make the journey hom to the divine pleroma." (Dictionary of Early Christian Literature, p. 537)
In short, mr. Pearson appears to have fell for the joke. If you've got Catholic friends, try reading this as a preaching to them - they might laugh out loud at the most unlikely things they've every been preached about. Mine did, anyways.