schillingklaus wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 6:52 am
Christianity is the result of a Judaization of pre-Christian gnosticism
Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Sun Jan 22, 2023 11:50 pm
Pre-Christian "Gnosticism"? What is the evidence?
schillingklaus wrote: ↑Mon Jan 23, 2023 12:22 am
The evidence is the logics of the dogmatics, as proved by Jean Magne in LOGIQUE DES DOGMES
Logique des Dogmes,
Jean Magne (SUMMARY)
http://egodeath.com/JeanMagne-LogiqueDesDogmes.htm
III. The Paradise Story in Gnostic Writings
NHC 2.1
The Apochryphon of John, best as NHC II:1 but also known otherwise from NH and outside, starts with a frame story confrionting John Zebedeus with a representant of Jewish orthodoxy, underpinning the heretical Jewish origin of Christianity. John retreats and receives a vision, where he's enlightened by Jesus. The vision contains the standard cosmic cosmogony with emanations of archons/rulers etc., involving a retelling of the paradise story of Genesis.
The retelling IMO is a Platonist retelling. It is a standard Platonist cosmology. Jean Magne wrote early. Much scholarship has gone under the bridge. The gnostic author was "acclimatizing Plotinic logic within biblical creationism". The only thing "Jewish" in the Secret Book of John is the setting and the characters. This is not an historical account. Someone familiar with Platonism was about to give the Jewish Genesis story a profound depth. Jesus presents the expanded Platonic cosmology.
The "frame story" about the representative of Jewish orthodoxy runs as follows:
Secret Book of John wrote:One day when John the brother of James, the sons of Zebedee, went up to the temple, it happened that a Pharisee named Arimanios came up to him and said to him, Where is your teacher, whom you followed?
I said to him, He has returned to the place from which he came.
The Pharisee said to me, This Nazarene has deceived you badly, filled your ears with lies, closed your minds, and turned you from the traditions of your parents.
When I, John, heard this, I turned away from the temple and went to a mountainous and barren place. I was distressed ...
This frame story frames the post resurrection John being successfully trolled at the temple by a Pharisee named Arimanios. The author is about to introduce the post resurrection Jesus. When Jesus arrives as a child, as an old man, as a young man and says:
Jesus wrote:The One rules all.
Nothing has authority over it.
It is the God.
It is Father of everything,
Holy One The invisible one over everything.
Jesus could have read the Enneads. Or he could have read the words of Apollonius of Tyana who, according to Eusebius, wrote this sort of stuff about the One God. Nothing Jewish in this Platonism / Pythagoreanism.
We see that some serious manipulation has been going on in order to keep pace with Judaisation, here: the condamnation of the serpent. A grammatical ambiguity is subsequently used to name Abel and Cain Yahveh and Elohim, instead, and to make Archon Yaldabaoth, not Adam, father of those. The blasphemy of cain and Abel being sons of a devil instead of Adam was already confronted and refuted by Targumic and Talmudic writings.
We see that judaisation of this text brought a shift from qualities formerly assigned to the Lord of the Tanakh to the serpent.
I can't be sure what Magne means by "Judaisation". But IMO it is Platonism which relegated YHWH of the Greek LXX to the demiurge of the Platonist scheme. The NT Story Book with its Jesus and the Twelve is set in 1st century Judea. In all likelihood it is an historical fiction. It was packaged in codex form with the LXX. A new part and an old part.
The author of the Secret Book of John had read very closely both parts of the Bible. He did not read it as a Christian. Or a Hebrew. He read is as a Platonist philosopher and after he had finished reading the Bible he wrote a response. Jesus starts with the inexpressible essence. Shades of Arius.
NHC 2.4
The Hypostasis of the Archons is only known as NHC II:4. The intro makes it appear to explain Ephesians 2:12. It contains a cosmology similar to the Apoichryphon. It ends with a revalation to Norea, daughter of Adam *and* Eve, by angel Eleleth, about the true essence of the evil archons under the guidance of Samael.
The cosmology is Platonic.
Hypostasis of the Archons wrote:
Their chief is blind. Because of his power and his ignorance
and his arrogance he said, with his power,
“I am god; there is no other but me.”
It is tentatively dated in the third century CE. It could be from the 4th.
Which chief Pontifex Maximus because of his power enforced a god? Aurelian?
NHC 2.5
NHC II:5 is often referred as treatise on the orins of the world, already implying its cosmological character similar to the above.
Th3e paradise exegesis explicitly distinguishes 2 special trees. The first being the tree of knowledge, the second the tree of life. The archons banned Adam and Eve from paradise, after he ate from mthe former, in order to prevent them from eating from the latter, two, which would make man immortal. Already the first tree makes man similar to the gods. The Books of henoch contain a detailed description of various trees of the paradise, something flought into NHC II:5. Adam is seen on three levels: A pre-existant Light Adam, a terrestral Adam created by the Archons after the fleeting image of the Light Adam, and an intermediate Adam made by Sophia in order to redeem mankind.
Again we have Platonist cosmology and the demiurge. Nothing Jewish.
WIKI wrote:
It [On the Origin of the World] is estimated to have been written sometime near the end of the third century. While the author is not mentioned, they seem to have been interested in expressing a Gnostic understanding of the world's conception.[2] In particular, it rethinks the entire story of Genesis, and positions Yaldabaoth (the Demiurge) as the creator of the world, fulfilling the role of God in Genesis. Furthermore, the Serpent in the Garden of Eden is depicted as a hero sent by Sophia, the figure of wisdom, to guide mankind towards enlightenment.
NHC 9.3
NHC IX:3, the Testimonium Veritatis, is a late (Valentinus is mentioned by name) treatise of a Gnostic hardliner against the falsification (Judaisation) of Christianity. It underlines the necessity of celibacy etc. for salvation and mocks those who lack his understanding of Jewish and Christian myths and don't try to understand them metaphorically in his ways.
The paradise tale of Genesis is recounted, emphasising the lie of God who prophibits eating from the tree, his ignorance, his envy etc., as opposed to the truthfulness of the serpent.
It is connected to an opposition of John B.to Jesus, the former born by a postclimacterial woman (like Anne and Sarah in the Tanakh), the latter by a perpetual virgin, a concept found also in the Ascension of Isaiah or the Protevangile of James. (Yet Marcion saw Jesus as not born at all in this world. Mark's has no birth narrative.) Jesus is seen here not as a real human, but an ideal one, a different form of the paradise serpent and the metal serpent of Moses in the desert.
The Valentinian cosmology looks to be a subset of the Platonic cosmologies in other tracts in the NHL. The text refers to "The All" 28 times as some sort of gnostic technical term. Is it coincidental that the Enneads of Plotinus refers to "The All" as a technical term more than 200 times? [McKenna translation]. Again any Jewish references are being taken from the LXX and NT.
Also see:
"Rethinking Valentinianism: Some Remarks on the Tripartite Tractate with Special Reference to Plotinus' Enneads II, 9" in Augustinianum 56/2 (2016)
https://www.academia.edu/30834079/_Reth ... _56_2_2016
These texts all underpin the origins of Christianity in the heterodox exegesis of Genesis, and the necessity of multiple phases of redaction accompanying the process of Judaisation.
No Klaus. I think Magne has got it wrong here. These texts all underpin a concerted effort on the part of various authors to introduce a decidedly Platonic spin on what is found in both the Greek NT and the Greek LXX. This does not require any necessity of multiple phases of redaction. These texts can be seen as original literary reactions.
There is no process of Judaisation. Gone are the days of looking for "Jewish layers" in texts just because they make specific mention or allusion to the OT books. The simpler explanation consistent with these texts and many others inside and outside the NHL is that they were authored by people skilled in Platonist philosophical literature. And who, for some compelling reason, decided to read the Greek NT and LXX, and make a literary response to it. This was decidedly a second stage in Christian origins. The first stage was the authorship and packaging of the Greek NT and LXX.