davidmartin wrote: ↑Thu Apr 15, 2021 6:01 pm
This part in Blue comes across to me as sounding like Gnosticism, wherein people exist in some heavenly, spiritual, or immateril realm and then when they enter the material world they incur death and suffering. I don't know if you can find some Christian non-Gnostic "Proto-Gnostic" or Platonic texts that express this same idea
I think "orthodoxy" using "gnostic" language does have some basis in surviving texts although it appears unusual i wonder if there's a case to re-evaluate that. i mean we have things in Colossians and Ephesians that look a little that way. Also I'm thinking of some of the stuff in the Clementine literature also associated with Peter. And some other texts i can't remember right now (i remember a commentary about a text that said it appeared to present orthadoxy in gnostic language. 3 corinthians?? my memory won't retrieve it)
What i mean is, perhaps when we see something that looks a little gnostic it might not actually be at all, just uses similar language or concepts
Ok, I understand what you are getting at David, which is that sometimes Gnostic sounding language shows up in orthodox Jewish or Christian texts. One simple example is Wisdom/Sophia. It's a big concept in Gnosticism, but the idea of Sophia as a Spirit shows up in the orthodox Wisdom of Solomon, as well as probably in Proverbs. So certainly some open mindedness is needed before classing a document as orthodox or gnostic. Maybe it's better a result to say that a document seems to be better classed as one or the other.
Still, it's important to see if a text falls into the orthodox or Gnostic camp in order to understand it. Each of those two camps has certain special definite features in their schemes of cosmology. Based on these special features, texts like the Sethian Gnostic writings and Eugnostos the Blessed for example can be classed as Gnostic. One of the special features in the Gnostic camp is that people pre-existed their life in our material, atomic, physical universe, realm, or aeon, and that by entering the material realm, we incur death and suffering. This is the idea that I cited from the Papyrus that the text ascribes to "Peter." In the orthodox conception, whether we were in the physical realm in physical bodies or not, we could still suffer due to sin. This is because in the orthodox conception, with sin, death and suffering entered the world. It's true that in the NT there is this tension between spirit and flesh, with flesh tending to sin and the flesh being mortal, but still there is a difference between the two camps on this topic.
To give you an idea of the difference in formulations, the Gnostic "Apocryphon of John," which precedes the Sophia of Jesus Christ in Codex III of the Nag Hammadi Library, refers to the archons as "the robbers" when it says that the archons
brought him (Adam) into the shadow of death, in order that they might form (him) again from earth and water and fire and the spirit which originates in matter, which is the ignorance of darkness and desire, and their counterfeit spirit. This is the tomb of the newly-formed body with which the robbers had clothed the man, the bond of forgetfulness; and he became a mortal man.
By comparison, the Papyrus the section about Peter that I was talking about as Gnostic sounding was:
also to] the [time] where we
33 [(arrived)] into the human world.
34 [The] man received these. And instead of
35 [life] he ended up under the hand of death.
FOOTNOTE: Lines 29 and following] perhaps a citation from The Preaching of Peter.
1 When he jumped from his [ ]
2 he lost the shape [ the one]
3 who [ ] became [ ]
4 [ ]
5 [ ] in [him ]
6 [ ] and [ ]
7 [ ] his nests [
The idea in this Papyrus section is that we preexisted our entrance into the material world, and that when Adam entered the material world he received mortality, went under death, and lost his original model. The implication is that it's blaming our entrance into the material world for our receiving going under the hand of death. These fit the Gnostic "take" on these issues better than the "orthodox" Jewish, pharisaic, NT etc. take. The orthodox Torah or rabbinical take could say that Adam had a body of light and then sinned, became mortal, and got clothed in skin. I would have to check whether getting flesh happened at the same time as getting mortality. But anyway the rabbinical and classic Christian view would not explain it as Adam's entrance into the material world as being responsible for him coming under death. Mortality and suffering are blamed more on sin. For instance, theoretically a being like Adam could still exist in our world without skin and still suffer or be dead, if for instance we are talking about a spirit from a corpse. Further, even though Adam got flesh, the classical view is that he didn't per se "lose" his created image or shape like the Papyrus section says. Man remains in the image of God despite deformity.