Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Giuseppe wrote: ↑Mon Oct 19, 2020 8:15 am
This is strictly close to what Robert M. Price has seen correctly, when he writes:

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It1 was part of the same theological transformation whereby the myth of the slaying of the Man of Light by the archons before the foundation of the world was rewritten as the historical crucifixion of a human being, Jesus Christ, at the hands of the Sanhedrin and the Roman procurator. As the extraction and seeding of 'the spiritual photons' of the Son of Man had enlivened the new-made earth, so the blood of Jesus was now said to redeem the souls of humanity. (The Amazing Colossal Apostle, p. 82)
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Note that none (not even dr. Carrier) knew why Bob Price placed the celestial crucifixion of Jesus in outer space before the creation of the world. Now we know why.

1 'It' = "what Käsemann called 'nascent Catholicism'."

One might say " 'nascent Catholicism' / orthodoxy was the culmination of much phases of theological transformation whereby the myth of the slaying of the Man of Light by the archons became the historical crucifixion of a human being, Jesus Christ "

That whole chapter of 'The Amazing Colossal Apostle' -- chapter 5, "The Original Gnostic Apostles" -- is a good read: a fascinating summary (of Robert M Price's account,* at least) of early 'Gnosticism', including true Gnosticism and derivatives of it, and how many of those early variations were transformed and coalesced into what became 'nascent Catholicism'.

* Price's account would concur with those of several Gnostic scholars such as David Brakke as far as I can see.

And supplementing what Price lays out in that chapter, ie. chapter 5, The Amazing Colossal Apostle, is the following [slightly modified by me] account of the fifth document of Codex II (of what I presume is part of the Nag Hammadi collection) -

Giuseppe wrote: ↑Mon Oct 19, 2020 9:51 pm
L'écrit sans titre: Traité sur l'origine du monde (NH II,5 et XIII,2 et Brit. Lib. Or. 4926[1])

of Louis Painchaud.

The fifth document of codex II, which has come down to use without a title, is a veritable didactic treatise on the origin of the world. It seems intended to persuade a non-Gnostic audience (probably Jewish) to embrace Gnostic beliefs concerning the creation of the world, in order to discredit the God of the Jewish Scriptures and to invite them to accept a superior doctrine concerning the existence of a transcendent God, superior to the Demiurge, and master of the material world.

This is what led to belie[f] in light of the disposition of the tractate and [to] the material used in each of its parts. After a prologue claiming to refute the theory of 'the primacy of chaos', in order to win over the Jewish or Christian readers, the Gnostic master delivers a long exposition concerning Gnostic cosmogony and anthropology. For this, he uses a Gnostic source also cited in the Hypostasis of the Archons and, possibly, the Apocryphon of John. These sources present the divine creator of the material world as an ignorant and envious god that blasphemes and claims to be the only god. Certainly by means of captatio benevolentiae, the author makes Sabaoth, one of the sons of the Demiurge Ialdabaoth, an example of Gnostic conversion, and proposes to his readers the God of the Jewish Scriptures as a model.

In his anthropogonic exposition, he again presents Ialdabaoth, the creator God, as ignorant and jealous, while Adam and Eve, like Sabaoth, [are proposed as] models who attain true knowledge by disobeying their creator. Once this exposition ends, the author proposes as a demonstration not an argument drawn from some Gnostic myth, but the belief, well attested in inter-testamental Jewish literature, that idolatrous cults, magical practices and spells had been taught to human beings by the fallen angels that he identif[ies] with the archons of his exposition.

The tractate concludes with an epilogue that summarizes the exposition and concludes with a vibrant appeal to conversion, a promise of reward or eternal punishment.The literary links observed in this untitled document, as well as the text known to us as 'Eugnostos the Blessed' permit the belief that these two tractates originally formed two sides of a diptych—the first dedicated to the origin of the world and the second to the transcendent God. Subsequently, these two documents have taken different paths in which they have experienced a certain number of modifications