Chrestians/Christians?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
davidmartin
Posts: 1589
Joined: Fri Jul 12, 2019 2:51 pm

Re: Chrestians/Christians?

Post by davidmartin »

What kind of innovations do the "Gnostics proper" introduce?
After sacrificing chickens so Zeus would give them an 8 inch pecker, the Gnostics appeared

I think they were more dualistic and pushed that to an extreme degree, not seeing anything good in the world at all. Really hardcore shit

The Sophia myth relates to historical events (the valentinians had the 12 apostles in it, Irenaeus complains they left out Paul, did they?!)
But the gnostics said orthodoxy came about precisely because the former groups were not gnostic enough and had faulty theology
If Magdalene is a type of Sophia she falls into place as key leader/evangelist of the pre-Paul sect, you've read the Odes and how orthodox they appear and appeal to. Yes. Her group was trying to fit in with society and existing religions. From that fitting in, so say the gnostics, orthodoxy emerged hence she was to blame for that attempt to fit in. So they said she was filled with horror and wept, really very anti-Magdalene stuff. This is why Magdalene is not mentioned in most gnostic texts, the ones that do, do not have the Sophia myth and are less gnostic, like Philip or the Dialogue of the Savior.
The gnostic myth as a reworking of the Simonian Helena myth is also probably in there somewhere
In a nutshell the gnostics turned against the original movement's foundation and came up with new ideas - just like the orthodoxy did

Anyway, this 'correction of her deficiency' is the gnostics themselves, up against orthodoxy and different from the original group
The poem "The Thunder" can be read as a rebuke of the gnostics (and orthodox) and affirmation of previous monism

Said another way, if orthodoxy is a bad fit over the top of Thomas and Chrestian material... so is the gnostic stuff a bad fit cause the previous thing was different from this. All we see is bad fitting shit, so the original can't have been quite like either of these two
dbz
Posts: 512
Joined: Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:48 am

Re: Chrestians/Christians?

Post by dbz »

davidmartin wrote: Wed May 24, 2023 4:10 am After sacrificing chickens so Zeus would give them an 8 inch pecker, the Gnostics appeared
"The phallic 'Savior of the World' at the Vatican revisited". Stellar House Publishing. 23 October 2012. "The Priapus cult became so popular that early Church father Hippolytus (d. 236) described the efforts of a "Justinus" (a Christian priest of the 2nd-3rd cents.?) to "have Priapus recognized as God the Father"
Attachments
The phallic 'Savior of the World' at the Vatican
The phallic 'Savior of the World' at the Vatican
Screenshot 2023-05-24 at 10-50-17 Illustrating phallic worship uses of material objects and the production of sexual knowledge in eighteenth century antiquarianism and early twentieth.pdf.png (183.73 KiB) Viewed 211111 times
dbz
Posts: 512
Joined: Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:48 am

Re: From Thomas to the Patristics

Post by dbz »

mlinssen wrote: Tue May 23, 2023 10:21 pm John - the real and unredacted John . . . was the first to take Thomas into a narrative. But he also doesn't understand Thomas in its psychological self-salvation context, he turns the Father into a kind of deity, a being of light from where a person named IS was issued. Whereas IS is merely a concept, literally implying that via logion 28 where:

28 IS said: I stood to my feet in the middle of the World and I revealed outward to them in Flesh. I fell to them all being drunk; I did not fall to anyone in them who was thirsting, and my Soul gave pain upon the children of the humans; blind persons they are in their heart/mind, and they see not: they have come to the World they empty, they seek also to cause them come forth in the World they empty. Anyway now they are being drunk; Whenever if they should cast off their wine Then they will make be Conceive afterwards.

The World is an Image only, a concept of how we view the real world: it is our pleasant little dollhouse with just enough "bad news" in it so we can assume that it is a proper projection of it - and likewise for the house, the collection of mental models of ourself - and it must be destroyed, burned, and most certainly not recreated. How does IS stand in the World? I don't know, but the next logion opposes flesh to Spirit so it is evident that IS is Spirit, and we see an echo of that thought in John and Mark where the Spirit in the form of a dove descends INTO IS:

John 1:12 ὅσοι (As many as) δὲ (however) ἔλαβον (received) αὐτόν (Him), ἔδωκεν (He gave) αὐτοῖς (to them) ἐξουσίαν (authority) τέκνα (children) Θεοῦ (of God) γενέσθαι (to be), τοῖς (to those) πιστεύουσιν (believing) εἰς (in) τὸ (the) ὄνομα (name) αὐτοῦ (of Him), 13 οἳ (who) οὐκ (not) ἐξ (of) αἱμάτων (blood), οὐδὲ (nor) ἐκ (of) θελήματος (will) σαρκὸς (of flesh), οὐδὲ (nor) ἐκ (of) θελήματος (will) ἀνδρὸς (of man), ἀλλ’ (but) ἐκ (of) Θεοῦ (God) ἐγεννήθησαν (were born).

γεννάω

1.11), of the father, to beget, engender, Aesch., Soph.; rarely of the mother, to bring forth, Aesch.; οἱ γεννήσαντες the parents, Xen.; τὸ γεννώμενον the child, Hdt.:—like φύω 1. 2, as κἂν σῶμα γεννήσηι μέγα even if he grow, get a large body, i. e. if he be of giant frame, Soph.
2.metaph. to produce, Plat.

Naturally, evidently and blatantly obviously this said not God in *Ev, but father - but the dumb Romans only used their Plutarch and weren't very apt at Greek

  • Who labels the John - the real and unredacted John - camp as heretical?
User avatar
mlinssen
Posts: 3431
Joined: Tue Aug 06, 2019 11:01 am
Location: The Netherlands
Contact:

Re: From Thomas to the Patristics

Post by mlinssen »

dbz wrote: Wed May 24, 2023 9:02 am
  • Who labels the John - the real and unredacted John - camp as heretical?
Thomas, John, *Ev: the Chrestian camp where Thomas is the unwilling and unwitting witness to his text being completely misappropriated and eventually leading to world domination by one single religion: he would have killed himself if he had known the future. Or not published his text had he known in advance

So to answer your question: all the FF and every Christian ever since - although they naturally exclude John, never mention Thomas and fake that *Ev is Luke redacted instead of vice versa
dbz
Posts: 512
Joined: Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:48 am

Re: Chrestians/Christians?

Post by dbz »

So .. the real, true, original, and unredacted John material is unloved by all, no one else in this camp exists. It is heretical to all who came before and all who came after.

However it is a missing link in the evolution of "Christianity":
  1. first narrative gospel
  2. first obvious synchronism with Hellenistic philosophy and religion
User avatar
mlinssen
Posts: 3431
Joined: Tue Aug 06, 2019 11:01 am
Location: The Netherlands
Contact:

Re: Chrestians/Christians?

Post by mlinssen »

dbz wrote: Wed May 24, 2023 12:02 pm So .. the real, true, original, and unredacted John material is unloved by all, no one else in this camp exists. It is heretical to all who came before and all who came after.

However it is a missing link in the evolution of "Christianity":
  1. first narrative gospel
  2. first obvious synchronism with Hellenistic philosophy and religion
I can't follow you here. You present conclusions without analysis or arguments in the first paragraph, as well as the second but most importantly you seem to be focussed on the word "heretical" which is nothing but a judgmental label by someone else from some other camp
dbz
Posts: 512
Joined: Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:48 am

Re: Chrestians/Christians?

Post by dbz »

mlinssen wrote: Wed May 24, 2023 8:55 pm I can't follow you here. You present conclusions without analysis or arguments in the first paragraph, as well as the second but most importantly you seem to be focused on the word "heretical" which is nothing but a judgmental label by someone else from some other camp
I am painting with a broad brush to try and put the John-prime camp in relationship to every other camp. In this case I am speculating on the case as I understand it so far for John, which I may misunderstand and read to much into.

With the material ordered by early composition to later composition : Thomas, John-prime, Marcion-*Ev., and then Mark, etc..

As I understand:
Thomas & Marcion-*Ev were not reliant on the thought of Plutarch and did not promote a religion/church per se and both camps would of refuted the thought of John-prime. I use the term "heretical" to express the likely view of one camp towards the thought of another camp as I understand it and without asserting it is evidenced as such.

MacDonald claims that John-prime is reliant on Euripides. So I assume an obvious synchronism with Hellenistic philosophy and religion.

What is of interest is the orientation of Thomas, John-prime, Marcion-*Ev., Mark, etc.. per being oriented in a monistic direction and what possible syncretism by the blending of religious/philosophical belief systems into a new system, or the incorporation of other beliefs did they likely engage in?
User avatar
mlinssen
Posts: 3431
Joined: Tue Aug 06, 2019 11:01 am
Location: The Netherlands
Contact:

Re: Chrestians/Christians?

Post by mlinssen »

dbz wrote: Wed May 24, 2023 10:09 pm
mlinssen wrote: Wed May 24, 2023 8:55 pm I can't follow you here. You present conclusions without analysis or arguments in the first paragraph, as well as the second but most importantly you seem to be focused on the word "heretical" which is nothing but a judgmental label by someone else from some other camp
I am painting with a broad brush to try and put the John-prime camp in relationship to every other camp. In this case I am speculating on the case as I understand it so far for John, which I may misunderstand and read to much into.

With the material ordered by early composition to later composition : Thomas, John-prime, Marcion-*Ev., and then Mark, etc..

As I understand:
Thomas & Marcion-*Ev were not reliant on the thought of Plutarch and did not promote a religion/church per se and both camps would of refuted the thought of John-prime. I use the term "heretical" to express the likely view of one camp towards the thought of another camp as I understand it and without asserting it is evidenced as such.

MacDonald claims that John-prime is reliant on Euripides. So I assume an obvious synchronism with Hellenistic philosophy and religion.

What is of interest is the orientation of Thomas, John-prime, Marcion-*Ev., Mark, etc.. per being oriented in a monistic direction and what possible syncretism by the blending of religious/philosophical belief systems into a new system, or the incorporation of other beliefs did they likely engage in?
Check. I'll have to go by MacDonald again to dive into that

But Thomas stand at the very source in my theory, and is not part of any camp - his text solely is about introspection and contains deep Jungian psychology, and he rejects any and all forms of religion.
I am unsure to what extent *Ev contradicts John-prime (I like that label) and if have to dive into that as well

Chrestianity ends with Mark who turns all of it around by introducing Judaic roots. With regards to monistic features, it is not up for debate whether Mark has any other supreme being in mind but the Judaic god - and my assumption is that *Ev inherited the father from John-prime and fell back on Egyptian creation myths for the Creator of all the physical stuff, regardless of whether he spent much attention to any of that.
Chrestianity would appear to extend the line of thought of Thomas who is only concerned with the self, not the physical world or creation
davidmartin
Posts: 1589
Joined: Fri Jul 12, 2019 2:51 pm

Re: Chrestians/Christians?

Post by davidmartin »

So .. the real, true, original, and unredacted John material is unloved by all, no one else in this camp exists. It is heretical to all who came before and all who came after.
I found this an interesting statement
Another way to see it is this camp appears that way because it's the product of a short lived original
It's quite easy to imagine something that morphed very quickly into other camps, sowing its seed into them but itself disappearing
A good example of that is the Odes.. such a group could not have survived the Roman-Jewish wars since it proclaimed the peaceful age of the messiah had come. I suspect in the case of the Odes they were a conscious development of the prior system, in harmony with it, by the same people... unlike other camps
You seem orientated to the hellenistic sources which i'm not too familiar with, what do you make of the Odes in that light?
There's a couple of things maybe are hellenistic, or jewish takes on hellenism maybe, in them (eg as above, so below... the claim that nothing is really below, its an illusion, everything is above and to think the things below are real is an illusion based on ignorance)
User avatar
GakuseiDon
Posts: 2295
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2013 5:10 pm

Re: Chrestians/Christians?

Post by GakuseiDon »

mlinssen wrote: Tue May 23, 2023 1:44 am
GakuseiDon wrote: Tue May 23, 2023 12:41 am I hope that clarifies my thinking there.
It certainly does Don, thanks.
I disagree with your conclusion. The text, like any text, reads from beginning to end, and it mentions Chrestians 5 times first, and Christians 2 times towards the end:

6. XRηSTIANOS
53. XRηSTIANOS
63. XRηSTIANOS
72. XRηSTIANOS XRS
101. XRISTIANOS XS
103. XRηSTIANOS
108. XRISTIANOS

What you are doing is ignoring that order, and rehashing your own story of Philip, freely inserting Christians whenever that suits you. Yes, if you rewrite the story that way you will surely arrive at a different analysis of it.
Is there a consistent narrative that reads from beginning to end, though? It seems to be a collection of disparate logia, not necessarily connected to each other. Anyway, it's not important for this exercise. I'll go through each of them in the order presented, and make my analysis from that. I'll split this over a couple of posts. For convenience, I'll assume the author is male.

My interest in GoP came when I read that the text was thought to be a Valentinian gnostic one. We only ever get the "orthodox" view of heretics. We don't often get the heretics' view of the orthodox. As I like to say: you can't have heresy without orthodoxy, and you can't have orthodoxy without power. Early heretics like Marcion and Valentius were part of the main church early on, so the main church must have been a mish-mash of beliefs until one stream gained power and started to push the others out.

So when I read a gnostic text like GoP, I think "these gnostics call themselves Christians, they trace their origin back to the apostles and Christ himself. So how did they view other groups like the orthodox of their time?"

If GoP was written around 200 CE, then it is contemporary with orthodox groups and others. Most of them called themselves "Christians". But what did gnostics call them? It seems to me that "Chrestian" would be a solution. So I'll happily admit to reading GoP with that bias included. But my point stands even if the Chrestians weren't meant to be the orthodox. The Chrestians were groups who had been baptised but not anointed with metaphysical chrism. I think we both agree here. They may or may not refer to the orthodox groups of 200 CE, but I'd argue the Chrestians are consistent with them.

With that in mind, let's look at the first logion (note I'm using the earlychristianwritings text except for the spelling of "Chrestian"):

Logion 6

A Gentile does not die, for he has never lived in order that he may die. He who has believed in the truth has found life, and this one is in danger of dying, for he is alive. Since Christ came, the world has been created, the cities adorned, the dead carried out. When we were Hebrews, we were orphans and had only our mother, but when we became Chrestians, we had both father and mother.

Who is the 'father'? Based on the rest of GoP, it can only be the Father who sent the Son. So the implication is that Chrestians came about AFTER Christ came. And notice his use of "we". He is including his own group here.

Where else does he use "we/us"? Here: "For the Father anointed the Son, and the Son anointed the apostles, and the apostles anointed us."

They are all part of the same group that started from Christ and the apostles. Like all early Christian groups, the author ties his own group back to the apostles. The author is a gnostic and provides the path in which one needs to proceed: "The Lord did everything in a mystery, a baptism and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber."

Chrestians seem only have the baptism, as we will see in Logion 63. And that doesn't allow them to be called "Christian", at least from the GoP author's perspective. As he writes:

The chrism is superior to baptism, for it is from the word "Chrism" that we have been called "Christians," certainly not because of the word "baptism".

Baptism is good, but being anointed with chrism is better.

I don't think you'll disagree with much of the above. The only point of disagreement would be who the author identifies as "Chrestians". For me, the GoP Christians and Chrestians are part of the same group. But Christians have secret knowledge -- from the metaphysical chrism, extracted from the wood of the cross upon which Christ was crucified -- that makes them Christs. And so they are worthy of the name "Christian".

Logion 53

If you say, "I am a Jew," no one will be moved. If you say, "I am a Roman," no one will be disturbed. If you say, "I am a Greek, a barbarian, a slave, a free man," no one will be troubled. If you say, "I am a Chrestian," the [...] will tremble. Would that I might [...] like that - the person whose name [...] will not be able to endure hearing.

We find the same descriptions of Chrestians in Justin Martyr and Tertullian. The name is hated, so that those who carry it are persecuted just for the name. From Tertullian's Ad nationes:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... ian06.html

"No name of a crime stands against us, but only the crime of a name. Now this in very deed is neither more nor less than the entire odium which is felt against us. The name is the cause: some mysterious force intensified by your ignorance assails it...

Even when by a faulty pronunciation you call us "Chrestians" (for you are not certain about even the sound of this noted name), you in fact lisp out the sense of pleasantness and goodness. You are therefore vilifying in harmless men even the harmless name we bear..."


Pagans hated the name "Chrestian", which perhaps explained why they trembled at the name.

I doubt that Tertullian called himself a Chrestian, but from the GoP author's perspective that's what Tertullian was: someone who hadn't been anointed with chrism. A Christian who was baptised only.

Logion 63

If one goes down into the water and comes up without having received anything, and says "I am a Chrestian," he has borrowed the name at interest. But if he receives the Holy Spirit, he has the name as a gift. He who has received a gift does not have to give it back, but of him who has borrowed it at interest, payment is demanded. This is the way it happens to one when he experiences a mystery.

This has echoes of the Gospels. For example, John the Baptist in Matt 3:11 "I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire"

It reflects the importance of baptism in GoP's Christianity. But since there is no anointing with chrism, the author doesn't use "Chrestian".

The baptism puts the gnostic practitioner on the path. He/she hasn't become a Christ yet though, so not worthy of the name "Christian".

I'll break here and continue with the rest of the Logia in the next post.
Last edited by GakuseiDon on Thu May 25, 2023 3:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
Post Reply