Who were the Earliest Gnostics?

[billd89]

One of the odder opinions, here. Oh well. How many of you believe that?! You can lead a horse to water ... (Old News.)
https://www.heritagedaily.com/2023/07/a ... lem/148121

[Secret Alias]

There were no such things as "Gnostics." It's like aggregating all the people who say they are "happy" in a day and claim that the "Happies" existed yesterday or the day before.

[billd89]

Hippies are forever, bro. Even if you hate 'em, and they hate that term, too. Check that "aggregation" at Burning Man, tho!






















A simple Venn diagram of 'gnostics' and 'hippies' would be, like, almost perfect maaaaaannnnn ....

[Leucius Charinus]

The earliest physical primary evidence for the Gnostics is stacked up in numerous codices within the Nag Hammadi Library in the mid 4th century. The Gnostic treatises here demonstrate a great affinity with Platonism. Platonising treatises are put into the mouth of Jesus.

"In the Book of Thomas, the teaching of Jesus has become Platonised,
while Plato's teaching has become Christianised."

John D. Turner, The Book of Thomas and the Platonic Jesus, pp.606-607

[billd89]

'Everything goes back to Plato' and 'everything goes back to Plotinus' is rubbish make-believe, pure idiocy. Reductionism (of complex socio-cultural phenom) to a prime is literally the stupidest conclusion you can make, ever. The insistent tendency is childish, superstitious, moronic, mentally-ill: eternal folly.

And it was no more 'Constantine' then than it would be Soros now.

The earliest physical primary evidence for the Gnostics...

The earliest physical evidence for so-called 'Gnostics' are countless amulets from the 1st C (and some, probably earlier)through the 3rd C AD. Thousands of such worked gems still exist: have you never gone inside a classical museum, looked in an Antiquities dept? That is 'the inconvenient truth' proving just how popular/widespread/age-old was the theology or belief system (in fact): "Plato" was irrelevant to those purchasing magical stones for salvation. Get a grip!

Again: see Mastrocinque [2005] for the context. By the First C. AD, there was thriving heterodox 'Jew-ish' culture -- read 'market' -- producing and consuming this Egyptian merch.

For Sale:

[Leucius Charinus]

From Jean Magne, La naissance de Jésus-Christ. L'exaltation de Sabaôth dans «Hypostase des Archontes» 143, 1-31 et l'exaltation de Jésus dans «Philippiens » 2, 6-11, dans Cahiers du Cercle Ernest-Renan, n°83 (21e année, déc. 1973). 1973 . What follows is a my rapid (and not-so-precise :roll: ) translation of the part II:

This exegesis, which can be deduced quite naturally from the parallelism of the two narratives, is exactly the one that constitutes the basis of the Gnostic interpretations that we read, for example, with later variants and elaborations, in writings, which already have a whole Gnostic tradition behind them. as the Apocryphon of John (BG 55:18 ss, 60:18 ss; and his other three witnesses), the Hypostasis of the Archons (GC 2, 136, 24 ff), the writing On the Origin of the World (GC 2, 166, 16 sec)

I note in particular that the author recognizes two facts:

1) the early Gnostics rejected judaism in toto as a “evil” religion of a inferior god.

YHWH was cast as the Platonic demiurge.

2) the early Gnostics were “bound to Judaism by some recognition of the authority of the Bible”.

When did this happen in the political history of the Roman empire?

[Leucius Charinus]

The earliest physical primary evidence for the Gnostics...

The earliest physical evidence for so-called 'Gnostics' are countless amulets from the 1st C (and some, probably earlier)through the 3rd C AD. Thousands of such worked gems still exist: have you never gone inside a classical museum, looked in an Antiquities dept?

The OP quotes tracts in the NHL. We are looking for the earliest physical evidence for gnostic manuscripts dude. Have you looked at the NHL? Do you reject the scholarship of John D. Turner about Platonism in the NHL? Can you find any earlier physical Gnostic manuscripts? I don't think so. Bro.



Gnosticism as Platonism: With Special Reference to Marsanes (NHC 10,1)
Author(s): Birger A. Pearson
Source: The Harvard Theological Review , Jan., 1984, Vol. 77, No. 1 (Jan., 1984), pp. 55-
72
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Harvard Divinity School
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/1509519

[billd89]

We are looking for the earliest physical evidence for gnostic manuscripts dude.

No. Intaglios are real, they are evidence: you cannot wish them away.

Reread the OP. Nothing limits us to discussing the NHL or whatever you choose. But therein lies the problem: you live in a land of make-believe, shamelessly insisting your warped pov is "right."

And nothing could be farther from the truth.

What's interesting to me -- not to suggest conspiracy theories are exclusively American -- but how exquisitely American your delusional modus operandi appears. The flagrant, corrupted monomania of "Conspiracy Thinking". It doesn't matter that you live on the other side of the globe: you still suffer from whatever disturbance Rightwing Amerika has imprinted and continued exploiting in the public consciousness (i.e. in millions of individuals' minds) for decades. Murdoch merely jumped on an old band-wagon, harnessed its trend-horses...

'Fluoride in the water', perhaps?

[rgprice]

It seems likely to me that "Gnosticism", specifically the re-framing of Jewish theology, started developing following the First Jewish-Roman War. I think a lot also had to do with the fact that claims of a "single god" existed within a much broader polytheistic context, where polytheism was actually able to address many complications that are introduced by true monotheism. And there was an on-going understanding that there were polytheistic roots to Judaism and this came into play with the idea that Yahweh had lied to Moses or to the Jews and tricked them into thinking that he was the only god. From this perspective, the claim of being "the only God" was like outrageous, conceited, egotistical, etc. This god was such a ridiculous liar, claiming to be the one and only god, responsible for everything. How absurd! And of course, he even says in his own scriptures that he is a "jealous god"!

So, there was a clear history here that people with a knowledge of Semitic religion could point to and bring back the polytheistic Semitic traditions and show that the Jewish scriptures were lies that tried to cover up the polytheistic truth. And in fact they were right, sort of. Because Judaism is derived from polytheistic traditions and the "God" of the Jewish scriptures is really an amalgamation of many different Semitic Gods, namely El and Yahweh, but others as well. And the writing out of Asherah, etc. lead to all of these clear lines of attack.

And what happened was that as a result of the Jewish-Roman Wars, and the losses suffered by the Jews, this was seen as proof that the Jews had been lied to and that they were being led astray by a lying God, who was leading them into defeat.

But I do think that "Gnosticism" pre-dated and was independent from Christianity. But when the Gospel stories came on the scene, they were easy to interpret along Gnostic lines of thought. But I think really, what was happening was that following the Jewish-Roman Wars, many divergent interpretations of Judaism developed as ways of reconciling the claims of Judaism with the outcomes of the conflicts. And once these different interpretations started springing up, they all cross pollinated with one another.

[Secret Alias]

What information do we have about Jewish life before the War? I don't know about you but I've been around long enough to know that you never necessarily catch ALL the infidelity, at best you catch the latest infidelity. The infidelities of the past disappear from history.