'The Original Gnostic Apostles'

[Secret Alias]

This isn't even a rational argument. You just want gnostic to mean something that it didn't for people in antiquity. What you've cited isn't even making the case that your meaning was the ancient meaning. It just exposes how crazy your lines of reasoning are most of the time. Embarrassing.

[Giuseppe]

My point is banally that a mere label can't impose a meaning X only in order to deny/eclipse what was really embarrassing: the biblical anti-demiurgy.

[Secret Alias]

So how does Plato, who invented the both terminologies cosmic 'Demiurge' and 'gnostikos' how fit into definition of the term gnostic?

[Giuseppe]

I don't like to be involved in a discussion of the term 'gnostic', sorry.

[Secret Alias]

So why exactly are you involving yourself in a discussion of the term 'gnostic' if you don't like being involved in such a discussion?

[Giuseppe]

No, it is only that I don't like when you seem "to correct" what Mythicist Robert M.Price says, implying someway he is wrong, just as myself, on the Christian Origins.

[MrMacSon]

Gnōsis - γνῶσις - is the common feminine Greek noun for knowledge.

Gnostikos was a reasonably common adjective in Classical Greek meaning 'cognitive'. Plato uses the plural adjective "γνωστικοί" – gnostikoi - and the singular feminine adjective "γνωστικὴ ἐπιστήμη" – gnostike episteme - in his Politikós (aka Statesman) where Gnostike episteme was also used to indicate one's 'aptitude'. The terms do not appear to indicate any mystic, esoteric or hidden meaning in the works of Plato: they did, however, express a sort of higher intelligence and ability analogous to talent.

Plato philosophised about knowing and believing and the distinctions between them. According to Plato, for one to have knowledge: (1) the proposition must be believed; (2) the proposition must be true; and (3) the proposition must be supported by good reasons, which was to say, 'you must be justified in believing it'. Thus, for Plato, knowledge was 'justified, true belief'.

Plato referred to the Demiurge frequently in his Socratic dialogue Timaeus (28a ff.), c. 360 BC. The main character, Timaeus, refers to the Demiurge as the entity who "fashioned and shaped" the material world. Plato described levels of God, with the highest level, the Monad emanating the Demiurge, aka Nous, consciousness. Plato, through Timaeus, described the Demiurge as unreservedly benevolent, desiring a world as good as possible.

But whether it was Plato who first applied the term Demiurge to a celestial entity may be hard to verify: it was originally a common noun meaning "craftsman" or "artisan", and gradually came to mean "producer", and eventually "creator", but when might be hard to discern.

Whether it was Marcion, or whether is was others before or contemporaneous to Marcion, who characterized the Demiurge as bad may be hard to discern (or I'm just espousing my ignorance).

[Secret Alias]

But whether Plato invented the term Demiurge might be arguable: it was originally a common noun meaning "craftsman" or "artisan", but gradually came to mean "producer", and eventually "creator".

Of course there were fucking artisans and craftsmen before Plato you nitwit. But we're talking about ὁ δημιουργός a cosmic figure.

Now everything that becomes or is created must of necessity be created by some cause, for without a cause nothing can be created. The work of the creator (ὁ δημιουργὸς), whenever he looks to the unchangeable and fashions the form and nature of his work after an unchangeable pattern, must necessarily be made fair and perfect; but when he looks to the created only, and uses a created pattern, it is not fair or perfect. Was the heaven then or the world, whether called by this or by any other more appropriate name-assuming the name, I am asking a question which has to be asked at the beginning of an enquiry about anything-was the world, I say, always in existence and without beginning? or created, and had it a beginning? Created, I reply, being visible and tangible and having a body, and therefore sensible; and all sensible things are apprehended by opinion and sense and are in a process of creation and created.[Timaeus, * 28a-29b, 29d-30c, translated by B. Jowett]

I can't believe we're having a discussion about whether or not there were δημιουργοί before Plato!

[Secret Alias]

The debate - if you want to call it that - between me and Super Mario is whether his moronic definition of 'gnostikos' is any more than a product of his ignorance, sloppiness and cognitive deficiencies.

[Irish1975]

Only the most enlightened assholes can define the gnosis.