The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

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rgprice
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The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by rgprice »

A lot of Gnostic theology revolves around the idea that there was a hidden god above the Creator god. According to many Gnostics, the Jews worshiped the Creator god, but were ignorant of the hidden god above him -- the true Father.

The Apocryphon of John, which pre-dated Irenaeus (though our oldest copy is from the 4th century), explains this circumstance.

"Now the archon who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaltabaoth [YHWH], the second is Saklas, and the third is Samael. And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, 'I am God and there is no other God beside me,' for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come.
...
"And having created [...] everything, he organized according to the model of the first aeons which had come into being, so that he might create them like the indestructible ones. Not because he had seen the indestructible ones, but the power in him, which he had taken from his mother, produced in him the likeness of the cosmos. And when he saw the creation which surrounds him, and the multitude of the angels around him which had come forth from him, he said to them, 'I am a jealous God, and there is no other God beside me.' But by announcing this he indicated to the angels who attended him that there exists another God. For if there were no other one, of whom would he be jealous?
...
"And the arrogant one took a power from his mother. For he was ignorant, thinking that there existed no other except his mother alone. And when he saw the multitude of the angels which he had created, then he exalted himself above them.

So this explains the thought behind why the Creator god of the Jews was thought to be arrogant and vengeful, etc.

As Barker explains in The Great Angel, this looks a lot like what we may expect from a religious group that descended from the original polytheistic Israelite traditions that preceded the Deuteronomistic Temple cult. This may describe the sentiments of a group that shared elements of the Jewish religious traditions, but did not accept the claim that Yahweh was the one and only god.

Now, it seems that many Gnostics attached to the idea that Jesus was sent from the higher god, who was the father of Yahweh (or in some cases just a separate power). But the question is, what evidence do we have that there were groups who believed that there was an unknown god higher than the Jewish god prior to the second century?

It seems that much of the "logic" of the Apocryphon of John stands on its own, even without Jesus. The teachings are attributed to Jesus in the Apocryphon of John, but they don't really have much to do with him. They could easily be earlier teachings that just got attributed to Jesus later. But the main thing is, do we have evidence of any of these types of teachings existing before, the middle of the first century?
Giuseppe
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Re: The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by Giuseppe »

For Guignebert, the name was: Auhra Mazda.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by neilgodfrey »

rgprice wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 3:50 am But the question is, what evidence do we have that there were groups who believed that there was an unknown god higher than the Jewish god prior to the second century?
Thompson's The Mythic Past, p 324, cites the Song of Moses as an early account of how the "most high" god El gave to his subordinate god Yahweh the people of Israel as his inheritance:
Think of the days of yore; consider the years: generation upon generation past. Ask your father; let him narrate it; let the old one recount it for you. When El, the Most High, divided the nations, when he separated the children of humanity from each other, and when he established the borders of peoples according to the number of the messengers of God, so Yahweh's part became his people; Jacob became his inheritance. (Deut. 32: 7-9)
Here we have a picture of God, called for antiquity's sake 'El the Most High', with his court of messengers, each of which is a god who is given one of the nations on earth for his own, for his 'inheritance'. The fact that Yahweh gets Israel creates an aetiology for Israel, identified as the people of Yahweh, which is so central to the theology of the Pentateuch.
Last edited by neilgodfrey on Tue Oct 26, 2021 10:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
rgprice
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Re: The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by rgprice »

Right, but is there any evidence of people in the first century interpreting this in that way? Or evidence of groups who claimed that Jews worshiped a lower god that they mistakenly believed was the highest god? It would seem like this is something that Samaritans might claim. What exactly were the claims of Samaritans? It seems like Samaritans were people who came from a similar religious tradition, but didn't accept the claims of the Jewish Temple priesthood and thought that Jews were incorrectly worshiping the ancestral gods. Today they are monotheistic and use the Torah, but was this the case in the first century?
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MrMacSon
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Re: The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by MrMacSon »

I've just started reading David Brakke's The Gnostics and listening to his great course presentation on Gnosticism on Audible.

I get the impression that Genesis (+/- other Creation accounts) was fundamental and key for 'the Gnostics', for Philo, and for Marcion.

And, so it seems, was Plato / 'Platonism'.

.
Gnostics read the opening chapters of Genesis as a confused account—muddled by its uncomprehending author, Moses—of how the divine potentiality came into this world and how it has survived the various attempts of the demonic forces to seize or eliminate it ... the Gnostics differed on precisely how the material universe came into being and how Wisdom was involved in it, but in any case the result was a distorted thought, a contemptible false version of divinity named Ialdabaoth and identified as both the "craftsman" (demiourgos) of Plato's Timaeus and the "God" of Moses' Genesis.

While Plato's craftsman god created this world as the best possible copy of the eternal forms, Ialdabaoth formed the material universe as a highly imperfect perfect copy of the spiritual entirety of which he had a dim memory. He exemplifies the self-deception of ignorant beings, vainly announcing to all who would listen, "For my part, I am a jealous god. And there is no other god apart from me" (see Exodus 20:5; Deuteronomy 4:24; 6:15; Isaiah 45:5). As a Gnostic author remarked, the god of Israel (that is, Ialdabaoth) here unwittingly testifies to the existence of a higher God, "for if no other one existed, of whom would he be jealous?" (Ap. John II 13:5-13).

David Brakke. The Gnostics (Kindle Locations 924-931).


Neil's quote from Thomas Thompson highlights the long standing issue of whether Judaism was ever 'monotheistic' or, if it was, for how long.

.
philosophically inclined Jews and Christians* agreed that the creator god in Genesis resembled the craftsman god of Plato's Timaeus and was not the highest God ... the Gnostics took a much less positive view of this divine being.

David Brakke. The Gnostics (Kindle Locations 932-934).


I've crossed out Christians* there b/c I'm increasingly wondering/thinking if a time-line could/would roughly have been:

.
.'philosophically-inclined Jews'.
.
.
.—>.
.
Gnostics/Gnosticisms
.
.
—>
.
.
.Marcionites/Marcionism.
.
.
—>
.
.
.orthodox Christianity.
.
(contemplating El, YHWH
+/- other gods/angels)
(prior to
+ contemporary
with Philo)
(via Irenaeus
& Tertullian)

* early orthodox Christians likely did contemplate those things but, if that [rough] timeline is [roughly] correct, early Christians would have been contemplating them through the prism of gnosticsms and marcionism
Last edited by MrMacSon on Tue Oct 26, 2021 2:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.
rgprice
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Re: The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by rgprice »

@MrMacSon Right. But what I would expect to find if this is indeed the case, is evidence of a belief that the Creator god worshiped by the Jews was not the highest god, prior to any accounts of Jesus. I expect that there were people who would have already believed that the Jews were worshiping a lower god, whose laws were not the laws of the highest god, and thus did not need to be followed. Then, when teachings about Jesus came into the mix, such religionists said, "Ah hah! He's the savior sent by the Highest God to overthrow the reign of the Creator."

But, I have yet to see evidence of the pre-existence of these Gnostics with specific teachings about the inadequacy of the Creator prior to the second century.
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Re: The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by ABuddhist »

rgprice wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 12:57 pm I expect that there were people who would have already believed that the Jews were worshiping a lower god
Buddhism's Pali Canon, although making no mention of Jews (and only 2 references to Greeks), could certainly support people in believing that the Jews worship a god who incorrectly claims to be the highest god, although the Pali Canon (and Buddhism outside Indonesia) rejects claims that the universe was created by any uncreated god.

For what it is worth, one Tibetan Lama apparently believes that YHWH is a powerful Gyalpo (wrathful deity, if I understand Tibetan Buddhist vocabulary correctly).
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billd89
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Agnostos Theos

Post by billd89 »

I am beginning to think most 2nd Temple Hellenistic 'Jews' (nebulous identity) were monolatrous, even in the 1st C. AD, and a binitarian formulation was already well-established by Philo Judaeus' day, c. 25 AD, perhaps 2-3 generations earlier.

I am translating Eduard Norden's Agnostos Theos (1913) right now.

([1913]: pp.65-6:
When we call Christian heretics ‘Gnostics’ we must be clear this use of the word is based on the narrowing of an originally much broader concept. “The existence of pre-Christian Gnostic communities, i.e. religious communities in which Gnosis was a neutral term, cannot be denied.” This is how the result of the joint work of theologians and historians of religion has been formulated in a booklet by W. Köhler, Die Gnosis [1911], p.12. which, in addition to and after the great fundamental works of Hamack, Hilgenfeld, Bousset and others, has its own independent value because the decisive factors — the sum of which we recognize in the great Gnostic system formations — have been worked out here with unusual (and in this difficult field: especially appreciated) sharpness and formed into vivid, comprehensive illustrations. That Hermetic writings in particular offer the richest material for proof of the existence of a pre-Christian Gnosis and are in their basic stock older than 2nd C Christian Gnostic system formations can be regarded as proven by Reitzenstein's researches, which is in this respect especially recognized by theologians. This applies unconditionally to the Creation myth, which is inserted into a hermetic writing with the strange title Kore Kosmou (Virgin -; Pupil of the Eye of the World), that Joannes Stobaeus has handed down to us in very long excerpts. This writing may have belonged to the younger examples of its kind, but in it older material has been utilized. In any case, the Creation myth is older in the conception of the Agnostos Theos, which alone is of interest to us here, rather than additions to this concept, which are still to be considered by us, because the division which Christian Gnostics carried out with it in favor of their dualistic world view, separating the Agnostos Theos from the World Creator {Weltschöpfer=Allführer; Cosmocrator}, has not yet been carried out here. …

([1913]: pp.72:
...The Excerpta ex Theodoto of Clement of Alexandria 7: {c.135 AD}“The Unknown Father wished to to be known to the Aeons. By enthymēseōs (intention, recall of Himself, as though He knew Himself) a Spirit of Gnosis (that is: from the Father’s Thought), He brought forth the Monogenēs (Only Begotten), that is: the Son. ‘That by the Son the Father was known’.” These words are important because they offer us the idea of the Hermetic cosmogony analyzed above (p.65ff.) transposed into the Christian: the Unknown reveals himself to the World through his Only Son; we also recognize here with perfect clarity why the Gnostics mostly speak of the ‘Unknown Father’.

Last edited by billd89 on Tue Oct 26, 2021 1:47 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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MrMacSon
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Re: The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by MrMacSon »

rgprice wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 12:57 pm But what I would expect to find, if this is indeed the case, is evidence of a belief that the Creator god worshiped by the Jews was not the highest god, prior to any accounts of Jesus.
I think that's what we find with/in the Gnostic literature (+/- the commentary of Irenaeus about some of that literature)

rgprice wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 12:57 pm I expect that there were people who would have already believed that the Jews were worshiping a lower god, whose laws were not the laws of the highest god, and thus did not need to be followed. Then, when teachings about Jesus came into the mix, such religionists said, "Ah hah! He's the savior sent by the Highest God to overthrow the reign of the Creator."
I'd need to know when you would "expect there were people who would have already believed that the Jews were worshiping a lower god", but I'm thinking this was happening through later second temple Judaism; though maybe outside Jerusalem and Judea eg. round Alexandria and maybe elsewhere (eg. Pontus? I've seen commentary Pontus had a well established Jewish community at the time of Marcion).

And I think that Gnosticsm is evidence of that.

Brakke says the Secret Book of John (aka the Aprocryphon of John) has four extant copies, all in Coptic; yet, while they vary, suggesting it was being 'upgraded', they have the same core, suggesting it was a popular story (possibly a stretch based on four copies vs < four for many text, but it may be correct or the four may be b/c of other factors).

He says scholars think the Secret Book of John was written ~100-150 CE, but I think it could have been written earlier (said 'scholars' are likely to have 'orthodox-Christianity-first bias'). He also says this book is more than a narrative of a revelation of God to 'John'; he says it's "the oldest surviving 'Christian' work of any kind that gives a complete, comprehensive narrative of salvation. It's the earliest grand vision of Christianity that we know of." (chapter three of the audiobook)

He then goes on to say this book shows the Gnostics thought 'God' was a "complex intellect consisting of numerous aspects or dimensions called aeons. The true god may be complicated but he is perfect and serene. Not so the god who created this world: he is imperfect and angry ...".

rgprice wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 12:57 pm But, I have yet to see evidence of the pre-existence of these Gnostics with specific teachings about the inadequacy of the Creator prior to the second century.
I think Gnosticism is likely to have been around before the second century and maybe even before the first.

The fact that we first or mainly know about them through Irenaeus (and of course the Nag Hammadi collection) doesn't mean they began in the second century or that they were a reaction to 'orthodox Christianity'.
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MrMacSon
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Re: The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by MrMacSon »

billd89 wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 1:36 pm I am beginning to think most 2nd Temple Hellenistic 'Jews' (nebulous identity) were monolatrous, even in the 1st C. AD, and a binitarian formulation was already well-established by Philo Judaeus' day, c. 25 AD, perhaps 2-3 generations earlier.

I am translating Eduard Norden's Agnostos Theos (1913) right now.

.
([1913]: pp.65-6:

... Hermetic writings in particular offer the richest material for proof of the existence of a pre-Christian Gnosis and are in their basic stock older than 2nd C Christian Gnostic system formations can be regarded as proven by Reitzenstein's researches, which is in this respect especially recognized by theologians. This applies unconditionally to the Creation myth, which is inserted into a hermetic writing with the strange title Kore Kosmou (Virgin -; Pupil of the Eye of the World), that Joannes Stobaeus has handed down to us in very long excerpts. This writing may have belonged to the younger examples of its kind, but in it older material has been utilized. In any case, the Creation myth is older in the conception of the Agnostos Theos . ... . the division which Christian Gnostics carried out with it in favor of their dualistic world view, separating the Agnostos Theos from the World Creator {Weltschöpfer=Allführer; Cosmocrator}, has not yet been carried out here. …
.

Interesting. Yes, the Hermetic literature is another unknown as far as Christianity goes.

fwiw, (and for my posterity)

"Hans-Martin Schenke's theory of Sethian Gnosticism has played an important role in Gnostic studies during the past 30 yrs. This Sethianism, in which Seth, the son of Adam, is considered the savior, is often seen as an important and early—perhaps the earliest—form of Gnosticism, rooted in Jewish soil and only secondarily Christianized ... Today the Ophites [the purported worshippers of the serpent (from Greek όφις [ophis], serpent)] have almost completely disappeared from the scholarly scene, probably because Schenke's Sethians were adopted in their place as a much better documented (due to the Nag Hammadi findings) early Jewish Gnostic movement ... Evidence...suggests that Sethian Gnostic authors drew upon the Ophite mythology in composing some of the central Sethian texts." [of which, afaik, the Secret Book of John is considered the main one]

Tuomas Rasimus, 'Ophite Gnosticism, Sethianism and the Nag Hammadi Library' Vigiliae Christianae Vol. 59, No. 3 (Aug., 2005), pp. 235-263 : https://www.jstor.org/stable/1584571?se ... b_contents

From the preceding abstract:

This article discusses the definition of Ophite Gnosticicsm, its relationship to Sethian Gnosticism, and argues that Eugnostos, Soph. Jes. Chr., Orig. World, Hyp. Arch., and Ap. John not only have important links to each other but also draw essentially upon the mythology the heresiologists called that of the Ophites.

Brakke says re On the Origin of the World:

Among its prominent characters is Ialdabaoth, the ignorant and arrogant creator god who is a key figure in the Gnostic myth, and it features other characters and incidents with clear parallels in Gnostic works. But in other, more important respects, the myth that it tells differs considerably from what one finds in The Secret Book According to John and related books. These differences are so fundamental that most scholars conclude that we are not dealing with a Gnostic work (in the restricted sense that I am advocating).

David Brakke, The Gnostics (Kindle Locations 637-640)

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