https://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionp ... 4585568934
A guy named Gary, probably a Jesus Agnostic, replied:
Instead of answering a comment directly, I’ll place this as a new comment, since multiple people questioned my “Cosmic Sperm Bank” comment, and Paul versus Gnostics.
I wasted my time doing this, so I hope people will check my facts, and verify them, so at least it was worth the effort of providing these references:
1st, apparently you are not very familiar with Nag Hammadi documents.
2nd, in no way am I supporting Raphael Lataster or Carrier’s statements, in any way, shape, or form. I disagree with them completely.
However, my comment has only to do with Cosmic Sperm Bank and Nag Hammadi. And related, the thought that Paul COULD be interpreted as Gnostic. Not that he actually was Gnostic. See “The Gnostic Paul”, Elaine Pagels. Let me also say, she does not see Paul as Gnostic. However, her book supports how OTHER people could see Paul as Gnostic. Valentinus and his followers, for instance.
“The Nag Hammadi Scriptures”, edited by Marvin Meyer, 2007:
Background - pg 191, “The Nature of the Rulers”, also translated, “The Hypostatis of the Archons”, Note 2, “Apparently the authorities are the same as the rulers or archons.”
On pg 193, same document,
“On the Origin of the World”, pg 213,
“The Revelation of Adam”, pg 354,
“The Testimony if Truth”, supposedly written by Valentinus, pg 617,
“The Gospel of Judas”, pg 766,
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionp ... 4587794522
Again, against the reiterated criticisms by O'Neill and McGrath, the same "Gary" replies by this comment (he quotes from Elaine Pagels's book):
Just hypothetically, considering:
pg 191, “The Nature of the Rulers”, also translated, “The Hypostatis of the Archons”, Note 2, “Apparently the authorities are the same as the rulers or archons.”
Is not David, a dead person, at Jesus’ birth, also a “ruler”? And didn’t Valentinus followers believe Paul was a Gnostic? So, laugh, but a community around 200AD called Valentinian, woudn’t find it funny. David represents a archon, and archons maintained “Cosmic Sperm Banks”.
Elaine Pagels, “The Gnostic Paul”,
Page 14,
The initiate, trained to read the deeper structure of the text, then, could see from 1:1 how Paul identifies himself both as a psychic and as a member of the pneumatic elect, and from 1:3-4 how he demonstrates two different modes of his preaching.”
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionp ... 4588534283
It is in this point that I am surprised by the colossal ignorance of James McGrath:
Thanks - now that is indeed interesting! The obvious question, of course, is whether one thinks the Valentinian reading of Romans is what Paul intended. If not, then this doesn't really provide anything that would support mythicism. Indeed, even if one thinks that Valentinus preserved precisely what Paul meant and taught, that still wouldn't help mythicism, since Valentinus thought Jesus had appeared in history. But I clearly have things to learn about Valentinianism, and am really grateful you shared this!
(To answer your question, no, dead people were not thought to become celestial rulers in ancient Gnosticism or other religions in this region that I am aware of.)
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionp ... 4589248475 (my bold)
I have not followed the rest of the discussion, but note the way of James McGrath:
1) McGrath denies that Paul reads himself as Valentinus reads him.
2) but McGrath concedes the possibility that, at least about a particular point (Rom 1:3: davidic sperm) Paul could read himself as Valentinus reads him.
3) even so, McGrath denies that Paul is mythicist since Valentinus was not mythicist.
Now, I have found evidence that the Valentinians placed the Death of Jesus in outer space:
Giuseppe wrote: ↑Sat Jul 06, 2019 8:51 amThe animal and carnal Christ, however, does suffer after the fashion of the superior Christ, who, for the purpose of producing Achamoth, had been stretched upon the cross, that is, Horos, in a substantial though not a cognizable form. In this manner do they reduce all things to mere images — Christians themselves being indeed nothing but imaginary beings!
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0314.htm
Where is this cross (called Horos) placed, according this Valentian myth?
It is the celestial wall between the upper spheres and the lower heavens.
In order, then, that the shapelessness of the abortion might not at all manifest itself to the perfect Aeons, the Father also again projects additionally one Aeon, viz., Staurus. And he being begotten great, as from a mighty and perfect father, and being projected for the guardianship and defense of the Aeons, becomes a limit of the Pleroma, having within itself all the thirty Aeons together, for these are they that had been projected. Now this (Aeon) is styled Horos, because he separates from the Pleroma the Hysterema that is outside. And (he is called) Metocheus, because he shares also in the Hysterema. And (he is denominated) Staurus, because he is fixed inflexibly and inexorably, so that nothing of the Hysterema can come near the Aeons who are within the Pleroma.
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050106.htm
In short: the cosmic cross.
That the my interpretation of that evidence as evidence of a Valentinian Mythicism is not fruit only of the my own speculations, is proved by the fact that the scholar Jean Magne argued the same thing, when he wrote:
(Sacrifice et Sacerdoce, 1975, p. 131)
Translation:
(my bold)
Hence note the great contradiction by McGrath:
he would like to show himself as one who is open to follow the interlocutor by conceding a possibility (in the specific case: the possibility that Paul could have the same view of the davidic sperm held by the Valentinians later)...
...but then he finds himself de facto obliged to deny that the Valentinians, even only some of them, had a Mythicist view of the same crucifixion of Jesus. Against the evidence. Against even a such possibility raised by an evidence as that shown by myself above.
I call this hypocrisy.