Loading...On to a different topic for a bit. I am now in the process or reading the copy-edited version of the new edition of my anthology of ancient Christian texts, After the New Testament. In early posts, back in January, I talked about what would be in this anthology and how it would differ from the first edition, which I published fifteen years ago.
In addition to adding some sections (full new rubrics, for example, on Women in the Early Church and on the History of Biblical Interpretation), I altered a few things – especially my entire section dealing with Christian Gnosticism. In my first edition I simply had one undifferentiated mass of texts that I called Gnostic. This is completely unsatisfying, confusing, simplistic, and, well, just wrong. This time I’ve tried to mend the errors of my ways. Based on my reading of more recent work in the field, I’ve rewritten the general introduction to Gnosticism in the text, and divided the primary text readings into four categories, each involving different “kinds” of Gnosticism: Sethian Gnosticism, Valentinianism, Thomasine Texts, and “Other” Gnostic Texts. In this post I will reproduce my new introduction; in subsequent posts I will reproduce my new introductions to each of the categories.
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Gnostic Christian Texts: Introduction
Prior to the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, we were ill-informed concerning the beliefs and practices of early Christian Gnostics, since virtually all of our information came from attacks leveled against them by their proto-orthodox opponents. An enemy can scarcely be trusted to provide a fair or accurate portrayal of one’s views.
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I work with a bunch of Wheaton College grads. You may know that Wheaton changed its sports team name from the “Crusaders” (too un-PC, even for Wheaton) a few years back to “The Thunder.”
It pleases me to mention to the more erudite among these friends that I’m so pleased they chose to honor a Gnostic text in this fashion!
(At least that’s the title of one of the texts in my translation of the Nag Hammadi collection).
I’m eager to read more!
I can never think of the Gnostics (“the world is a place of imprisonment for elements of the divine who are trapped here in human bodies”) without contrasting their view with that of a wonderful Tibetan lama, Tarthang Tulku, who was active in San Francisco some years ago. A Vajrayana Buddhist – I don’t know whether he’s even still alive.
Someone asked him, “If a person achieves Nirvana, where will the person be?”
His answer went something like this: “Right here! Because we can’t conceive of any existence *better* than that of a human being on Earth.
“The difference will be that the person will have a new understanding and appreciation of everything. As if the person had previously been able to see only one side of a coin, and now sees both sides.”
Hi Bart – I’m probably just being dense here, but how does this book differ from your The Other Gospels/The Apocryphal Gospels?
Nope, it’s a good questoin. The Other Gospels contains about 40 texts, all of them Gospels (many of them fragmentary). After the New Testament contains many more texts than this, and only about 15 of them are Gospels. There are also other apocrypha (Acts, apocalpytses, epistles); and texts of all sorts — some dealing with martyrdom and persecution, some with heresy and orthodoxy, some with the role of women inthe church, some with the rise of anti-Judaism, some with the defense of Christianity against its pagain opponents, some with the rise of church offices, etc etc etc.
Please allow a comment on previous subject. For those interested in Schweitzer. Most writings on Schweitzer I have read deal with comments about his work “The Quest For The Historical Jesus”. But I found that his earlier work “The Mystery of The Kingdom of God” to be more explanatory in his basic thought regarding Jesus and contains some founding framework not found in “Quest”. It is my understanding that the “Mystery” book was written earlier but translated later. Continue to appreciate your efforts.
Prof. Ehrman – Does modern scholarship give credence to any evolutionary relationship between Gnosticism and earlier Orphism? The Orphics seemed to have believed in the idea of the body as a tomb with a trapped Dionysiac nature enclosed within by a Titanic shell from which humans can escape only through the books and secret rituals brought to them from Orpheus (even this is often debated, though, as some scholars seem to think we may be syncretizing different “Orphic” beliefs into one cohesive mythology). But the parallels seem striking in certain ways. And how did such Gnostic beliefs ever come to be attached to Jesus since Gnosticism certainly seems *much* further away from the historical Jesus than even Pauline Christianity? I imagine there must be a lot of debate on these questions.
I’m afraid I don’t know much about Orphism…. (You’d be amazed at what I don’t know….)
I am glad that you are discussing Gnosticism because it has always been confusing to me. So far, so good. Keep going.
Off the topic but…
On 5/27/2014, Caroline Glick wrote an article in the Jerusalem Post about Pope Francis’s visit to the Holy Land. Among other things, she wrote:
“In one of his blander pronouncements during the papal visit, Netanyahu mentioned on Monday that Jesus spoke Hebrew. There was nothing incorrect about Netanyahu’s statement. Jesus was after all, an Israeli Jew.
But Francis couldn’t take the truth. So he indelicately interrupted his host, interjecting, “Aramaic.”
Netanyahu was probably flustered. True, at the time, educated Jews spoke and wrote in Aramaic. And Jesus was educated. But the language of the people was Hebrew. And Jesus preached to the people, in Hebrew.
Netanyahu responded, “He spoke Aramaic, but he knew Hebrew.”
Reuters’ write-up of the incident tried to explain away the pope’s rudeness and historical revisionism, asserting, “Modern-day discourse about Jesus is complicated and often political.””(end quote)
Contrary to Glick, I thought that at the time of Jesus Aramaic was the language of the people and Hebrew was more common among educated Jews.
Is there a consensus among scholars today as to the roles of Aramaic and Hebrew as languages at the time of Jesus?
There’s a strong consensus that Jesus spoke Aramaic. Whether he knew any Hebrew or not depends on whether or not he was literate, since it would have been a written, not a spoken language. And scholars are split on the questoin of whether he was literate (probably the majority think he was; but there is a lot of justified doubt about it)
I was wondering if this Netanyahu-Pope story would come up on the blog. Netanyahu says Jesus SPOKE Hebrew, but you say it was a written language. Are you saying that Hebrew was a written language only? What was it called if someone spoke the words that were written?
If someone speaks words that are written, he is speaking a written language, not a spoken language. Jesus almost certainly did not speak Hebrew.
I am wondering about what ways the church fathers use in determining which of the scripture writings are “Gospel” and which are Not, since most of the authors did not simply refered to “their” writings as “gospel”?
By “Gospel” do you mean “canon”? There were various grounds church fathers used to decide which books should be included in Scripture. You might look at my discussion in Lost Christianities for an explanation.