Philo's guide to decoding the Hebrew Bible

[seeker]

Seeker wrote:

The evidence that Gnostic ideas preceded Christian origins and led to an evolution of Christ like characters until a sort of ultimate ideal of that character was achieved seems to exist.

I agree - the OT is rife with gnostic ideas right from Genesis 1 all the way thru. Of course the problem with that is the oldest known versions of the OT are how old? The Dead Sea scrolls are the oldest aside from the Codex Sinaiticus. And I don't think they predate the 1st century. Or are there older?

And also - in one section in the NT I think I remember someone writing "until the Christ was made perfect" which also fits. But it could still be a different sect than gnostics that picked up on this and started it. I still feel it was the result of at least 2 differing sets of beliefs even at the start.

Here is where my minimalist tendencies will probably push some people's buttons. My view of the evidence leads me to believe that the underlying theology of the OT is Zoroastrian which is the underpinning of a lot of Gnostic ideas.

The oldest known fragments of the OT are pieces of the Septuagint that only date to the second century BCE. As to complete versions you have to go all the way to the 4th century CE. There are no known versions, even partial, of texts that predate the Septuagint, so it is entirely possible that the entire bible was written in the Gnostic period.

[Ishtar]

There are no known versions, even partial, of texts that predate the Septuagint, so it is entirely possible that the entire bible was written in the Gnostic period.

Bloody hell!

That's set the cat among the pigeons!

[Forum Monk]

so it is entirely possible that the entire bible was written in the Gnostic period.

Which period do you suppose that to be?

[rich]

Doesn't the dating for the Sefer Yetzirah roughly coincide with that too??? And it definitely refers to Pythagorian schtuffs.

[Forum Monk]

If Jesus worked all these miracles then how is it he got so little recognition? If he didn't really do the miracles then they must have been attributed to him afterwards, a situation which begs the question of what else was just attribution.

Before possibly addressing other points, I want to point out an implied associative fallacy. It looks like you've tried to connect the two statements by implication but each stands on its own, independently. If Jesus did miracles then why so little recognition is a valid question. If Jesus didn't do miracles then they must have been attributed..., is a valid inference But it is not valid to imply that because Jesus got little attention the miracles never happened and so were attributed to him.

Its a minor point, but important.

[Ishtar]

so it is entirely possible that the entire bible was written in the Gnostic period.

Which period do you suppose that to be?

If you date it from Pythagorus whose beliefs many of the Gnostics followed, that's c 500 BC - and despite the best efforts of the Roman Catholic Church, it never really went away but survived underground in various masonic sects like the Rosucrucians.

Paulists survived into the 10th century when they became the Bogomils of the Balkans, Manicheans into the 13th and Simonians into the 14th.

The Bogomils even had their own Gnostic Pope. In the 12th century, they moved into large areas of France, Spain and Italy and became the Cathars. The Cathars condemned the Literalist church as the "Church of the Anti-Christ".

Shortly after that, he Church of the Anti Christ wiped them all out, women and children too.

At Beziers, when the Church's troops asked how to tell who was a Cathar and who was not, the commanding legate Arnoud replied:

"Kill them all, for God will know his own."

Twelve thousand Cathars were killed at St Nazair and 10,000 at Toulouse.

In a prefiguring of the Nazi terror, those who converted to Catholicism had to wear a yellow cross sewn on to their clothes. In eastern Europe, the remaining Bogomils were rubbed with grease and roasted alive.

[Forum Monk]

If you date it from Pythagorus whose beliefs many of the Gnostics followed, that's c 500 BC - and despite the best efforts of the Roman Catholic Church, it never really went away but survived underground in various masonic sects like the Rosucrucians.

Claiming Pythagoras was gnostic is like saying Moses was a christian and yet the religious beliefs of Moses were much more closely aligned with christianity than Pythagoras with gnosticism:

Pythagoras’ religious and scientific views were, in his opinion, inseparably interconnected. However, they are looked at separately in the 21st century. Religiously, Pythagoras was a believer of metempsychosis. He believed in transmigration, or the reincarnation of the soul again and again into the bodies of humans, animals, or vegetables until it became moral. His ideas of reincarnation were influenced by ancient Greek religion. He was one of the first to propose that the thought processes and the soul were located in the brain and not the heart. He himself claimed to have lived four lives that he could remember in detail, and heard the cry of his dead friend in the bark of a dog.

[Ishtar]

Claiming Pythagoras was gnostic is like saying Moses was a christian and yet the religious beliefs of Moses were much more closely aligned with christianity than Pythagoras with gonosticism:

What can I say? Philo, the Jewish Gnostic, was among many that followed Pythagorus and Moses and Sophie and the Logos and the christ.

Gnosticism spread from Pythagorus.

There were many Gnostics that compared the story of Exodus to the story of Jesus, and would say that they are both similar initiation stories. I can explain to you how that works if you want.

[Minimalist]

We have exactly one textual source, dating from the early 6th century to a couple of lines from the OT....or, which could have later been incorporated in the OT. This find is the silver scroll found by Gabe Barkay in 1979.

[Minimalist]

Shortly after that, he Church of the Anti Christ wiped them all out, women and children too.

Ah! The biblical solution.

[Forum Monk]

We need to clear the air about something. As I've already said, there were many religions which had mysteries, secrets, christ-like figures, dying and resurrecting gods, so on and so on. But they are not the same religion and there is no evidence that because they contained similar elements they are connected or devolved from one another. This is simply not true.

There is strong evidence that (in fact it is certain) the christian messiah is an extension of the hebrew messiah who was written about and taught about since the beginning of the jewish identity at least 600BCE and in the view of some scholars even as early as 1200BCE. (The first messianic prophecy: Gen 3:15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." )

The fact that the Christian Christ is strikingly different (i.e. the suffering servant, sacrifical lamb) has nothing to do whatever with gnostic principles of intiations or divine spark or the dying god-man of other religions. It is was one of the greatest mysteries revealed by Paul. the Wisdom of God was not Sophia or any goddess, it was an attribute revealed in Christ and Christ himself was the mystery hidden from the ages. None of the attributes of Christ are dreamed up or made up or passed on or borrowed from other cultures. They can all be found in the hebrew scriptures. Period. The great mystery that Paul received was the revelation, that christ had been in the hebrew writings all along. Lets review:

1. Christ came in the flesh and lived, died and resurrected. Gnostics do not believe this - flesh is evil
2. Christ has redeemed people by his blood and people are saved by faith in who he is and what he has done - gnostics believe salvation comes from attaining sufficient secret knowledge.
3. Christ is the creator - gnostics believe the evil demuriage is the creator
4. Christ is seated at the right hand of the father - gnostics believe the goddess Sophia is at god's right hand
5. The name of Christ is above all names - gnostics honor Sophia.
6. Christ is co-equal with god - gnostics believe christ is a conduit to god and do not equate him with god.
7. Salvation is can not be attained by ritual, obedience, initiation, lawfulness, goodness or any thing man does, it is a free gift from god - gnostics believe one most attain salvation through learning, rituals, meditations, basically some kind of works.
8. Christ is worthy of all honor, glory and praise - I not sure what the gnostics believe about this.


There is so much signficant disparity between the beliefs of the two groups, to claim one emerged from the other is wishful thinking and really not even necessary, unless the purpose is to somehow discredit or diminish the beliefs of a significant group of people.

[rich]

Another thing to keep in mind is that no one really knows what the original OT had in it. We only know from pieces dating to the gnostic times.

[seeker]

so it is entirely possible that the entire bible was written in the Gnostic period.

Which period do you suppose that to be?

As Ish points out you could use 500BCE as an early date but you could also argue a date as late as the mid second century BCE. Personally I think the majority of the bible comes from the Hasmonean period so I go with the later date.

[Forum Monk]

In a previous post, seeker asked how do we know Paul and Peter taught the same christ and I am sure he was begging the question, about the authenticity of the Peter letters.

We need to only look at Paul for the answer who also explains how he came to know the truth about Christ apart from the knowledge of other men.

First I would like to apologize to everyone for this post because I realize that for some reading a fairly longish chunk of an ancient text can be tedious. Especially one from the bible but please indulge me as I make this point (you can glean the gist from the my bolded sections):

From Galatians chap 1 & 2:

11I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. 12I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.
13For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. 14I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. 15But when God, who set me apart from birth[a] and called me by his grace, was pleased 16to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not consult any man, 17nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus.

18Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him fifteen days. 19I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord's brother. 20I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie. 21Later I went to Syria and Cilicia. 22I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. 23They only heard the report: "The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy." 24And they praised God because of me.

1Fourteen years later I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. 2I went in response to a revelation and set before them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. But I did this privately to those who seemed to be leaders, for fear that I was running or had run my race in vain. 3Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. 4This matter arose because some false brothers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. 5We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you.
6As for those who seemed to be important—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not judge by external appearance—those men added nothing to my message. 7On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as Peter had been to the Jews. 8For God, who was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles. 9James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews. 10All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.

[Ishtar]

Monk - I'd also like to clear the air. ..you're really disappointing me.

Everything I've said on this subject I've backed up with extensive references to academics and early texts on the subject. I've given a lot of detail about who knew what and when, and also how they knew it.

Yet pretty much all we're getting from you boils down to this:

"I don't believe what you're saying is true because ....I don't believe what you're saying is true."

You ignore whole swathes of evidence - for example, the anointed one has been known right throughout recent history and not just Jewish history. That Jesus, John the Baptist and Paul, even in the canon, spoke of a secret teaching.

You're also cherry picking the easy bits....you're not answering about 95 per cent of the points raised, which have been very considered and very detailed in their content.

I have given plenty of my views, and why I think what I think. I don't think something because someone told me to think it. I didn't swallow lock, stock and barrel a whole history that I was told to believe. I don't just say something must be true because I think it is true.

The whole history of the church as we know was written by Eusebius, who was Constantine's scribe. 1700 years later, you're still believing it, because it's what you've been told.

I'm sorry to speak so plainly, but so far, it's hasn't been good enough and far less than I know you're capable of.

An excellent case has been presented here in the last week. I'd now like to see start rebutting these points to prove it wrong, with substance based on more than what you have been taught by your Church and your biblical scholars.