All the references to demiurge in Mark

[Ben C. Smith]

I am adding something that obviously the apologist can never say: that Jesus is made the creator in this deliberately embarrassing episode (the failed first healing) to justify the accused clumsiness of the creator before the Gnostics.

This is where it all goes off the rails.

Here I disagree. The midrash from scriptures is not an innocent operation. It is made with a goal.

In this case it is you doing the midrash. I do not believe for one second that Mark was performing this midrash: justifying the alleged clumsiness of the creator by making Jesus a clumsy healer.

The rest of what you wrote is irrelevant, because it is not heretical history but rather the text itself that resists your exegesis of modern midrash.

[Giuseppe]

In this case it is you doing the midrash. I do not believe for one second that Mark was performing this midrash: justifying the alleged clumsiness of the creator by making Jesus a clumsy healer.

Attention, you are not understanding here. What I call midrash is what you are calling midrash in the previous post, when you have said that you are able to see what the apologist writes about the connection spittle/creation.

What I am saying is that that midrash (agreed by you as a midrash, at least as a possibility) was made to realize a polemical point.

[Giuseppe]

Note also the polemical reference to the Simon Magus's claim:

it is evident that a tree is nothing but a man

The point of Mark is that the blind man can see this presumed "Gnosis" (of which the gnostics boast) only thanks the creator, i.e. Jesus himself.

[Ben C. Smith]

In this case it is you doing the midrash. I do not believe for one second that Mark was performing this midrash: justifying the alleged clumsiness of the creator by making Jesus a clumsy healer.

Attention, you are not understanding here. What I call midrash is what you are calling midrash in the previous post, when you have said that you are able to see what the apologist writes about the connection spittle/creation.

What I am saying is that that midrash (agreed by you as a midrash, at least as a possibility) was made to realize a polemical point.

Okay, then, to rephrase: I do not believe for one second that Mark had as the goal of this potential midrash the justification of the alleged clumsiness of the creator by making Jesus a clumsy healer.

[Giuseppe]

Okay, then, to rephrase: I do not believe for one second that Mark had as the goal of this potential midrash the justification of the alleged clumsiness of the creator by making Jesus a clumsy healer.

And what about this second goal by me seen in action behind the same "potential midrash", instead?

Note also the polemical reference to the Simon Magus's claim:

it is evident that a tree is nothing but a man

The point of Mark is that the blind man can see this presumed "Gnosis" (of which the gnostics boast) only thanks the creator, i.e. Jesus himself.

Isn't the creator rehabilitated, in this way? Hence, is not "Mark" an apologist of the creator against the Gnostics, here?

[Ben C. Smith]

Okay, then, to rephrase: I do not believe for one second that Mark had as the goal of this potential midrash the justification of the alleged clumsiness of the creator by making Jesus a clumsy healer.

And what about this second goal by me seen in action behind the same "potential midrash", instead?

Note also the polemical reference to the Simon Magus's claim:

it is evident that a tree is nothing but a man

....

Where is Simon Magus alleged to have said that a tree is nothing but a man?

[Ben C. Smith]

Is that from the Great Declaration?

[Giuseppe]

Where is Simon Magus alleged to have said that a tree is nothing but a man?

https://thegodabovegod.com/great-declar ... mon-magus/

[Ben C. Smith]

Is that from the Great Declaration?

Where is Simon Magus alleged to have said that a tree is nothing but a man?

https://thegodabovegod.com/great-declar ... mon-magus/

So yes, it is from the Great Declaration (it would help if you would source your material as soon as you use it to make a claim). But Simon is quoted by Hippolytus as referring specifically to Isaiah 5.7 in the course of likening his system of knowledge to a fruitful tree. I honestly do not see what connection you are trying to draw here with Mark 8.22-26.

I think you are missing the context of this healing entirely and trying to find it elsewhere than in the text itself. The miracle is not about God and the demiurge; it is, if anything, about God and Jesus, since the Son is demonstrated to have creative powers just like his Father. And the gradualness of the cure is not about an allegedly clumsy creation; it is, if anything, about the disciples' lack of understanding:

Mark 8.14-21: 14 And they had forgotten to take bread, and did not have more than one loaf in the boat with them. 15 And He was giving orders to them, saying, “Watch out! Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” 16 They began to discuss with one another the fact that they had no bread. 17 And Jesus, aware of this, says to them, “Why do you discuss the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet see or understand? Do you have a hardened heart? 18 Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember, 19 when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces you picked up?” They say to Him, “Twelve.” 20 “When I broke the seven for the four thousand, how many large baskets full of broken pieces did you pick up?” And they say to Him, “Seven.” 21 And He was saying to them, “Do you not yet understand?”

This is the immediate context of the healing of the blind man. It has nothing to do with the demiurge. It is all about who and what Jesus is, and about the disciples' inability to grasp it as of yet.

[Giuseppe]

The miracle is not about God and the demiurge; it is, if anything, about God and Jesus, since the Son is demonstrated to have creative powers just like his Father.

Ok, but the point of "Mark" is that if the man can see what a Simon Magus (=rival Gnostics) could see, if the "knowledge" in the his superior meaning can be gained by the man, then it is only thanks the creator.

And since the likes of the Magus despised the creator in virtue of their presumed "knowledge", the point of "Mark" is finally a rehabilitation of the creator in the figure of Jesus.