Jewish Origins of Gnosticism

I am becoming increasingly convinced that Gnosticism had a Jewish origin. After the Jewish revolts against Rome in 66-70 and 132-35 AD, Judaism went in one of two directions. Rabbinic Judaism that tried to compensate for the absence of the temple and expulsion from the land through a very manufactured micro-piety built on Torah and Halakah, and those that effectively tried to make Judaism palatable to the middle platonic zeitgeist by turning Judaism effectively into a pagan religion, i.e., Gnosticism.

I think support for this view, at least partly, is found in Philo. In Opificio, Philo attributes the creation of the cosmos to God, but the creation of human beings is outsourced to other heavenly beings so as to make God one step removed from the sin of human subjects (the mediating entities are "gods" and "reason" in Opif. 25, 27). This is a move clearly towards the demiurgal creationism whereby, for the sake of theodicy, God is removed from the creation and evils of humanity. In addition, the Gospel of Thomas is not a Gnostic document per se since it lacks demiurgal creationism, but it is certainly conducive to Gnostic beliefs and very probably found a home in Gnostic circles (hence its inclusion in the Nag Hammadi Codices). But despite all its rhetoric against the followers of Jesus (e.g., Matthew, Peter, etc.), Gos. Thom. 12 still holds James in relatively high regard. So I wonder if Gnosticism filtered into Christianity via second century Jewish Christianity.

What is a Gnostic Gospel?

Pheme Perkins ("What Is a Gnostic Gospel?" CBQ 71.1 [2009]: 123) writes:

"What is a Gnostic Gospel? Used in the oral sense for preaching a message about salvation revealed through the coming of Jesus, it is the content of their soteriology, not the term, that distinguishes Gnostics from other Christians. Used in the mid-second century forward for written accounts of Jesus and his teaching commonly circulated among Christians, there is no special Gnostic Gospel. Gnostic teachers rely on the range of gospel traditions being circulated among Christians with no greater tendency than believers to exploit apocryphal Gospels. In addition, the poetics of the Gnostic universe push its teachers away from imaginative engagement with the historical or physical world such as might produce additional Gospel narratives. Instead, one has a form of writing that Plese refers to as 'meta-physical fiction,' though one might expect more narrative to justify the 'fiction' in such a description'."

Friday is for 'Heretics': # 1, Basilides

I am currently reading through Antii Marjanen and Petri Luomanen (eds.), A Companion to Second-Century Christian 'Heretics' (VGSup, 76; Leiden: Brill, 2005). I'm taking a break from my 'Friday is for Ad Fontes' series for something different with the 'other' side of Christianity. The first essay in this volume is by Birger Pearson and is about Basilides .

Eusebius wrote that: 'Basilides the heresiarch was living in Alexandria; from him derive the Gnostics'. As to who actually was the first 'Gnostic' was a bit of a debate in the early church (Simon Magus was normally the culprit on that score, see Stephen Haar's book on this subject!). What is known about Basilides comes mainly from Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 1.24.3-7) and other quotes from various patristic authors (W.A. Lohr has collected fifteen ancient testimonies about him [see some here]). According to Pearson, Basilides operated principally in Alexandria and taught from 132-138 CE. His teachings reflect an Alexandrian milieu as they reflect the influence of Philo, Alexandrian Jewish Gnosticism, and Greco-Roman philosophy. It is possible that Basilides made a journey to Antioch (Irenaeus may be following Justin Martyr as his source on this point) and there Basilides may have come across Saturninus and the 'classic Gnostic myths' in Antioch during a sojourn ca. 115-17 during the Jewish uprising in Alexandria (heresiologists argue that Basilides and Saturninus got their doctrines from Simon Magus and Menander who were also in that region). He then returned to Alexandria where he made his own adaptations to that myth. According to Clement, and unlike Saturninus, Basilides taught a primal Ogdoad (consisting of Unbegotten Father, Nous, Phronesis, and Dynamis) similar to that found in the Testimony of Truth and Eugnostos. But like Saturninus he believed that the world was made by creator-angles and the chief archon was named 'Abrasax'. Basilides sharesd with Saturninus that the saviour was sent to liberate people by the power wielded by the secreator-angels. Whether Basilides was docetic (as was Saturninus) is more debatable as the evidence is ambiguous. Origen attributes to him a doctrine of reincarnation: 'Indeed, the Apostle (Paul) has said, "I was once alive apart from the law," [Rom 7:9] at some time or other. That is (Paul means), before I came into this body, I lived in the kind of body that is not subject to the law: the body of a domestic animal or a bird.' Basilides' most lasting literary activity was his 24 volume Exegetica which is an exposition of the Gospels (which Origen may have mistakenly called the 'Gospel of Basilides'). In terms of his legacy, Basilides stands as a precursor to later Gnostic thinkers like Valentinus (another Alexandrian) but also to other Alexandrian exegetes such as Clement and Origen given his mix of exegesis and philosophy.

Rodney Stark on Gnosticism

April DeConick has blogged on Are Gnostics Fringe Believers? where she writes:

The literature produced by the "other" forms of Christianity looks scant only because the members of the Apostolic Church burnt it. But these other Christians were equally prolific in their writing and instruction. We happened to get lucky with the NH and Tchacos finds, which recovers part of this other literature. From it we can tell that they were very very sophisticated theologically, and were often critical of theologies of the Apostolic Church. And we can see theologies develop within the Apostolic Church that respond to the criticisms of the other Christians. The theology of the Apostolic Church would not have become what it did without the Gnostics and other Christians (and Jews) as dialogue partners.

An interesting counter-point is provided by sociologist Rodney Stark, and I provide below a few quotes from his book Cities of God (see the side bar for more details).

Purely as a matter of faith, one is free to prefer Gnostic interpretations and to avow that they give us access to secret knowledge concerning a more authentic Christianity, as several popular authors have recently done. But one is not free to claim that the early church fathers rejected these writings for nefarious reasons. The conflicts between many of these manuscripts and the New Testament are so monumental that no thinking person could embrace both (p. 142).

Elain Pagels stresses that the Gnostic writers 'did not regard themselves as "heretics"'. Of course note. But the issue of heresy is hardly a matter of self-designation. Let us assume that these writers (including forgers) sincerely believed that they possessed the truth and that the conventional Christians had it all wrong, while the conventional Christians were equally sure that theirs was the true Christianity. Within the confines of faith, the charge of heresy can be resolved objectively only on the basis of which side more accurately transmitted the original teachings of Jesus. That decision must come down to sources (152).

Had the Gnostics prevailed, they presumably would be viewed today rather more in the manner that Pagels and other 'Ivy League' Gnostics would wish, assuming that such a thing as Christianity still existed. But the Gnostics did not prevail, because they did not present nearly so plausible a faith, nor did they seem to understand how to crate sturdy organizations. Instead, most of them did and taught their own 'thing'. To sum up, the Gnostics gospels were rejected for good reason: they constitute idiosyncratic, often lurid personal visions reported by scholarly mystics, ambitious pretenders, and various outsiders who found their life's calling in dissent. Whatever else might be said about them, surely they were heretics. As N.T. Wright put it, they 'represent ... a form of spirituality which, while still claiming the name of Jesus, has left behind th every things that made Jesus who he was, and that made the early Christians what they were' (p. 154).

My comments:

1. I like the word "nefarious" and I intend to use it more in daily conversation.

2. I love the term "Ivy League Gnostics" and if you've ever sat in an SBL seminar with a Harvard or Vanderbilt graduate you'll know precisely what Stark is talking about.

3. If the question of "orthodoxy" is determined by theological continuity with Jesus and the Apostles, then the idea of "heresy" is a real possibility and is not a later imposition by an ecclesial oligarchy. The innovation of the Marcionites, Valentinians, Montanists, and Gnosticis is what sets them apart from the proto-orthodox. Note Irenaus' comment: '[E]very one of them generates soemthing new, day by day, according to his ability, for no one is deemed "perfect" who does not develop among them some mighty fictions' (Adv. Haer. 1.18.1).

4. The proto-orthodox won for a reason, and I think Stark outlines what those reasons were.