Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Jerome seems to have thought that Philo could have had some contact with early Christianity (apparently thinking of the references to the Therapeutae and interpreting them as such). https://web.archive.org/web/20070224051313/http://www.textexcavation.com/gospelorigins.html#jerome [ From On Famous M...

fwiw, in chronological order by year: Williams, “Uses of Gender Imagery in Ancient Gnostic Texts,” in Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols ; edited by Caroline Walker Bynum, Stevan Harrell, and Paula Richman; Boston: Beacon, 1986. Virginia Burrus, The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Author...

Elsewhere, Litwa comments on Wisdom, but the most significant would be where, in saying says Ophite Christians "speculated on the role and figure of Wisdom," he immediately gives old Hebrew references thus, "Prov. 8; Sir 24; Wis. 7; 1 En. 42" (in brackets), and says, "whom t...

In Found Christianities , Litwa wrote: Another indication of an early date for the [ Great ] Declaration Commentary is its failure to agree with the earliest anti-Simon reports. The earliest of these reports is Acts, which depicts the pre-Christian Simon venerated as “the Power of God called Great” ...

I’ve been reading Irenaeus’ Against Heresies because it has some of the earliest known records of gnostic thought, and his section on Barbeloites essentially tells the first half of the Apocryphon of John, starting with the Monad and Barbelo, and ending with Sophia creating the demiurge. There’s so...

Eusebius' Eccl. hist. II.1.10-12: (paraphrases Acts 8:9-13 and misrepresents Simon as being called the Great Power, as does Acts 8: Simon in both is an emphatic personification of Simonian theology) "So much did divine grace cooperate with Philip than even Simon the magus, with many others, wer...

Markion radicalized this dogma when he ventured his Antitheses and everything else he thought would impugn the Artificer of all things. 201 Loukianos his disciple taught the same. 202 Marcion and Loukianos---the original Mark and Luke? I wonder if the names were co-opted, eg. by Irenaeus. (I think ...

M David Litwa's very recently published book, Simon of Samaria a and the Simonians: Contours of an Early Christian Movement, outlines ... "a distinctly "Simonian" version of Christianity between the second and fourth centuries CE. ... "Anti-Simon(ian) stories and reports began to...

e Tertullian Against Marcion 1 .2 The heretic of Pontus introduces two Gods, like the twin Symplegades of his own shipwreck: One whom it was impossible to deny, ie. our Creator; and one whom he will never be able to prove, ie. his own god. The unhappy man gained the first idea of his conceit from t...

From Refutation of al Heresies book 7: (M David Litwa's book version) 36.3 ... The Holy Spirit through the Revelation of John mocked his [Nikolaos's +/- others'] disciples and exposed them as “fornicators and eaters of meat sacrificed to idols”. 199 37. 1. A certain Kerdon likewise took his starting...