Toto

I came across this lecture on Valentinian theology, related to the issue of Jesus' wife:

Investiture Talk by Professor David Brakke
"How Jesus Could Have a Wife and Still Not Be Married: Gender, Cosmology, and Salvation in Early Christianity"



More on Brakke

I knew that early Christian thinking was bizarre, but I didn't fully appreciate how bizarre.

stephan huller

He is the editor of the Journal of Early Christian Studies. Very smart guy. His specialty is Athanasius of Alexandria.

Vorkosigan

His book on the Gnostics is excellent. Love the topic title.

Vorkosigan

Toto

Here are some notes on the talk, since I couldn't find a transcript:


Gospel of Jesus' Wife - Brakke prefers Gospel of Mrs. Christ.

The scholarly tide is toward viewing this as a modern forgery, but it's not a big deal even if it's real. It is similar to the Gospel of Philip. In that gospel, ordinary marriage is an image of something higher.

The Gospel of Philip comes from the Valentinians. In Valentinian theology, the unity of and difference between the sexes were primary metaphors for talking about God and salvation. The pairing of Jesus and Mary Magdalene was a symbol of salvation. So if the Gospel of Mrs. Christ is Valentinian, it doesn't mean that Jesus was married.

A bit about Valentinus - 100-165 AD, born in Alexandria, but by 140 he was teaching in Rome. He was a great teacher, as shown by his many students. His teaching lasted until the 4th century when he was called a heretic. Despite that, some Valentinian works survive.

There are 3 sources for Valentinius: 1) a description from Irenaeus - On the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis - a hostile source to be used with caution, but his account checks out.

2) Clement of Alexandria, also an enemy but less hostile

3) The Gospel of Philip, compiled by a Valentinian as excerpts from his works.

This is Brakke's synthesis, other scholars might differ.

Like many ancient intellectuals, the Valentinians were concerned to explain how all things originated from a single divine source but were also diverse. Their solution was a series of emanations or, aeons. Everything came from the father, but the father is unknowable. The Intellect is a lower level divinity, with a consort Truth - their unity and difference is captured in genders Male and Female, because of the genders of the nouns. They are two, but also one. There are other pairs derived from these.

The greatest value for Valentinians was harmony and stability, based on the harmony of male and female.

One of the last emanations, Wisdom (Sophia), tried to have direct knowledge of the father, and this led to the current world with sin, requiring salvation.

Androgyny is a symbol of wholeness, but androgyny is not symmetric - the male prevails. This was actually common thinking among ancient intellectuals, but a particular Jewish and Christian version of this was based on Genesis' double creation story. Ancient Jews and Christians did not have access to documentary hypothesis. The popular explanation for the double creation was based on Plato's Republic - the first creation was an androgynous creation, the second split man into two sexes.

For Valentinians, the separation of Eve from Adam was the beginning of death. Christ came to heal this division and abolish death by reuniting the male and female.

But this meant to them that our lower self must reunite with our higher angelic selves. The lower self is female and the higher self is male, by their definition.

This explains the gThomas saying that the female Mary must become male. We are all Mary, and all must become our higher masculine angelic self.

Horatio Parker

Fascinating stuff. I will watch.

There's a lot of common ground with Platonism, sounds like, though the note about the Republic sounds more like the Symposium.

I'm reading Pagels now, and just put a hold on Brakke. I love the nypl(when they circulate the book I want).

Toto

I might have mistaken it - the audio quality on this youtube video is not the best, and I made my notes in a bit of a hurry.

Chili

It is the Minotaur Labyrint wherein Sophia is the mermaid to provide the lone sojourner with the material to built his own Atlantis from the ruins he left behind, as she is the source of all his ambition when he built it.

Hence "to ruins applied myself/ and fell down thence," where she shows us the underpinnings (essence) of it at as the holy of holies now. So now sex, is intercourse here with Sophia who takes us down into the innermost depth of 'her own' being as the truth 'we are' to be exposed. Iow, she is the sum-total of what we really are.

And notice that she is a real event.

Chili

Jesus of the Gospel is never Sophia/Mary's wife. Jesus is there only to set wisdom free in the man and must die to get this done as insurrectionist or second Adam.

It is fair to say that Adam married Eve when they left Eden and took up residence in the TOK (left brain) where Eve becomes the fancy of his light by day as dreamer with a dream, or at least with substance in his dream to live outside Eden now where 'clothes do make the man' that he pretends to be.

That so is where he becomes a "Spire" builder on his own . . . "and fell down thence" to meet her first person now.

This is where the Gospels begin where "to those ruins he applied himself," as second Adam now with a mandate to rebuilt his life on solid ground, this time, and without Eve to find out who he really is, from which follows that the glow will be on him instead of his fancyfull accomplishments.

The Cana event is indeed the divine marriage (between TOK and TOL) but really is only where Jesus is witness (best man) with Christ as groom himself, and also true, takes place inside the mind of man.

And nobody says the better than Aufidius in Coriolanus "know thou first,/ I loved the maid I married" (IV.v.114-150) wherein the valor of Valeria got thim to this point in life sofar, while now Virgilia took him home as Coriolanus from Corioli to be the order of his everlasting day (in what they called the New Jerusalem here just outside of Rome).

These are all just words with a message to be seen.

Chili

Androgyny is wholeness beyond or beneath our sexuality, and so our sex is not part of Man proper in the image of God that is positive if earth is negative, where so now father God has relations with mother earth and life begins wherein she holds the Material Data Sheet of all that is.

And you are correct, Gen.1 is ex-nihilo creation wherein God said, and said that it was good and had no more say, and so it came to be in Gen. 2 where God was done and here Lord God formed, but did not create.

So there are no 2 creation stories, and the use of the word God in Gen. 1 and Lord God in Gen. 2 make that very clear. Then I can add here that light was before the sun and moon etc. to show that light is about life itself but thruth was prior so that life can be in her. Just read it and you will see.

But notice that the Seventh day was not part of Gen.1 but is wherein the first six days culminate to be with substance now as the everlasting day on which evening did not follow like on the first six days. This also means that creation is not part of Gen 2.

The message here is that the light of common day is an illusion and so is the night, both of them there only to foster fantasy as in a dream to live. While this is true, it does not mean that in Eden the sun does not shine but that direct contact with the Father eliminates fantasy and dreaming with no soul to communicate at night, and so desire (tanha) will also end.

In Buddhism She is Nairatmya http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nairatmya (that Brakke called Mrs. Christ in the unity with whom we are androgyne, also as prior to even hermaphrodite).

* See below

From this follows that She is the source of grace and thus full of Grace but not filled with Grace, if you can see a difference here, because She is prior to grace itself as known to us below = the substance of metaphysics here and so is the medium of the Son to make the fullness of the Father known . . . that in a distant far means that a civilization can be no greater than the complexity of its mythology.

In "WE," Zamjatin called her O-90 as opposite to S-4711 who together would be like H2O to add color to her presence now, and therefore her skirt is slightly blue as a snow-white shimmer herself inside the blue.

So She, Sophia in Brakke, cannot do that as the polar opposite to God and therefore needs a son to identify the genus to make herself known as Lord God in the image of Man as God . . . and so "My Lord and My God" is a proclamation of that end in sight when all was said and done wherein the victory is Hers, as shown here, triumphantly below the cross, standing there where She actually is the 'it' in "It is finished" and She better be standing there as the material data sheet (genus) of John identified via the son who without each other could not be one (the higher form that Brakke points at here).

http://ca.search.yahoo.com/search;_y...fr=yfp-t-715-s

In the end 'Theotokos Assumed into Heaven" (under his care) is the metaphysics that precede the physics wherein "The Child is Father of the Man" to make [what they call] God known here on earth. Just, and not so just, is she the beauty of truth and is why only beauty and truth is real, that so demonstrated "Essence precedes existence" wherein she was first to hold the manifest made known.

* Notice the word shimmer here that Plato called 'glows,' like inspired insights/achievements used to decorate our chest that post-parousia puts the halo on the Saints, wherein She is the glow upon the Saint that now makes her the glow of every saint, and therefore is the substance of grace as well (or even a rainbow could never be seen; ROY G BIV here now).

Chili

Here is the one you should look at, where below the Virgin and St. John are identified and Jesus on the cross is not referred to as Christ, with Mary presenting her victory with her right hand.

http://www.abcgallery.com/M/masaccio/masaccio5.html

Sorry I should have checked that out first, and it is not St. John the Evangelist either, as he was not an evangelist as we know them today.