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Old 12-24-2009, 08:00 PM   #1
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Default Gnosticism in the news

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Gnosticism is everywhere these days, in the movies, in the headlines and on bestseller lists. And this year marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Elaine Pagels's The Gnostic Gospels (or via: amazon.co.uk), the book that more than any other brought knowledge of gnosticism back into the mainstream.

...

There has always been debate over the precise meanings of “gnostic” and “gnosticism,” especially since most of the people we call “gnostics” do not appear to have described themselves that way. Two recent books – Rethinking Gnosticism: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (or via: amazon.co.uk), by Michael Williams, and What is Gnosticism? (or via: amazon.co.uk), by Karen King – have helped to break down the idea that there was some monolithic movement called “gnosticism.”
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Old 12-25-2009, 09:38 AM   #2
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Default one of my all time favorite newspapers

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Thank you very much Toto, for this link to one of my most favorite newspapers, the Toronto Globe and Mail.

What an excellent review by Michael Kaler.

I am obliged to add, to your several useful quotes from his review, this short passage:
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Originally Posted by Michael Kaler of the Toronto Globe and Mail
Pagels tears down the popular myth of earliest Christianity as a period of broad church unity, occasionally troubled by heresies. She replaces it with a vision of a period in which many aspects of Christianity were unfixed, meanings and definitions were still up for grabs and any number of roads were still open. Gnostic thought represented one of those roads, one ultimately not taken, but nonetheless fascinating and potentially valuable today.
I learned something here. I had thought that gnosticism predated christianity, and represented the thinking man's alternative to supernatural interpretation, two millenia before the present day... Guess I was wrong!!!

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Old 12-26-2009, 07:52 AM   #3
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Gnosticism” is a loose term used to describe a number of movements within early Christianity, most of them characterized by an emphasis on the transcendent importance of knowledge, a devaluation of the material world and its authorities in favour of a higher, spiritual plane, and a mythological structure that involved the fall of the spirit into the world, its entrapment there and its eventual liberation to return to its original home. .
Doesn't Zarathustra and Plato predate Xianity?
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Old 12-26-2009, 10:46 AM   #4
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Knowledge over faith.
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Old 12-28-2009, 06:55 AM   #5
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And I'd like to give a little shout-out to John The Baptists' Mandaeans, who also might have been "gnostics".
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Old 12-30-2009, 10:17 PM   #6
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Originally Posted by Toto
Thank you very much Toto, for this link to one of my most favorite newspapers, the Toronto Globe and Mail.

What an excellent review by Michael Kaler.

I am obliged to add, to your several useful quotes from his review, this short passage:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Kaler of the Toronto Globe and Mail
Pagels tears down the popular myth of earliest Christianity as a period of broad church unity, occasionally troubled by heresies. She replaces it with a vision of a period in which many aspects of Christianity were unfixed, meanings and definitions were still up for grabs and any number of roads were still open. Gnostic thought represented one of those roads, one ultimately not taken, but nonetheless fascinating and potentially valuable today.
I learned something here. I had thought that gnosticism predated christianity, and represented the thinking man's alternative to supernatural interpretation, two millenia before the present day... Guess I was wrong!!!

The river card has not yet been played avi. Pagels is simply following Eusebius in her chronology. What she says needs to be qualified by this one simple fact.

IMO the gnostics had a collegiate presence known as the Sacred College of Pontifices who reported to the Pontifex Maximus in Rome and in Alexandria. This collegiate included the philosophical academies such as that of Plato and thus also the lineage of the neopythagorean / neoplatonic philosophers until Sopater. Sponsorship of the gnosticism of the Greek priesthood who preserved all that was important of Greek civilisation was continuously adhered to by most Roman emperors of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd centuries. Some directly assert Diocletion (4th century) to have also so sponsored the Greek civilisation.

With Constantine, the Roman tolerance of the Greek civilisation ended. Constantine disbanded the Greek priesthood, destroyed their temples, executed Sopater. Eusebius was Constantine's heresiologist. I find it intriguing why those who study the history of the gnostics accept the backbone of their chronology from an utterly biased "Christian" heresiologist.
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Old 12-30-2009, 10:26 PM   #7
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Knowledge over faith.
The gnosticism referred to in the article and in stuff related to Galilaeanism refers to a specific epoch in ancient history in the Roman empire. In general it is evident that the Indian gnostics first attempted to record this field in the Vedas, and later in the Upanishads. It is an interesting subject.

Compliments of the seasons.
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Old 12-31-2009, 03:07 AM   #8
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Knowledge over faith.
Thank you.

How does this "Gnostic" concept differ from the 5th to 3rd Century BCE "atomists", specifically, Democritus and a century later, Epicurus? Can they also be considered "Gnostics"?

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In general it is evident that the Indian gnostics first attempted to record this field in the Vedas, and later in the Upanishads.
Thanks Pete.

So, then, are we to understand that the "Hindus" invented Gnosticism, and the Greeks adopted it, or vice versa? I was under the impression that the Upanishads were composed about the same time as LaoZi, and Siddhartha, i.e. about 500 BCE.

Is there any linguistic correlation between the Upanishads' "individual soul", i.e. atman and the Greek "atomists"?

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Old 12-31-2009, 04:44 AM   #9
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In general it is evident that the Indian gnostics first attempted to record this field in the Vedas, and later in the Upanishads.
Thanks Pete.

So, then, are we to understand that the "Hindus" invented Gnosticism, and the Greeks adopted it, or vice versa?
I'd be inclined towards the former "opinion" since the Hindu civilisation is older than the Greek, because India was given reverence by the followers of Pythagoras, and because many ideas passed from India to the west which were instrumental -- mathematical and astronomical and medical knowledge included.

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I was under the impression that the Upanishads were composed about the same time as LaoZi, and Siddhartha, i.e. about 500 BCE.
There is controversy over the antiquity of the Indian literature particularly the Vedas which may have predated the Upanishads by many centuries if not millenia.

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Is there any linguistic correlation between the Upanishads' "individual soul", i.e. atman and the Greek "atomists"?
Someone here (was it GuruGeorge?) pointed me to the works of Richard Kingsley related to the concept of nonduality. In the same sense that Buddism is often seen as neither a religion, metaphysics or philosophy, the Greek conception of divinity (as espoused by Plato to Plotinus) may also be so perceived.

There is also a small window of opportunity in the early 6th century BCE for Buddhist (Hindu) ideas to pass to Greece. C.515 BCE Therapeutae were sent by Buddha as emmissaries to the four directions. Were the ancient Pythagoreans influenced by Indian ideas – vegetarianism, communal property, 'transmigration of souls.' and the principles of Ayurvedic medicine (Pythagoras' four humours).
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Old 12-31-2009, 04:44 PM   #10
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Someone here (was it GuruGeorge?) pointed me to the works of Richard Kingsley related to the concept of nonduality. In the same sense that Buddism is often seen as neither a religion, metaphysics or philosophy, the Greek conception of divinity (as espoused by Plato to Plotinus) may also be so perceived.

There is also a small window of opportunity in the early 6th century BCE for Buddhist (Hindu) ideas to pass to Greece. C.515 BCE Therapeutae were sent by Buddha as emmissaries to the four directions. Were the ancient Pythagoreans influenced by Indian ideas – vegetarianism, communal property, 'transmigration of souls.' and the principles of Ayurvedic medicine (Pythagoras' four humours).
That's Peter Kingsley, and yeah it's an interesting angle. He posits, basically, that the Phoceans borrowed from the shamanism indigenous to their previous home in Asia Minor, and took it to Italy in Greek-i-fied form, where it was mixed with Hindu/Egyptian ideas, became Pythagoreanism, fomented the Eleatic school, and then retired away from the spotlight for a while, only to return with Neo-Pythagoreanism (which probably actually was Pythagoreanism, contrary to what earlier scholars thought), and also influenced the closely-related Hermetic teachings, as well as Middle Platonism and Gnosticism (which, if Plotinus was engaged with in its philosophical aspect, must have been quite big, especially in Alexandria). The stream of indigenous European non-dualism then ended up in Akhmim in Egypt, from whence it spread, along with the closely-related Alchemy, to Sufism, and, ironically, back to roughly the same regions it started from, in Persia. Basically, it was non-dual "meditation" (very similar to the Tibetan Dzogchen, and may possibly be distantly related) and exercise in "dying before you die".

You only have to look at what Parmenides' teacher is noted to have taught him, to cotton on to what it was really all about: silence.
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