JERDOG

Please forgive me if this question seems self evident to most of you. But it is new info to me. I am reading this book where the author makes this claim. What do you guys think?

Jesus and the Lost Goddess (link fixed)

Peter Kirby

What's a Gnostic?

best,
Peter Kirby

mark9950

Gnos·ti·cism

The doctrines of certain pre-Christian pagan, Jewish, and early Christian sects that valued the revealed knowledge of God and of the origin and end of the human race as a means to attain redemption for the spiritual element in humans and that distinguished the Demiurge from the unknowable Divine Being.

Toto

Gnosticism usually refers to certain heretical sects that were stamped out by the "orthodox" Christian church in the 2nd century. At least one of these heretics, Valentinius, claimed to have learned his theology from Theudas, a disciple of Paul, which would make Paul the original Gnostic.

But it's hard to know what to believe. I got a copy of Elaine Pagel's Gnostic Paul, but she only discusses the way the Gnostics interpreted Paul's letters, not what Paul himself might have thought or wrote.

JERDOG

Well just incase some of you didn't know. The Gnostics did not believe that Jesus was a real person in the flesh. The authors of the book that I posted above claim that some of Pauls letters were forgeries. In the ones that are not forgeries you will see that he never refers to jesus as a physical person. It is only in the forgeries (done by the litteralist who took the story of Jesus litteraly) that you see Paul refer to Jesus as a physical person.

http://members.aol.com/ps418/pp.html

Peter Kirby

All of the Gnostics didn't believe that Jesus was a real person in the flesh?

If this is a definition, it differs from the one offered by Mark.

Doherty disagrees and says that none of the NT epistles refer to Jesus as a physical person, excepting two interpolations.

best,
Peter Kirby

JERDOG

It is not a definition but an aspect of it. Nor did I meantion that I disagreed with Mark's definition. So why would you assume that I was trying to offer a correction to his definition instead of an addition which was in fact what I was doing?

Who's Doherty?

Peter Kirby

I didn't assume that you were correcting Mark, which was why I used the qualification "if this is a definition." I now know that the "if" condition is false.

The reason that I have asked the question is because I am reading a book called "Rethinking 'Gnosticism'" where the author maintains that the term "Gnostic" is not a useful one for scholars. The question of whether Paul was Gnostic depends both on knowledge of what Paul believed and agreement on what beliefs constitute Gnosticism, so I wanted to get your take on what Gnosticism means.

Earl Doherty runs this web site and has two books out:

http://pages.ca.inter.net/~oblio/jesus.html

best,
Peter Kirby

mark9950

I got the definition from dictionary.com in case you are interested.

mark9950

Jesus was?

If they believed that jesus was not a physical person the personal accounts are all myths or what are they?

Just curious.