avi

Thank you Toto, I appreciate your reply, today.

Here's where I am having trouble understanding your point.
A person who accepts the fundamental aspects of any religion, including Christianity, cannot, in my opinion, also adhere, honestly, to a method of thinking ("search for inner knowledge") characterized, as Gnosis does, "based on one's own authority".

Religions, all of them, so far as I am aware, but particularly the Jewish descendants, including Judaism itself, DEMAND subjugating one's own "authority", in favour of some written text which provides, then, the necessary "authority". One must not, in my understanding, abrogate the written text of any religion, i.e. the tanakh, or new testament or quran, in favour of one's own opinion.

Further, it is my understanding, perhaps incorrect, (ok, probably incorrect!) that those who spoke out, or wrote against the central authority prescribing all doctrines for all persons, were subject to merciless imprisonment, beatings, burning, amputation, mutilation, and death. So, to my rigid, and inflexible notion of religion, there is no way for gnosticism and christianity to coexist in one person, without representing a threat to the central authority.

avi

show_no_mercy

I'm not the one claiming that all Christian works were written after Eusebius.

Toto

Are you assuming that adherence to a text is a fundamental aspect of Christianity? There are many Christians who would disagree.

I am not in the business of trying to decide who is a True Christian and who is not. All I know is that there were a lot of diverse thinkers (and non-thinkers) who called and call themselves Christian.

It was only Martin Luther who insisted on the authority of Scripture alone. The Christian Church up to that time relied on Scripture, Church tradition, and a certain amount of philosophical inquiry and moral reasoning. Later Christians have relied on direct inspiration from the Holy Spirit. But all of these people are fairly standard Christians.

The authority of Scripture does not solve all problems.

Early Christians seem to have treated the Jewish Scriptures as inspired, but read them differently from the Jews. They then added their own scriptures, which at times seem to have been based on revelation. They then disageed about the meaning of scripture.

This sounds more like the Christianity of the middle ages and the Inquisition, or perhaps a modern totalitarian system. Christianity before Constantine did not have the means to enforce orthodoxy. Even after Constantine, the state did not have that degree of power.

Yes, that is probably why gnostic Christians were at times persecuted, why they hid their texts at Nag Hammadi. But gnosticism keeps popping up throughout history.

mountainman

G'day show_no_mercy,

If you look into this matter carefully you will find that the issue of the Acts of Pilate is a microcosm in the macrocosm that I have been attempting to sketch. Namely, a post Nicaean appearance of all the non canonical literature as a Greek academic reaction to the recently published and "quasi-canonized" canonical literature.

When you examine these so-called "Acts of Pilate" you will find there to be three such hypothetical manuscripts:

(1) The very early christian "Acts of Pilate"
(2) The early fourth century pagan "Acts of Pilate"
(3) The late fourth century christian "Acts of Pilate

I have written an article on these three Acts of Pilate that discusses:

Introduction to The Three "Acts of Pilate"

(1) The document tradition
(2) A collation of scholarly commentary

(3) Examining the "Three Acts of Pilate


(3.1) The very early christian "Acts of Pilate"
(3.2) The early fourth century pagan "Acts of Pilate"

(3.3) The late fourth century christian "Acts of Pilate"


(4) Extracts from the Text (M.R. James)

(5) Are the "Christian" Acts of Pilate in fact "Pagan"?

Your question relates to (3.1) The very early christian "Acts of Pilate"

I have provided references in the above article to the sources for this (1) early christian "Acts of Pilate".

The real problems arise with the (2) "Pagan" AOP and (3) Christian AOP of the 4th century since, as the story goes with mainstream belief system at the moment, the former "Pagan Acts of Pilate" has been destroyed, We have the text of "The Acts of Pilate" as part of the Gospel of Nicodemus", but it is believed that the text we have is in fact another (3) "Christian" Acts of Pilate.

Unravel this is you are able.
My idea is that there was only ever the one "infamous" Acts of Pilate.
It was authored by the pagans after 324/325 CE.
It is in fact the text we possess.
Pilate says Jesus heals by Asclepius!


This among other things was its "heresy" and its blasphemy !

mountainman

A 90 to 95% demographic dominance is generally conjectured for the pagans, so the pagans get the front running position and lower odds. They must be the favorites. I see the "Gnostics" as the academic Alexandrian Greek speaking "Guardian Class" in that fateful year of 324/325 CE when Constantine turned up on the western horizon with a Christian Army and a "new and strange" Codex.


There is no reason to believe educated Greeks read the bible - this is what Arnaldo Momigliano says. Who in their right minds would read the bible assuming it had existed in Greek in the library of Alexandria for example?


Furthermore it was encoded. It has nomina sacra throughout it. What did they mean? Did you have to ask a "church man"? It assumes the story was known, and the names are known. Which educated Greek reading pagan is going to read the common Greek of the NT? We are dealing with people who preserved Porphyry and Plotinus, Galen, Marcus Aurelius, Philostratus, Plato and Pythagoras, etc, Euclid, etc.



It is easier to believe that when Constantine brought the bible to the attention of the Alexandrian Greeks, they had never before had the pleasure of reading it. Constantine elevated the book into public view.

When he left them a copy of his terms and a bible or bibles around Nicaea, these Alexandrian Greeks commenced to seriously study this "new and strange" testament because the Roman Laws had been decreed that "Religious privilieges were no longer reserved for Asclepius, or for Apollo, or for Diana, or for Zeus, or for Buddha, or for Mani, or for Hermes, or for Apollonius, or for <<INSERT-YOUR-FAV-DEITY-HERE>>. Religious privileges by imperial law, were reserved for Christians = followers of the codex that Constantine had in his possession and brought with him for "canonization".

So they mercilessly authored their own competitive stories on the new deity and "Homerized" the story of the New Testament by inventing many additional gospels and acts. Hellenistic romance narratives featuring the 12 with docetic appearances of the Canonical Jesus.

It is easier IMO to see these "Gnostic books" as a 4th century political literary reaction of the Alexandrian Greeks to the New Teatament codex and its legal implications impacting their c.324 CE culture, along with the military impact. The Greek civilisation itself was being oppressed by the new Christian revolution. These authors of the Gnostic material were trying to get even by being inventive. The Gnostic "Acts and Gospels" became very popular for a very short while - perhaps as short as ten years. But they were mercilessly sought out and destroyed by the army in the employ of the orthodox christians (who owned the canon). They were prohibited and it was the death penalty for having one. They became too hot. They had to get buried.

mountainman

Constantine not only executed family members, but also the head of the Academy of Plato, Sopater. Bullneck's Praetorian prefect describes his rule as "Neronian". Early laws by Constantine for the first time describe the burning of people alive. Accounts strangely do not exist for what really happened during the rule of Constantine. The ground seems to have been swept clean of historical reports. What Ammianus may have written in Constantine's obituary may have been very telling.

The torture of the upper classes is documented in Ammianus when his history commences under Constantius c.350 CE. Death by death Christianity became supreme during the 4th century by the imperial sword. See Vlasis Rassias

Toto

This is a misuse of statistics. You might as well say that with 90 percent of the American population being Christian, that Christians produce any particular piece of American literature.

This is just your epicycle to force the facts to fit your theory that Eusebius forged Christian history. There is no other reason for it.

Lucian mocked Christianity from a pagan point of view. He did not write gnostic gospels.

mountainman

I have cited conjectural demographic statistics as cited by others. The social reality of slavery in the Roman Empire at that time, and the known exceedingly low level of literacy shared between a relative few in no way correspond to your analogy of modern America or Australia. We are discussing the ancient world of late antiquity, when the codex technology was first exploited by rulers.



The OP is about the history of the noncanonical gospels and acts, etc. I have allowed the existence of a 5% preNicaean christian populace, and the history of the gnostic gospels etc is not the history of the canon following Christianity, which for the sake of the OP is assumed to have existed, but was an underground green movement that kept to itself for a few centuries, and emerged like a circada to sing with the sun of Constantine.

The history of the Gnostics, precisely like the history of other heretics such as Mani and the Manichaeans, was deliberately obscured by the orthodox christian authors of the early 4th century. I seek to elucidate who these Gnostic authors actually were, when they wrote, why they wrote, what they wrote, why they were persecuted, why they were deemed to be "heretical authors", and why their books in the end had to be buried in the earth for preservation, while the books of the canon (the history of which does not concern this thread) were carefully and interpolatively preserved in the imperially appointed vaults of the City of Constantine, and the Roman Vatican.

My hypothesis is that the history of the gnostic authors only commenced 324/325 CE, and lasted only a brief span, but was obscured by the presevers of othodoxy after the tumultuous Arian controversy had been cleared, and final canonization was achieved (ie: after c.367 CE). This is a separate issue to that of the history of the books of the canonical new testament.


Lucian appears to have been a popular satirist, and imaginative author. He did not write gnostic gospels but did write Life of Demonax. A large number of forgeries under his name were fabricated in the 4th century, so it would be unwise to be inflexible about the idea that Lucian mentioned Christians, and even if he did, it is not relevant to this thread, which concerns the gnostic gospels and acts.

I have outlined the reasons by which I am convinced that the mainstream dating of the noncanonical gospels (etc) is questionable in this post and at post #20 in this thread.

Eusebius, Tertullian and Irenaeus are holding the authority to the chronological history of the gnostic authors in much the same way that Hegemonius and Ephrem Syria held the authority to the history of Mani and the Manichaeans from the 4th century until late into the 20th century.

The history of the gnostic heretics as is currently "believed", is that provided by their bitter enemies - the orthodox heresiologists. All I am asking is that for one minute we give consideration to the possibility that these orthodox heresiologists are purposefully wrong or mistaken, and these "Gnostic Gospels and Acts" did not in fact commence to appear until the time of Nicaea. I am of the opinion that the history of the Gnostic authors is important and should be revealed and understood.

Their story was preserved by the earth itself, direct from what appears to be the 4th century, and no earlier.

mountainman

Top 10 Mysterious Texts

Ranked second are the "Gnostic Gospels"



Examining the "Possible Explanations" for the "Gnostic Gospels".

Summarising the possible explanations to (1) heretical fabrications and (2) divinely inspired texts, it appears to me that the possible explanations must include one of the following options:

(1.1) Heretical fabrications authored from the 1st century CE.
(1.2) Heretical fabrications authored from the 2nd century CE.
(1.3) Heretical fabrications authored from the 3rd century CE.
(1.4) Heretical fabrications authored from the 4th century CE.

(2.1) divinely inspired texts authored from the 1st century CE.
(2.2) divinely inspired texts authored from the 2nd century CE.
(2.3) divinely inspired texts authored from the 3rd century CE.
(2.4) divinely inspired texts authored from the 4th century CE.



Mainstream Position on the origin of the "Gnostic Gospels"


Would it be a reasonable assessment to say that the mainstream position on this question, from the above set of options, excludes the second set - ie: the gnostic gospels are not "divinely inspired texts". And that the dominant chronology is given in the option 1.2 Heretical fabrications authored from the 2nd century CE?

Some do subscribe that (1.1) is viable (eg: The Gospel of Thomas is a 1st century text).
Are there any authors who can be considered to be subscribing to option (1.3)?
Or even (1.4)? [such as this OP].

mountainman

The Naming of the Naassenes: Hippolytus, Refutatio V. 6-10 as Hieros Logos
Mark J. Edwards, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Bd. 112, (1996) (pp. 74-80)