"him who judges justly" is allegory of the demiurge: Pilate

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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billd89
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Pilate is Not the Demiurge

Post by billd89 »

Giuseppe wrote: Sat Sep 04, 2021 7:54 amThe gnostics accused the Jewish god of being blood thirsty and the true killer of Jesus.
SOME, yes. But probably not even most: "Gnostic" is such a sweeping term.

I suppose 'Gnosticism' begins c.150-100 BC among Jewish sectaries ambivalent or even grown hostile to Yahweh. They were Allegorists and dialecticians (intellectual elite) on one side and Diaspora Folk-Jews w/ conflicting beliefs &traditions. Much more work needs to be done, investigating 'outside Jews' of the 1st C BC.

AntiJewish (gentile; hateful apostate) Gnostics of the 2nd or 3rd C. AD are less relevant to whatever happened c.33 AD.
Last edited by billd89 on Sat Sep 04, 2021 9:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
Giuseppe
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Re: Pilate is Not the Demiurgecism

Post by Giuseppe »

billd89 wrote: Sat Sep 04, 2021 9:32 am
Giuseppe wrote: Sat Sep 04, 2021 7:54 amThe gnostics accused the Jewish god of being blood thirsty and the true killer of Jesus.
SOME, yes. But probably not even most: "Gnostic" is such a sweeping term.
your distinction doesn't matter, to all the pragmatic goals. I call 'Gnostic' the anti-demiurgist and only them.
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Re: Pilate is Not the Demiurge

Post by Giuseppe »

billd89 wrote: Sat Sep 04, 2021 9:32 am

AntiJewish (gentile; hateful apostate) Gnostics of the 2nd or 3rd C. AD are less relevant to whatever happened c.33 AD.
are you historicist? Then I remember you that this thread is meant only for mythicists.
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Re: "him who judges justly" is allegory of the demiurge: Pilate

Post by Giuseppe »

Secret Alias wrote: Sat Sep 04, 2021 7:06 am Is there an argument in print that Marcion thought the Demiurge was Pilate?
Freke and Gandy are more explicit, indeed.

They have realized, from the following text in Irenaeus 1.25.6 :


Others of them employ outward marks, branding their disciples inside the lobe of the right ear. From among these also arose Marcellina, who came to Rome under [the episcopate of] Anicetus, and, holding these doctrines, she led multitudes astray. They style themselves Gnostics. They also possess images, some of them painted, and others formed from different kinds of material; while they maintain that a likeness of Christ was made by Pilate at that time when Jesus lived among them. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world that is to say, with the images of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honouring these images, after the same manner of the Gentiles.


...the following logical inference:

n the Jesus myth, the figure of Pontius Pilate also represents the Demiurge. Some Christians taught that Pilate made an image of Jesus which was crucified instead of Jesus himself. This myth encodes the teachings that it is the Demiurge, the craftsman, who creates Jesus' body, the eidolon or image, which is what is actually crucified on the cross.
Through the death of the eidolon, Jesus defeats the Demiurge
and his forces, which have temporarily imprisoned him within the cave of the cosmos. Pauf teaches:
'On that cross he discarded the cosmic powers and authorities like a garment.'

Paul also reminds initiates who have symbolically died and resurrected with the figure of Jesus:
'Did you not die with Christ and pass beyond the reach of the elemental powers of the cosmos?


(Jesus and the Lost Goddess: The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians, p. 154, my bold)
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billd89
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Re: Pilate is Not the Demiurge

Post by billd89 »

Giuseppe wrote: Sat Sep 04, 2021 9:42 am
billd89 wrote: Sat Sep 04, 2021 9:32 am AntiJewish (gentile; hateful apostate) Gnostics of the 2nd or 3rd C. AD are less relevant to whatever happened c.33 AD.
are you historicist? Then I remember you that this thread is meant only for mythicists.
No, I don't believe I need to wear any label or 'pick a side' to post here, or on Gnosticism or the Demiurge specifically.
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Re: "him who judges justly" is allegory of the demiurge: Pilate

Post by Secret Alias »

I can't cite Freke and Gandy in a paper.
yakovzutolmai
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Re: "him who judges justly" is allegory of the demiurge: Pilate

Post by yakovzutolmai »

Joseph D. L. wrote: Sat Aug 18, 2018 6:40 pm You're overlooking one major componant in all of this, Giusseppe...

PILATE IS NOT THE ONE WHO CRUCIFIES JESUS

Time and time again, the Synoptics, John, and Marcion, make this point clear. It is always the Jews who demand the death of Christ. Not Pilate. So then, how is Pilate a representative of the demiurge? Wouldn't the Jews be appropriately representatives of the demiurge?

Or is this an example of your nonesensical 'judiazer/marcionite' reactions?

"I find no guilt in this man."
I think he is saying that Pilate is written as the god of the anti-Gnostics. The Jews reject truth in favor of Gnosticism.
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Re: "him who judges justly" is allegory of the demiurge: Pilate

Post by yakovzutolmai »

Joseph D. L. wrote: Sun Aug 19, 2018 1:39 am Let me also add that I am of the Samaritan persuasion, meaning that I believe Samaritanism is the authentic tradition, or at least a closer version.
Does this mean that the Samaritans are the returnees from Babylon, and the Jerusalem clique are the stay-behinds?
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Re: "him who judges justly" is allegory of the demiurge: Pilate

Post by Giuseppe »

Secret Alias wrote: Sat Sep 04, 2021 4:40 pm I can't cite Freke and Gandy in a paper.
I see that you do much support on Justin. Have you read a case for Pilate being interpolated in Justin?
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Re: "him who judges justly" is allegory of the demiurge: Pilate

Post by neilgodfrey »

Giuseppe wrote: Sat Sep 04, 2021 8:37 pm I see that you do much support on Justin. Have you read a case for Pilate being interpolated in Justin?
If I may interject with a thought here -- the article and quotation of Wells that you link is debatable. Wells says, as many others do as well, that what we read in those sections of the Dialogue are based on our canonical gospels. But when you read those sections you find key details that have no part of our canonical gospels, so whether one says Justin knows the canonical gospels of if, as Wells says, those passages are interpolated into Justin from our gospels, we have a problem. Example: the central focus of Justin narrating details that appear in our Matthew and Luke is to demonstrate the fulfilment of the prophecy in Isaiah that the righteous man will dwell safely in a cave. But Jesus being born in cave is a detail that only appears elsewhere in the Infancy Gospel, not in our canonical gospels. And it is not in reaction to Marcionism since it is explicitly pointed out that it counters the claim that Christianity borrowed from Mithraism in this detail. It is in reaction to the charge of borrowing from paganism.

Further, there are other details that do not derive from our canonical gospels -- e.g. the star's work is done once it brings magi "from Arabia" (and that Arabian provenance is another important detail to fulfil OT prophecy) to Herod -- but that's not how we read it in Matthew.

I think a more economical case can be made for Justin drawing upon a host of different snippets of prophetic fulfilments to prove the messiahship of Jesus and that these various proposals and mini-narratives were later used as sources by the authors of Matthew and Luke.
Last edited by neilgodfrey on Sun Sep 05, 2021 12:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
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