Loading...In my last several posts I’ve been talking about Sethian Gnostics, beginning with a description of what they believe and then discussing one Sethian text, the Gospel of Judas. Sethians weren’t the only kind of Gnostic floating around in the second and third century; there may have been lots of other groups (since we only have a limited number of texts, it’s impossible to say how many, or what each of them actually believed). But one that we know about reasonably well are called the Valentinians. Here is what I say about them in the second edition of my book After the New Testament (Oxford University Press).
******************************
Valentinians
Unlike the Sethian Gnostics, the Valentinians were named after an actual person, Valentinus, the founder and original leader of the group. We know about the Valentinians from the writings of proto-orthodox heresiologists beginning with Irenaeus and by some of the writings discovered among the Nag Hammadi Library that almost certainly derive from Valentinian authors, including one book that may actually have been written by Valentinus himself (The Gospel of Truth).
Get access to Dr. Ehrman's library of 4,000+ articles plus five new articles per week about the New Testament and early Christianity. It costs as little as $2.99/mth and every cent goes to charity!
Unlock 4,000+ Articles Like This!
Did any of the Gnostics (Sethian, Valentinian, or otherwise) ever write a polemic against the proto-Orthodox views of Christianity? I’m thinking of something equivalent to what Irenaeus and other proto-Orthodox heresiologists were writing about Gnosticism. Or maybe we just don’t know since the works of the Gnostics have mostly been lost.
Oh yes. We don’t have any in essay form (like the anti-Gnostic heresiologists produced) but we do find intensive polemic against the proto-orthodox in a couple of the Nag Hammadi writings, especially the Coptic Apocalpyse of Peter. Maybe I should post on that.
I have been wondering where the “Us/Them” theology stemmed from within the Hellenistic Christians came from and still persists in todays christianity. So the “animal/spritual theology may have stemmed from early gnosticism. Makes me wonder about the introduction of the “parables” of Jesus into the gospels, as a counter to such gnosticism division of the world. Jesus’s parables are inclusive of all the world. It leads me down a path that the earliest gospels may have been progressional works adapting to counter the different gnostic beliefs. That would explain the additions and modifications between earliest and later manuscripts. Also the “explosion” of 2nd/3rd century gosples not included into the canon. Just thoughts and waiting for more information to better consider.
I think a lot of us-them dialogue and matter-spirit etc. can be found in lots of places, not just ealry Christianity (platonic thinking, e.g.)
In the Synoptics, is it considered historical that Jesus did something like send the disciples out, two-by-two, unaccompanied by Jesus himself, on a preaching and healing mission well before the passion and resurrection?
I was recently reading Schweitzer’s autobiography. He seems to have considered the failure of that mission to have caused Jesus’s decision to go to Jerusalem to die.
Yes, that’s a thesis he develops in The Quest of the Historical Jesus. He thought the Kingdom would come before they had visited “all the cities and towns of Israel” and it didn’t happen. So he began to think that he himself had to inaugurate the kingdom by dying. It was only on the cross that he realized that was wrong too….
It’s not implausible that Jesus sent out disciples to preach his message, just as, in a sense, he himself went out to preach John the Baptists message. But I don’t think there was anyway there were 70 (or 72 — textual variant!) of them.
” not implausible” don’t we love double negatives!
it causes me to reread the passage, other than skimming through it.
Schweitzer wrote:
Jesus threw himself upon the wheel of history in an attempt to bring it to a halt, to bring this world to an end, and to usher in the Kingdom of God in its fullness and power; but the wheel continued to turn, and it crushed him. Even now, his mangled body hangs on that wheel as it turns…
Amazing passage.
From a historical standpoint, is it possible to construct a rough chronology of events between Jesus leaving John the Baptist and Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem just before he was arrested and crucified?
Besides the gospels devoting a lot of space to the passion itself there is a lot of teaching taking place between the entry into Jerusalem and the Last Supper. Is something along those lines likely to be historical?
It’s very difficult because in Marks’ Gospel the entire ministry appears to go from the fall (when the fields are being harvested, ch. 2) to the spring (passover feast) Between the opening scenes and the end, one of Mark’s favorite words is “immediately.” Immediately this, then immediately that, etc. No indication of a long passage of time.
But in John Jesus attends three separate passover feasts, and since these were annual, the events must extend somewhat over three years (it’s where we get the idea of a three-year ministry from).
And yes, it seems most reasonable to think Jesus went to Jerusalem at passover precisely to bring his message to the capital city when it would be swelled in size, so he would have larger crowds, so I’m sure he spent most of his time there preaching his message of the coming kingdom.
I can only find one place in each of the Synoptics where Jesus talks about the resurrection of the dead. And I’m assuming that Matthew and Luke copied Mark so it doesn’t qualify as multiple attestation.
Resurrection seems to be implicit in apocalypticism but I’m wondering what else there might be to show that the historical Jesus taught resurrection?
Yes the key passage is Mar 12:18-27 (found also in Matt 22:23-33 and Luke 20:27-38). There are othre passages though, e.g., Luke 14:14, and of course independent references in John. My guess is that Jesus wasn’t teaching about it because it was understood that when the Kingdom arrived it would be not just for those alive at the time but also those who had died; the key passage occurs only when jesus gets to Jerusalem at the end, since that is where the Sadducees were, adn they were the group that doubted it. (In Galilee, where he spends his ministry, he wouldn’t have confronted any of them)
Similar to Hillel’s summary of the Jewish Law as the “negative” version of the Golden Rule, could a Christian, maybe a liberal Protestant, summarize Christianity by saying that “God is Love” and everything else is commentary?
The story about Hillel is one of my favorite religious stories.
They could and many have!