andrewcriddle

I agree that both texts express a prevailing sentiment, however both express it in the same distinctive, unusual and unusually forceful way. (IIUC the explicit injunction to flee the feminine has little parallel in the Ancient World outside these two passages.)

I agree that Zostrianos' statement is stronger than Porphyry's. (I'm not sure about much stronger.) But it seems IMO plausible that a gnostic writer making use of Porphyry's ideas would exaggerate Porphyry in this way.

Andrew Criddle

Elijah

No I think anthropomorphic entities shouldn’t be taken literally especially if they are being discussed by philosophers. Socrates was accused of being an atheist as were the early Christians. And it with the materialist philosophers like Democritus and Epicurus you should see the “particle” half of the particle/wave debate with the Platonists being on the other side. The philosophers are the rational part of the discussion while those who take the poets/myth literally and carry on with superstition are the other side/majority.

Now there is some argument that the ideology degraded into nonsense supernaturalism later into the neo platonic period but that’s debatable.
So “mundane gods” means supernatural/superstitious anthropomorphic entities in the above? How are you getting that? And that there was a natural mixing of the superstitious understanding of gods with their philosophy?

I would look at the dichotomy between the “mundane gods” and gods of the “intellectual sphere” as having to do with the divides of the spiritual in how you get from the one to the many. Like the difference between Plato’s Good and simple forms or actors on the bridge. He’s just saying you can’t praise the main creative forces while cursing the minor forces that are in play in the material world. Your interpretation that there is a link between intelligent forces in the universe and supernatural entities because he’s understanding Plato’s cave literally as supernatural people at work behind the scenes would be surprising.
What are you referencing of Philo’s?

So you are taking the OT references to God literally. No interpretation no allegory? There really was a talking bush or cloud or man or whatnot and you don’t believe there is any mythos there? And you think that the contribution the Greeks made to the Jewish understanding of God wasn’t a philosophical/metaphysical understanding but just an attitude change?
If you’re coming from the one, which I’m not arguing they weren’t, then logos doesn’t order but divide. Early on Logos brings order or balance out of Chaos; later on it divides the one into many parts.

So you’re saying Logos is an ordering intermediary between an angry anthropomorphic god and his creation for the Christians?

For me the intermediary is mainly because of the unknowable nature of the true God that some of the Platonists and early Christians believed in. Describing the creator of the world when you are coming from a materialistic perspective is one thing but when you add in Platonic idealism and the creator just doesn’t create the world but also the ideas by with which we understand the universe it becomes difficult to comprehend and almost impossible to describe.

“But the father and maker of all this universe is past finding out; and even if we found him, to tell of him to all men would be impossible.” Plato Timaeus
And the Gnostics went the opposite way with using it as an intermediary between a good god and a flawed world? I think you are correct that a lot of Greeks solved the problem of evil by other means then saying it was created that way by an evil creator. I’m just not convinced by your Enneads reference that the Gnostics believed in an evil creator. I’m not saying you can’t make a good case with some Gnostic texts, just that Plotinus reference isn’t going to do it. It’s like trying to say a politician’s platform is what the person running against them says about her.
Well you are more than welcome to your interpretation, but if you want to make the case about them not being platonically influenced you may want to avoid using a reference that talks about them being influenced by Plato and instead is one of their texts talking about an obviously non platonic concept that coincides with whatever you consider the Gnostics to be.

gentleexit

Here, Porphyry has soul (which is sexless) dressed in body. What is a male body? Body can be dry or moist. Generation is moist (ala his Odysseus' cave), escape is dry. His society (and its medicine) saw the female body as moist, the male as drier. So to be male is to be dry, is to ascending. I know I threw in an indirection but this is how I think he thought.

Zostrianos (who I never read) seems to go straight for maleness, femaleness equated to bondage and salvation. He's crude. The male is obviously better because it is capable of controlling the passions. This is an older and much less developed conception. It's Dido's cry of "What use are prayers and shrines to a passionate woman?"

That's my read. I don't think Porphyry would ever just say "be male, get saved".

gentleexit

No no no. I see what you're saying but that's much too clean. Yes, Democritus et al (pre-socratics) didn't have time for the gods, but Plato did. That's why he slammed Homer for defaming them. Plato was, above all else, a conservative man. Damn the messenger was his solution. Philosophers not "superstitious" (in our terms)? Pythagoras coined "Philosopher" and he was what we would call a mystic.

As "atheists", the pre-socratics were the exception. Plato had a lot to do with this. His genius served a conservative bent that marginalized their thought. Epicurius and his ilk - lot's of Ciceronian Romans later - did resurrect a godless world but that was never mainstream and its influence petered out as empire replaced republic.

Well, let's back up - I don't take allegory "literally" but that's an aside. To clean up the gods, Plato and successors remove "personality". Behavior is reduced to the elemental. Does such a polish leave anything anthropomorphic? We could go in circles on this. No doubt, the god's names were reused for these "forces". How much more? It gets down to the writer. How much of the older lore was the man eager to preserve? As time went on, Philosophers (yes Philosophers) sought to preserve more and more.

Quite honestly, I'm referencing what others have said of him, that he was only willing to go so far with Greekness, that he denied the Jews had myths. That one wasn't raw.

Yes on Jewish understanding. No on me - I don't take them literally!

Well, it never divides the One. The One just is, always is. It can only be defined in the negative. Never divides, never changes etc. You point to an opposition, I've never seen them explicitly work. Division down == distance from unity which leads to disorder. Division up from "the blob of chaos" == cookie cuter for order. They only worked down.

Not from their point of view, but from 20,000 feet, that was the problem for anyone introducing abstraction to Judaism. OT guy has stories. You have to wash them. Now, Plato could just damn the poets but the Jews weren't willing to do that. The Orthodox just denied any bad behavior and cried "supreme being", the Gnostics bit the bullet and said "that guy is the evil or incompetent creator. There's another perfect One above him." And Plotinus cried "incoherent" at that compromise.

And this is always the tension. It is Iamblichus' excuse for Theurgy - Plotinus' "empty your mind" is too hard for most. So let's ask the gods around us for help. They'll give us a leg up. It's funny. Platonism ends with a need for saviors.

Well, all I can say is that the best definitions come from opposition. It illustrates what the attacker most cares about and the weakest aspects of the attacked. It is, admittedly, probably fairest to the attacker. You can see a lot about the Greeks or the Christians or the Jews from their back and forth, more than you can from their treatises to a vacuum.

Ah, but Plotinus is claiming they warp and denigrate the Greeks. He doesn't claim they are Greek. But to your point, why were these "non Greeks" in his orbit? Gnostics. They were everywhere, akin to but denied by everyone.

mountainman

Dear gentleexit,

This is an interesting comment. What evidence would you provide in support of this?

FWIW, my take is that roots of gnostic thought are Hellenistic, such as we find in the Nag Hammadi codices, the gJudas, the NT apocrypha, the Pistis Sofia and in the lineage of the followers of Pythagoras and Plato (from the 1st to the fourth centuries)

Best wishes,


Pete

gentleexit

It was a flippant comment. My main point is that what we call Gnostic is OT names and beings, later joined by some NT and both baked in words from Greek Philosophy. But the essence of that Philosophy is lost or is never appreciated. In some ways, "Gnostics" were akin to modern "Pagans" and their half-baked rethreads of old words and ways.

However, in general, I think the term "Gnosticism" is so vague as to be meaningless (per exchange with Elijah earlier), which leads to fruitless discussions like "were Gnostics a Christian sect?" or false dichotomies like "orthodox vs Gnostic" etc. Who the hell are Gnostics? Despite the popular name, "against the Gnostics" for Plotinus' attack, I think the correct name of his Ennead gets into its substance and never mentions "gnostics".

BTW, who first came up with the term?

Now, if by Gnostic, we mean a movement with an OT base (Seth etc) baked in Philosophical Greek, why not call them "Evil Goders" or better "Biblical Dualists" or something like that?

andrewcriddle

I think there are more parallels between Zostrianos and Porphyry than you do.

From Porphyry to Marcella


Andrew Criddle

IamJoseph

By the time of Plato [360 BCE], the hebrew bible was already written and existed a 1000 years. Almost the entire Roman religion was derived from Hellinism, al beit with name changes. It is not reasonably contestable that Euope would amalgamate these cultural and belief traits in European Christianity - specially why there is no commonality between the Gospels with the Hebrew bible.

In 200 BCE, the Hellenists proposed that Moses be made as a global figure - but this great premise fell when they insisted the Jews also agree to melt both dieties - that of the Jews and Zeus - and form a new joint deity, along with omitting the diet restrictions of pig and shell fish consumption. The Jews did not accept this and the Greeks never forgave them for this rejection - and European antisemitism sprung from this point, well before the Gospels emerged.

A great war ensued and the Hellnists desecrated the Jewish temple, making false charges of Jews killing greeks and drinking the blood on passover [this is also where the later medevial European blood libels was evoked from]. It infers that all the gospels villifications also stem from such sources. The same syndrome pervades Islam. The big tragedy is it has hijacked humanity for over 2000 years and almost impossible to negate - thus the holocaust and the demands Israel must be wiped off the map. It also means that whatever is meant for Jews will eventually come to all other sectors of humanity from these two religions.

Elijah

Of course Plato had gods. He wasn’t a materialist so he had forces and a constant/ideal side of the universe. Now the question is should we take the art literally in trying to understand Plato’s take on Gods or assume he was trying to speak rationally in a metaphysically way about the nature of the universe. Should I be looking to Morgan Freeman in Bruce/Evan Almighty to understand Plato’s take on a God like Logos or look to a wave function collapsing in quantum mechanics?

Plutarch actually contrasts superstition with atheism.

“Atheism is Reason deceived, Superstition a passion arising out of false reasoning.”

“And again Atheism is in no way responsible for Superstition—whereas Superstition has both supplied the cause for Atheism to come into being, and after it is come, furnished it with an excuse—not, indeed, a just nor a sound one, but yet one not destitute of a certain plausibility; for it was not because they had discovered anything to be found fault with in the heavens, or in the stars, or in the seasons, or in the revolutions of the sun about the earth, the producers of day and night, or anything erroneous or disorderly in the mode of nutrition of living things, or in the growth of plants, that they passed sentence of Atheism upon the Universe; but it was the ridiculous doings and sufferings of Superstition, its impostures, witchcrafts, races in a circle, and beating of timbrels; its impure purifications, and uncleanly cleansings, its barbaric and illegal penances and self-defilement at the holy places, all these things have given occasion to some to say that it were better there should be no gods at all than that there should be any that accepted such worship, that took pleasure in such rites; gods so insolent, so covetous, so irritable.”

Plutarch, On Superstition

I think the question of if the Platonists had anthropomorphic gods should be a pretty basic question you need to answer before you even take at stab at understanding this. I don’t see with the platonic understanding of the spiritual side of the universe that it’s possible for the gods/forces to have any anthropomorphic qualities because we are temporal entities that change. What anthropomorphic qualities are possible in spiritual entities with the platonic understanding of the spiritual side of the universe for you?

I think they did more then remove personality even though that was a big pet peeve. They didn’t like that they didn’t have to back up what they said with reason or like where the source of the poets info was coming from. The philosophers were about using reason and being able to argue your points.

“ I entirely agree with you, he said; in my opinion those stories are quite unfit to be repeated.

"Neither, if we mean our future guardians to regard the habit of quarrelling among themselves as of all things the basest, should any word be said to them of the wars in heaven, and of the plots and fightings of the gods against one another, for they are not true. No, we shall never mention the battles of the giants, or let them be embroidered on garments; and we shall be silent about the innumerable other quarrels of gods and heroes with their friends and relatives. If they would only believe us we would tell them that quarrelling is unholy, and that never up to this time has there been any, quarrel between citizens; this is what old men and old women should begin by telling children; and when they grow up, the poets also should be told to compose for them in a similar spirit. But the narrative of Hephaestus binding Here his mother, or how on another occasion Zeus sent him flying for taking her part when she was being beaten, and all the battles of the gods in Homer--these tales must not be admitted into our State, whether they are supposed to have an allegorical meaning or not. For a young person cannot judge what is allegorical and what is literal; anything that he receives into his mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts.”

--“let us have no more lies of that sort. Neither must we have mothers under the influence of the poets scaring their children with a bad version of these myths--telling how certain gods, as they say, `Go about by night in the likeness of so many strangers and in divers forms'; but let them take heed lest they make cowards of their children, and at the same time speak blasphemy against the gods.”

“let us tell her that there is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry; of which there are many proofs,”

“At all events we are well aware that poetry being such as we have described is not to be regarded seriously as attaining to the truth;”

Plato Republic

You assume it is meant to be understood literally. You believe there isn’t mythos in the OT to the Jews but reality. Correct?
Lost me on what your take of the One is.

”God, having sharpened his own word [logos], the divider of all things, divides the essence of the universe which is destitute of form, and is destitute of all distinctive qualities,”

... "it was the untaught God who divides them, and that he divided all the natures of bodies and things one after another, which appeared to be closely fitted together and united by his word [logos], which cuts through everything; which being sharpened to the finest possible edge, never ceases dividing all the objects of the outward senses, ...

Philo, Who is the Heir of Divine Things

You don’t have to wash them you just have to interpret them rationally. I still don’t know what you think the writer of John understood the Logos to be and what concept of God do you think he was working with. I realize you have an angry sky guy for the OT Jews but what about the writer of John?
I think those have more to do with mystical practices. The unknowableness of god is about the difficulty in describing non spacial/temporal aspects of the universe, due mainly to the fact that our language is constructed in time/space. When you try to move to the source of already difficult to describe processes it become what appears to be impossible. (Which leads to a lot of symbology, mythology and confusion.)

What text are you getting your Platonic savior from?
I think that’s the best way to get a strawman understanding but in this case you are blatantly misrepresenting someone’s philosophical opinion about the beliefs of a group as one of the groups own beliefs/tenets. You should be able to make the case with the Gnostics’ texts, if the case can be made.
It doesn’t matter that they warp the Greeks. It matters that they are derived or should be understood from a Greek philosophical perspective. That a more educated/true Platonist found objection with a Platonic knockoff isn’t surprising and that he found objection doesn’t exclude it from being Platonic.

mountainman

Dear gentleexit,

You will not find IMO the roots of "the gnostics" in the Hebrew Bible; rather IMO you will find them inscribed (in Greek, in "the academy") within the aphorism "Know Thyself" which is Greek. The Hellenistic temple-cults preceeded christianity and followed with the expansion of the greek empire under Alexander the Great. The Hebrews were Hellenised. The Persians were Hellenised. The Romans were Hellenised.

These temples and their temple cults (which collectively preserved all the Hellenistic wisdom of Plato and Pythagoras and others) were extant at the beginning of the fourth century. Diocletian in the tradition of all Roman emperors had continued to contribute and sponsor towards donations, for maintenance and reconstruction of old and new temples. When Constantine appeared, the axe was laid to these trees, and they were cut down and thrown into the fire. The temples were fucking destroyed (please excuse the French).

The Hellenistic civilisation (with its gnostic and Platonic "guardians" - a class alone) was destroyed. Its temples were literally torn down and its literature literally burnt by order. Except for the Nag Hammadi Codices, the gJudas, numerous Syriac and Coptic tractates which were buried (by the last of the Gnostics [Hellenes]) so that they MIGHT survive (the process of Roman Imperial Christianisation).

Best wishes,


Pete