Joseph D. L. wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 2:15 am
I'm not qualified to speak of such a linguistic quagmire, but Carrier is being wholly dishonest if he is suggesting that "gnosticism" was just invented out of nothing by modern scholars when it wasn't.
The main thing Carrier is doing is trumpeting the work of others -
... all this is due to “cutting-edge scholars,” including Michael Williams, David Brakke, Denise Buell, and Karen King, “who, over the past fifteen years or more, have made a thorough case against the existence of Gnosticism [as a category].” Thorough enough, indeed, to persuade a representative majority of mainstream scholars. And they’re right.
I disagree with what he said two sentences prior to that [because David Brakke +/- others probably would] -
"the central finding that “the category of Gnosticism needs to be dismantled” because it “no longer works” to describe any ancient religion or sect."
Yes, "the category of Gnosticism needs to be dismantled”, because it "no longer works" as
a category, but some, such as Brakke, would say there is likely to have been
one gnostic sect.
Joseph D. L. wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 2:15 am
Irenaeus refers to these sects as γνωστικός, and "
gnosticism" is an appropriate rendering in English when speaking of these sects, instead of constantly referring to them as
the gnostics,
those gnostics,
these gnostics.
And the key point is that Irenaeus was wrong to do that, as the Britannica webpage says -
Britannica wrote:Irenaeus’s use of gnostikoi is said to be somewhat confusing, however, since he sometimes seems to apply it to all of the groups he condemns rather than to only one or two sects, ie. when he refers to “Marcion or Valentinus or Basilides or Carpocrates or Simon or the rest of the falsely called ‘gnostics’.” It is uncertain from his report how many of those movements called themselves gnostic, and whether those that did intended the term as a proper name indicating sectarian identity or merely as the assertion of a general quality (“informed” or “enlightened”).
irenaeus' commentary has muddied the waters since; to the convenience of Christians wanting to assert (i) 'there had been an orthodoxy from the beginning' and (ii) that pesky heretical 'Gnostics' tried to upstage it in the 2nd century.
That trope is bullshit.