Elijah

I’m not sure what exactly you think the ideology was that you are suggesting was a precursor to Christianity. Most of the Gnostic texts look like an attempt at Platonic philosophy for the masses and there is a lot of room for debate and confusion of the ideas involved. But, when you start mixing a philosophical world view with a mythological/supernatural worldview, then that needs to be supported because they are completely different.

The Gnostic texts can be read as containing supernatural anthropomorphic entities existing in an astral realm but supporting that is a difficult task because of the nature of the subject matter. You can’t tell if the writers were taking philosophical concepts and turning them into supernatural understandings or you are just misinterpreting their symbolic/figurative language.

Who in what text are you getting the Gnostic redeemer from? I think the philosophy/ teachings itself would be the key to salvation in most Gnostic religions.

The Jewish Messiah is a political leader who is meant to help lead an oppressed people. And while a lot of the language in the NT should be understood under a Gnostic/platonic light, the savior part is probably more correctly understood from the stand point of Socrates death and Plato’s ideal society. It wasn’t all metaphysics back then; there was a political element as well.
There are lots of understandings of the Logos out there. I think looking towards Philo would be the closest example for what they were trying to express.

gentleexit

but the notion of "gnosis" with its levels of knowledge meant exclusivity, didn't it? (this sense of secrecy probably stunted their growth). Hardly for the masses.

As for Gnostics being Platonist. The notion of a demented creator is not Platonist and that was central for Gnostics, wasn't it? Platonists went on and on about the goodness of divinity. Plotinus attacks the gnostics (on this point) and when Porphyry goes for the Christians, its for their angry, jealous demon of a god. Surely Gnostics are more like mystical Christians or Manicheans? Ala John's use of "Logos", their reuse of any terms from Plato and successors is probably just a matter of using what had become commonplace.

Of course, if gnostics were "wayward" platonists, Iamblichus' devotion to even "dirty" matter being good would make him the ultimate "orthodox".

Elijah

I don’t know how many of them made their teachings secret or kept a true meaning reserved for an inner circle. I think more often than not it would be the difficulty in the teachings themselves that lead to exclusivity for those who could/can understand the nature of the conversation, not because of a mystery school setup. Even though I’m sure there was movements like that, I’m just unsure of who had those surrounding religious practices based on the texts they left.

By the masses I mean that it’s the basic philosophical greek worldview without having to go read greek philosophy.
Demiurge is a Platonic concept. Now the nature of the intermediary creator/force between an unknowable god and its creation varies greatly. It usually depend on if you are using the concept to solve the one to many problem or how a good creator could make an imperfect/evil creation.

Gnostics are like Manicheans sure, but mystics get their information/gnosis from a totally different source and would probably look down on the general Gnostic way of communicating the truth about the universe as just repeating what others have said without ever sniffing at the true reality. I could see a trend of inner circle exclusivity in the mystic practicing religions though and there were probably groups that tried to incorporate everything they could.

For Logos, I don’t think they just grabbed a word without having a related meaning in mind. Unfortunately they grabbed a word like Logos that has multiple abstract meanings so you can’t tell what concept they were speaking to exactly.
Lost me. Orthodox Platonists?

gentleexit

Here's where we differ. I don't believe gnosticism follows the dominant line of Greek thought.

And Platonists tackled both. To be a Platonist (in my understanding) you have to deny the (Persian) concept of an evil creator/intermediate. You use metaphors of distance/misunderstanding/absence to avoid an evil counterpoint to "the one" or any malicious intent on the part of any "tier" of divinity.

This is the main distinction between Platonism and Greek thought in general and Christian/Manichean/Persian/Gnostic thought. It was the focus of much of Platonic writings. As the gods were brought on board in the last classical centuries, they too were defined good and helpful, their different aspects clearly delineated.

Mysticism takes words out of context and simply reuses them. They become symbols, not the stuff of discussion. While most mystics start with some sort of pseudo-logical framework, their practice usually devolves into "magic words".
I know I'm mixing my terms. Orthodox as in "straight", accepted as "true followers". Iamblichus plied theurgy. Plotinus didn't. But both were viewed by peers and successors as followers of Plato. You don't see gnostics treated that way. To be a follower meant musing on certain dialogs, reworking Platonic metaphors etc. The dialogs of Plato are "a bible". In this sense, I don't see gnostics as Platonist.

Sure they may have reused general philosophical terms ala John used "Logos" but that doesn't make them Platonists. Doesn't mean they teased out meaning from Plato.

andrewcriddle

You can make this true by definition. (A sort of no true Platonist argument.). However we do find dualistic views in prima-facie Platonists such as Plutarch Atticus and Numenius, some of whom at least believed in an actively evil world-soul. See for example Middle Platonism

Andrew Criddle

Elijah

I think greek thought is too varied and interpretation of the Gnostic texts too subjective to make that kind of claim personally.
I’m not sure what kind of concepts you are working with for your deities and if they are reflective of philosophy or mythology. Being a Platonist in my mind means at the minimum believing in a sensible side of the universe and a constant side. The nature or divide of the constant side or the material side is too debatable. While not seeing evil in the cosmic forces is a common philosophical concept; for the masses an answer on why the world sucks is needed and a scapegoat has to be picked.
Mysticism is connecting to a spiritual universal force for guidance/information not the symbolic language used to express the nature of said force. Prophecy and speaking in tongues can be seen as types of this along with connecting with the Way in Taoism.

Well Gnostics obviously aren’t Platonists in that fashion. I’m speaking of only using the Platonic worldview, not using his texts.
I don’t know who’s meaning of Logos it was they had in mind but odds are it was a philosophical understanding.

gentleexit

That's a strange summary. It has lines like "Valentinus, nearly became pope" (getting in there a couple of hundred years before the title) and "It is possible that Numenius read St. Paul" (really?) and puts much store in "influencing Origen" even to the point of having his life define a milestone - "Middle Platonism ends with Origen of Alexandria ...". And then there's "Gnosticism had an immense influence not only on the development of Christianity but on emerging Neoplatonism as well. Plotinus, for example, was forced to respond" - debating something doesn't mean it defines you, that's it's "an immense influence". There is nothing in Plotinus as a whole (personal opinion) that requires a leap beyond the influences given by Porphyry.

As for "Evil": distance or person and agent? Gnostics, as Plotinus, pointed out, held the latter (as would Mani's folks and Orthodox Christians when they came along) and he said they were wrong. Where they invoked Plato, they were slandering him (BTW, it's this sort of "true faith" speak that makes me think of "Orthodox Platonism".).

Numenius believed in an evil world soul! He did? Numenius so influenced Plotinus that Plotinus was accused of plagerism. Plotinus sees good in soul. There is no agent of badness. Certainly impersonal matter isn't one. Ergo what did Numenius believe? I think the Christian lens sees what it wants to see.

Later on, it's not that varied (or truly creative). Skepticism is dead. There's Plato, Pythagoras who taught him, pick how much of the Chaldean stuff you like and hey presto. I think all the variations on how many emanations etc. makes later Philosophy look more creative and multi-faceted than it is. And after Plotinus, I find it hard hard reading.

What's a Platonist? Does it just mean seeing separate spirit and matter, of constant and change and using a few words? Or must your conception be derived from Plato's works in the way Plotinus' are or even Proclus' elaborate hierarchies later? Not just superficial overlap, "in the air" stuff. Platonists/later Philosophers are "people of the dialogs".

Jews (in a broad sense), gnostic, christian whatever, may have dabbled in Plato but their focus is on other texts. Were they influenced by Plato's words? Some were but that doesn't make them Platonists. And I don't see influence in the other direction.

Elijah

I really don’t know what your view of Greek thought is or how rationally you understand the metaphysics they were pushing.
Separating the world into matter and spirit is the only idea I’m comfortable saying should be applied to everyone who should be counted as influenced by the ideas Plato was famous for pushing. It has nothing to do with reading Plato’s texts or following an exact worldview in my mind but if you want to establish a word for someone who was pushing his ideas but didn’t/weren’t reading his text then go for it.

gentleexit

Well the problem with this is that it reduces Platonism to a cold, impersonal brand of astronomy. It becomes nothing more than a "planetary outfit" for the Jewish tales and this reduced form invites "reflection" like "(gnostics) immense influence on ... emerging Neoplatonism".

The layers of divinity is one part of a much larger and fundamentally non-Jewish picture. Take reincarnation. Clearly not a Jewish sect thing. But it is part and parcel of Platonism - Myth of Er sums it up nicely. And then there's the intrinsic goodness of divinity. These aren't add-ons to some "creator god" core. These are core. And they interplay to make a coherent story.

The further you are (Odysseus easily straying crew was a favorite example) from the good, the more likely you are to return to this world after death and not to a good place. Few make it all the way "from the alone to the alone", achieve oblivion. Theurgy (playing with the gods), astrology, ... are just color for this drama.

The Jewish drama, the philosopher's drama, they both had different poets over time, with different emphases and though these tellers drew on the tales of others, they never forgot the essentials of their own. Gnostics (as we call them) were essentially Jewish. Plato was at most icing. They weren't bringing Plato or Greek thought to the masses. That thought was an altogether non-Jewish thing.

DCHindley

I only mean to suggest that Christianity, if it was influenced at all by Platonism, may have adopted an already existing redeemer myth. It did not exhibit a very high level of philosophical sophistication, even when late 2nd and 3rd century fathers tried to do for it what Philo did for Judaism in the 1st century. In both cases, it was like trying to make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

Gnostics seem to have been much more directly influenced by Platonism, at least in their dualism, and yes in a bawlderized form (pure ideas vs material manifestations becomes a freedom of a perfect pleroma vs the prison of the material world), but that doesn't completely explain the redeemer myth.

That is why I am interested in Pearson's research on Jewish influenced Gnosticism. A good deal of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology and technical terminology that betrays Hebrew and Aramaic origins is in a wide variety of Gnostic and Hermetic writings, not just "Sethian" ones. What he proposes is this:

Gnosticism was a religions protest movement of late antiquity that, at least in its earliest history, based much of its mythology on Jewish scripture and tradition. It was a movement of intellectuals, and thus was able to incorporate ideas and traditions from the syncretistic milieu of the Hellenized Levant. The dominant impulse of the early stages of Gnostic history was its attitude towards Judaism. This attitude, as we have seen in our survey of Sethian texts, is o0ne of alienation and rejection, expressed in a very sophisticated, if perverse, way of reinterpreting biblical and Jewish traditions. Hence it seems most plausible to conclude that the earliest Gnostics were Jewish intellectuals eager to redefine their own religious self-understanding, convinced of the bankruptcy of traditional verities. It is quite possible that an important factor in the development of this Gnostiuc attitude was a profound sense of the failure of history. This appears to be reflected in the way in which the Gnostic sources depict the foibles and mechanizations of the Creator. The essential feature of Gnosticism in its earliest history is its revolutionary attitude toward Judaism and Jewish traditions. [Gnosticism, Judaism & Egyptian Christianity, pp 133-134]

So perhaps I should be more specific and say that the same set of historical events (mainly the failure of the aims of the Jewish rebellion of 66-70 and the influence of popularized Platonic ideas) were key elements in the development of BOTH classical Gnosticism AND "proto-orthodox" Christianity.

DCH
Taking my 15 minute union mandated morning break to send a message composed yesterday evening, thank you.