Carrier on "gnosticism"

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Joseph D. L.
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Re: Carrier on "gnosticism"

Post by Joseph D. L. »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_Jeu
The Books of Jeu are two Gnostic texts. Though independent works, both the First Book of Jeu and the Second Book of Jeu appear, in Coptic, in the Bruce Codex.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Th ... frontcover
Save all my members which have been scattered since the foundation of the world...
Hmmm, where else have I heard something like that?

As they relate, Isis proceeded to her son Horus, who was being reared in Buto, and bestowed the chest in a place well out of the way; but Typhon, who was hunting by night in the light of the moon, happened upon it. Recognizing the body he divided it into fourteen parts and scattered them, each in a different place. Isis learned of this and sought for them again, sailing through the swamps in a boat of papyrus. This is the reason why people sailing in such boats are not harmed by the crocodiles, since these creatures in their own way show either their fear or their reverence for the goddess. The traditional result of Osiris’s dismemberment is that there are many so‑called tombs of Osiris in Egypt; for Isis held a funeral for each part when she had found it.

But this also sounds familiar... Ah ha!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omophagia
The Orphic mysteries originated as a ritual which focused on purification[8] and the afterlife; the mysteries were based on the stories of Dionysus Zagreus. Zagreus was the child of Zeus and Persephone, who was torn apart by the Titans in an act of sparagmos. After tearing Zagreus apart, the Titans devoured him, except for his heart.
And of course, this sounds eerily similar to...

And as they were eating, he took bread, and when he had blessed, he brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take ye: this is my body. And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave to them: and they all drank of it. And he said unto them, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Verily I say unto you, I shall no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.

If there are similarities between Christianity and pagainism, then that too applies to gnosticism, MrMacSon, and the broadens the horizon to the outer limits.
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MrMacSon
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Re: Carrier on "gnosticism"

Post by MrMacSon »

Joseph D. L. wrote: Tue Sep 01, 2020 4:12 am ...these groups would be called "gnostic" given the kind of knowledge--divine/heavenly--they are claiming to possess. That's precisely my point. There isn't a difference between "orthodoxy" and what they call "gnosticism" on a fundamental level, and the same is true for orthodox Judaism and "Jewish gnosticism a la Philo of Alexandria, the Merkabah or the Zohar ...
I'm pretty sure that's Carrier's and the ''Gnostic' scholars' point, ie. there would be both little differentiation and limited if any point with which to group the various contemporaneous sects.

mlinssen wrote: Tue Sep 01, 2020 4:43 am We can debate about what Gnosticism was or is it was meant to be, but we should omit all labels and simply try to define who and what we are taking about
Exactly.
perseusomega9
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Re: Carrier on "gnosticism"

Post by perseusomega9 »

Giuseppe wrote: Mon Aug 31, 2020 8:36 pm
What I fear is that the rejection of gnosticism as category may imply also the rejection of an useful feature of it that was at the origin of the euhemerization of Jesus: hostility against YHWH.
That's a category invented by you. Try reading Margaret Barker's The Great Angel, you'll find the source root for much of Jewish 'gnosticism'/mysticism that evolved into Christianity and it doesn't involve "hostility against YHWH".
The metric to judge if one is a good exegete: the way he/she deals with Barabbas.

Who disagrees with me on this precise point is by definition an idiot.
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Re: Carrier on "gnosticism"

Post by Giuseppe »

perseusomega9 wrote: Tue Sep 01, 2020 6:27 am
Giuseppe wrote: Mon Aug 31, 2020 8:36 pm
What I fear is that the rejection of gnosticism as category may imply also the rejection of an useful feature of it that was at the origin of the euhemerization of Jesus: hostility against YHWH.
That's a category invented by you. Try reading Margaret Barker's The Great Angel, you'll find the source root for much of Jewish 'gnosticism'/mysticism that evolved into Christianity and it doesn't involve "hostility against YHWH".
and do you think that so great mythicists who have found a lot of marcionite antithesis in the gospels are indebted to Margaret Barker ?

And even if she had any reason (= Jewish origins of anti-demiurgism), her reconstructions don't matter, just as Maccoby's view about origins of Gnosticism (the more supportive for my case) don't matter.

By the time under our interest (between 1 and 2 century), YHWH was H-A-T-E-D sincerely and mystically.

And that anti-YHWH hostility has influenced our gospels, if not Paul himself.

Give to Marcion his due, please. The anti-demiurgism is not an invention of an anti-Jewish conspiracy by both Celsus and Tertullian.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
perseusomega9
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Re: Carrier on "gnosticism"

Post by perseusomega9 »

Good lord you're a stubborn fucktard
The metric to judge if one is a good exegete: the way he/she deals with Barabbas.

Who disagrees with me on this precise point is by definition an idiot.
-Giuseppe
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Re: Carrier on "gnosticism"

Post by Giuseppe »

So myself:

I agree with the article’s conclusion, but I would like that you don’t ignore at least a feature of the ‘Gnosticism’: the fact that some sects hated the Jewish God and claimed that Jesus was the Son of an unknown Father (not YHWH) and he was not the Jewish Messiah of YHWH. We have evidence of the existence of this sect even in Mark, since their Jesus was reduced (by midrash from Lev 16) to the role of ‘Jesus Bar-Abbas’ (another Jesus with the only difference who he is not ‘called Messiah’, that is all his true “crime”).

This feature (worship of Jesus + hostility against YHWH) may be called anti-demiurgism to distinguish it from the abstract category of gnosticism. If you recognize his early existence, then mythicism may have a good explanation about why Jesus was euhemerized by ‘Mark’. I know that your defense of minimal mythicism doesn’t require by you to clear what moved ‘Mark’ and his insiders to invent the ‘historical Jesus’, but often I see that a criticism addressed against mythicism is its presumed not-inability of explain WHY Jesus was euhemerized.

My point is that the anti-demiurgism was the real reason and impulse to euhemerize Jesus: by reducing Jesus to a pious Jew (not only to a mere creature, but to an adorer of YHWH), then the anti-demiurgists couldn’t say that Jesus was killed by YHWH (=one of the 7 “archons of this age”) in outer space. They couldn’t say more that Jesus was the Serpent of Genesis (seen as a positive figure). Their threat could be neutralized by fabricating the Gospel of Mark.

This would explain why Jesus is provided with a mother and brothers and sisters: while the anti-demiurgists rejected the carnal procreation (in the world of the demiurge YHWH), the invented carnal family of Jesus would prove that the procreation is a good thing. In the same time, the hostility of Jesus against her mother and brothers believing him “out of himself”, would eclipse the antidemiurgist hostility against carnal procreation, by replacing it with a more banal misunderstanding between a man and his relatives.

This would explain why all that midrash from OT to prove that Jesus was the Messiah of YHWH: not only the Jews had to be persuaded about that point, but also the anti-demiurgists.

This would explain why Jesus was placed under Pilate: the Messiah of YHWH was expected in recent times.

What do you think about all these points ?

Thanks in advance for any answer.

This is the Carrier's answer:

The sectarian move to denigrate the Jewish God is not “Gnostic,” is the point. It does not distinctively come along with any other specific baggage, but just as diverse a baggage as any other sect. This is what I already point out: yes, each particular thing credited as Gnostic existed somewhere. But the collection of all of them in any one sect, much less group of sects, existed nowhere.

Hence there is no point in calling this Gnosticism. Just call it what it is. You can find weird new developments and features in every sect, including the sects that merged into later orthodoxy. They all deviated from the original.

In this particular case, this is just a different way of dealing with the same problem: distancing Christianity from the Jews. Which became increasingly important after the Jewish War. The sects that later merged into “orthodoxy” chose a different method: blaming the Jews for killing and rejecting Christ and thus accusing Jews of being unfaithful to their own God, even blinded by their own God for their wickedness, and as such deserving of everything they get (as we see in John; which is an evolution of the more nuanced critique of the Jews in Mark, on which see my discussion of the Barabbas narrative in On the Historicity of Jesus, index).

Thus we got Christian antisemitism. Other sects accomplished this same goal in a different way, by simply redefining the cosmic order by having the Jews worshiping literally a false God (the Demiurge), which simply recreates the entire antisemitic apparatus under a different set of schematic trivia. (One more borrowed from Plato than Jewish literature.)

In other words, there is no meaningful structural difference between Marcionism (which is the earliest form of what you are talking about, which was not actually “Gnostic” by any modern definition) and what evolved into Nicene Christianity. They both reinvented new understandings of cosmic history to ground their antisemitic rejection and denigration of the Jews. The minor trivial details of how they did that hardly matter in practice. And “Gnosticism” as a concept is wholly unhelpful in understanding it.

Apart his interpretation of Barabbas, I am satisfied about that. It is basically what I already believed. It doesn't change my Weltanschauung.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
davidmartin
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Re: Carrier on "gnosticism"

Post by davidmartin »

OK so I learn a bit about Carrier here
He's less of an idiot than i thought, but he's still on steroids with his assumptions so not a great scholar

The Gospel of Thomas - what's anti-Jewish about that?
What about the Samaritans? were they anti-Jewish, they sure weren't too friendly
The Odes of Solomon - Jewish Christian another 1st century contender

He ignores the PROCESS, the evolution. Nothing matters to him except the end result which he doesn't like so this is just empty talk
If he ignores the sources he's not going to be able to say what the original Christians were like
He just blanket assumes - no connection worth taking seriously
He assumes the gnostics magically appeared in 150AD out the ground like mushrooms, and had zero 1st century origins at all, of course he does - that fits his theory which is not a theory so much as a pronouncement which relies on scholar-speak to carry weight, the substance is weak
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Carrier on "gnosticism"

Post by Ben C. Smith »

davidmartin wrote: Tue Sep 01, 2020 1:59 pmThe Gospel of Thomas - what's anti-Jewish about that?
I am not fond of generalities, but the following passage, at least, generally comes into play with such an accusation:

Thomas 43.1-3: 1 The disciples said to him, “Who are you who speak these things to us?” 2 “You do not understand who I am from the things which I say to you, 3 but you have become like the Jews, for they love the tree but hate its fruit, or love the fruit but hate the tree.”

ΤΙ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ
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MrMacSon
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Re: Carrier on "gnosticism"

Post by MrMacSon »

I think Carrier gets to the crux of the issue in the repl[ies] below (underling and bold mine) -

Jeff Q
No ancient writer used the word “Gnostic”? What about Ireaneus’ book “On the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis”, which is basically the Constitution of the Apostolic Church?
  • REPLY Richard Carrier

    No ancient writer used that word of a group or sect or collection of distinctive ideas. Even that book is not about Gnostics, hence illustrates exactly my point. Irenaeus is using the word as just the Greek word “Knowledge,” i.e. that title should be translated as it is written: “On the Detection and Overthrow of False Knowledge.” It’s about heretics in general; meaning everyone Irenaeus disagrees with. Not anything modern scholars mean by Gnosticism.

    This is a central point in the works of King and so on: they extensively demonstrate that it was modern scholars who tried to “spin” that title to mean something else. Once we abandon that modern construct, we can finally translate a title like that correctly, and not attach a bunch of false baggage to it the author never meant.
eta:
  • P.S. Someone elsewhere asked a similar question about Plotinus’s essay Against the Gnostics in the Enneads. That’s exactly the kind of thing these scholars are talking about. That has nothing to do with Christianity. It isn’t about the modern notion of Gnosticism at all, or even about a group, movement, or sect of any kind. It is simply a tract against a specific (and he means pagan) doctrine of the gods—in fact it’s simply a criticism of middle Platonist theology that followed the Timaeus. It’s title should just be translated “Against Those Who Claim to Have Knowledge”, in reference to Plato’s Socratic principle, “Only he knows who knows that he knows nothing”. The word was never intended in the way modern scholars translate and interpret it. So by rendering it “Gnostics” we completely mistranslate and misunderstand what this text even is and what it’s about.

    This is the kind of thing they mean when they say we need to stop doing this. The tract is simply “Against Those Who Claim to Know Things” not “Against the Gnostics.” The latter doesn’t exist as a thing.

Giuseppe
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Re: Carrier on "gnosticism"

Post by Giuseppe »

Note that Carrier subscribes to Pagan origins of anti-demiurgism:

Thus we got Christian antisemitism. Other sects accomplished this same goal in a different way, by simply redefining the cosmic order by having the Jews worshiping literally a false God (the Demiurge), which simply recreates the entire antisemitic apparatus under a different set of schematic trivia. (One more borrowed from Plato than Jewish literature.)

(my bold)

So it is just true: the Jewish War of 70 had given born to the monsters of religious anti-semitism, in both the variants, marcionite and proto-catholic.

The possibility is concrete, that:
  • Proto-Mark was written in reaction to the fall of Jerusalem
  • Proto-Mark was written by Marcion.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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