Jean Magne's interpretation of Hippolytus, Elenchos V

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Giuseppe
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Jean Magne's interpretation of Hippolytus, Elenchos V

Post by Giuseppe »

Jean Magne thinks that the following passage:

This Serpent — they say — is Cain whose sacrifice the God of this world did not accept, while he accepted the bloody one of Abel because — according to them — the despot of this world enjoys blood. Furthermore, this Serpent last appeared in the form of a man in the time of Herod ...

(pseudo-Hippolytus, Elenchos, V)

...is not a mere description by pseudo-Hippolytus of what the Serpentists thought.

It has to be interpreted, rather, assuming a climax-effect at the end:
  • before the Serpentists believed that the Serpent is Cain etc etc etc
  • ...after, i.e. in recent times, the Serpentists invented a story where the Serpent appeared on the earth in human form.
This would give us indirectly the identity of the first Gnostics who euhemerized Jesus, and the name of the king who, in this first invented story, would have killed him:

Herod.

NOT Pilate.
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