On dating the Gnostic literature after 325 CE

[Leucius Charinus]

The Berlin Codex 8502, representing the Apocryphon of John, widely cited as the single most significant bit of Gnostic literature, was written, in Coptic, in the 4th Century, or later. It is, along with the other three copies of the same text, unearthed in the Nag Hammadi excavation, (also from the 4th century or later), our most complete ancient text representing Gnostic influence on Christianity.

It might even be an interesting exercise to start from this time period and work backwards on a more sure footing, discarding what doesn't come up with actual evidence.

I repeat Pete's question.

Who can offer a link to any document, older than these ancient texts?

In have maintained a table of data for all the "gnostic acts and gospels" that I could find.
It is located here: http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/A ... _Index.htm

The table lists:

• Title of Text
  
  Attestation Status
  
  Mainstream Chronology
  
  Alternative Chronology
  
  Editorial Comments & Notations
  
  Discovered
  
  Earliest Manuscript <<<<<===============
  
  Earliest Mention
  
  Notes

The earliest manuscript date (column 7) is the one to run one's eye down. I don't have some earliest manuscript dates for some texts, but we get the 4th and 5th century for most of the set. The only 3rd century one listed there is :

The Acts of Peter and Andrew Eusebius is witness . The note says 3rd Greek (p.Hamburg), 4thCoptic (Heidelberg).
This may be a palaeographical date.

[Stephan Huller]

Your response to the existence of a hostile pagan witness to the Christian gnostics from the third century is completely laughable. With Pete it always comes down to how much he can cheat and get away with to "prove" a necessary defense of his meta-lie. Go for it dishonest one

[Leucius Charinus]

You said 'Nice try' when I referred to Plotinus. But no one - I mean no one - doubts that Plotinus wrote the Enneads.

Where did I claim that Plotinus did not write the Enneads ?

I made no such claim. Let me clarify the question since you appear incapable of the most basic logic.
The question is what did Plotinus mean when he referred to "Gnostics".

This question has been debated ad nauseum ....

Your response to the existence of a hostile pagan witness to the Christian gnostics from the third century is completely laughable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotinus#P ... e_Gnostics
Plotinus and the Gnostics (WIKI)

At least two modern conferences within Hellenic philosophy fields of study have been held in order to address what Plotinus stated in his tract Against the Gnostics and who he was addressing it to, in order to separate and clarify the events and persons involved in the origin of the term "Gnostic". From the dialogue, it appears that the word had an origin in the Platonic and Hellenistic tradition long before the group calling themselves "Gnostics"—or the group covered under the modern term "Gnosticism"—ever appeared. It would seem that this shift from Platonic to Gnostic usage has led many people to confusion.

The strategy of sectarians taking Greek terms from philosophical contexts and re-applying them to religious contexts was popular in Christianity, the Cult of Isis and other ancient religious contexts including Hermetic ones (see Alexander of Abonutichus for an example).

Plotinus and the Neoplatonists viewed Gnosticism as a form of heresy or sectarianism to the Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy of the Mediterranean and Middle East.[note 1] He accused them of using senseless jargon and being overly dramatic and insolent in their distortion of Plato's ontology."[note 2] Plotinus attacks his opponents as untraditional, irrational and immoral[note 3][note 4] and arrogant.[note 5] He also attacks them as elitist and blasphemous to Plato for the Gnostics despising the material world and its maker.[note 6]

So what has been clarified by such conferences? Nothing much. The hypothesis that Plotinus use of the term 'gnostics' refers to the same use of the term by the church fathers and modern Christian scholarship - in which the gnostics were the authors of the "Gnostic Gospels and Acts" is far from established, despite Huller's attempts to laugh away the negative evidence against the position.

Plotinus never once refers to Christians. Not once in all his works.

Hence those who wish to claim that the "Gnostics" to whom Plotinus refers in the Enneads were the "Gnostic authors of [SUPPOSEDLY Christian] Gospels and Acts" have a great deal of work to do to convince a great many Classical scholars. Biblical scholars will grab hold of any usage of terms for their own uncritical ends. There was even a time when the Christian academics believed that the teacher of Plotinus, the father of Neoplatonism, Ammonius Saccas, was a Christian, but this lie and misconception (with its roots in the testimony of Eusebius) has fallen away a long time ago.

Nice try. Sorry no cigar.

[Stephan Huller]

This is so utterly disingenuous. Plotinus wrote in the middle of the third century. Plotinus wrote Against the Gnostics (otherwise known with a much longer title). Against the Gnostics demonstrates that Plotinus knew of gnostic Christian texts before Nicaea. End of story. There is nothing you can do. This is not a supposition. It's an established fact with Porphyry the great anti-Christian as a witness. End of story.

[MrMacSon]

Patristic Polemical Works Against the Gnostics

Irenaeus of Lyon: (c. 140 – c. 202 AD)

Irenaeus (died c. 202) was Bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul, then a part of the Roman Empire (and now Lyons, France). His writings were formative in the early development of Christian theology. Irenaeus' best-known book is Adversus Haereses ("The Destruction and Overthrow of Falsely So-called Knowledge," c. 180). It is a detailed attack on Gnosticism and especially on the theology of the leading Gnostic Christian of his age, Valentinus. He thus unwittingly provided one of the best historical sources on Valentinian tradition.

http://gnosis.org/library/polem.htm

[MrMacSon]

Plotinus, Ennead II 9 [33] 'Against the Gnostics'
A Commentary

Series: Studia Patristica Supplements, 1

Authors: Spanu N.

Year: 2012
ISBN: 978-90-429-2583-0
Pages: XXIV-229 p.


Summary:
This book consists in a commentary and translation of Plotinus’s Ennead II 9 [33], entitled by Porphyry 'Against the Gnostics'. The commentary has tried to go beyond the traditional approach, based on the idea that Plotinus’s Ennead II 9 is the theatre of the clash of two antithetical worldviews: the first, championed by Plotinus; the second, by his Gnostic disciples; on the contrary, the Ennead II 9 [33] represents a dialogue between a master of philosophy and his own disciples. Plotinus’s disciples do not regard Gnosticism as distant from Plato. In contrast, Plotinus does not think that Plato is a precursor of Gnosticism, even if he is aware that his doctrines can be interpreted in a dualistic and Gnostic fashion. He agrees with his disciples that for Plato sensible and intelligible reality, as well as Soul and body, are different; however, Plotinus thinks that their different nature can be ultimately traced back to the same principle, namely being, which contains in itself all possibilities of existence. This is the true gnosis that Plotinus has tried to make his disciples obtain by writing the Ennead II 9 [33].

http://www.peeters-leuven.be/boekoverz_ ... sp?nr=9070

[Leucius Charinus]

Patristic Polemical Works Against the Gnostics

Irenaeus of Lyon: (c. 140 – c. 202 AD)
http://gnosis.org/library/polem.htm

Thanks Mac but read the OP. I am testing out the hypothesis that the orthodox Christians of the 4th and later centuries falsely inserted references to the appearances and mentions of various heretical books into their own "Church History". If you want an example of this see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clementine_literature

OP

(1) The "Church Fathers" mentioned these Gnostic gospels and Acts, etc

The contention is that these "mentions" were inserted into the books of "Early Christians" (who we may presume to be genuine) after Nicaea. The classic example highlighting my response here is the dating of the Clementine literature - the Recognitions and Homilies. Until recent times this literature was presumed to be from the 2nd or 3rd century because of mentions by Origen. However modern scholarship sees this literature as being written by an Arian after 330 CE. The idea is that there was a massive controversy over UNAUTHORISED books and the orthodoxy wrote up this controversy as though it had been a controversy over the books of the heretics during the earlier 2nd and 3rd centuries.

[Leucius Charinus]

This is so utterly disingenuous. Plotinus wrote in the middle of the third century. Plotinus wrote Against the Gnostics (otherwise known with a much longer title). Against the Gnostics demonstrates that Plotinus knew of gnostic Christian texts before Nicaea.

No it does not demonstrate this.

End of story. There is nothing you can do. This is not a supposition.

QUESTION: Where does Plotinus mention any Christian text, either gnostic or orthodox?
ANSWER: He doesn't. Anywhere.

QUESTION: Where does Plotinus mention anything to do with the Christians?
ANSWER: He doesn't. Anywhere.

http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Plotinus5.html

Plotinus

Against the Gnostics

Against Those That Affirm the Creator of the Cosmos and the Cosmos Itself to Be Evil

(Under Porphyry's numbering system, this essay is the ninth tractate of the Second Ennead.)


1. We have seen elsewhere that the Good, the Principle, is simplex, and, correspondingly, primal — for the secondary can never be simplex — that it contains nothing: that it is an integral Unity.

Now the same Nature belongs to the Principle we know as The One. Just as the goodness of The Good is essential and not the outgrowth of some prior substance so the Unity of The One is its essential.

Therefore:

When we speak of The One and when we speak of The Good we must recognize an Identical Nature; we must affirm that they are the same — not, it is true, as venturing any predication with regard to that [unknowable] Hypostasis but simply as indicating it to ourselves in the best terms we find.

Even in calling it “The First” we mean no more than to express that it is the most absolutely simplex: it is the Self-Sufficing only in the sense that it is not of that compound nature which would make it dependent upon any constituent; it is “the Self-Contained” because everything contained in something alien must also exist by that alien.

Deriving, then, from nothing alien, entering into nothing alien, in no way a made-up thing, there can be nothing above it.

We need not, then, go seeking any other Principles; this — the One and the Good — is our First; next to it follows the Intellectual Principle, the Primal Thinker; and upon this follows Soul. Such is the order in nature. The Intellectual Realm allows no more than these and no fewer.

Those who hold to fewer Principles must hold the identity of either Intellectual-Principle and Soul or of Intellectual-Principle and The First; but we have abundantly shown that these are distinct.

It remains for us to consider whether there are more than these Three.

Now what other [Divine] Kinds could there be? No Principles of the universe could be found at once simpler and more transcendent than this whose existence we have affirmed and described.


etc etc etc

[Stephan Huller]

QUESTION: Where does Plotinus mention any Christian text, either gnostic or orthodox?
ANSWER: He doesn't. Anywhere.

QUESTION: Where does Plotinus mention anything to do with the Christians?
ANSWER: He doesn't. Anywhere.

Oh, so you have finally staked out a position or at least changed your original stupid opinion. Now Plotinus (a) doesn't specifically use the word 'Christian' and (b) no specific mention of Gnostic 'text' so = these were another group of pagan group (or perhaps 'Chinese') Gnostics with exactly similar beliefs to the Christian gnostics known through Irenaeus and other second century sources who did not record their beliefs down in writings. Or maybe if you gain enough confidence in your belief that these were 'some other' Gnostics then you fill find the courage to admit they wrote things down.

Real research doesn't proceed like this Pete. You don't build a wall around your ideas and then only slowly admit possibilities if they allow your proposition to survive. This is called parenting. No one should 'parent' an idea. That shows favoritism and selfishness - important for child rearing but not for historical research.

[Leucius Charinus]

QUESTION: Where does Plotinus mention any Christian text, either gnostic or orthodox?
ANSWER: He doesn't. Anywhere.

QUESTION: Where does Plotinus mention anything to do with the Christians?
ANSWER: He doesn't. Anywhere.

Oh, so you have finally staked out a position or at least changed your original stupid opinion.

My opinion has not changed. You are just back-peddling here.

Now Plotinus (a) doesn't specifically use the word 'Christian' and (b) no specific mention of Gnostic 'text'

Precisely.

... so = these were another group of pagan group (or perhaps 'Chinese') Gnostics with exactly similar beliefs to the Christian gnostics known through Irenaeus and other second century sources who did not record their beliefs down in writings.

Not necessarily. Did you read the bit about the precedent of the Platonic use of the term "gnostic"?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotinus#P ... e_Gnostics
Plotinus and the Gnostics (WIKI)

At least two modern conferences within Hellenic philosophy fields of study have been held in order to address what Plotinus stated in his tract Against the Gnostics and who he was addressing it to, in order to separate and clarify the events and persons involved in the origin of the term "Gnostic". From the dialogue, it appears that the word had an origin in the Platonic and Hellenistic tradition long before the group calling themselves "Gnostics"—or the group covered under the modern term "Gnosticism"—ever appeared. It would seem that this shift from Platonic to Gnostic usage has led many people to confusion.