Papyrus 20915 - English Translation

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andrewcriddle
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Re: Papyrus 20915 - English Translation

Post by andrewcriddle »

davidmartin wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 4:11 am My one gift to this forum, see the attached translation of this 2nd century Coptic work from German into English
Done by a gifted scholar I know Eugenia (PM for contact details)

It contains quotes from the Preaching of Peter, many old testament quotes and so on, some gospel quotes

The work is rather bleak and unfortunately fragmentary but surely someone can mine it for some clues?

I had hoped it would be more interesting but if someone can pull even one significant thing out then i'll call it a success!
Thanks very much for this.

It provides early testimony to the Epistle of Barnabas and important insights into pre-Clementine Alexandrian Christianity.

Minor quibble: page 86 appears to occur twice.

Andrew Criddle
davidmartin
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Re: Papyrus 20915 - English Translation

Post by davidmartin »

thanks Rakovsky interesting
On the Odes i'm not sure about Bardeisan authorship. Not sure there's any of his doctrines identifiable in them?
I've seen some pretty orthodox writers not see them as gnostic, the book by JH Bernard is one. He calls the Pistis Sophia a strange, repulsive book but he loves the Odes... the Pistis Sophia is the Trout Mask Replica of Gnosticism after all. I just don't know in what way the Odes are gnostic

What you said about the Ebionites and their gnostic tendancies is exactly why i wondered of a connection between them and the preaching of peter
there's scope for this if they had a non-pauline theology. but this probably is just idle speculation without anything much to go on.
I saw something else gnostic-like about the papyrus. The author claims Eve was born from Adam not just in body but soul and spirit as well - ie she is not made in God's image at all. This profound anti-femaleness is a habit of some orthodox and gnostic groups. Sometimes they can end up looking more alike than opposite at times
A common idea in Gnosticism was even that the ultimate true Deity and the OT Jehovah were two separate gods, and the Gnostics looked down on the latter, calling him Yaldabaoth
That's where I recon the earliest Christians didn't go along with this
Because it looks polythiestic to so very easily believe that your opponents' god actually exists (and is not your God misunderstood) and read their scripture negatively
It seem like the Christian approach is to better define the character of the one God and correct misunderstandings, even big ones but not go there
To me the Gnostics fit better into a Greek world than a Jewish one where polytheism was ingrained and natural
So i see the Odes as 'defining' the character of God and so not Gnostic
The author of this papyrus is also in the business of defining God, as particularly wrathful, so he's skirting with heresy himself!
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rakovsky
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Re: Papyrus 20915 - English Translation

Post by rakovsky »

davidmartin wrote: Mon Apr 19, 2021 3:43 pm thanks Rakovsky interesting
On the Odes i'm not sure about Bardeisan authorship. Not sure there's any of his doctrines identifiable in them?
I've seen some pretty orthodox writers not see them as gnostic, the book by JH Bernard is one. He calls the Pistis Sophia a strange, repulsive book but he loves the Odes... the Pistis Sophia is the Trout Mask Replica of Gnosticism after all. I just don't know in what way the Odes are gnostic
...
To me the Gnostics fit better into a Greek world than a Jewish one where polytheism was ingrained and natural
So i see the Odes as 'defining' the character of God and so not Gnostic
First, I want to note that apparently some things that Gnostics wrote do not appear to express Gnostic doctrines per se. Some possible examples could include the Gospel of Peter and Acts of John. One 2nd century Syrian bishop wrote that Docetists wrote the Gospel of Peter, and we have a medieval Egyptian passion gospel self ascribed to Peter that many consider to be that passion gospel. That medieval text at times has hinted at Gnosticism for some modern readers, but I think that even those places are not definitively Gnostic.

In the case of Bardeisan and Tatian, they both began as orthodox who are said to have gone over to the Gnostic camp, but I haven't studied closely how true that is or how far Gnostic they became.

To give a more on point answer about the Odes of Solomon, I welcome you to my Q and A thread where I researched the answers to a bunch of my own questions about the Odes:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4925&p=96524&hilit=Odes#p96524

As to Bardeisan's and Gnostic authorship, I linked to two major opposing scholars' writings on that topic. I did not reach a conclusion myself.

Looking carefully at the text itself, I found several places that I thought might indicate Gnosticism as I discussed in the thread. One was the Ode about the "As above So below" concept. On closer inspection, this Ode and its concept, as well as those in other such Odes, were not necessarily Gnostic per se, because these kinds of ideas in the several potentially Gnostic verses show up in Platonic thinking, as well as probably Philo's Judaic theories. I wrote about that in my thread about the Odes.

The author of the Odes was probably a 1st to 2nd century eloquent Aramaic-speaking Christian or Gnostic Christian, probably one familiar with and approving of some Platonic or Gnostic ideas. Bardeisan would fit this profile, and I'm inclined to think that he was the author, or at least he is my best guess for the author.
davidmartin
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Re: Papyrus 20915 - English Translation

Post by davidmartin »

"As above So below"
isn't much different from
"May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven"

I think the Odes are primarily pneumatic, unlike Platonism and it's Gnostic offshoot
It's the consistent pneumatic element of them that they drum out from start to finish that has to have first dibs at categorising them i feel, rather than the edges that here or there might lean in some other direction. I think that's part of the genius of them the defying of categorisation. I've not seen any other text be argued and feature in both Jewish, Christian and Gnostic pseudepigrapha like this one. They're just 'early Christian' i recon, possibly the best example of the genre? Sure why not. It doesn't do any harm compared to most of the other theories of Christian origins
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