davidmartin wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2020 2:40 am
Giuseppe you've overlooked why the unknown God would decide of all the people on earth to pick Jews to announce himself, against their own God
There's no logic to this, why not the Celts or Egyptians?
The best answer is found here, on a thread that didn't to deserve the contamination by the continue insults of the modern Judaizer Joseph D.L. :
Giuseppe wrote: ↑Sun Dec 29, 2019 8:32 am
29. And some of them with jests upon their lips departed [from me], abandoning themselves unto the Way of Death; others entreated to be taught, casting themselves before my feet.
But I made them arise, and I became a leader of the Race towards home, teaching the words (logoi), how and in what way they shall be saved. I sowed in them the words (logoi) of wisdom; of Deathless Water were they given to drink.
And when even was come and all sun's beams began to set, I bade them all give thanks to God. And when they had brought to an end the giving of their thanks, each man returned to his own resting place.
http://gnosis.org/library/hermes1.html
The last word will be not, for all the Gnostics, the total condemnation of the Judaism and his god. The apostolic spirit of the disciples of Hermes, always eager to "sow the words of wisdom" (C.H. 1:29), will have as goal to draw the Jews from the hold of the evil creator and his Law...
(J. Magne,
L'Exaltation de Sabaôth dans Hypostase des archontes, NH, II, 4, 95, 1-31 et l'exaltation de Jésus dans Philippiens 2, 6-II : ou la Naissance de Jésus-Christ, p. 20)
Basically, all the my best Mythicist authors (Couchoud, Stahl, Magne, Fau, Ory, Stephane)
agree explicitly (I mean: I can quote them) with Hyam Maccoby about where to find the real origin of the anti-demiurgism I am talking about. Not among Jews, not among Pagans, but among ex Noahides:
We may now return to our question about the identity of the biblical Gnostics and put the question rather differently. What kind of people were attracted to the Gnostic viewpoint, but felt that they had to express it, partly at least, in terms derived from the Jewish Bible? What kind of people wished to reduce the pretensions of Judaism, but could do so only by engaging fully in the Jewish sacred writings which they found it imperative to reintrepret, rather than to ignore?
The most likely place to find our quarry is in the penumbra surrounding Judaism, consisting of people on their way in or on their way out. These are basically Gentiles who are attracted by Judaism enough to study it or to seek acquaintance eith knowledgeable Jews. Some pursue their study far enough to become actually converted to Judaism, but find Jewish observance too strenuous or too alien, and lapse. Others only reach the status of 'God-fearers', attend the synagogues in this capacity, but eventually become resentful of the inferior status accorded them. Others never actually declare or renounce allegiance to Judaism, but, having become the targets of Jewish missionary activity, acquire a considerable smattering of Jewish knowledge, and feel constrained to formulate some attitude towards Judaism. Such marginal people develop ambivalent feelings towards Judaism. On the other hand, they feel it to be a force to be reckoned with; on the other hand, they feel a certain resentment at the impudence of this barbarian faith in professing to be superior to the spiritual claims of Hellenistic culture; or, if they have gone so far as to succumb to Judaism for a while, they feel a corresponding need, after lapsing from Judaism, to justify their reversal of attitude and to reassert the superiority of the Hellenism from which they had temporarily defected. The most likely place to find such people in numbers sufficient to give rise to a distinctive religious grouping is Alexandria, where Jewish missionary activity was confident and even sometimes aggressive. The unease at such activity and the need to fight suscettibility to it, or to justify withdrawal from it after initial acceptance, could lead to a religious movement that contrasted the superior spiritual quality of Hellenism with the materiality and this-worldly stance of Judaism, while at the same time Accounting for Judaism and explaining its proper place in the scheme of things
(Hyam Maccoby,
Paul and Hellenism, p. 31-32, SCM Press, London, my bold)
Note that April de Conick agrees very much with Maccoby about the existence of these Biblical Gnostics. Somewhere in this forum Andrew Criddle did me the favour to quote from Philo a direct polemic against these people.
I think that it is a very realistic description of what moves someone to hate YHWH without be for this a modern anti-Semite or a Catholic anti-anti-deicide.