Gnosticism did not exist

[lpetrich]

 Gnosticism
I'll use the first paragraph of that Wikipedia article:

Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek: γνωστικός, romanized: gnōstikós, Koine Greek: [ɡˠno̞s.tiˈkos], "having knowledge") is a collection of religious ideas and systems which originated in the first century AD among early Christian and Jewish sects.[1] These various groups emphasised personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) over orthodox teachings, traditions, or the authority of the church. Viewing material existence as flawed or evil, Gnostic cosmogony generally presents a distinction between a supreme, hidden God and a malevolent lesser divinity (sometimes associated with the Yahweh of the Old Testament)[2] who is responsible for creating the material universe.[3] Gnostics considered the principal element of salvation to be direct knowledge of the supreme divinity in the form of mystical or esoteric insight. Many Gnostic texts deal not in concepts of sin and repentance, but with illusion and enlightenment.[3]

Gnosticism Didn't Exist (Say What Now?) • Richard Carrier

It’s scandalous to say, because so much pop theorizing about early Christianity is anchored to it, but it turns out, Gnosticism was never actually a thing. It was an invention of modern scholars; an interpretive category, it turns out, that refers to no actual thing that existed in antiquity. Or worse, when defined vaguely enough to actually encompass anything real, it refers to every sect of Christianity and thus distinguishes none of them. The word is therefore useless and ought to be abandoned. I find myself having to point this out a lot, so clearly this memo hasn’t made it to the public yet. So I am writing this article to get you up to speed.

I came to this conclusion on my own, from my extensive postdoc research project on the historicity of Jesus. Which is why (in case readers didn’t notice) the words “Gnostic” or “Gnosticism” never appear anywhere in my book On the Historicity of Jesus (except incidentally as the title of a couple of books I cite, but not on that subject). I never use Gnosticism as an interpretive category there, or as an explanation of anything. And yet, as soon as that was published, the Westar Institute (best known for The Jesus Seminar, and of which I am now a fellow) published a report declaring the same thing, and on the same basis. That a large group of prestigious Biblical scholars independently came to the same conclusion I did, and for pretty much the same reasons I had uncovered on my own, is fairly powerful evidence we are correct about this. The odds of that all happening by coincidence are pretty low.

A rather startling conclusion.

 

[lpetrich]

Fall 2014 Christianity Seminar Report on Gnosticism - Westar Institute
They voted on what they considered the most likely possibility, as did that institute's Jesus Seminar. Yes, its participants voted on what they considered most likely about Jesus Christ.

• The category of gnosticism needs to be dismantled. (Voted Red)
• Michael Williams and Karen King have made compelling cases that the category “Gnosticism”—whether it names an ancient religion equivalent to “Judaism” or “Christianity” or it functions as a typological category for the grouping of various teachers, writings, and movements—no longer works. (Voted Red)
• The relegation of gnosticism to the scholarly sidelines removes a confusing category for our ongoing Christianity Seminar work in rethinking the history of early Christianity. (Voted Pink)

It is difficult to overestimate what these decisions mean for the Seminar’s resolve to rewrite the history of early Christianity and for broader historical positions long held about how Christianity came into being. For at least a century “Gnosticism” has been understood as the primary and earliest major heresy that threatened a pre-ordained trajectory from the message of Jesus to the “Church Eternal.” Now, according to the Christianity Seminar, the idea that such a thing as “gnosticism” even existed is simply off the table.

Other votes:

• Scholarship now needs a less blunt tool/analytical category than gnosticism for examination of the Jesus/Christ(ian) literature of the second and third centuries. (Voted Red)
• The wealth of documents that Nag Hammadi provides to both scholarship and the public has been blocked or caricatured by the imposition of the gnostic label on them. These documents offer important information to scholarship about the Jesus/Christ(ian) movements in the second and third century. (Voted Red)
• The Secret Revelation of John is Christian. (Voted Pink)
• Without an intense scrutiny of what we label Christian and why, orthodox coherence and directionality will be the implicit underwriters of our history. (Voted Red)
• In describing pre-Nicene Christianity we should discard the category variously called “the Great Church,” “(emerging) Catholicism,” “mainstream Christianity,” or “proto-orthodoxy.” (Voted Red)
• Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and company should be liberated from “proto-orthodoxy” and allowed to “be their own idiosyncratic selves.” (Voted Red)
• The post-Constantinian project of creating a “catholic” Church, characterized by uniform theologies, structures, and practices, co-opted selected earlier Christian persons and groups to legitimate that project and should not determine our understanding of those persons and groups. (Voted Red)
• The Gospel of Judas should lead historians to discard the present category “Sethianism” and its reconstructed history and instead to create a new one, called “the Gnostics,” and start over on its history. (Voted Pink)

So for the first few centuries of its existence, Xianity was a mishmash of sects. After Constantine, the church that got official favor then constructed a history of itself that represented itself as the only legitimate successor of Jesus Christ and the apostles, with all the rest being heresies, departures from the One True Church and its teachings.

 

[lpetrich]

More from the Westar Institute:

The Jesus Seminar was one of the first scholarly venues to contradict this picture of such recently discovered documents, when it rejected earlier scholarship that defined the Gospel of Thomas as both “gnostic” and from the second century. Instead, the Jesus Seminar led scholarship over the last thirty years in noticing the relative impossibility of defining this gospel as “gnostic.” More recently, similar work has been done on a number of these discoveries such as the Secret Revelation of John, the Sayings of Sextus, the Odes of Solomon, the Letter of Peter to Philip, the Gospel of Mary, the Thunder: Perfect Mind, and the Gospel of Truth.

More from Richard Carrier:

To exemplify the problem, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy still has an entry on Gnosticism that says, “Gnosticism (after gnôsis, the Greek word for ‘knowledge’ or ‘insight’) is the name given to a loosely organized religious and philosophical movement that flourished in the first and second centuries.” That’s a pretty typical statement. But the Westar Institute scholars have concluded, as I did, that no such “movement” existed. What was mischaracterized as some sort of sectarian pedigree is really just a random collection of “ideas” shared by numerous diverse philosophers and theologians and sects, in varying degrees. “Gnosticism” was no more a distinct “movement” than “dualism” or “henotheism.” In fact, less so; as those at least are real coherent things that developed and spread in antiquity; Gnosticism as a whole isn’t. Only individual pieces of it.

Hence when the IEP claims, for example, “certain fundamental elements serve to bind these groups together under the loose heading” of Gnosticism, there actually is no group that possesses all of the usually-attributed features, and nearly every group possesses one or more of them, or some modified version of them, and there was no particular relationship among any set of groups one could distinguish as “Gnostic” as if in opposition to some other set of groups. For instance, every sect of Christianity on which we have any information on the point believed in a separate Logos who created the universe at God’s behest; likewise, believed some kind of secret knowledge (“gnosis”) was essential to ensuring one’s salvation; likewise, had a dualist view of the cosmos in which the lower world was corrupted by meddling divine beings and the upper world’s God was awaiting a chance to destroy it and start over, and help us escape our corrupt bodies and locations by fleeing into celestial ones.

He continues with "To illustrate by analogy, I also think this same fate will eventually befall another made-up category, Docetism, the supposed existence of sects that claimed Jesus only visited earth in a fake, illusory body."

 

[lpetrich]

Some of the comments are interesting. Richard Carrier responded in one of them:

In this particular case, this is just a different way of dealing with the same problem: distancing Christianity from the Jews. Which became increasingly important after the Jewish War. The sects that later merged into “orthodoxy” chose a different method: blaming the Jews for killing and rejecting Christ and thus accusing Jews of being unfaithful to their own God, even blinded by their own God for their wickedness, and as such deserving of everything they get (as we see in John; which is an evolution of the more nuanced critique of the Jews in Mark, on which see my discussion of the Barabbas narrative in On the Historicity of Jesus, index).

Thus we got Christian antisemitism. Other sects accomplished this same goal in a different way, by simply redefining the cosmic order by having the Jews worshiping literally a false God (the Demiurge), which simply recreates the entire antisemitic apparatus under a different set of schematic trivia. (One more borrowed from Plato than Jewish literature.)

 

[excreationist]

I like how they apparently believe in "a supreme, hidden God"... I believe in an intelligent force that isn't obvious...

I wonder what books/etc the "supreme hidden God" idea comes from....

 

[Politesse]

Who said Gnosticism was some sort of cohesive "movement" in the first? At least when I was doing my graduate work, that was not how it was portrayed. Typical Carrier nonsense, begging for attention by stating the bleeding obvious in a provocative way.

 

[ruby sparks]

Some of the comments are interesting. Richard Carrier responded in one of them:

Thus we got Christian antisemitism.

By Carrier's own standards, Christian antisemitism did not exist.

 

[Tharmas]

Who said Gnosticism was some sort of cohesive "movement" in the first? At least when I was doing my graduate work, that was not how it was portrayed. Typical Carrier nonsense, begging for attention by stating the bleeding obvious in a provocative way.

I agree with this. It was clear to me from my first readings of Gnostic texts fifty years ago that it was a hodge-podge term covering a large amount of ground, and that it was not useful to talk about different Gnostic "groups." The Nag Hammadi library show us, by its very existence, that Gnostics were very catholic (small "c") in their tastes of inspirational texts. It's still a useful term however. If one discerns "Gnostic" elements in the Gospel of John for instance, it doesn't therefore mean that there is no such thing as Gnosticism, as Carrier seems to argue.

And, after all, the Marcionite belief system was certainly a thing.

 

[Politesse]

I agree with this. It was clear to me from my first readings of Gnostic texts fifty years ago that it was a hodge-podge term covering a large amount of ground, and that it was not useful to talk about different Gnostic "groups." The Nag Hammadi library show us, by its very existence, that Gnostics were very catholic (small "c") in their tastes of inspirational texts. It's still a useful term however.

If one discerns "Gnostic" elements in the Gospel of John for instance, it doesn't therefore mean that there is no such thing as Gnosticism, as Carrier seems to argue.

Well, exactly. Carrier and Seminar are actually making somewhat different points. Carrier seems to be trying to imply that the phenomenon of Gnosticism was somehow fabricated by scholars, which fits into the standard existentialistic atheist polemics against the early church generally. But the Seminar has never argued that the theologies contained within gnostic-coded texts - hierarchical heavens, ascension to a Neo-Platonic godhead, the existence of perfidious archontai or demiurgoi hiding the true god from humanity, etc.- themselves never existed at all. What they are saying is that they were not, in their own time, considered heretical. Rather they were Christianity, full stop, to the communities that kept them. With much less communiction between cells, it was easy for a rich plurality of beliefs and practices to flourish in the first three centuries of the church, and we have manifold evidence for this. This has been a major theme in Patristics since the late 80s, before the Nag Hammadi library had even come to widespread popular attention (it is the most important, but not by any means our only window into early church esoterica). What scholars are trying to discourage (and have been doing for decades now) is trying to tamp down the popular press imaginary of a brave renegade sect of Gnostics fighting back against the ingrained power of the Christian orthodoxy, during a time period where by all means historians can see, there was no such orthodoxy to fight against, and your local bishop was likely your only means of accessing "correct" doctrine.

This story is indeed one you see printed in popular works and discussed over liberal coffeeshop tables. But like many historical narratives, that portrayal of the past is more about the needs of the political present than historical reality. It was never the scholarly consensus. It is a romantic trope that liberal Christians find comfort in referring to, as it makes their own heterodoxy more normalized and implies deep roots, beating the orthodoxists at their own game by claiming a deeper and truer manifestation of the faith than what utimately triumphed. No doubt, this is one of the reasons Carrier has special ire for it; atheist activists have always strongly preferred debating with conservatives; there's too much homework involved with trying to debate a Progressive Christian, and perhaps more to fear rhetorically from people whose faith seems more overtly rational or at least harder to pin down and argue against. Carrier is a smart man and I do not here impugn his credentials, but we are all compromised by our beliefs and political projects one way or anohter, and I find his grandstanding habits somewhat irritating after a while.

In my own opinion, there isn't really such a thing as an expert on the 2nd-3rd century church, not for lack of interest and study but simply for lack of historical records to describe it. There is simply too much missing information for such an expertise to exist in the present. If only we had time traveling ethnographers to go back and peek under the roof of the ancient house churches to see what is going on!

 

[lpetrich]

Richard Carrier on why he prefers dealing with (theologically) conservative and centrist Xians:

Adventures at the Society of Biblical Literature Conference, Part 1: The Westar Encounter • Richard Carrier

I usually only deal with conservative and centrist Christians because liberal Christians are so wishy washy and mushy void of substantive beliefs beyond the ethical and political sphere, and their ethics and politics usually mostly align with liberal secularists of various stripes and thus are less of an urgent threat to society. At least in respect to their religion, as their religion really doesn’t provide any basis for their views, whether friendly or toxic. As I’ve often said of liberal Christians, they have no text. They’re just making it all up as they go along. So arguing with them is never any different than arguing with a secular philosopher. They don’t resort to citing Scripture or the Holy Spirit or “historical facts of faith” for authority on anything they espouse. So really, they are just atheists in practice, who dress up as theists.

Consequently I often forget how many of them there are.

From Taoist to Infidel - Richard Carrier's testimony - about Fundamentalism and liberal Xians:

It did no good that most nominal Christians disavow all this behavior, for I discovered all too quickly that hardly any of them had the moral fiber to stand up to it, few make much effort to defend in public their apparently kinder, gentler message of tolerance and love against the Righteous Hoarde, and fewer still would call me ally. Why would they? Jesus himself tells everyone I am damned, and if the most informed, wise and compassionate being in the universe condemns me utterly, deeming me worthy of unquenchable fire and immortal worms, far be it for any mortal to have a kinder opinion of me. Worse, the liberal Christians have no text. In any Bible debate, the liberal interpreter always loses, for he must admit he is putting human interpretation, indeed bold-faced speculation, before the Divine Word of God. And without the Bible to stand on a Christian can be condemned as an unbeliever in disguise. Since being thought an atheist is worse than being thought a prostitute, not many believers are likely to raise their head against Fundamentalism.

 

[Politesse]

"Consequently I often forget how many of them there are."

Uncommon honesty!

Something interesting to note: the atheist critique/stereotype of liberal Christianity is almost identical to the conservative Christian critique of liberal Christianity. Funny, that. Almost as though there are two groups of people in society who have no comprehension of what value religion might have aside from being an authoritarian source of unquestionable rules or knowledge.

Personally, of course, I see nothing immoral or even silly about questioning ideas without abandoning them entirely.

 

[DBT]

Christianity appears to have split into several groups quite early. The elements of Gnosticism were probably present quite early, but the believers did not call themselves Gnostics.

 

[Politesse]

Christianity appears to have split into several groups quite early. The elements of Gnosticism were probably present quite early, but the believers did not call themselves Gnostics.

Not exactly true; the term gnostikos meant "learned" or "knowledgeable", and was used by friends and foes to describe teachers of Christian doctrine throughout the first three centuries of the church. Implication being something like calling someone "an intellectual" today, which can be a compliment or insult depending on what you think of what their studies have taught them. But the term did not have its current popular meaning or scope, and "Gnosticism" as a noun is an English neologism of the 17th century (per philosopher Henry More), as is well known.

 

[DBT]

Christianity appears to have split into several groups quite early. The elements of Gnosticism were probably present quite early, but the believers did not call themselves Gnostics.

Not exactly true; the term gnostikos meant "learned" or "knowledgeable", and was used by friends and foes to describe teachers of Christian doctrine throughout the first three centuries of the church. Implication being something like calling someone "an intellectual" today, which can be a compliment or insult depending on what you think of what their studies have taught them. But the term did not have its current popular meaning or scope, and "Gnosticism" as a noun is an English neologism of the 17th century (per philosopher Henry More), as is well known.

Rather than the meaning of the word, I meant the development of an 'Gnostic' organization with a set of teachings and a well defined theology.

''Gnosticism (after gnôsis, the Greek word for “knowledge” or “insight”) is the name given to a loosely organized religious and philosophical movement that flourished in the first and second centuries CE. The exact origin(s) of this school of thought cannot be traced, although it is possible to locate influences or sources as far back as the second and first centuries BCE, such as the early treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Jewish Apocalyptic writings, and especially Platonic philosophy and the Hebrew Scriptures themselves.

In spite of the diverse nature of the various Gnostic sects and teachers, certain fundamental elements serve to bind these groups together under the loose heading of “Gnosticism” or “Gnosis.” Chief among these elements is a certain manner of “anti-cosmic world rejection” that has often been mistaken for mere dualism. According to the Gnostics, this world, the material cosmos, is the result of a primordial error on the part of a supra-cosmic, supremely divine being, usually called Sophia (Wisdom) or simply the Logos. This being is described as the final emanation of a divine hierarchy, called the Plêrôma or “Fullness,” at the head of which resides the supreme God, the One beyond Being. The error of Sophia, which is usually identified as a reckless desire to know the transcendent God, leads to the hypostatization of her desire in the form of a semi-divine and essentially ignorant creature known as the Demiurge (Greek: dêmiourgos, “craftsman”), or Ialdabaoth, who is responsible for the formation of the material cosmos.''

 

[Politesse]

Christianity appears to have split into several groups quite early. The elements of Gnosticism were probably present quite early, but the believers did not call themselves Gnostics.

Not exactly true; the term gnostikos meant "learned" or "knowledgeable", and was used by friends and foes to describe teachers of Christian doctrine throughout the first three centuries of the church. Implication being something like calling someone "an intellectual" today, which can be a compliment or insult depending on what you think of what their studies have taught them. But the term did not have its current popular meaning or scope, and "Gnosticism" as a noun is an English neologism of the 17th century (per philosopher Henry More), as is well known.

Rather than the meaning of the word, I meant the development of an 'Gnostic' organization with a set of teachings and a well defined theology.

''Gnosticism (after gnôsis, the Greek word for “knowledge” or “insight”) is the name given to a loosely organized religious and philosophical movement that flourished in the first and second centuries CE. The exact origin(s) of this school of thought cannot be traced, although it is possible to locate influences or sources as far back as the second and first centuries BCE, such as the early treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Jewish Apocalyptic writings, and especially Platonic philosophy and the Hebrew Scriptures themselves.

In spite of the diverse nature of the various Gnostic sects and teachers, certain fundamental elements serve to bind these groups together under the loose heading of “Gnosticism” or “Gnosis.” Chief among these elements is a certain manner of “anti-cosmic world rejection” that has often been mistaken for mere dualism. According to the Gnostics, this world, the material cosmos, is the result of a primordial error on the part of a supra-cosmic, supremely divine being, usually called Sophia (Wisdom) or simply the Logos. This being is described as the final emanation of a divine hierarchy, called the Plêrôma or “Fullness,” at the head of which resides the supreme God, the One beyond Being. The error of Sophia, which is usually identified as a reckless desire to know the transcendent God, leads to the hypostatization of her desire in the form of a semi-divine and essentially ignorant creature known as the Demiurge (Greek: dêmiourgos, “craftsman”), or Ialdabaoth, who is responsible for the formation of the material cosmos.''

Yes, I too can read Wikipedia. And many other actual books. Though it is interesting that what the "open encyclopedia" says on the subject conflicts with what Carrier claims "everyone" believes.

 

[DBT]

Somebody is mistaken. Who is it likely to be?

 

[DrZoidberg]

But researchers do this all the time. The put what looks like random noise and then find metrics to categorise it, to make sense of it. Early Christianity was a godawful mess of various ideas and beliefs. All they agreed on is that it's important that everybody had the correct faith. But what that correct faith was, was all over the place.

Perhaps it's better to talk of flavours of Christianity, based on the regional pagan traditions Christianity blended with as it spread? Because pagan gnosis most definitely was a thing, especially in ancient Egypt. Christianity was arguably created in Alexandria. So it must have had an impact.

 

[Politesse]

Somebody is mistaken. Who is it likely to be?

What do you mean? Mistaken about what?

 

[Politesse]

But researchers do this all the time. The put what looks like random noise and then find metrics to categorise it, to make sense of it. Early Christianity was a godawful mess of various ideas and beliefs. All they agreed on is that it's important that everybody had the correct faith. But what that correct faith was, was all over the place.

Perhaps it's better to talk of flavours of Christianity, based on the regional pagan traditions Christianity blended with as it spread? Because pagan gnosis most definitely was a thing, especially in ancient Egypt. Christianity was arguably created in Alexandria. So it must have had an impact.

If Gnosticism is a blend with something, it's urban Neo-Platonism, not regional pagan traditions, per se.

 

[DBT]

Somebody is mistaken. Who is it likely to be?

What do you mean? Mistaken about what?

What you said: "what the "open encyclopedia" says on the subject conflicts with what Carrier claims "everyone" believes."

If there is a conflict, there is a contradiction. If one is right, the other must be wrong