gurugeorge

[QUOTE=Clouseau;4568664]I may be wrong, but I think you'll find most of the real scholars here backing away from you just the same way that I, an amateur of this stuff have, after your comments about the NT Canon and Catholicism above. I've been browsing around on this forum for several years, so I can say that with some assurance.

There are all sorts of views represented here, Christians, atheists, agnostics and crackpots of all sorts (not excluding myself ), but I'd say that one thing most people here would be united on is the idea that the NT canon as we know it is a fairly late compilation (although the basics were in place about 400 CE). That doesn't denigrate it in anyway, it's just a bland fact.

If you don't hold that, you won't find much common ground with many people here, even Christians and apologists.

Clouseau

But will they back your perception of reality? That's the big question.

Jedi Mind Trick

By Paul's own admission (I think in one of the letters to the Corinthians) he was rather forceful in letter but unimpressive in person.

gurugeorge

Further on this matter, I've been browsing around for other opinions on this subject of Paul and Marcion, and have come across this interesting essay on the Radikalkritik site:

The First Edition of the Paulina by Paul Louis-Couchoud, from 1928.

It seems to support my position. (Not saying that means I think I'm Jesus Christ and can walk on water, but it's nice to see some rather more substantial scholarship supporting my amateur fumblings. There's also reference to an essay by Gilles Quispel on JSTOR that looks relevant, though unfortunately I can't access it: Marcion and the Text of the New Testament.)

Interestingly there's been a generally available book about this area of thought and although I've seen it in shops I've never thought to read it (mainly because for a long time I thought of Paul more in the orthodox way and the title just put me off because I thought it was silly). But now I think I will get it: The Gnostic Paul (or via: amazon.co.uk)by Elaine Pagels.

Gamera

But I think you are trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps: you define Paul as gnostic based on an understanding of gnosticism that you ultimately derive from Paul, and you use the purported gnosticism of Paul to attribute a gnostic strain to the early Church. Marcion is Marcion and Paul is Paul, and the only real link between them we know is that Marcion found Paul's epistles attractive, apparently because of their antinomianism, not because of any ill-defined gnosticism.

Well we could argue about yoga and Buddhism and whether there are hidden teachings. But that's not relevant to what we know of the gnosticism of the time in question, which appears always to involve secret knowledge.


But this begs the question of the difference. Christian gnostics teach a public "gospel" and a private secret gospel. There is no indication that Paul did it, and plenty of indications that he did not. So this is very relevant.


Well, I've made my arguments about the meaning of the word gospel, both semantically and in context of Paul's epistles. I think I make a strong case. And of course tradition supports my reading -- tradition has Paul preaching a gospel with is essentially the biography of Jesus that accords with the synoptics. I don't think you can marshall any evidence that Paul preached a gospel of theology of some sort.

I don't know if it's useful to try to define a text as gnostic or not. I think it's fair to say there are gnostic elements in Thomas, as well as the gospel of Judas, and various other texts, and the gnosticm revolves around secret knowledge. Now, you can reply and claim we are bootstrapping, deriving elements of gnosticism by first defining texts as having gnostic elements. But if you take that tact, gnosticism basically evaporates. As I said from the start, gnosticism is ill-defined. But I'm not making the argument that the authentic Paul had a gnostic strain. You are. So the burden is on you. I don't think it helps your argument to assert our complete ignorance of what gnoticism is or was.

Toto

I wouldn't want to discourage you from reading the book, but the title is a little misleading. Pagels carefully discusses how the 2nd c. gnostics used Paul, without offering any opinion on Paul himself.

gurugeorge

You're almost right, I admit I'm perilously close to bootstrapping, but I think I just narrowly avoid it because I do take my understanding of Gnosticism partly from the general scholarly idea, it's just that I'm not stuck on it, I hold it rather loosely, I wait to see, as it were. This is partly because my larger perspective is more from the point of view of comparative religion, especially comparative mysticism, and I view visionary and mystical experience as natural brain processes - again that's an external anchor that stops my interpretation from being purely question-begging. IOW, I look at Buddhism, Hinduism, etc., all in the same light - if you'll pardon the pun - and have started to see early Christianity, and most especially now Paul, in that same light. I see in Paul - rather, specifically at the moment, in that Marcion version of Galatians - some elements of the "classical" notion of Gnosticism, but not all - that's why I think of it as "proto-Gnostic". And seeing a germ of it, as it were, makes it possible to see how Marcion's development is one possible development, Gnosticism strictly so-called another.

As to Marcion, I doubt that either Paul or Marcion could be said to be fond of antinomianism with the "anarchy" connotation. "Law" stands for the bondage of matter, reflected in man-made laws (especially the Jewish Law), to be sure, but the focus is on the hidebound nature of the God of the world, as opposed to the freedom offered by the greater God of Love, and dedication to that ideal in fact involved a strong asceticism. Harnack:-

Along with the fundamental proposition of Marcion, that God should be conceived only as goodness and grace, we must take into account the strict asceticism which he prescribed for the Christian communities, in order to see that that idea of God was not obtained from antinomianism. We know of no Christian community in the second century which insisted so strictly on renunciation of the world as the Marcionites.

Not theology, a practical working way of getting into touch with the "Christ in you" - through love first, then through the practice of spiritual "gifts". And it's mainly this emphasis on personal experience of the divine, rather than belief, that gives Paul (and Marcion) the gnostic tint. (In the previous post I point to some scholarly essays to show how the orthodox stuff is an addition - especially note the Couchoud article, which shows the "irreversible" nature of things like the red bits I've pointed out with Marcion's Galatians here. IOW, linguistically, philologically, they have to be additions, and cannot be excisions, as orthodoxy demands.)

As to your defence of your position, I just don't see it, I take "gospel" as good news about an event, but event doesn't necessarily imply story or narrative. To me, Paul's explicit gospel is so sketchy as to qualify as relating to an event, but not a narrative - and as somebody else mentioned on that thread, you haven't really addressed the point that no life or ministry is mentioned, just the being of Jesus Christ himself, his death and resurrection. That's a rather strange kind of narrative, if you're trying to make it equivalent to the gospels as such, even in sketched-out form. But let's leave it at that for the moment, if you want we can revisit that other thread to take this point further, but I'd like to keep this thread to the proto-Gnostic Paul thingy if possible.

Well I'm not really a scholar (ha, bet you hadn't noticed! ) I'm just exploring this in an amateur way, but in the course of my reading scholarly stuff, I've certainly seen enough to make the idea of Paul as a proto-gnostic plausible. I'm sort of discovering more or this as I go along (because it's actually something new to me, I never really took it seriously till I came across that Marcion version of Galatians, which prompted me to start this thread.

One thing that always struck me on looking at Greek/English versions of Paul online is that there seem to be words that echo words often associated with Gnosticism. Here's a bit of a scholarly look at that. From An Exposition of Van Manen's Epistle to the Romans by Thomas Whittaker (1909):-

That there is some close relationship between Paulinism and Gnosticism is generally admitted, however it may be explained, whether by a pre-Pauline Gnosis influencing Paul or by the existence in his writings of germs which the Gnostics afterwards developed. Most of the Christian Gnostics are known to have held "Paul" in high honor. Tertullian undertakes to refute the "heretics" by the testimony of their own Apostle (Apostolus vester, Adv. Marc. 1.15). And, in fact, the Pauline writings are full of the phraseology and the ideas characteristic of Gnosticism. The same peculiar stress is laid on "knowledge" (gnôsis). We hear of the "wisdom" (sophia) that is spoken among "the perfect" (tois teleiois, 1 Cor. 2:6-16). The highest knowledge rests neither on tradition nor on Scripture, but on a special revelation. It has pleased God, says Paul, "to reveal his Son in me" (apokalupsai ton huion autou en emoi, Gal 1:16), cf. 1 Cor 2:10, "God revealed to us through the spirit." For him and his there is a continual "manifestation of the truth" (phanerôsis tês alêtheis, 2 Cor 4:2). They have nothing to do with the letter (Rom 2:29 ; 7:6; 2 Cor 3:6). [128] Like the Gnostics, they are "spiritual" (pneumatikoi), in possession of "the spirit" (to pneuma). Anti-Judaism, in spite of sentences to the contrary scattered through the Epistles, is just as much a characteristic of the Pauline as of the Gnostic teaching. The "called" (oi klêtoi) stand opposed to both Jews and Greeks outside as the "saved" (sôzomenoi) to the "lost" (apollumenoi, 1 Cor 1:18, 24). By the natural or animal man (psuchikos anthrôpos), who "does not receive the things of the Spirit of God," is meant the Jew as well as the Greek. Like all gnosis, Paulinism cares little for historical events except as material for allegory. This indifference extends not only to the Old Testament, but to the actual life of Jesus on earth (2 Cor 5:16).

If dualism is a mark of the Gnostic teaching, it is no less a mark of the Pauline. We find opposed God and the world, which has its own "rulers" and "elements"; the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world; God and Satan; God and his Son, on the one side, and a series of powers hostile to them, on the other; "the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ" and the blindness proceeding from "the god of this world" (2 Cor 4:4); the animal and the spiritual (to psuchikon and to pneumatikon); flesh and spirit; and so forth. The differences between Paulinism and Gnosticism are not greater than the mutual differences of the Gnostic systems known to us. We recognize both by the peculiar significance they give to certain words (e.g., gnôsis, alêtheia, sophia, kosmos, charis, pneuma, ektrôma, zôê, zôê aiônos, exousiai, phôs, phôtizein, phôtosmos) and phrases (Rom 11:33) and antitheses (Rom 8:38, 39). Thus it may be stated as unquestionable that there are Gnostic elements in the Pauline writings, including [129] the Epistle to the Romans.

(After this quote, Whittaker goes on to the radical critical hobby horse about this proving that Paul couldn't have written the Epistles - which is another, totally different way of looking at the matter that I don't agree with. I think in fact that they become a bit too uncritical at this point, in relying too readily on the Patristic notion of Gnosticism being a late development - and in fact Detering shows in his essay where he equates Paul with Simon Magus, that it might well go back further. But Whittaker's exposition of the parallels simply in terms of the words used, is striking. Notice your "secret/guru" angle still isn't there, but there are plenty of other things that are. Also take particular note of Whittaker's "The differences between Paulinism and Gnosticism are not greater than the mutual differences of the Gnostic systems known to us." Incidentally this is the same point Doherty outlines in his essay discussing the Mysteries question - sure there are differences between the Mysteries and Jesus, but there are as many differences between the Mysteries.)

Gamera

Indeed, he states that he intentionally avoiding persuasive rhetoric, relying instead on the "power" as he calls it, of the gospel narrative. For Paul, the gospel was absolutely central. He even claims that if a huckster preaches it out of self-promotion, it still is effective in its salvational effect.

1 Corinthians 2:1 - When I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling; 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Phil 1: 15 Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. 16 The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel; 17 the former proclaim Christ out of partisanship, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. 18 What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in that I rejoice. 19

tubalkain

Dear Gerard

can you suggest some reading that elaborates on your scheme of eastern/western concepts of god?

many thanks

Luca

DCHindley

The problem I see here is that Gal 4:20ff is really two arguments woven together:

Gal 4:20 I could wish to be present with you now and to change my tone, for I am perplexed about you. 21 Tell me, you who desire to be under law, do you not hear the law? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and one by a free woman. (Gen 16:15) 23 But the son of the slave (Hagar) was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman (Sarah) through promise. 24 - 31 [...]. 28 Now we, brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29-30 [...] 31 So, brethren, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman

The point here is that both Jews and Gentile God-fearers are justified before God by their faith in that promise God made to Abram. He elsewhere states that this common faith is justification enough before God, removing any requirement on the part of faithful Gentiles that they become circumcised to benefit from those promises.

An alternate commentary runs as follows, and is not in synch with the one just enumerated:

24 Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 27 For it is written, "Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and shout, you who are not in travail; for the children of the desolate one are many more than the children of her that is married." (Isa 54:1) 29 But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now. 30 But what does the scripture say? "Cast out the slave and her son; for the son of the slave shall not inherit with the son of the free woman." (Gn 21:10)

This argument turns the previous one on its head, speaks of Abraham's descendants through Isaac as if they are slaves (this is clear indication that this thread of argument postdates the war and the capture of Jerusalem), and reasons that on this basis they (Jews) must be descendants of Hagar and thus "cast out". I don't think the author of this argument liked Jews very much.

While he may share a distaste for Jewishness with Marcion, note that Marcion whittled away at the existing text, not following either line of argumentation. To me that means Marcion did not create the Paulines, but encountered them as we have themk now, modifying them to suit his beliefs. I would not doubt that he felt he was excising error from them.

DCH