ἔσω ἄνθρωπος
Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2020 11:40 am
C. H. Dodd on John's gospel and its use of anthropos. First mentioning the Corpus Hermeticum in the introduction:
https://preteristarchive.com/Books/pdf/ ... gospel.pdfThe cosmos therefore is Son of God, bearing His likeness. Man similarly is the offspring of the K6auos, and bears its likeness; cf. C.H. VIII. 5 T6 8ETpiTOv 3C00V, 6 dvOpcoTros, KOCT* elKova TOO Koajjiou yEvouEvos, et passim. Thus we have the gradation of being: God, cosmos, man. Man accordingly knows God not immediately but through the mediation of the cosmos. ' Man became a spectator of the works of God, and he marvelled and recognized their Maker', OECTITJS ydp ly^vero TOO Epyou TOO 6EOO 6 dvOpcoTros Kai lOauuaaE Kai ^yvcbpiae TOV iroiriaavTa (C.H. iv. 2). It is to be observed that the idea that man knows God through His Son the cosmos sometimes finds expression in terms which recall Christian language about the revelation of God in His Son Jesus Christ. Such statements as John i. 18, xiv. 9^, would readily have been accepted by many Hermetists, though by the 'Son' they would have understood the cosmos
... we have already seen that as used by John it has some affinity with the idea of a heavenly Man found in Philo and the Hermetica. This idea plays a part in several of the Gnostic systems. It is to be observed that the Aramaic term lying behind υἱὸς τοὺ ἀνθρώπου, Ntfl *ia, means 'man*. It is however unlikely that the Gnostic writers were acquainted with this fact; and indeed some of them distinguish ἄνθρωπος from υἱὸς τοὺ ἀνθρώπου,1 making the latter the son of the former, according to the strict meaning of the Greek. When therefore we find the figure of the heavenly ἄνθρωπος playing an important part, we may be fairly sure that we are not dealing with ideas originally derived from a reading of the gospels. In the Valentinian systems ἄνθρωπος appears among the aeons of the primary Ogdoad, but plays no special part. His consort is ἐκκλησία the heavenly prototype of the πνευματικοὶ on earth. Thus ἄνθρωπος is there solely to provide a heavenly prototype for the human race which is to be created when the lower world is formed on the model of the Pleroma.1
We may suspect that as Logos is there because it already held an important place in Christian thought, so ἄνθρωπος is there because the idea was important in one or other of the traditions upon which the Gnostics drew. The question is whether it came out of the Christian tradition or out of some other. Paul's doctrine of the heavenly Man suggests itself as a source. But although Paul's doctrine might give Christian sanction to the idea, there is nothing in the Valentinian use of the term which suggests a reference to Paul. There is no attempt to identify Anthropos with Christ, or with Holy Spirit. Moreover, as Reitzenstein pointed out, Paul's argument in I Cor. xv. 46-7 has a polemical tinge. He is arguing against a doctrine of the heavenly or spiritual Man which made Him prior to the χοϊκός- Such a doctrine is found in Philo and in some Hermetic and Gnostic writings. Thus we are encouraged to look in other directions for the source of the idea. In point of fact it is in the systems more remotely connected with Christianity than the Valentinian that Anthropos is important. In the Naassene document we read of an αρχάνθρωπος called Adamas, who is to be identified with the Greek Hermes. Now Hermes is the Logos, the ερμηνευς και δημιουργός of all things that were and are and shall be. Moreover, the earth produced an image of this αρχάνθρωπος, a second Man whom the nations know under various names. The Chaldaeans call him Adam. He lay breathless, motionless, like a statue, until a soul was given him from above. This soul was brought down upon him from the αρχάνθρωπος. The ἔσω ἄνθρωπος in all men is in fact Adamas, the αρχάνθρωπος. When a man is reborn spiritually, this immanent humanity comes as it were into full being. The reborn is a τέλειος ἄνθρωπος, and in some sort identical with Adamas. It was to this that Jeremiah referred when he said (xvii. 9)
avOpcoiros £crnv KOCI TIS yvcocreTca carrov; 'For the knowledge of man is the beginning of perfection, but the knowledge of God is achieved
perfection' (Hippolytus, Refut. v. 8). It is difficult to reduce the teaching of the document to consistency, but the purport seems to be that there
is a man in men, who is really the offspring and counterpart of the eternal, heavenly, divine Man, and when a man is initiated into Gnosis, he is delivered from his fleshly self, and becomes wholly identical with the true man within him. The affinities of all this are obviously with the ἄνθρωπος doctrine of some of the Hermetica. It is given a Christian tinge, for Christ is said to be the true man in men: 6 ev Traai TOIS yevr|T0ls
uios ocvOpcoTrou (i.e. offspring of the αρχάνθρωπος), KExapaKTr|piau£vos dnro TOO dxcxpocKTripioTou Aoyou {ibid. v. 7); and Jesus is the type of the 'perfect* man: 6 CXTTO TOU dxapoocrripiaTou CCVGOOEV KexapocKTripiauevos TEAEIOS dvGpcoTTOS {ibid. v. 8). It is clear that this identification of Christ with "AvOpcoTTos is secondary. The figure of ἄνθρωπος is not derived from Christian sources.
In Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 1. 28 (Harvey) we seem to have a variant of the same doctrine, attributed here to the Sethians, also called Ophites, who say 'that there was a certain primal light in the power of BuOos, blessed, incorruptible, and infinite; and this is the Father of all, and is called the First Man. And his "Evvotoc proceeding from Him they call... the Son of Man, the Second Man.' The doctrine is Christianized by making Christ the offspring of the First Man and Holy Spirit, the female First Principle. Again, the Barbelo-Gnostics of Irenaeus, 1. 27 have a somewhat obscure genealogy in which Ennoia and Logos give birth to Autogenes, and he produces hominem perfectum et verum quern Adamantem vocant, and as his consort Agnitionem per fee tarn (fvcoais TeAeta). From them is born lignum (£uAov), quod et ipsum Gnosin vocant. In this genealogy Christ is so to speak an elder collateral of Anthropos, being emanated at an earlier stage than Logos and Ennoia. Having in mind some other forms of the "AvOpcoTros doctrine, we might interpret this as meaning that a man's true humanity emerges only when he embraces Gnosis, and so becomes an antitype of the heavenly pair who are the offspring of Logos and the thought of Logos. It does in any case seem clear that ἄνθρωπος was a figure in some non-Christian tradition to which these various systems go back,1 and was brought into touch with Christian ideas in various ways. It seems difficult to resist the conclusion that John also is alluding to some such tradition. For him the Man is identical with the Logos (as in the Naassene document, and, as we have seen, in Philo), is the offspring of the supreme God, the Father, descends into the world to reveal knowledge of the Father, and, ascending again, draws after Him those who are born again and in whom He Himself abides. The language used in this sentence is in every respect both Johannine and Gnostic, but the difference between Johannine Christianity and Gnosticism emerges the more clearly because the terminology is so largely similar.