ἔσω ἄνθρωπος

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Secret Alias
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ἔσω ἄνθρωπος

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C. H. Dodd on John's gospel and its use of anthropos. First mentioning the Corpus Hermeticum in the introduction:
The cosmos therefore is Son of God, bearing His likeness. Man similarly is the offspring of the K6auos, and bears its likeness; cf. C.H. VIII. 5 T6 8ETpiTOv 3C00V, 6 dvOpcoTros, KOCT* elKova TOO Koajjiou yEvouEvos, et passim. Thus we have the gradation of being: God, cosmos, man. Man accordingly knows God not immediately but through the mediation of the cosmos. ' Man became a spectator of the works of God, and he marvelled and recognized their Maker', OECTITJS ydp ly^vero TOO Epyou TOO 6EOO 6 dvOpcoTros Kai lOauuaaE Kai ^yvcbpiae TOV iroiriaavTa (C.H. iv. 2). It is to be observed that the idea that man knows God through His Son the cosmos sometimes finds expression in terms which recall Christian language about the revelation of God in His Son Jesus Christ. Such statements as John i. 18, xiv. 9^, would readily have been accepted by many Hermetists, though by the 'Son' they would have understood the cosmos

... we have already seen that as used by John it has some affinity with the idea of a heavenly Man found in Philo and the Hermetica. This idea plays a part in several of the Gnostic systems. It is to be observed that the Aramaic term lying behind υἱὸς τοὺ ἀνθρώπου, Ntfl *ia, means 'man*. It is however unlikely that the Gnostic writers were acquainted with this fact; and indeed some of them distinguish ἄνθρωπος from υἱὸς τοὺ ἀνθρώπου,1 making the latter the son of the former, according to the strict meaning of the Greek. When therefore we find the figure of the heavenly ἄνθρωπος playing an important part, we may be fairly sure that we are not dealing with ideas originally derived from a reading of the gospels. In the Valentinian systems ἄνθρωπος appears among the aeons of the primary Ogdoad, but plays no special part. His consort is ἐκκλησία the heavenly prototype of the πνευματικοὶ on earth. Thus ἄνθρωπος is there solely to provide a heavenly prototype for the human race which is to be created when the lower world is formed on the model of the Pleroma.1

We may suspect that as Logos is there because it already held an important place in Christian thought, so ἄνθρωπος is there because the idea was important in one or other of the traditions upon which the Gnostics drew. The question is whether it came out of the Christian tradition or out of some other. Paul's doctrine of the heavenly Man suggests itself as a source. But although Paul's doctrine might give Christian sanction to the idea, there is nothing in the Valentinian use of the term which suggests a reference to Paul. There is no attempt to identify Anthropos with Christ, or with Holy Spirit. Moreover, as Reitzenstein pointed out, Paul's argument in I Cor. xv. 46-7 has a polemical tinge. He is arguing against a doctrine of the heavenly or spiritual Man which made Him prior to the χοϊκός- Such a doctrine is found in Philo and in some Hermetic and Gnostic writings. Thus we are encouraged to look in other directions for the source of the idea. In point of fact it is in the systems more remotely connected with Christianity than the Valentinian that Anthropos is important. In the Naassene document we read of an αρχάνθρωπος called Adamas, who is to be identified with the Greek Hermes. Now Hermes is the Logos, the ερμηνευς και δημιουργός of all things that were and are and shall be. Moreover, the earth produced an image of this αρχάνθρωπος, a second Man whom the nations know under various names. The Chaldaeans call him Adam. He lay breathless, motionless, like a statue, until a soul was given him from above. This soul was brought down upon him from the αρχάνθρωπος. The ἔσω ἄνθρωπος in all men is in fact Adamas, the αρχάνθρωπος. When a man is reborn spiritually, this immanent humanity comes as it were into full being. The reborn is a τέλειος ἄνθρωπος, and in some sort identical with Adamas. It was to this that Jeremiah referred when he said (xvii. 9)
avOpcoiros £crnv KOCI TIS yvcocreTca carrov; 'For the knowledge of man is the beginning of perfection, but the knowledge of God is achieved
perfection' (Hippolytus, Refut. v. 8). It is difficult to reduce the teaching of the document to consistency, but the purport seems to be that there
is a man in men, who is really the offspring and counterpart of the eternal, heavenly, divine Man, and when a man is initiated into Gnosis, he is delivered from his fleshly self, and becomes wholly identical with the true man within him. The affinities of all this are obviously with the ἄνθρωπος doctrine of some of the Hermetica. It is given a Christian tinge, for Christ is said to be the true man in men: 6 ev Traai TOIS yevr|T0ls
uios ocvOpcoTrou (i.e. offspring of the αρχάνθρωπος), KExapaKTr|piau£vos dnro TOO dxcxpocKTripioTou Aoyou {ibid. v. 7); and Jesus is the type of the 'perfect* man: 6 CXTTO TOU dxapoocrripiaTou CCVGOOEV KexapocKTripiauevos TEAEIOS dvGpcoTTOS {ibid. v. 8). It is clear that this identification of Christ with "AvOpcoTTos is secondary. The figure of ἄνθρωπος is not derived from Christian sources.
In Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 1. 28 (Harvey) we seem to have a variant of the same doctrine, attributed here to the Sethians, also called Ophites, who say 'that there was a certain primal light in the power of BuOos, blessed, incorruptible, and infinite; and this is the Father of all, and is called the First Man. And his "Evvotoc proceeding from Him they call... the Son of Man, the Second Man.' The doctrine is Christianized by making Christ the offspring of the First Man and Holy Spirit, the female First Principle. Again, the Barbelo-Gnostics of Irenaeus, 1. 27 have a somewhat obscure genealogy in which Ennoia and Logos give birth to Autogenes, and he produces hominem perfectum et verum quern Adamantem vocant, and as his consort Agnitionem per fee tarn (fvcoais TeAeta). From them is born lignum (£uAov), quod et ipsum Gnosin vocant. In this genealogy Christ is so to speak an elder collateral of Anthropos, being emanated at an earlier stage than Logos and Ennoia. Having in mind some other forms of the "AvOpcoTros doctrine, we might interpret this as meaning that a man's true humanity emerges only when he embraces Gnosis, and so becomes an antitype of the heavenly pair who are the offspring of Logos and the thought of Logos. It does in any case seem clear that ἄνθρωπος was a figure in some non-Christian tradition to which these various systems go back,1 and was brought into touch with Christian ideas in various ways. It seems difficult to resist the conclusion that John also is alluding to some such tradition. For him the Man is identical with the Logos (as in the Naassene document, and, as we have seen, in Philo), is the offspring of the supreme God, the Father, descends into the world to reveal knowledge of the Father, and, ascending again, draws after Him those who are born again and in whom He Himself abides. The language used in this sentence is in every respect both Johannine and Gnostic, but the difference between Johannine Christianity and Gnosticism emerges the more clearly because the terminology is so largely similar.
https://preteristarchive.com/Books/pdf/ ... gospel.pdf
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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billd89
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Re: Hermes = ἄνθρωπος?

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Secret Alias wrote: Wed Apr 08, 2020 11:40 am
... In the Naassene document we read of an αρχάνθρωπος called Adamas, who is to be identified with the Greek Hermes. Now Hermes is the Logos , the ερμηνευς και δημιουργός of all things that were and are and shall be. Moreover, the earth produced an image of this αρχάνθρωπος, a second Man whom the nations know under various names. The Chaldaeans call him Adam. He lay breathless, motionless, like a statue, until a soul was given him from above. This soul was brought down upon him from the αρχάνθρωπος. The ἔσω ἄνθρωπος in all men is in fact Adamas, the αρχάνθρωπος. When a man is reborn spiritually, this immanent humanity comes as it were into full being. The reborn is a τέλειος ἄνθρωπος, and in some sort identical with Adamas. It was to this that Jeremiah referred when he said (xvii. 9) xxxxxxxxx; 'For the knowledge of man is the beginning of perfection, but the knowledge of God is achieved perfection' (Hippolytus, Refut. 5.8). ... The figure of ἄνθρωπος is not derived from Christian sources.
https://preteristarchive.com/Books/pdf/ ... gospel.pdf
Names of Hermes-Thoth.

Dodd is wrong: it's not the 'Greek Hermes' but rather the Graeco-Egyptian Hermes Trismegistos who is associated with the (Judeo-)Hellenistic Logos of Philo Judaeus. The Hermetic Poimandres has the Adam-Creation Myth; Poimandres - Sovereign Mind of Re - is Thoth, divinizing his Man (his 'Hermes', equivalent to Philo's Aletheian Anthropos) who then becomes Leader of the Race ('Son of God' = cult; level of initiation).

Evident syncretism must be explained. Why the Egyptian Jews had the 'Jewish Hermetic' tradition would be due to either organic or synthetic reasons. So, two reasons bascally: a) an older folk syncretism existed in the Fayum, or b) later Alexandrian Jewish Hermeticists adapted Graeco-Egyptian myth for their own artificial (commercial/propaganda) purposes. Presume the precedence of a), because Philo elaborates rekated concepts in a number of works (c.25 AD): his allegoresis is both following & answering some common conceptualization already known to his contemporary Jewish readers. I've addressed this topic on another thread. Adamas might be a Gnostic twist, but it was Jewish (Chaldean = Syro-Mesopotamian) and much older than Philo; the antiquity of Thrice Greatest Hermes is c.250 BC, and this Judaicizing mystical syncretism perhaps runs parallel if not much later to what was happening in the 'Greek' community.

I want to address the three (3) odd 'Names of Hermes' which appear in an archeological fragment (c.150 AD?) mentioned by Bousset (1913/21), pp.48-9 (my trans):
Now, following and supplementing the study made by Norden, we survey the milieu already reached in Wisdom of Solomon 2, on the ground of Hellenistic mystery piety. There, in the Hermes prayer of the Papyri Graecae Magicae 8.49-50, a magus or mystes prays: “Ἑρμῆ, καὶ σὺ ἐμέ, εἰμι σὺ καὶ ἐγώ {I know, O Hermes: I am you, and you are I}”.37 However, even though it has a strong external appeal, {p.49} we are dealing here with a much deeper-level of the most primitive piety. By context, the speaker is a magus who glories in knowing the outward forms of the god, his origin, his cultic signifier, and, most of all, his sacred names (βαρβαρικὰ ὀνόματα καὶ τὸ ἀληθινον ὄνομά = foreign and true names)***. Because he knows these mysterious names, he has the ἐξουσία {Authority} of the god and is identical to him: ‘I am Thou and Thou art I.’ And yet we feel from this prayer how out of this primitive attitude a higher personal mysticism of a mysterious union with the godhead can grow: “Come to me, Lord Hermes, as babes come into the bodies of women,” the prayer begins. Thus this mysterious motto of a dual knowledge resounds, is gradually detached completely from primitive magical rites and ‘pre’ imaginings, and takes on the stamp of personal mysticism. With gnosis comes about a mysterious relationship between deity and man, in which the god draws man and man draws the god completely into his being in a miraculous union.

37. Cf. the text of the prayer in C. Wessely, “Neue griechische Zauberpapyri” in Denkschriften der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1893), p.55; F.G. Kenyon, Greek Papyri in the British Museum, Vol.1 [1893], p.116; and in a possible reconstruction in Reitzenstein, Poimandres, pp.20-1.

*** Egyptian Hermes’ three (3) barbarous names are: Φαρναθαρ: Βαραχήλ: Χθα = Pharnathar: Barachel/Barakhêl: Khtha. I would like more information on these foreign and true appellations.
(1) Hermes ______ (if there was some qualifier/identifier for Hermopolitan Hermes, besides Trismegestos?)
2. Pharnathar = ??? What is this? From where? Is this, say, a Libyan name for the Egyptian Hermes?
3. Barachel = ‘El Has Blessed’ is Jewish. I did not know this was the Jewish name for Hermes.
4. Khtha ?? Does this sound prototypically Egyptian? See Robert W. Daniel and Franco Maltomini, Supplementum magicum, Vol. 2 [1990], p.93,3: χθα καὶ τῷ κυρὶῳ θεῷ Ὀσίριδι καὶ {=Ktha and Lord God Osiris and…} Perhaps this is fragment of another name. Marakhakhtha and Marmarakhtha appear in the Pistis Sophia 333b; that might suggest a suffix.

In this Invocation, - pagan, Graeco-Egyptian, from deep in Egypt - Hermes has four different names. Presume a Hermetic priest shared the god's names, known at his temple. Who or from where are these other 'representations', and specifically is there any other evidence to suggest a (Jewish?) Hermes-Barachel? If this fragment dates from 200 AD - and (we are told by historians) Jews had already 'disappeared from the Fayum' - then so it preserves an older First Century AD local Jewish name for Hermes-Thoth. An Egyptian Jew invoking Hermes T. c.100 AD would use his Jewish name, presumably.
Secret Alias
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Re: ἔσω ἄνθρωπος

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The real problem is that the supernatural Jesus is at the core of the Christian experience and the historical Jesus seems to have been developed as an afterthought. As Jesus has no real accomplishments other than 'empowering' the soul of devotees, there is a real dubiousness to the notion that Christianity is dependent on a living historical Jesus.
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