So, Veeky Forums, is it gnostic or what?

I really love this shit, but i wish there was a really top tier blog for new finds and studies in historical-critical theory.

Read Quispel's The Gospel of Thomas Revisited. It's the end of his career, so he's kind of tired about it all, and he just drops the truth bombs like the skies are about to roll up before us.

Sometimes I've learnt about new books through r/academicbiblical, otherwise the best option might be to look at new publications from A&C Black, Brill, Mohr Siebeck, SBL, Peter Lang, etc.

>he's kind of tired about it all

I watched every available lecture through open courses, great courses, and stanford open, and read all the assigned reading I could get my hands on, and at the end of it I was pretty fucking tired of it.

I cant image what 60 year old academics who have been writing on the historical jesus project since 1970

*feel

Quispel works on gnosticism and early church history though, not on the historical Jesus. For these people, the whole thing was grand, of great enthusiasm ; the Nag Hammadi codices were discovered when they were in their 20s and had already been studying gnosticism before. It was like a great wave of excitement.

>before I realised how hating this world achieves nothing

Nothing achieves anything. That's the main point of the idea that this world is evil. Gnosticism is against all aspects of Utopia and all roads leading to it even more than Nietzschean yuppies are.

I don't know but I like logion 67

>Jesus said "One who knows everything but lacks in oneself lacks everything"

I read this as a kid and it messed me up.

How?

I don't know, I just found it unsettling and couldn't get it out of my head. Even now every verse is very familiar.

I like 77

>Jesus said: I am the light that is above them all. I am the all; the all came forth from me, and the all attained to me.
>Cleave a piece of wood; I am there. Raise up a stone, and you will find me there.

>So, Veeky Forums, is it gnostic or what?

7. Jesus said, "Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human."

22. ..."and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]."

50. Jesus said, "If they say to you, 'Where have you come from?' say to them, 'We have come from the light, from the place where the light came into being by itself, established [itself], and appeared in their image.'

51. His disciples said to him, "When will the rest for the dead take place, and when will the new world come?" He said to them, "What you are looking forward to has come, but you don't know it."

61. ... "For this reason I say, if one is whole, one will be filled with light, but if one is divided, one will be filled with darkness."
Yes, OP. I'm sure the references to world-carcasses and metaphor of the lion "eating" as being literally consumed by world illusion are not lost on you.

Also, tell me logion 22 isn't clearly an early understanding of anima and animus and the process of individuation as a road to happiness.

This all reads very Platonic, as in the idea of forms. I know what I'm going to be getting at the library today...

I'm surprised you didn't quote 56 which seems gnostic with its rejection of the material world.

Thomas O. Lambdin translation
>Jesus said , "Whoever has come to understand the world has found a corpse, and whoever has found a corpse is superior to the world."

None of the logia you quoted are remotely gnostic, especially not the seventh.

Take a look at the 28th, the christology of Thomas isn't gnostic at all.

It's not gnostic. Beyond my own conclusions, this is the scholarly consensus.

t. grad student who just spent 6 months doing research on the gospel

It is Thomasine.

Yeah, there probably was a community in Edessa which got its authority from Thomas and practiced radical ascetism. It's "Thomasine".

>Take a look at the 28th, the christology of Thomas isn't gnostic at all.

It is irresponsible to cherry pick one line and say it represents the rest. And anyway I disagree. Read 27 before it for context. The Encratites who followed the sayings in Thomas and abstained from wine were reading it literally. The words of Jesus spoken in 27-28 are an exhortation to deny the world. He speaks of masses of people drunk and sated. Literally not thirsty for the message from heaven. Their contentment with temporal pleasure blinds them to the message. The great archon of the world has consumed them, in the metaphor of logion 7.

All of the references to being of the light, as well, were later adopted by the better known followers of Mani. So when OP asks "is this gnostic" I say yes of course it is. Early gnostics wrote it, later gnostics built their cosmology around it.

Misreadings, lack of proper knowledge of subject matter, broad assumptions : yes, we're still on Veeky Forums.

I'd love to hear your interpretation, user.

Let me begin my refutation with the localization of the Gospel of Thomas. On the subject of the localization of this text, the prologue, is illuminating: the Apostle Thomas bears the name of "Jude Thomas Didyme", a name whose first traces can only be found in Syria. This localization in Syria, moreover, is supported by several parallels among various Syriac authors, of which we shall limit ourselves here to a few examples: the sixth Demonstration of Aphraate refers to androgyny as we find in the Gospel of Thomas: There will be neither male nor female "(6, 51), while Ephrem in his Commentary quotes a word of Christ very similar to what is found in logion 30:" where there is one, there I am "(XIV, 24). Finally, a homily of Macaire seems to develop a conception very similar to what one finds in Logion 69. In any case, the location of the GosThom in Syria seems to be a matter of consensus: the majority of the authors, including François Vouga, John D Turner and France Quéré, locate it in Syria. Ménard points out that "Syriac parallels to the Gospel according to Thomas are found in Macarius, in the Libri Graduum and in the Diatessaron," and the fact that the use of the epithet "Living" to speak of Jesus is found in " Syriac environments, such as that of Ephrem "; Quispel notes important links between the Diatessaron and the GosThom and the presence of references to GosThom in Macaire as well as many other Syrian authors. The localization of the GosThom can also be made clear, thanks to the Acts of Thomas, which seem to have been written at Edessa in the first half of the third century. Quispel says that the GosThom was known to their author, and that it can thus be said that it was known in Edessa before 225. It is also known that the city of Edessa flattered itself with having the tomb of the apostle Thomas. According to these considerations, it seems that one can follow the advice of Quispel, and place the GosThom at Edessa, in the first half of the second century. What does this mean? We must ask ourselves what Christianity might be like at Edessa at the beginning of the second century.

1/?

It seems that Syriac Christianity, especially Edessa, was strongly ascetic. It also seems that we can speak here of encratite christianity. According to DeConick, Syriac Christianity is characterized by a mystical reinterpretation of the eschatological event; this Christianity shows man "rediscovering a paradise lost by his own efforts to live a righteous life, as revealed by Jesus." Quispel completes the picture by saying that there is no evidence whatsoever, even some pointing to the contrary, that there were Gnostics at Edessa at the time of the writing of the GosThom. In the first place, if the Christianity of Edessa, at the beginning of the second century, is as described above, the community behind this gospel is not gnostic, and seems rather to understand itself better as an encratite, or at least, as a strongly ascetic christianity.

2/?

I'm too lazy to write the rest kek

Basically if I kept going on, the evidence would just keep piling up more and more. The Gospel of Thomas isn't gnostic.

Interesting. As a layperson it definitely struck me more as generally ascetic than specifically gnostic.

>tfw you can't stop interpreting religious writing through Jung/Peterson and it always makes sense

DUDE

ARCHETYPES

There MIGHT be one or two logia here and there where the Coptic translator added a gnosticizing ring to it.

We have the proof that some later translator tried to make some logia sound gnostic, such as logion 30 : "where there are three gods they are gods; but where they are two or one I am with him," where the Greek, P. Oxy version preserves a much better version going : "where they are three, they are without God ; but where one is one, then I say : I am with him".

And, by the way, Ephrem, in his Commentary of the Diatessaron, quotes this logion in its P. Oxy form, which means it existed as such before 170, which is way before the Coptic redaction of the Gospel of Thomas.

Yes and apocryphal

No shit

Shame, I was really willing to hear you and be enlightened and you came at me with meaningless localization pasta that does nothing to confirm your claims.

So the world-denying ascetics at Edessa were not gnostics but they practiced like gnostics and held the same beliefs (e.g. Christ as emanation of light, the temporal immanence of the kingom of heaven) and used the same symbols as gnostics. You really showed me, fella.

I think we're getting tripped up on the vague language of "is this gnostic." I presume you mean to say it is not because it was not written by a gnostic. I am saying it is because these ideas were quickly adopted by gnostics like Basilidies and spread as a heresy against Mithraism and (((Christianity))). You could say this was written by Thomasites, but hardly anyone would know it by that association.

I don't know why you mentioned Peterson, but I'm sure you're a dolt. Thanks for contributing absolutely nothing to the discussion.

I study Thomas at a graduate level. Your understanding of early church history and gnosticism implied in a sentence like "these ideas were quickly adopted by gnostics like Basilidies and spread as a heresy against Mithraism and (((Christianity)))" shows that your knowledge is limited to youtube conferences and wikipedia articles.
Also it's not pasta, it's from my research.

If you had any knowledge about the times, you'd know that there is no such thing as heresy at the time of Basilides, and that Mithraism is a fringe phenomenom.

>WTF there is no such thing as heresy are you retarded
No, you are for thinking heresy (choice) can exist at a time when there's no fixed orthodoxy. You should read Bauer's Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum.

You have an understanding of diffusion of ideas --- as if a man like Basilides "adopted" the ideas of someone to "create" an heresy ---, which is not even anachronistic, it is plain stupid. This isn't some modern author seeing something cool in another author and doing something new with it. Behind every single text, there's a community of people who believe and experience religious and spiritual issues, to which texts presented as scripture try to answer.

Your understanding of gnosticism is limited by your wikipedia-knowledge of the subject ; you consider the presence of certain themes in a given work to indicate a gnostic origin : according to your base ideas, half of Plato's works and everything written by Plotinus and Philo, would be gnostic. The presence of themes mean nothing ; then John would be a gnostic, and so would Paul be, with his speculation on the cosmic powers vanquished by Christ and his discourses on the esoterical christianity he has yet to teach to his disciples. But none of this is gnostic. Why is that? That's because gnosticism isn't a set of ideas or themes. The colloquium on gnosticism held in 1966 in Messine, quite aptly explained the issue : gnosticism is a historical manifestation of a religion split in different schools. I repeat : GNOSTICISM IS NOT A SET OF IDEAS OR THEMES, IT IS A HISTORICAL MANIFESTATION OF A RELIGION SPLIT IN DIFFERENT SCHOOLS. If you are not part of this historical phenomenom, then you're not gnostic, period.
It's that easy.

>I don't know why you mentioned Peterson, but I'm sure you're a dolt. Thanks for contributing absolutely nothing to the discussion.

If you can't understand why, I think you're the dolt.

Drop your fucking trip before I have to destroy you some more, little wikischolar piece of shit.

BTFO

few !!16o4bCWqhNL on suicide watch, will never recover

kek u mad. Aside from the snide remarks, this was much more helpful/informative. Thanks user.

>I study Thomas at a graduate level.
I'm glad your six months (kek) of studying Thomas is being put to use.

>youtube conferences and wikipedia articles
No.

>If you had any knowledge about the times, you'd know that there is no such thing as heresy
Oh please. Every Catholic kid knows the Council of Nicea was in 325. Any persecution before then would have been at the local level. I somehow doubt all the skinflint no-fun gnostic communities just dried up and died on their own, however. They made the world their enemy and the locals made them into martyrs. Christianity was made from the cults that survived and gnostic teaching became apocrypha. That's all I meant.

>The colloquium on gnosticism held in 1966 in Messine, quite aptly explained the issue : gnosticism is a historical manifestation of a religion split in different schools.

I'm aware. This is where you fucked up. Gnosticism was both. It was a set of ideas AND (at one time) a cultural identity AND a series of extinct sects. It doesn't mean only what you say it means. That's not how language works.

>GNOSTICISM IS NOT A SET OF IDEAS OR THEMES. I-IT'S A HISTORICAL MANIFESTATION... OF A RELIGION... SPLIT INTO DIFFERENT SCHOOLS OF IDEAS.

You really make me laugh.

I guess I got a little mad. I have to deal with a lot of people who just like to label everything gnostic, it gets on my nerves after a while.

>I'm glad your six months (kek) of studying Thomas is being put to use.
I hope I never have to study such literature again, honestly ; but I did learn a few things from it, namely, that early church history and gnosticism are issues much more complex than they first seem.

>I somehow doubt all the skinflint no-fun gnostic communities just dried up and died on their own, however.
Honestly, they probably did. The later gnostic texts tend to express the feeling that a lot of their members are giving up under the rise of orthodoxy. See the Gospel of Judas, which is basically just a polemic against orthodox christianity and which, most likely, is trying to convince gnostics not to leave the community. On the other hand, if you read Tertullian, you get the feeling that heresies like gnosticism were a huge thing, probably much larger than the orthodox church.

>I'm aware. This is where you fucked up. Gnosticism was both. It was a set of ideas AND (at one time) a cultural identity AND a series of extinct sects. It doesn't mean only what you say it means. That's not how language works.
The ideas which you would have funding the gnostic identity, are ideas of the Spätantiker Geist, which are extremely common in late antiquity, and to be found way outside of gnosticism. When you say :
>Ideas such as the divinity of man, matter being evil and the world resulting from a degradation of the divine came from gnosticism or spring from a pre-gnostic gnosis which then spread around
You confuse the general spirit of the times with the manifestation of a religion which brought such ideas to their logical conclusion. You'll have this kind of shit in Seneca's letters ; it really is widespread once the empire sets in. I feel it's a general distrust for history and the world.

When we're dealing with christian gnostics, these fucks probably weren't aware heresy was a thing. They named themselves "christians" and if you read their texts, you don't feel that they consider themselves as outsiders or anything : they're part of the church, which is the earthly representation of the hypercosmic spiritual church. Give it two hundred years, and you can feel the despair in their works : they've been cast out of their universal church, just like christians were expelled from the synagogues. Then they start developing ideas like the "spiritual church", followed by the "psychic church" and then the "hylic church". Gnosticism no longer made sense in a world where christianity had become mainstream, and it had to go, because it could no longer provide answers.

Guy, Gnosticism as prescriptive Historic Ideology, which the Gospel of Thomas may or may not be related to, and Gnosticism as felt experience are two different things.

>tfw another discussion about the quality of the human spirit degenerates into pointless bickering about ossified history

Lil' boy taking long-dead systems out of context to fuel an edulcorated pomo spirituality.
Do you add buddhism to the mix too ?

lol

>The ideas which you would have funding the gnostic identity, are ideas of the Spätantiker Geist, which are extremely common in late antiquity, and to be found way outside of gnosticism.

I was unclear, when I say gnostics I mean the pre-Christian ascetics who renounced wealth, abstained from wine, and believed in a Christ who delivered them from the illusions of a deceiver (archon). Also the Coptics who wrote the Nag Hammadi texts at a time when a Christian orthodoxy was being developed, and the Manicheans and Cathars. That's a long span of time and it's all over the map, so I'm sorry if I was not very careful with my usage earlier in the thread.

The bits that I've seen in Thomas and in my reading of the canonical gospels suggest a reading of the bible that is heretical by Catholic standards but (imo) more accurate than the theological contortions designed by centuries of church scholars using literal readings of a gimped source material and their Protestant interlocutors.

>Give it two hundred years, and you can feel the despair in their works

I think that's just human nature at work, the progress of science without proper tools. Pre-alchemical figuring with a dosh of psychological projection. The job of the theologian is to invent systems that can interpret the human experience and reveal the divine. There have been lots of those blokes, and most of their works were only stepping stones to newer (but not necessarily better) systems.

>when I say gnostics I mean the pre-Christian ascetics who renounced wealth, abstained from wine, and believed in a Christ who delivered them from the illusions of a deceiver (archon).
There's no evidence that such people ever existed.

>Also the Coptics who wrote the Nag Hammadi texts at a time when a Christian orthodoxy was being developed, and the Manicheans and Cathars.
The Coptics didn't "write" anything. They translated texts from many different schools. It is unclear why, and it also is unclear whether a community existed in Nag Hammadi.

>The bits that I've seen in Thomas and in my reading of the canonical gospels suggest a reading of the bible that is heretical by Catholic standards but (imo) more accurate than the theological contortions designed by centuries of church scholars using literal readings of a gimped source material and their Protestant interlocutors.
It is your understanding of orthodoxy which needs to be widened. Read the Church Fathers. Clement of Alexandria speaks of the "true Gnosis" which lets the Christian reach "a mystical union with God".
Orthodoxy is a dynamic manifestation ; the first Christians probably were Ebionites and were considered heretical before the end of the first century. None of the evangelists display a christology and a theology compatible with official church dogma. Paul speaks of Christ as the "new Adam" --- that sounds heretical af if you ask me.

>more accurate than the theological contortions designed by centuries of church scholars
They had different concerns, different communities and experienced a different relationship to God. The Gospels aren't "closer" to the "real" Jesus than official church theology. They just have a different theology, each one of them. Clearly Luke is all about the apostolic tradition, Mark doesn't even care about the resurrection and John.... just the name is enough to illustrate what I'm saying. Now these theologies and christologies were rooted in the world they lived in, the way they had to deal with religious experience : in a word, with their own Sitz im Leben.

>I think that's just human nature at work, the progress of science without proper tools.
There's no such thing as progress, they are works produced to answer to the religious and spiritual questions of given communities at a given time, and once the questions they answered to are no longer relevant, they disappear.

So much of the modern Christ's message seems to be recalling apocryphal remnants in the bible. Holy spirit as the word from the invisible throne, Mary as vessel for the logos and stand-in for the student. Christ as logos manifested. Salvation from the hell that is immanent in this world by imitation of Christ.

The similarity to a gnostic belief in a great deceiver who has trapped the soul in mortal flesh and escaping only by the wisdom of a Christ-idea you cannot touch (noli me tangere much? lel) is too much to bear.

Hans Jonas wrote about this. Gnosticism, according to this man, is the most radical manifestation of nihilism to have ever set foot on this old planet.
The idea is that in Gnosticism, the world is deprived of all ontological value ; it is considered as a pure Nihil in-itself, as a violent expression of nothingness. Meanwhile, the divine, or everything that "is", has the most radical possible transcendence applied to it, so that it more or less exits the world : in regular christianity, God is somewhere up, in the universe, he cannot be "outside" of the universe since he is God. Now with gnosticism, God is thoroughly absent from the universe ; the whole of it is non-being, which is ontologically opposed to the nature of God.

Existentialism and most modern thought applies the same process to the world. Since Being is not longer conceived, then the world has no value anymore, and becomes "nothing" --- this is nihilism. The gnostics did set their God outside the universe, but existentialism and modernism in general, does not conceive anything transcendent. It's just pure nothingness.

Thus, of course, gnosticism will feel appealing to modern readers, because it feels like the gnostics are going through the same kind of feeling about the world being worth nothing, while they are able to set their own God outside of it, as to have him not sullied by the world. A teacher of mine always said gnosticism and dualism in general, was the product of an extended reflexion on the concept of Evil. Gnostics thought the world Evil, and didn't think Christ's dead was enough to save this world. They wanted their God to have no part in this evil. The classical fedora argument against God allowing evil, doesn't hold against the gnostic system, which would rather cut God's hands than them covered in blood.

Christ's death*

>The Coptics didn't "write" anything

So if I asked you to translate a text you would take a sheet of paper, hold your pen in your hand and... then what? You would turn one set of letters into a different set of letters by writing. You are infuriating to talk to.

>"true Gnosis" which lets the Christian reach "a mystical union with God".
Clement of Alexandria sounds like a scrub who became a political power but didn't understand his work by any means but the language of his youth. A union with God is present all the time. I'll allow that translation, the gulf of years, and the difference of my experience and his would cause him to place an emphasis on a mystical communion that I just don't see could be anything but the hysteria of a fanatic.

>Paul speaks of Christ as the "new Adam" --- that sounds heretical af if you ask me.
I've had this thought lately. It's a fitting superimposition of the myth of Adam as the original Christ, the first born of God. Just as all men are a subclass of Adam, so was Christ the Adam of our mortal age. As Adam steered Eve/Mary away from destruction, so did Jesus teach his flock. Doesn't seem heretical at all unless one uses a literal interpretation of the text.

>There's no such thing as progress, they are works produced to answer to the religious and spiritual questions of given communities at a given time, and once the questions they answered to are no longer relevant, they disappear.
Very Fichte.

>So if I asked you to translate a text you would take a sheet of paper, hold your pen in your hand and... then what? You would turn one set of letters into a different set of letters by writing.
The word was between quotation marks to illustrate that it was not to be taken literally. Are you autistic? It clearly meant that the works of Nag Hammadi were not composed by the Coptics.

>A union with God is present all the time.
Um no except if you're an heretic.

>Doesn't seem heretical at all unless one uses a literal interpretation of the text.
"Adam speculation" was rather common in intertestamental literature and clearly had more to do with jewish mysticism than actual christianity.

Jonas sounds like an interesting fella. I think his observations are correct, and that ultimate nihilism inherent in the world-illusion would have been one cause for the failure of gnostic sects. It's hard to reconcile living your mundane existence with knowing that the field you plowed to grow the grain to bake the crust of bread in your mouth will only prolong your suffering. Gimme me bright light and my escape hatch now dammit. I NEED MY NUGGETS.

>Gnostics thought the world Evil, and didn't think Christ's death was enough to save this world.
Well yes that is part of the gnostic deal. It is performative. Same with the cross-bearers. Christianity is something you do, not an opinion you hold. Especially not the braindead KMart brand "just believe and you will be saaaaived!praisegeesus".

I'm not sure on the gnostic's answer to the problem of evil. The world is suffering and illusion, very much in the tradition of Maya. I suppose there would be no evil. The word should not have a definition. There is only what is undesirable and self-destructive to the individual and the community, and then we're back to Old Testament moral instruction.

>Are you autistic?
No, I'm just used to dealing with people here and your smug answer didn't come across as smugness. I thought you were actually mentally handicapped and couldn't understand what I had written.

>Um no except if you're an heretic.
I am a heretic.

>"Adam speculation" was rather common in intertestamental literature
That's interesting! I think I'll read more about that.

>clearly had more to do with jewish mysticism than actual christianity.
There you go again, erasing interpretation for the orthodoxy. I hope you are paid well after you graduate.

I said I'd love to hear your interpretation and you obliged. It was a pleasure hearing from you.

Now I have a question for you user. What are your personal religious beliefs? How does your research into the history of the church affect those beliefs? And do you feel that studying heretical documents and ideas may poison the well?

Gnosticism is only nihilism from the perspective of the 'worldly,' just like it only seems like a 'dualism' to a 'monist of the world.'

>I said I'd love to hear your interpretation and you obliged. It was a pleasure hearing from you.
A good discussion, even when we disagree and start insulting each other, is always a pleasure.

>What are your personal religious beliefs?
I don't have any. Nietzsche's God is the idea I most closely associate with, I guess.

>How does your research into the history of the church affect those beliefs?
I'm not graduating in this particular field. As much as it fascinates me, I hate dealing with this religion of the rabble.

>And do you feel that studying heretical documents and ideas may poison the well?
It sure poisons me. I hate this life-denying shit, I just hate it, but it's fascinating.

What are your personal religious beliefs btw?

Good catch desu. That is part of the trick. We are all born worldly and grasping, the challenge is to become a self-actualized adult who hears the voice of God and puts it into practice. What that means varies by creed.

>As much as it fascinates me, I hate dealing with this religion of the rabble.
At least you're graduating. This doesn't seem like an easy subject. Good luck m8.

>It sure poisons me. I hate this life-denying shit, I just hate it, but it's fascinating.
I would say it's not so much about life denial as affirmation through denial of specific taboo. I'm glad you're well read on it, at least.

Raised in a Spanish-speaking Catholic Church, became apostate at 13. Read some Crowley, determined he was a fraud. Experimented with Buddhism as a teenager, found its ego-destroying principles unhealthy and stopped. Returned to KJV and apocrypha as literature but not the church. "Agnostic" for a long time, then read Campbell, Frazer, Jung, Eliade, 'n them. More recently Girard's scapegoat and mimetic desire, Agamben's homo sacer. Now: Man *needs* myth, and this is the myth of my people. I would see what comes next.

tldr: God is something in Man. P much all of the holy books attune us to this voice in one way or another. We are absolutely fucked when augmented reality rolls up. We've got 50 years, tops. Only art can save us.

I like the Gospel of Mary fragments too, they're undoubtedly gnostic. Especially the description of overcoming desire and ignorance.

Mary 15-16 (Karen L. King)
>And Desire said 'I did not see you go down, yet now I see you go up. So why do you lie, since you belong to me?' The soul answered 'I saw you. You did not see me, nor did you know me. You mistook the garment I wore for my true self. And you did not recognize me.'
>After it had said these things, it left, rejoicing greatly
>Again, it came to the third power, which is called 'Ignorance.' [It] examined the soul closely, saying, 'Where are you going? You are bound by wickedness. Indeed you are bound! Do not judge.' And the soul said, 'Why do you judge me, since I have not passed judgement? I have been bound, but I have not bound anything. They did not recognize me, but I have recognized that the universe is to be dissolved, both the things of earth and those of heaven.'

That's really interesting. Reminds me of Plato's usage of 'down' and 'up'. Down I went to Piraeus... down to the worldly wise men and the markets where base commerce occurs. Up here seems to imply a transcendence of flesh into supernal wisdom, knowledge of the true nature of the universe.

We'll doesn't that reduce its legitimacy as a text since it's source is in unclear?

Nice thread. Have you ever read Calasso, tripfag? I think you might like him if you like those other mythologians. I am unsure if I consider Christianity the myth of my people. I was born an Anglo Catholic in North America and wonder about new myths and new world orders subverted and autotranscendent...

I've been sitting on the Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony for a while. Might bump it up if Veeky Forums recommended it.

>Might bump it up if Veeky Forums recommended it.
(Which you did.) Had a few nips and brainfolds are stepping in molasses. sage

>speculation on the soul's ascent through the ogdoad with passwords to give to each archon
FUCKING DROPPED

Randumb unsupported attack - yep, it's Veeky Forums...

>(49) Jesus said, "Blessed are the solitary and
elect, for you will find the kingdom. For you
are from it, and to it you will return."

sounds preddy gnostic