which is the link between Rev 13:8 and the gnostic Parable of Sower

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Giuseppe
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which is the link between Rev 13:8 and the gnostic Parable of Sower

Post by Giuseppe »


In Rev. xiii. 8, supposing the words
"from the foundation of the world" be
taken with "written," and not with
"slain," we still get this idea that "names
(of those to he saved) were written from
the foundation of the world in the Book
of Life of the Lamb that hath been
slain."
So that the Book existed at the
foundation of the world (cp. xvii. 8),
and since it was the Book of the Lamb
slain, Christ was the slain Lamb also
from before creation.

(G. Sadler, Has Jesus Lived on Earth?, p.30)

Richard Carrier observes rightly that in a Jewish (expiatory) system there is no reason why the Lamb had to be killed before the foundation of the world, since a sacrifice has to follow a corrupted (already created) world.

But the point is that the Parable of Sower was interpreted by the pre-Christian Naassenes as an allegory of the demiurgical creation of the world.

The great originality of Robert Price
is to see in the same creation of the world (as allegorized by the Parable of Sower) the myth of the celestial crucifixion of the Primal Man (''Christ'') by the same Demiurge (and his archons), to give spiritual life to a world otherwise ''without form and void''.

In other terms, the Serpent (a kind of Prometheus) was Christ.

So the author of Revelation betrayes in 13:8 the his cooptation of a previous Gnostic myth, where only it makes sense the crucifixion of Christ before the creation of the world (and necessary to that same creation).
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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