Were the Gnostics "anti-Jewish" and "anti-Semitic"?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Post Reply
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Were the Gnostics "anti-Jewish" and "anti-Semitic"?

Post by Giuseppe »



MC: I’ve heard fundamentalists say, “Well the Gnostic texts were anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic.” What is your answer to that?
Robert Price: It is possible to read it that way, but I think that it’s more of a Jewish reaction to what some mystical Jews began to consider oversimplification, as well as a kind of dumbed-down editing and domestication of the stuff. It’s those who are rejecting and reviling the Archons who lied about Adam and Eve. Again, they’re getting it from the Bible in the first instance; and it seems to me that you’d have to ask who were they portraying with the image of gods who want to stymie human knowledge and progress. That’s what the old rationalist used to call priestcraft.
It’s like traditional Catholics despising Vatican II or Louis Farrakhan despising the reforms made by Warith Deen Muhammad after the death of Elijah Muhammad. It’s a partisanship for a repressed and condemned belief that was once very common — and these people are not giving up on it. So, it isn’t anti-Jewish so much as it’s against people who have emasculated what the writers consider the true Biblical religion. These guys aren’t Marcionites. In On the Origin of the World, it says that the writings of the prophets — and it seems to be the Jewish prophets — are key to the coming apocalypse. Why would you reinterpret all these Jewish sources if you were simply a Marcionite? And if you were anti-Jewish, why would you be accepting the Old Testament? It seems to me that’s just a convenient oversimplification.

https://thegodabovegod.com/the-nature-o ... t-m-price/
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Post Reply