Why did the Gnostics use Paul and Gospels?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
perseusomega9
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Re: Why did the Gnostics use Paul and Gospels?

Post by perseusomega9 »

billd, if you haven't read Margaret Barker's The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God yet I highly recommend it to you. IMO she conclusivly demonstrates some of gnosticisms origins in these very Jewish debates and intertextual exegesis.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Why did the Gnostics use Paul and Gospels?

Post by neilgodfrey »

rgprice wrote: Fri Oct 15, 2021 2:44 pm
After the First war, tensions started to grow in this community and such God-fearers became increasingly uneasy with their ties to Judaism. This increased over time as the conflicts continued to roil.
But why would gentiles who had been attracted to Judaism become increasingly uneasy with their ties to it? Would not we expect the war to elicit sympathy and increased sense of solidarity rather than a distancing? People who have bonds to begin with usually have them strengthened when one of them suffers a calamity, yes?

Why Marcion and Gnostics used Paul and the Gospels is a great question, though. I think when we can find a foolproof answer to it we will have put our finger on the very origin of Christianity -- at least Christianity as it is recognizable to us. I have been struggling with it for some time.
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MrMacSon
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Re: Why did the Gnostics use Paul and Gospels?

Post by MrMacSon »

neilgodfrey wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 2:11 am [Why] Marcion and Gnostics used Paul and the Gospels
Did Gnostics like the Sethians and Valentinians use Paul and the Gospels? If so, in what state--what version-- were they?

Did Marcion use the Gospels (plural)? (we know he at least collected ten Pauline epistles; Robert M Price thinks he wrote some of them)
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Why did the Gnostics use Paul and Gospels?

Post by neilgodfrey »

MrMacSon wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 2:43 am
neilgodfrey wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 2:11 am [Why] Marcion and Gnostics used Paul and the Gospels
Did Gnostics like the Sethians and Valentinians use Paul and the Gospels? If so, in what state--what version-- were they?

Did Marcion use the Gospels (plural)? (we know he at least collected ten Pauline epistles; Robert M Price thinks he wrote some of them)
Paul was labelled the apostle of the heretics (by Tertullian iirc) but we have so many questions about Paul: who was that author(s)? when was he/they? how much of the canonical texts did he/they compose? what has been added or deleted? I don't know the answers to any of those questions. Even less do I know the details of who used what of the Pauline epistles.

Marcion appears to have used at least one of the gospels in our canon, or at least some form of it. But we cannot be sure of the details, including changes in the Marcionite text over time. (Reconstructions of his gospel are hypotheses of a text that was not constant.)

Marcion appears to have responded to the Jewish Scriptures by reading them literally and thereby concluding that their God was not very nice. Catholics responded to Marcion by reading the same Scriptures figuratively to disprove the accusations about God by the literalists. But why the rift in the first place? We return to the original question.

The Gospels present a story of the conversion of gentiles, of Christianity spreading beyond Judaism, but they are also "heavily Jewish" writings - so why the interest in gentiles? and when did that interest start?

The OP's question could well be extended to include "Catholics". Why did any gentiles embrace these Jewish works and Jewish religious ideas?

To answer this question the early Fathers repeated myths of apostles, having experienced some miracle, going out to convert the nations. So it looks like they didn't know how it all got started either. Why didn't they know? We need more sociologists and historians in this field to bring new tools to help us find our way.
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Irish1975
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Re: Why did the Gnostics use Paul and Gospels?

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neilgodfrey wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 2:11 am
rgprice wrote: Fri Oct 15, 2021 2:44 pm
After the First war, tensions started to grow in this community and such God-fearers became increasingly uneasy with their ties to Judaism. This increased over time as the conflicts continued to roil.
But why would gentiles who had been attracted to Judaism become increasingly uneasy with their ties to it? Would not we expect the war to elicit sympathy and increased sense of solidarity rather than a distancing? People who have bonds to begin with usually have them strengthened when one of them suffers a calamity, yes?
If we’re just speculating, it makes sense to me that proselytes in the diaspora would have been attracted to the worship of the Abrahamic god, Moses and the prophets, moral purity and simplicity, etc. while at the same time not wanting to be associated with the zealots rebelling violently against Roman rule in Judea. Jewish “solidarity” was not then what it became after Constantine.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Why did the Gnostics use Paul and Gospels?

Post by neilgodfrey »

Irish1975 wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 7:56 am.............

If we’re just speculating, it makes sense to me that proselytes in the diaspora would have been attracted to the worship of the Abrahamic god, Moses and the prophets, moral purity and simplicity, etc. while at the same time not wanting to be associated with the zealots rebelling violently against Roman rule in Judea. Jewish “solidarity” was not then what it became after Constantine.
Yet is not that image of the war being led by fanatics the one created by Josephus in his books for his propaganda purposes? Ironically, Josephus used that image to make Judaism even more attractive in the eyes of his gentile readers by making it clear that those fanatics did not represent "true Judaism".

The public image of the war may be better represented by Vespasian's propaganda. This propaganda was an over-the-top display designed to legitimize his right to rule despite being from a non-noble class: he accordingly magnified the war as if it had been the conquest of a foreign people and not as Josephus presented it, as a crushing of wayward Jewish rebels. Coins circulated showed defeated Judea as a mourning woman, an object of sympathy:
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DCHindley
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Re: Why did the Gnostics use Paul and Gospels?

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I think you have not factored in Josephus' accounts of the ethnic polarization the war caused in Judean dominated areas and nearby Gentile regions. Assuming that early Christians who produced the books that became the NT were originally gentiles, we should be asking ourselves "Why did they identify with Judaism?" "On what terms did they do so?"

Here we have gentiles who are more than just casually familiar with Judaism. Why? Since popular Judaism, even in the Diaspora, held hopes that "one day" God would make good his promise to Abraham's "seed," for a just, blessed age of plenty. The common belief was that there would be a general resurrection of the righteous to allow them to experience their reward. Of those alive, there would be a divine judgement by his angels. The nations would be tamed with a Judean ruler who would rule them with a rod of iron (that is, harshly).

I think it is likely that the earliest gentiles to become proto-NT "Christians" had converted to Judean ways, circumcision and all. They had wanted to be a part of the action in this new age. Back then, "christian" simply meant you put your hope in an anointed leader who would lead in the new age. I cannot yet say whether Jesus had a message of human action to realize that kingdom or just wait for God to act through his angels. However, the war of 66-73 had dashed any hope for either option, although those hoping for god to act held sway throughout the 1st Judean war, especially in the Simon Bar Giora party in Jerusalem and also among the Sicari in Masada, even to the very end.

Josephus describes how polarized the regions of Judea/Samaria/Idumea and southern Syria became. It was very intense, involving ethnic cleansing, killing everybody even remotely perceived as a threat, and jailing of moderates on both sides as people not to be trusted. Just being friendly towards one another was enough to get people killed or arrested. Images of athletic fields being turned into detainment camps, and deciding to just kill the detainees rather than risk letting them "show their true colors," are not just for 1990s Bosnia Herzegovina.

If you are a former gentile, your extended family may have supported you in better times, but now they think their convert relative is a lightning rod bringing down destruction on them. The converts were cut off, rejected. The sense of betrayal among the gentile converts would have been intense some some. I would suggest they renounced their conversions to Judaism and fealty to their Laws, and sought a way to rationalize what had happened. In southern Syria and Judean regions, these gentile converts were clearly worse off after the war.

The natural reaction is to rationalize what had happened. They clearly felt an affinity to the Judean God, and could not believe that they had followed him in vain. Here is where the Divine Redeemer myth was incorporated into the story, where God has punished the natural born Jews by the Roman defeat, and that the true seed of Abraham was actually the gentile converts! Yes, that is a complete reversal.

However, as natural as that way of looking at the incubation process seems, nobody seems to be able to think outside of predetermined boxes developed to explain away the triumph of the Church. Of course, seeing early gentile Christians as "political" or having personal motives (better future for selves and others) is not popular at all.

DCH
neilgodfrey wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 2:11 am
rgprice wrote: Fri Oct 15, 2021 2:44 pm
After the First war, tensions started to grow in this community and such God-fearers became increasingly uneasy with their ties to Judaism. This increased over time as the conflicts continued to roil.
But why would gentiles who had been attracted to Judaism become increasingly uneasy with their ties to it? Would not we expect the war to elicit sympathy and increased sense of solidarity rather than a distancing? People who have bonds to begin with usually have them strengthened when one of them suffers a calamity, yes?

Why Marcion and Gnostics used Paul and the Gospels is a great question, though. I think when we can find a foolproof answer to it we will have put our finger on the very origin of Christianity -- at least Christianity as it is recognizable to us. I have been struggling with it for some time.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Why did the Gnostics use Paul and Gospels?

Post by GakuseiDon »

rgprice wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 2:25 pm It seems that even Marcion's Gospel and Marcion's version of the Pauline letters still deal with the Jewish scriptures and still present a Jesus who is at least tangentially tied to Judaism. Given the teachings of the Gnostics, why did they deal with these materials at all? How did the canon that Marcion put forward inspire or support his teachings?
Note that Marcion wasn't a Gnostic. Gnostics described how the world of evil matter was created through generations of aeons and how the divine spark of divinity ended up in humans. Marcion wasn't concerned by that apparently. For Marcion, the God of the Old Testament was the Just God, while the God of the New Testament was the unknown Good God. From here:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/i ... athen.html

[Marcion] had to account for the existence of the Old Testament and he accounted for it by postulating a secondary deity, a demiurgus, who was god, in a sense, but not the supreme God; he was just, rigidly just, he had his good qualities, but he was not the good god, who was Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The metaphysical relation between these two gods troubled Marcion little; of divine emanation, aeons, syzygies, eternally opposed principles of good and evil, he knows nothing...

The Old Testament is true enough, Moses and the Prophets are messengers of the Demiurge, the Jewish Messias is sure to come and found a millennial kingdom for the Jews on earth, but the Jewish messias has nothing whatever to do with the Christ of God. The Invisible, Indescribable, Good God (aoratos akatanomastos agathos theos), formerly unknown to the creator as well as to his creatures, has revealed Himself in Christ.

There is only a small step from Paul's Christ, whose coming was a mystery from the start of time but only revealed recently, to Marcion's Christ, also a mystery revealed recently. Marcion started off within the proto-Catholic Church, and seemed to have seen himself as the new Paul combating the new Judaisers.

I'm guessing that non-Christian Gnostics, whose worldview described how a spark of divinity -- via divine emanations and generations of aeons -- ended up in humans in a world of evil matter, already had a metaphysical basis for how that world came about. It would have been a simple matter for Christian Gnostics to slip a Marcion-like Jesus into the calculation.
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Re: Why did the Gnostics use Paul and Gospels?

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DCHindley wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 9:30 am
I think it is likely that the earliest gentiles to become proto-NT "Christians" had converted to Judean ways, circumcision and all. They had wanted to be a part of the action in this new age.
You say you think it "likely", but is there evidence to support the view that it was such eschatological hopes that attracted gentiles to Judaism, or even that those hopes were prominent identifying elements of what was considered the religion of the Judeans at that time? I have understood the evidence rather pointed to the attraction for gentiles being more to do with their "philosophy" or way of life in the here and now.
DCHindley wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 9:30 am Back then, "christian" simply meant you put your hope in an anointed leader who would lead in the new age. I cannot yet say whether Jesus had a message of human action to realize that kingdom or just wait for God to act through his angels. However, the war of 66-73 had dashed any hope for either option, although those hoping for god to act held sway throughout the 1st Judean war, especially in the Simon Bar Giora party in Jerusalem and also among the Sicari in Masada, even to the very end.
Again, I am not sure what evidence you are thinking of as the basis for this outlook scenario or even of such your view of what it "simply meant" to be Christian. Nor do I know what evidence exists to support the idea that the Jewish War "dashed" "Christian hopes".
DCHindley wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 9:30 amJosephus describes how polarized the regions of Judea/Samaria/Idumea and southern Syria became. It was very intense, involving ethnic cleansing, killing everybody even remotely perceived as a threat, and jailing of moderates on both sides as people not to be trusted. Just being friendly towards one another was enough to get people killed or arrested. Images of athletic fields being turned into detainment camps, and deciding to just kill the detainees rather than risk letting them "show their true colors," are not just for 1990s Bosnia Herzegovina.
Again, what evidence do we have that Josephus's portrayal -- and it was certainly an ideological one in the way (and for the reasons) that he portrayed ethnic atrocities -- effected Christians in Phrygia, Syria, Egypt, Greece, Italy? We do know that Vespasian's propaganda was spread through those regions and presumably had some impact on public attitudes. The ethnic troubles in Palestine were arguably what led to Roman intervention and the Jewish War in the first place, and they had been longstanding frictions. But is there any evidence that these frictions spilled over among Christians and Jews outside Palestine and Alexandria up to this time?
DCHindley wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 9:30 amIf you are a former gentile, your extended family may have supported you in better times, but now they think their convert relative is a lightning rod bringing down destruction on them. The converts were cut off, rejected. The sense of betrayal among the gentile converts would have been intense some some. I would suggest they renounced their conversions to Judaism and fealty to their Laws, and sought a way to rationalize what had happened. In southern Syria and Judean regions, these gentile converts were clearly worse off after the war.
Where are we thinking of? Christians in Judea during the War? Or Christians beyond Judea?

If we look at the recent examples of MIddle Eastern ethnic tensions that were provoked by terrorist attacks, we have seen how difficult it is to prise apart different ethnic and religious groups who have long lived as neighbours and friends. Those people pull together in the midst of wider crises around them.

But of course, we have very little reliable evidence that Christians were sizeable communities in Judea during these war years. Christianity as we have seen it evolve appears more reliably to have roots in Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Egypt, Africa, Italy.
DCHindley wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 9:30 amThe natural reaction is to rationalize what had happened. They clearly felt an affinity to the Judean God, and could not believe that they had followed him in vain. Here is where the Divine Redeemer myth was incorporated into the story, where God has punished the natural born Jews by the Roman defeat, and that the true seed of Abraham was actually the gentile converts! Yes, that is a complete reversal.
This is a hypothesis that needs to be argued, of course. If the core of Paul's letters were written before 70 then we have the earliest written documentations of Christian teaching announcing that both Jews and gentiles were united by faith in the promise to Abraham and his seed.
DCHindley wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 9:30 amHowever, as natural as that way of looking at the incubation process seems, nobody seems to be able to think outside of predetermined boxes developed to explain away the triumph of the Church. Of course, seeing early gentile Christians as "political" or having personal motives (better future for selves and others) is not popular at all.
I have no idea how Christianity actually "started" or where or when. So I don't know what box you think my ideas belong to. ;-)



DCH
neilgodfrey wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 2:11 am
rgprice wrote: Fri Oct 15, 2021 2:44 pm
After the First war, tensions started to grow in this community and such God-fearers became increasingly uneasy with their ties to Judaism. This increased over time as the conflicts continued to roil.
But why would gentiles who had been attracted to Judaism become increasingly uneasy with their ties to it? Would not we expect the war to elicit sympathy and increased sense of solidarity rather than a distancing? People who have bonds to begin with usually have them strengthened when one of them suffers a calamity, yes?

Why Marcion and Gnostics used Paul and the Gospels is a great question, though. I think when we can find a foolproof answer to it we will have put our finger on the very origin of Christianity -- at least Christianity as it is recognizable to us. I have been struggling with it for some time.
rgprice
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Re: Why did the Gnostics use Paul and Gospels?

Post by rgprice »

DCHindley wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 9:30 am I think you have not factored in Josephus' accounts of the ethnic polarization the war caused in Judean dominated areas and nearby Gentile regions. Assuming that early Christians who produced the books that became the NT were originally gentiles, we should be asking ourselves "Why did they identify with Judaism?" "On what terms did they do so?"
This is actually fairly easy to answer. The association of Jesus with Judaism was an argument against the existence of two gods. Marcion claimed that Jesus was not a Jewish Messiah and was not predicted by Jewish prophets. Marcion claimed that nothing about Jesus could be found within the "Old Testament", because Jesus was the Son of the Highest God, who was entirely unknown to the Jews or the Jewish god.

According to Marcion, Jesus was a pure spiritual entity who descended directly to earth from the Highest Heaven of the Unknown God. In Marcion's system, there was a god of Good, who was the Father of Jesus. This god was unknown until Jesus came to earth and announced his presence and his interest in saving mankind from the suffering imposed by the Jewish god - the Creator of the material world.

The material world is flawed and brings about pain and suffering. Jesus was not of the material world.

The primary objection that orthodox Christians had to this was the idea that there were two gods. Under Marcion's system, the Creator is a bad god, who punishes people and is the cause of suffering. The orthodox Christians were, first and foremost, monotheists. For them, the idea of two gods - one good and one bad, was preposterous. There couldn't be two gods and it couldn't be that all this time no one knew of the good god - that all along, everyone has only worshiped evil gods and only now is the good god making himself known. That all had to be opposed.

So, in order to do that, it was necessarily to state that Jesus was sent by a known god, and of course that meant that Jesus had to be the son of the Jewish God. Even Marcion agreed that the Jewish god was the Creator of the world. The task of the orthodox opponents of Marcion was to show that Jesus was actually foretold by the Jewish scripters and that he was born on earth as opposed to having descended from heaven. By showing these things they would "prove" that Jesus was a part of the Creation, not separate from it, and show that he came from the Jewish Creator god. This would prove that there was only one god, not two, thus upholding monotheism.

Yet even the orthodox Christians wanted separation from Judaism, they just needed to first show that Jesus came from the Creator god, then they would use the idea of Jewish rejection to separate Jesus from Judaism. Under Marcion's scheme, the Jews didn't know the good god, because they had been fooled into worshiping the bad creator of the flawed material world. Under the orthodox scheme, the Jews worshiped the correct god, but they rejected their own god.

But the main point is that it was really all a battle over whether there was one god or two. Tying Jesus to the Jewish Creator was necessary for the defense of monotheism.
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