The forgotten third Christian movement

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Giuseppe
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by Giuseppe »

rgprice wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 8:16 am
Giuseppe wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 7:45 am The author thinks that he has detected passages, for example in Galatians, where Paul means a supreme god who is totally alien to Jews (=not expected therefore to be YHWH).
Interesting. Any citations?
For example, so p. 359:
The statement made above that G probably distinguished between the Creator and the Supreme Being is deducible from the fact that he was writing chiefly for Jews. After writing in verse 8 of chapter iv, "not knowing God, ye were in bondage to them which by nature are no gods," he proceeds immediately, without any break : "but now that ye have come to know God how turn ye back to the weak and beggarly rudiments, whereunto ye desire to be in bondage over again? Ye observe seasons," etc. In the immediately preceding passage also he had been addressing Jews, saying that the heir who had been in wardship to the law had now received the sonship. Such terms, as before observed, are quite inapplicable to Gentiles. He, therefore, is telling his Jewish readers that they had not previously known God, and were in bondage to them which by nature are no gods

(my bold)
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Jagd
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by Jagd »

Giuseppe wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 8:46 am For example, so p. 359:
The statement made above that G probably distinguished between the Creator and the Supreme Being is deducible from the fact that he was writing chiefly for Jews. After writing in verse 8 of chapter iv, "not knowing God, ye were in bondage to them which by nature are no gods," he proceeds immediately, without any break : "but now that ye have come to know God how turn ye back to the weak and beggarly rudiments, whereunto ye desire to be in bondage over again? Ye observe seasons," etc. In the immediately preceding passage also he had been addressing Jews, saying that the heir who had been in wardship to the law had now received the sonship. Such terms, as before observed, are quite inapplicable to Gentiles. He, therefore, is telling his Jewish readers that they had not previously known God, and were in bondage to them which by nature are no gods

(my bold)
Do you postdate Paul? If not (or if we're just talking about a broad 50-80 AD range) then this may be indicative of an earliest deific perspective for these "Christians", who could've had something like the Johannine/Thomasine dynamic where Christ is a god and is a son of the (unknown) God. I almost wonder if the "unknown god" thing was based on how there was no concrete understanding of who the higher god was, so you have a branch embracing the ineffable nature (with precedence in other traditions, like Hermeticism, IIRC) and then another branch that tries to make it into Yahweh. With the huge amount of variety within the so-called gnostic traditions, it looks like Yahweh as the highest god was a minority opinion.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by neilgodfrey »

rgprice wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 7:01 am
I'm confident that Paul and VoI do reject Moses. "Jewish Gnosticism" rejects Moses. "Jewish Gnosticism" embraces the demiurgical myth, which holds that the Highest God is not the Creator. Paul and the writer of VoI might have also held this view, but it isn't clear whether they did or not. Regardless, the rejection of Moses by Paul and the writer of VoI was enough to make their ideas appealing to people who did adopt the demiurgical myth, which includes Marcion, Valentinian, and whatever other "Gnostic" types there were.
If Paul preaching of Jesus had nothing to do with Moses or the Jewish god, then who would have had any interest in his message? If there is no OT to "prove by prophecy" who Jesus was, then what would lead anyone to believe in Jesus?

Is it likely that one man, Paul, who said his message was true because of a vision he once had, and without any appeal to other witnesses or prophecy, would be able to start a new religion that might attract Marcion or anyone else?
rgprice
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by rgprice »

neilgodfrey wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 1:10 pm If Paul preaching of Jesus had nothing to do with Moses or the Jewish god, then who would have had any interest in his message? If there is no OT to "prove by prophecy" who Jesus was, then what would lead anyone to believe in Jesus?

Is it likely that one man, Paul, who said his message was true because of a vision he once had, and without any appeal to other witnesses or prophecy, would be able to start a new religion that might attract Marcion or anyone else?
Possibly. Firstly we should keep in mind that Christianity wasn't necessarily that popular until after the orthodox takeover. There did seem to be a "Gnostic" movement independent of Jesus worship, which blended Judaism with Neoplatonism. God-fearers and such were already around. "Paul" doesn't seem to have actually been very popular. It seems that Marcion rescued him from obscurity. I still hold to my view that the Gospel of Mark is what made Paul.

So imagine some Jewish-Gnostic community. A Paul and others "ex-Jews" who preach against Moses, the Law and circumcision. The Gnostics are down with it. Some wars happen, and some God-fearers start wanting to distance themselves from Judaism. The message of Paul and other Jewish-Gnostics has appeal in that it is still familiar to the Judaism they have adopted, but it also rejects aspects of Judaism they have trouble with and distances them from the Jews.

Some guy writes this story we call the Gospel of Mark in which the Jesus character is based on Paul. Some Pauline community takes the Gospel of Mark and reworks it to make Jesus more of a moral instructor. The story and Paul's letters are held by the same community and perhaps bundled together. Marcion, an already Neoplatonic or Gnostic minded guy, comes across this story and is taken by it. Marcion thinks its the greatest story ever and that it validates his belief system so he starts advocating it. The story spreads and is adopted by other like minded Gnostic types, and then other God-fearers who lean more Jewish hear about it and they derive versions of it the from Marcion's Gospel that lean more Jewish. These then make their way into the hands of people like Justin, etc.

What I'm thinking now is that "Paulinism" and the Vision of Isaiah are related, and both still used some of the Jewish scriptures. They rejected the Torah, but used the Prophets and such. So there were still elements of prophecy fulfillment, but it wasn't in line with traditional Jewish ideas.

I don't know, I'm still working through it.
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Jagd
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by Jagd »

davidmartin wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 12:55 am I might add that early on this figure was considered salvific. The Odes demonstrate that
But his whole nature was basically salvific it wasn't the cross it was the words/deeds/life as a whole. The Pauline atonement theology was a later restating of this, which took a good long while to become 'orthodox'
Interesting to note the salvific aspect as so early! I think I agree, and it's probably good to note that the most common denominator is that salvific nature of this figure, and I think you're right in saying that the words/deeds/life were seen as the main "source" of this salvific nature (note that there is no event that causes the salvation in the Gospel of Thomas apart from the effect of the sayings) and that the details of these words/deeds/life were extremely vague, subject to wild creative invention. Certainly agree that the Pauline atonement theology was a later idea.

As for the Simonians, it appears the 1st century Samaritans had a solidly attested tradition of wonder-working god-men, ones who exorcised demons and promised eternal life. Christ is not a part of their teachings, and their identification as deific appears without precedent in the region, maybe coming from basic influence from pagan cultures, specifically demigods. These Samaritans also have association with Marcion. I almost wonder if these "Samaritans" were only such in terms of where they came from, not their religious background, since none of them appear overtly associated with the Israelite Samaritan religion.
They apparently didn't go along with the theology of orthodoxy and had mystical leanings
I'm beginning to understand that "Christianity" (might as well call it pre-Christianity, I suppose) was similarly non-theological, rather basic in its mysticism.
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by davidmartin »

Maybe it could be labelled 'folk Judaism'?
Folk traditions emerging into the mainstream for a while. The separation of influences into 'pagan' and 'non-pagan' is really a bit artificial. I mean Judaism never had a hell but as if by magic it gets one after being around religions that did like Greek and Egyptian. Then suddenly this 'hell' is not pagan any more. I think the 'pagan' category is more problematic than the 'gnostic' one it hardly makes any sense
RParvus
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by RParvus »

RParvus wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 1:11 pm Neil,
I noticed your plug and decided to add here a few thoughts about how Judas might fit into my Simonian/Saturnilian scenario. Realize that what I offer is here is half-baked, perhaps in more ways than one, but I’ll put it forward for whatever it is worth.

In the recently uncovered Gospel of Judas it is Judas who is the conduit for the “real” message of Jesus. There is much in that Gospel that resonates well with the admittedly little that we know from Irenaeus about the Saturnilians. One item in particular that catches my attention is the idea that men (created not by the highest God, but by lower angels) fall into two groups: one made for an imperishable realm and the other for total perishability. This type of predestinatory division calls to mind the “vessels of destruction” (Rom. 9:22) in the letter to the Romans with its: “Who are you, o man, to talk back to God? Will what is made talk back to its maker? ‘Why have you created me so?’ Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for a noble purpose and another for an ignoble one? - Rom. 9:20-21).

For me it also calls to mind the parable about the types of soil (hearers) in chapter 4 of gMark, the chapter in which Jesus is said to have privately revealed to his disciples the “mystery of the kingdom of God”. As Morna Hooker notes in her commentary on Mark: “The existence of four groups of hearers should not conceal the fact that basically there are only two: those whose hearing of the word bears fruit and those who hearing proves to be fruitless” (p. 132). Yet Jesus, in telling the parable, says that the reason he speaks in parables is to prevent some of his hearers from understanding.

It seems strange that there is so much repetition of the word “Hear!” in chapter four of gMark when at the same time Jesus is there preventing some of the hearers from understanding. Unless it is some kind of clue. Remember that Simonians claimed that Simon’s name meant “Hear!” and that it was given to him by the highest God when Simon heard/obeyed the command to descend to this world. And they believed that Simon was the Christ. And IF the Gospel of Judas was Simonian/Saturnilian in origin, it may be that an earlier gMark was modified at some point by them to provide pointers to the “real” gospel. That would give us a modified gMark for “those on the outside” (Mk. 4:11) that pointed to gJudas for those on the inside. And so it would come to pass that, as Mark 4 says, “Nothing is hidden” (in gMark) “except to be revealed” (in gJudas), “and nothing is concealed”(in gMark) ”except to be brought into the open” (in gJudas). “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear! And he said to them, ‘Pay attention to what you hear!’ ” (Mk. 4:22-23).

In this scenario there would, of course, have to be a third stage of development in which the proto-orthodox had the final say and further modified/cleaned up gMark to mesh with their own beliefs. One way to counter Simonian/Saturnilian pretensions regarding Judas’ private information would be to make him a traitor. Words like the following would belong to the third stage: “For the son of man indeed goes, as it is written of him, but woe to that man by who the son of man is betrayed” (Mk. 14:21). But perhaps initially there were some, Justin among them, that preferred to just ignore the claim of those who, as Justin saw it, were Christians-in-name-only. Why separate Judas from the 12 and wrongly tarnish his status just to counter an utterly baseless heretical claim?
I need to correct the above. I have re-read the Gospel of Judas (what little is extant of it) and think that it, if Simonian, should more properly be assigned to the Basilidean branch instead of the Saturnilian. Irenaeus says that Saturnilus “was the first to say that two kinds of men had been molded by the angels, the one wicked, the other good” (Against Heresies, 1,24, 2), but Basilides too subscribed to this idea as well as Saturnilus’ docetism. Although both were said to have been pupils of Menander, Saturnilus may have been active a bit earlier than Basilides, for Irenaeus speaks of him first. One at least, if not both, may have identified as Jews before coming under the tutelage of Menander, for we are told that Basilideans claimed “they are no longer Jews, but not yet Christians” (Against Heresies, 1,24,6). Justin, of course, considers both offshoots of Simonianism to be Christians-in-name-only (Dialogue with Trypho, 35).

When it comes to the Gospel of Judas, there are a number of things that tilt the balance in favor of Basilidean origin. First of all it is astrological. Each person, including Judas, has an influencing star. Now Basilideans, says Irenaeus, accept the principles of astrologers and “have transferred them to their own brand of doctrine” (Against Heresies, 1, 24, 7). He says nothing comparable about Saturnilus.

Moreover, says Irenaeus, Basilideans “even invent certain angelic names, and declare that some belong to the first heaven, others to the second, and one by one they attempt to expound the names, the rulers, the angels, and the powers of the 365 false heavens” (1,24, 6). This is the kind of thing we see in the Gospel of Judas, although there the number is 360 and is arrived at by multiplying 72 heavens x 5 firmaments. Irenaeus may have heard that their total numbers corresponded to the number of days in the year. That would be 360 or 365 depending on whether you count the 5 intercalary days or not. And notice, in particular, the number 72 in the Gospel of Judas’ calculation. This number, according to Jewish lore, was the number of nations in the world. Now Basilides, says Irenaeus,had something to say about the spirit rulers of the nations:

“But those angels who possess the last heaven, which is the one seen by us, set up everything in the world and divided between them the earth and the nations upon it. Their chief is the one known as the god of the Jews. Because he wished to subject the other nations to his own, that is, to the Jews, all the other principalities opposed him and worked against him. For this reason the other nations were alienated from his nation.” (Against Heresies 1, 24, 3).

Next there is the laughing Jesus. Several times in the Gospel of Judas Jesus laughs at the mistakes of his hearers. Irenaeus says nothing about a laughing Jesus when describing the teaching of Saturnilus, but says Basilides claimed that Simon of Cyrene was transformed by Jesus, was thought to be Jesus himself, and crucified through ignorance and error. Meanwhile Jesus “stood by laughing at them” (Against Heresies 1, 24, 4).

Next there is the secrecy element. The Gospel of Judas begins by calling itself “the secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke to Judas…”. Irenaeus doesn’t mention secrecy in connection with Saturnilus, but says this about Basilides and his followers. “They say… that their secrets must not be uttered at all, but they must keep them concealed by silence” (Against Heresies 1, 24, 6). And according to Hippolytus: “Basilides and his legitimate son and disciple Isidore say that Matthias spoke to them secret words which he heard from the Savior in secret discourse” (Refutation of All Heresies 7, 20, 1. Note that the name “Matthias” here could easily be due to a misunderstanding. Hippolytus may have heard that they claimed the 13th disciple as their source and mistakenly concluded, as many would even today, that it must be Matthias, the replacement for Judas. But in the Gospel of Judas it is Judas who is the 13th. Jesus foresees that the others will curse Judas and he says to him: “You will become the thirteenth.” In the extant fragments of the Gospel of Judas it is nowhere spelled out why the others will curse him. One could plausibly infer it was because of jealousy that Judas was the one to whom Jesus revealed the mysteries of the kingdom and the only one of the 12 who really knew who Jesus was.)

Finally, there is the fact that, according to Origen and a few others, Basilides composed a gospel. I know of nothing like that being said about Saturnilus.

So, to sum up, while I am still quite comfortable with identifying Saturnilus/Saturnilians as the interpolator(s) of some bare-bones letters of Paul, I think Basilides is a better candidate for author of the Gospel of Judas and interpolator of an earlier version of gMark. Assuming that Saturnilus was the earlier of the two, it may be that Saturnilus’ interpolations inspired Basilides to attempt something similar and, indeed, to include a number of ideas from the interpolated Paulines into his own reworking of gMark.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by neilgodfrey »

Roger -- I am reminded (it is a long time since I read the Gospel of Judas) that Judas is not one of the Twelve. Rather, he stands apart, perhaps comparable the Gospel of John's Beloved Disciple, yet alongside the Twelve. (I am mentioning this point because it relates to another question I have expressed in another thread re the origin of Judas in our canonical gospels.)

But one question: Does not Irenaeus also inform us that a tradition associated the Gospel of Mark with Basilides? Comment? (esp in the context of this discussion?)
RParvus
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by RParvus »

neilgodfrey wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 9:54 pm
But one question: Does not Irenaeus also inform us that a tradition associated the Gospel of Mark with Basilides? Comment? (esp in the context of this discussion?)
Neil,

It is the same incident as the switcheroo I mentioned between Simon of Cyrene and the laughing Jesus (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1,24, 4). Some think it was gMark’s careless use of pronouns at 15: 21–25 that gave Basilides the idea for the switcheroo. But if, as I suspect, Basilides modified an earlier gMark, the so-called carelessness may have been deliberate.
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MrMacSon
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by MrMacSon »

RParvus wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 1:29 pm It is the same incident as the switcheroo I mentioned between Simon of Cyrene and the laughing Jesus (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1,24, 4). Some think it was gMark’s careless use of pronouns at 15: 21–25 that gave Basilides the idea for the switcheroo. But if, as I suspect, Basilides modified an earlier gMark, the so-called carelessness may have been deliberate.
What if Mark modified Basilides? (fwiw, I think switcheroos were more common than is acknowledged)
Last edited by MrMacSon on Tue Dec 07, 2021 6:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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