The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
User avatar
MrMacSon
Posts: 8798
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:45 pm

Re: The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by MrMacSon »


The Gnostic myth was a bold attempt to explain the origin and fate of the universe and to proclaim human salvation through a combination of the Jewish Scriptures, Platonist mythological speculation, and (it seems) revelatory meditations on the structure of the human mind ...

Several divine characters or structures appear in similar ways even within narrations of the myth that otherwise differ, suggesting that they lay at the heart of what Gnostics saw as distinctive about their teachings about God. For example, nearly all feature a triad of father, mother, and son at a very high level of the godhead.

In The Secret Book According to John, the Barbelo conceives by the gaze of the first principle and begets a spark, the Self-Originate or Christ. Unlike other aeons, which emanate by becoming "disclosed," Christ is "the only-begotten" of the Father and the Barbelo, who are then his father and mother (Ap. John 11 6:10-18) ...

In First Thought the aeons praise Christ, who is "the only-begotten" and "the perfect child" and who establishes four eternal realms and their luminaries (38:16-39:12) ... The Gospel of Judas calls the Self-Originate or Christ, as it does many of the divine beings, "a great angel" and "the god of light"; it is attended by four angels, and it brings into existence the lower aeons (47:16-48:21).

David Brakke, The Gnostics, 2010 (Kindle Locations 759-760, 797-801, 808-11)

Brakke notes both Ephesians 6:12 and Hypostasis of the Archons, an exegesis on Genesis 1–6, have

"Our contest is not against flesh and blood; rather, the authorities of the world and the spiritual hosts of wickedness"

The beginning and conclusion to Hypostasis of the Archons are Christian Gnostic, but the rest of the material is a mythological narrative regarding the origin and nature of the archontic powers peopling the heavens between Earth and the Ogdoad, and how the destiny of man is affected by these primeval happenings.

The treatise begins with a fragment of cosmogony, which leads to what is framed as a "true history" of the events in the Genesis creation story, reflecting Gnostic distrust of the material world and the demiurge that created it. Within this narrative there is an "angelic revelation dialogue" where an angel repeats and elaborates the author's fragment of cosmogonic myth in much broader scope, concluding with historical prediction of the coming of the savior and the end of days.

Although the etymologies and puns on Semitic names suggest the author's close contact with Jewish legends and interpretive traditions, as well as knowledge of Greek mythology and Hellenistic cult practices, the myth is, according to Bentley Layton, purposefully anti-Judaic.
rgprice
Posts: 2056
Joined: Sun Sep 16, 2018 11:57 pm

Re: The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by rgprice »

Firstly, we can follow Gmirkin in concluding that the Torah and Judaism as we know it, originated in the 3rd century BCE. The Torah was constructed from a collection of polytheistic myths of Canaanite and Babylonian origin. In the Torah, existing myths about multiple Gods were recast in a monotheistic manner. The identities of multiple gods were assigned to a single God in the Torah, with some gods also being assigned to other heavenly figures, earthly figures and various presences.

We may then assume that from the 3rd century BCE on into the second century, the accounts of Judaism co-existed alongside many other polytheistic traditions, including the traditions from which the Torah was created.

Some people, either from Semitic backgrounds or non-Semitic God-fearers who studied the Jewish scriptures, recognized similarities between the Jewish scriptures and the polytheistic traditions from which they were derived.

They concluded that the Jewish scriptures were in error, or that they provided a biased account of the Creation, and that the Jews were being deceived into worshiping a deity who claimed to be the only god, but who in fact was actually not the only god, and worse, he wasn't even the Highest God, but he was fooling the Jews into believing that he was.

All of this would be understandable.

But, it appears that we don't have solid evidence of all this that predates Irenaeus, though of course such Gnostics had to pre-date Irenaeus in order for him to be aware of them, but we don't know by how long.

We may conjecture that there was a spectrum of such thought, which ranged from Temple abiding Jews to Jews who diverged from pure Deuteronomistic monotheism (such as Philo and Paul) to Samaritans to Gentile God-fearers who studied the Torah to Marcionite types, etc.
davidmartin
Posts: 1588
Joined: Fri Jul 12, 2019 2:51 pm

Re: The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by davidmartin »

Alongside this proposed early gnosticism with sharp gnostic dualism there's also pantheistic elements and texts (Eugnostos the blessed and others)
These origins you're talking about have to include a spectrum of gnostic-like thought and it's apparent opposite - pantheism
In the pantheist scheme the Jewish God is one of many God concepts and don't take scripture literally
User avatar
MrMacSon
Posts: 8798
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:45 pm

Re: The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by MrMacSon »

davidmartin wrote: Wed Oct 27, 2021 2:23 pm Alongside this proposed early gnosticism with sharp gnostic dualism there's also pantheistic elements and texts (Eugnostos the blessed and others)*
These origins you're talking about have to include a spectrum of gnostic-like thought and it's apparent opposite - pantheism
* Yes, Tuomas Rasimus has noted the points you make in 'Ophite Gnosticism, Sethianism and the Nag Hammadi Library' -

.
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...of the Ophites.

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

rgprice
Posts: 2056
Joined: Sun Sep 16, 2018 11:57 pm

Re: The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by rgprice »

I think fundamentally a lot of Gnosticism has to do with the Creation and the problem of evil. If you accept Gmirkin's theory, that Genesis is based off of the works of the Babylonian priest Berossus (which I do), then it means there would likely have been people who recognized that the Genesis story of Creation was familiar, but not exactly the same as older accounts. These people may then have seen Genesis as a "corruption of the truth", who then sought to reconcile the Genesis account with the other traditions.

If we understand Genesis as a mixture of Babylonian mythology and Canaanite/Israelite mythology, in which stories about multiple gods and goddesses have been merged into the story of a single God, it is fairly easy to see what may have been driving Gnostic efforts. Babylonian and Canaanite lore was indeed quite ancient, and was seen even by Greeks and Romans as something very old and sacred, particularly that of the Babylonians.

So one could certainly see in Genesis a biased account of the Creation, in which the god worshiped by the Jews (or Moses) was lying to the Jews, and deceiving them into thinking that he was the only god or that he was the only agent of Creation, when in fact he was not. So, Gnosticism may have been an effort to set this record straight, by drawing back upon older Semitic and Persian creation mythology.

Why care about the Jewish scriptures though? Perhaps because the Jews claimed them to be very ancient, which people likely believed. But also, its possible that Gnosticism emerged from God-fearers and worshipers of Theos Hypsistos who were initially attracted to Judaism, but then grew disaffected by it. Perhaps these were Jewish proselytes and such who started to recognize some of the relationships between the Jewish scriptures and other accounts of the Creation and Platonic concepts and viewed the Jewish scriptures as being in error.

But, I also detect elements of Orphism in Gnosticism as well. But again, while Orphism may be seen as Greek, its true origins are unknown and it was actually viewed by Greeks as a something foreign that pre-dated Greek religion. I'm not sure of the relationship between Gnosticism and Orphism, I haven't read anything in particular about it, I just notice some similarities between the two.
davidmartin
Posts: 1588
Joined: Fri Jul 12, 2019 2:51 pm

Re: The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by davidmartin »

MrMacSon wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 1:10 am * Yes, Tuomas Rasimus has noted the points you make in 'Ophite Gnosticism, Sethianism and the Nag Hammadi Library' -

.
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...of the Ophites.

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

Or it was the other way round and the Ophites drew off texts like Eugnostos
Eugnostos is used as a source by the Apoc of John and the gospel of Judas and it was turned into the Sophia of Jesus as well. Can't ignore that
To add to that Eugnostos has been dated very early, the original Nag Hammadi library book I've got suggests 1st BCE

This would give a different pattern to the one RG is suggesting
That there was an earlier 'mystical' Jewish-like phase that wasn't classically gnostic and the gnostic elements we're familiar with were developed later and from it say in the late 1st C
There may have been a split within this community over the stance to be taken with 'official' Judaism and it's depiction of God?
I'm not saying there was no Jewish gnosticism only that Christianity and it's gnostic texts seem to indicate an earlier mystical phase that got swamped by later more dualistic gnostic thought. Even if that secondary phase was in fact a genuine Jewish gnosticism 'taking over' or whether it came later there's still this mystical/wisdom start behind Christianity
That's why there's no gnostic myth in the g. of Thomas, and texts like Trimorphic Prot have layers Turner identified, and why Thunder is in the NHL and why the Odes of Solomon are what they are. It's also more obvious that orthodoxy sprang from a sapiential type mysticism than somehow managing to spring from hardcore Gnosticism
The gnostic may have been 'right' that the earlier incarnation didn't much like the pharisee depiction of God etc (that orthodox Christianity embraced), but that doesn't make them gnostics. It's almost as if the gnostics are saying 'let's correct them with the real truth' and it's interesting to me to think orthodoxy did exactly the same thing, hence both could be considered to have innovated is more likely!
User avatar
MrMacSon
Posts: 8798
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:45 pm

Re: The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by MrMacSon »

Rasimus noted in his 2015 article, cited above, that Filastrius' account in Diverarum hereseon liber suggests that the Ophite teaching is pre-Christian in origin, though it's is the only early heresiology suggesting that.

He also notes Sethian Gnosticism is considered by many scholars as an early and important Jewish Gnostic movement which was only secondarily Christianized (Schenke, 'Phenomenon,' 607; Pearson, Gnosticism, 127-33; Turner, Sethian Gnosticism, 257ff.

He finishes saying "the hypothesis concerning the essentially Ophite character of Eugnostos, Soph. Jes. Chr., Orig. World, Hyp. Arch., and the second half of Ap. John needs to be tested by a more detailed analysis of these texts and of the Ophite accounts in the heresiological literature. Similarly, the precise character of the Ophite mythology and its relationship to other forms of Gnosticism, as well as to Judaism, require further study."

H-M Shenke, 'The Phenomenon and Significance of Gnostic Sethianism,' in Rediscovery, 588-616.

B Pearson, Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity, Minneapolis: fortress Press, 1990.

J Turner, Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition, Bilbioteque Copte de Nag Hammadi, Section: "Etudes" 6, Quebec-Lovain: Les Presses de l'Universite Laval-Editions Peeters, 2001.

Rasimus also notes think Irenaeus' accounts of the Ophites in Adv Haers. 1.29 and 1.30 are likely from two different documents with slightly different 'traditions': a Barbeloite myth in 1,29, and an Ophite myth in 1,30.

He wrote that Turner and Logan have noted the underlying structures of the Ophite doctrine in Adv. Haers. 1,30 - the triad of three male divinities - is found at the base of the systems of Eugnostos and Soph. Jes. Chr., two texts mostly dealing with the genesis and structure of the pleromatic world. This triad of three males is found nowhere else in Gnostic literature, except perhaps in Origen's account of the Ophites (Father-Son-Love) in Contra Celsus [in which Celsus seems to have a different account]. Obviously there is some variation in the way the rest of the system has been built around this core. Irenaeus' Ophites account [in Adv. Haers. 1,30] has superimposed an additional triad of the First Man, Son of Man, and the Holy Spirit on this scheme.

A Logan, Gnostic Truth and Christian Heresy, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996

Turner thinks a group crafted the anthropogenies common to the Apocryphon of John, the Hypostasis of the Archons, the Apocalypse of Adam, and Irenaeus' Adv. Haers. 1,30 Ophites. He calls this non- and even pre- Christian group 'Sethites' since he thinks they saw themselves as the worthy seed of Seth.

Logan thinks that a 'Sethianization' process occurred around 200 CE after the Barbeloite and Ophite myths were already fused -> the idea of Seth as a saviour, the Gnostics as the pneumatic seed of Seth, the four lights as the dwelling places of Adam, Seth and his seed, and the division of history, all being introduced into the Barbeloite and Ophite traditions.
User avatar
GakuseiDon
Posts: 2294
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2013 5:10 pm

Re: The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by GakuseiDon »

rgprice wrote: Wed Oct 27, 2021 3:54 amThey concluded that the Jewish scriptures were in error, or that they provided a biased account of the Creation, and that the Jews were being deceived into worshiping a deity who claimed to be the only god, but who in fact was actually not the only god, and worse, he wasn't even the Highest God, but he was fooling the Jews into believing that he was.
A scholar that McMacson referenced on another thread, David Litwa proposes in his book "The Evil Creator": Origins of an early Christian idea" that the idea that the God of the Israelites was an evil one existed in ancient Egyptian thought. In the Summary on his website, Litwa writes:

https://mdavidlitwa.wordpress.com/

Firstly, ancient Egyptian assimilation of the Jewish god to the evil deity Seth-Typhon is studied to understand its reapplication by Phibionite and Sethian Christians to the Judeo-catholic creator. Secondly, the Christian reception of John 8:44 (understood to refer to the devil’s father) is shown to implicate the Judeo-catholic creator in murdering Christ.

I'm ordering the book as it's an idea I'd love to know more about.
User avatar
MrMacSon
Posts: 8798
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:45 pm

Re: The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by MrMacSon »

Michael Waldstein, The Providence Monologue in the Apocryphon of John and the Johannine Prologue, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 1995.

.
The connection between Jewish wisdom traditions and Gnostic speculations has been highlighted by a number of scholars. The Providence Monologue [at the end of the long version of the Apocryphon of John] is a particularly striking example of this connection. Its narrative strongly resembles Jewish stories about the descent and re-ascent of pre-existent Wisdom ... It is likely that the background of the Providence Monologue lies in such Jewish stories about Wisdom, recast in terms of πρόνοια, Providence ...

.
Previously, the author, Waldstein, is more explicit:
  • "The Providence Monologue...is a non-Christian text rooted in Hellenistic-Jewish wisdom speculations, recast in recognizably Gnostic fashion"
[and]
  • "In its present setting in The Apocryphon of John, the Providence Monologue is [said to be] spoken by 'Jesus', "the savior," to tell of three trips he took as the divine Forethought or Providence"
[and]
  • In sum, when Providence describes her trips into the cosmos she appears to be primarily interested in what she does when she arrives, namely, reveal herself, and in the effect of her trips, the salvation of her listeners. She does not dwell on the mode of her travels, incarnation or otherwise. In this respect the Providence Monologue resembles the Wisdom of Solomon, which also knows of saving arrivals of the divine spirit or Wisdom without specifying the exact way in which the revealing savior arrives (eg. Wis 9.17-18).31, below

The question is how and why certain stories are used, recast and reinterpreted. A comparison between the Providence Monologue and the Wisdom of Solomon shows that the many motifs shared by these two texts are deployed in the Monologue with a sharper dualistic edge and a new claim of consubstantiality between the self and the divine spirit ...

In deploying motifs shared with the Wisdom of Solomon in...two distinctive directions, increased alienation from the cosmos and increased claim to identity with the divine, the Providence Monologue moves into close kinship with texts commonly classified as "Gnostic."

... If the similarities between the Providence Monologue and the Johannine Prologue are not close enough to indicate dependence of the former on the latter, they are also not close enough to indicate dependence of the latter on the former. The argument employed by Robinson to show that the Johannine Prologue depends on the Trimorphic Protennoia hinges on the manner in which motifs concentrated in the Prologue appear widely dispersed in the more detailed and elaborate mythical scheme of the Trimorphic Protennoia where they seem to find their "natural context." The Providence Monologue does not provide sufficient grounds for such an argument—mainly, perhaps, because it is so short, only about one fourth longer than the Prologue.

What the Providence Monologue can provide is a benchmark, more similar in style and length to the Johannine Prologue than the Trimorphic Protennoia, by which one can measure the proximity or distance of the Prologue to or from a Gnostic recasting of Jewish sapiential motifs. This article has attempted to establish that benchmark. Measurement of the Prologue is a further task, contingent on exegesis of John.


31 More detailed information on the way in which the savior arrives is found in a hymnic fragment contained in the [Nag Hammadi] Letter of Peter to Philip which has points of contact with both the Providence Monologue and the Johannine Prologue:
  • "I am the one who was sent down in the body because of the seed which had fallen away. And I came down into their mortal mold. But they did not recognize me; they were thinking of me that I was a mortal man. And I spoke with him who belongs to me, and he harkened to me just as you too who harkened today. And I gave him authority in order that he might enter into the inheritance of his fatherhood. And I took [...] they were filled [...] in his salvation. And since he was a deficiency, for this reason he became a pleroma"

    (NHC VIII 136.16—137.4) See Marvin Meyer, The Letter of Peter to Philip: Text, Translation & Commentary (SBLDS 53; Chico: Scholars Press, 1981) 128-

An interesting aside is discussion of a Call of Awakening and a Ritual Raising and Sealing in the account of the third trip by Providence, and a footnote associated with that discussion.

.
The expanded call begins with Providence's self-presentation in the "I am" style (18a-b) together with the announcement of salvation, "who raises you up to the honored place" (18c). It continues with exhortations (19-10). These exhortations, in turn, contain teachings on the origins of the human race: Providence is the listener's "root" (19), a root that has become trapped by a system of hostile powers (20) in the prison of the body (21).

The call also resembles the tripartite model of Gnostic revelation discourses constructed by Bultmann and Becker in their work on the Johannine discourses: self-predications in the "I am" style; summons to a decision; and promise of reward and/or threat of punishment.

The call is followed by a ritual of raising and sealing which accomplishes what the call commands. Taken by itself, "raising" could simply be a metaphor for " awakening. " The parallel position of two actions, however, "I raised him up and sealed him," suggests a rite with two main elements, raising and sealing, perhaps a baptismal rite in which the initiate is raised out of the water and anointed.

The indicative "And I raised him up" (22a) accomplishes the imperative "Arise!" (19, cf. 15), and the indicative "I sealed him in the light of the water with five seals, in order that death might not have power over him from this time on" (22b-c) accomplishes the imperative, "Guard yourself against the angels of poverty . . . (and) beware of . . . Hades!" (20-22). "I raised him up" probably has additional overtones in the vertical cosmic schema that forms the backdrop of Providence's descents and ascents. The initiate is to be raised, ultimately, to the sphere of light from which Providence herself descends.

Behind this mythic ritual, in which Providence herself paradigmatically raises and seals the paradigmatic listener, there probably stands an actual rite.40 Five seals are attested in several Sethian texts in cultic contexts. Cultic references are clearest in a Sethian text closely related to the Apocryphon of John, the Gospel of the Egyptians.
  • "Here one has a series of references to certain gestures and verbal performances capable of ritual enactment: renunciation, invocation, naming of holy powers, doxological prayer to the living water, receipt of incense, manual gestures, as well as baptismal immersion itself," Turner, "Ritual in Gnosticism," 144.
Some Sethian texts reject outward rites in favor of a purely spiritualized symbolic understanding. The Apocalypse of Adam, for example, rejects polluted physical baptism in favor of a purely spiritual baptism consisting of knowledge.


40 The three elements contained in the statement, "I sealed him in the light of the water," are attested in early Christian baptismal language.
Baptism as a whole came to be called "seal," perhaps by analogy to the Jewish use of "seal" for circumcision. "The seal, then, is the water"
(Hermas, Sim. 9.16.4); see Gottfried Fitzer, σφραγίς, TDNT 7.939-53, esp. 951-53.
Baptismal water was linked with the light of faith eg. "This washing is called illumination (φωτισμός)" (Justin, Apol. 1.61.11-12)
.

andrewcriddle
Posts: 2816
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 12:36 am

Re: The hidden god of the Gnostics before Jesus?

Post by andrewcriddle »

davidmartin wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 10:29 pm
MrMacSon wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 1:10 am * Yes, Tuomas Rasimus has noted the points you make in 'Ophite Gnosticism, Sethianism and the Nag Hammadi Library' -

.
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...of the Ophites.

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

Or it was the other way round and the Ophites drew off texts like Eugnostos
Eugnostos is used as a source by the Apoc of John and the gospel of Judas and it was turned into the Sophia of Jesus as well. Can't ignore that
To add to that Eugnostos has been dated very early, the original Nag Hammadi library book I've got suggests 1st BCE

T
IMS The original Nag Hammadi library book suggests a very early date on the basis that the list of philosophical positions at the beginning of Eugnostos does not include Platonism and hence it was written before the Middle Platonic revival in the late 1st century BCE.

However, Eugnostos is clearly borrowing from a Pythagoreanizing type of Middle Platonism and is at the earliest mid 1st century CE.

Andrew Criddle
Post Reply