Cheerful Charlie

It might mean the Diocletian persecution. Many did sacrifice etc which led to the Docetist controversies later.

Cheerful Charlie

mountainman

But when did the Gnostics flee from the Christians in the rule of Diocletian?

The Christians had no power until Nicaea. No one would have needed to flee from Christians until then.

After Nicaea many were fleeing from the Christians.


Are you thinking about the Donatists?

mountainman

Duvduv I am going to answer this again.

See post # 20 for the summary of these two groups as discussed by Philip L. Tite, McGill University.

According to the text I am discussing in the OP [NHC 11.1] the large majority of people (including the author of NHC 11.1) described as Group 1, were fleeing because they were being "reproached and humiliated" by the second group, Group 2. I am entertaining the hypothesis that Group 1 represents the pagans of the Eastern Empire when Constantine & Co. (Group 2) became supreme 324 CE on the basis that we have evidence that Constantine destroyed pagan temples and in some cases publically executed their chief priests. There is also the evidence that he had pagan philosophers and magistrates of the city of Antioch tortured, in order that they might confess their errors, following the Council of Antioch.

The notion conveyed in "They fled without having heard that the Christ had been crucified" is IMO that the Christian Crusade being conducted by the Emperor Constantine in the eastern empire was through the use of military force before the use of religious reason. That is, Constantine focussed on the military aspects of destroying the pagan temples, prohibiting their use, and making all pagan priests very very nervous, before he supplied anyone with Bibles and his "Holy Message".


We have discovered no records from the massively pagan generation which witnessed Nicaea. The reconstructed history for this momentous event (aside from Big E.) is being sourced largely from "Church Historians" writing from the 5th century, one hundred years afterwards.


Was NHC 11.1 written by the losers of Constantine's Holy War in the east?


The OP is suggesting however that the text of NHC 11.1 (and perhaps other texts within the Nag Hammadi Codices) are actually sourced from this pagan generation in refuge. The Coptic NHC manuscript is dated to the mid 4th century by its cartonage.




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mountainman

Where have you gone sv?




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