Apocryphote of the Day: 8-9-08

Jesus said, "Place your treasures in heaven, for the heart of a person is where his treasure is."

Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Zuhd, p. 95 (no. 313) (The Muslim Jesus)

Apocryphote of the Day: 8-6-08

Indeed this path of great commandments leads to the house of the Lord and enters into his bridal chamber.

Liber Graduum 19.36 (fourth century Syrian church handbook)

Apocryphote of the Day: 8-5-08

"You will clothe yourselves in light and enter the bridal chamber.

Dialogue of the Savior 50 (second century Syrian Christian text)

Commentary: Today is my eighth wedding anniversary and so I post this in celebration of one of the most wonderful days of my life.

Jesus, the Apostles and the Zodiac

As I finish writing my Codex Judas Congress paper for the forthcoming volume, I have become interested in ancient depictions of the apostles as the Zodiac signs. The substitution of the patriarchs and also the apostles was not uncommon in ancient Judaism and Christianity. In Christianity, the idea was that once baptized, you were no longer ruled by the old Zodiac signs, but you were reborn and had a new fate controlled by the apostles (=church?). The Zodiac was a powerful image, even found in religious buildings like this sixth century synagogue.

If you know of any ancient art depicting especially the disciples substituting for the Zodiac signs, please share this in the comments, and I'll try to post this information.

6th c., Zodiac on synagogue floor of Beit Alpha, Beit She'an Valley.

Apocryphote of the Day: 8-3-08

So what else is there to name it apart from "God," since it is everything. Even if it is given numberless names, they are spoken simply as a reference to it, since it transcends every word, every voice, every intellect, every thing, and (even) every silence.

Tripartite Tractate 129.15-25 (Valentinian late second century text)


Mosaic: third century, Vatican grottoe under St. Peter's Basilica, tomb of the Julii, depicting Christ (?) as the sun-god Helios or Sol Invictus riding in his chariot.

Apocryphote of the Day: 7-31-08

Jesus said, "Gaze upon the Living One while you are alive, in case you die and then seek to see him, and you will not be able to see (him)."

Gospel of Thomas 59


Illustration by Hildegard von Bingen

Accommodation to society in Gnosticism

I have been working on a little-known text, the Paraphrase of Shem, while doing research for an article I'm writing called "After the Gospel of Judas: Reassessing what we have known to be true about Cain and Judas." What has struck home for me about this text is just how "weird" it is to modern readers, myself included, yet how "advanced" it must have been at the time it was written.

This text is what I'm calling "wombic Gnosticism" since it relies on a mythology of three divine principles and a Womb which births everything - angels, demons, the cosmos. The text is very erotic, with sexual images everywhere, used to explain how this cosmos came into being.

What is so fascinating about this text is that its mythology is based on second century scientific knowledge about embryology. What the author is doing is taking the most advanced scientific knowledge about conception and the formation of embryos and he is using it to explain religious questions. This is a person who was on the cutting edge of science and religion in the second century.

So the Gnostics appear to me to be the ones who were trying to combine "secular" knowledge of the second century - whether it be middle Platonic philosophy or Soranus' embryology - with Judaism and Christianity. In sociological terms this is interesting because what it means is that they were not forming sects or cults. Rather they were taking a religious "sect" (i.e. Christianity) which was defining itself by removing itself from society's ways, and reforming it so that it was more friendly to society, so it fit in to society's ways. This is a tendency that sociologists track. Often sects and cults define themselves against society. But overtime, this erodes and there are people within the movement that want to belong to society again. So the movement is reformed. This appears to me to be what was happening with the ancient Gnostics.

At any rate, this is a topic that I am collecting evidence for to write another paper about the origins and growth of Gnosticism.

Apocryphote of the Day: 7-30-08

Cast you anxiety on God alone.
Do not become desirous of gold and silver which are profitless,
but clothe yourself with wisdom like a robe,
put knowledge on yourself like a crown,
and be seated upon a throne of perception...
For a foolish person usually puts on folly like a robe,
and like a garment of sorrow,
he puts on shame.
He crowns himself in ignorance
and takes his seat upon a throne of nescience.
For since he lacks reason,
he leads only himself astray,
for he is guided by ignorance.

Teachings of Silvanus 89.15-90.2 (second century Alexandrian text, containing many Jewish-Christian traditions)

Sculpture is the Throne of Wisdom 1280-1300, Northeast Spain, The Cloisters, New York City

Those exclusive Gnostics?!

The Gnostics have been characterized as elitists and exclusivists - a characterization begun by the church fathers and kept in our common knowledge about what Gnostics are supposed to be. But were they?

This is a good question and since I've been dealing with all the children of Eve texts lately, I have had to re-evaluate this common knowledge. Yes, the texts say that the Sethians thought they were the carefully preserved race of Seth, that they even had a heavenly pre-existence. There were other races descended from Eve's other children, but the seed of Seth was elect.

Now this sounds elitist and exclusive at first glance. Until you ask the question, how do you become a Sethian? The answer is that you convert. In other words the Sethians, like the Valentinians, thought that your response to the religious message - i.e. you choose to become one of us - is what signaled that you were an elect. Certainly the Valentinians at least were concerned about proper sex so that an elect might be conceived, but one only knew if the child was elect if the child responded instantly in a positive way to the Valentinian message.

I haven't figured out how the Mandaean (modern Gnostics) notion that only children born to Mandaean fathers and mothers could be Mandaean, but I imagine that this was a later development and had to do with social issues. As the community moved and settled into new locations, intermarriage was probably a natural response to keep the faith "pure".

At any rate, the ancient Gnostic Christians look to be every bit as much like any other Christian tradition at the time. If you converted, you became part of the saved. If not, you were doomed. They were no more elitist or exclusive in terms of salvation than the standard Christians in that period (or many Christians today).

Apoocryphote of the Day: 7-29-08

Jesus said to the apostles: "When you strip off what is corrupted, then you will become radiant bodies in the midst of human mortals."

The Letter of Peter to Philip 137.6-9 (Gnostic Christian text; third century?)

Who was in Noah's Ark? A Gnostic perspective

Since many of us are familiar with Christian traditions that have "exclusives" on knowledge and on hermeneutics - i.e. there are few acceptable ways (usually only one) interpret any given scriptural passage according to most churches today - it is sometimes difficult for us when we confront ancient materials to face the huge (and often contradictory) variety of explanations of given scriptures. This is even the case in the study of the gnostic literature, where I have seen us more than once want to talk about "the" Valentinian or "the" Sethian interpretation of a scripture. If a new text doesn't read that scripture in our pre-determined Valentinian or Sethian way, than it can't be Valentinian or it can't be Sethian.

This is dangerous business indeed, because we are assuming that the ancient gnostic Christians had exclusive interpretations of passages. My reading of the gnostic literature reveals to me that this was not the case. That any given tradition - be it Valentinian or Sethian or whatever - had a wide range of acceptable hermeneutical possibilities for any given scripture. And that a particular community in fact may have held contradictory views comfortably.

The gnostic literature isn't about exclusive views as many of us have been taught. The gnostic literature is about uncovering a range of subversive interpretations of scriptures (that is, reading meanings out of the scripture that were not the traditional acceptable interpretations). Both the knowledge of the scripture and the manner of interpretation reminds me more of rabbis arguing and writing midrash, than it does Christian teachers trained in Hellenistic philosophy and apologetics trying to persuade a reader to "the" right view.

I have been studying carefully the Sethian exegesis of the flood story and the Sodom story, and I am finding that their literature doesn't have a consensus view, other than an agreement that the flood story and the Sodom story was about the rescue of the children of Seth from the wrath of the biblical god. But what actually happened and who belonged to who and who tricked who, etc., are all up in the air as possible ways to read the story.

Noah can be good in one text, and bad in another. Was he righteous, serving the supreme God, or the demiurge, the lower biblical god? Who was "hidden in the ark" (cf. 1 Enoch 10.2). In the Apocryphon of John, Noah is an enlightened gnostic (Epinoia comes to his rescue and gives him gnosis) and he and the children of Seth are hidden in a luminous cloud. So the children of Seth are directly his ancestors. But in the Hypostasis of the Archons, Noah is the father of non-Gnostic Jews and Christians, while the children of Seth are traced only through Norea the daughter of Eve. Noah serves Ialdabaoth. So when Norea wants to join Noah in the ark, he refuses her, so she sets it on fire and destroys it. Noah has to make it a second time. Norea is rescued by the angel Eleleth. In the Apocalypse of Adam, angels transport the children of Seth to the light realms where they live until they can be transported back after the flood and join Noah's descendants tricking the Demiurge.

The gnostic writers were not forging an exclusive consensus view on scripture. What they were doing was acting like rabbis, exploring many possibilities, while trying to uncover the hidden meaning of the scripture. It appears that these communities thrived on hermeneutical problems and a wide range of solutions.

Illustration from medieval illuminated bible: Jean Bondol, Bible historial. Paris, 1372.

Apocryphote of the Day: 7-28-08

The kind of person who can be saved is the one who seeks the self and the intellect. How much power this person has!...whenever this person [wants], he parts from all matters and withdraws into himself. For this person becomes divine, having withdrawn into god.

Zostrianos 44.1-4, 17-22 (third century Sethian texts)

Apocryphote of the Day: 7-26-08

Jesus said, "That I may redeem you from death and annihilation, I will give you what you have not seen with the eye nor heard with the ears nor grasped with the hand."

Turfan Manichaean Fragment M 789

Baylor Board fires university's president

Today the Houston Chronicle reported on the goings-on at Baylor.

Baylor University's board of regents fired the Baptist school's president on Thursday, saying they had lost confidence in his ability to "unite various Baylor constituencies."

John M. Lilley, on the job less than three years, rejected an offer to serve out his five-year contract as regents searched for a replacement.

Lilley's relatively brief tenure was marked by disputes over tenure and even over the university's logo. But how best to achieve Baylor's goal of becoming a major research university without sacrificing its strong Christian character appears to have been an issue, as well.

More HERE

I do not have inside information about this firing, but from what I have read (the written news report was more detailed than this on-line version seems to be!), it appears to me that Baylor has a dual agenda. By 2012 it wants to be a top-tier research institution, but it also wants to be a faith institution.

To become a top-tier research university, drastic things have to happen in an institution, and one of them is secularization and a move to reward research above teaching in the tenure process. Apparently Lilley denied a dozen faculty tenure because he felt that their research contributions were not up to these standards, while the promotion and tenure committee disagreed. Teaching must come first. What this represents to me is not a call to rid of tenure, but a call to raise the bar in terms of research at a university whose goal is to enter the top-tier.

I think what we are witnessing is just the kind of conflict that can be expected when such a goal is put into place, especially at a faith-based university. There will be resistance to what needs to be done to meet such a goal, especially among those faculty who have devoted their lives to teaching rather than research, and who feel that the faith of the institution is threatened. I can't imagine that the next president is going to have it any easier.

I for one hope that Baylor sticks to their plan to move the university into the top-tier of research institutions.

UPDATE: Rebecca Lesses left this comment which is very good so I have moved it here to the main text.

Without knowing anything about this particular case, it seems to me that there is not only a conflict over the university's faith identity, but over the expectations for faculty trying to gain tenure. If they were hired and were explicitly told that teaching was more important than research, and poured their energy into improving their teaching, then I believe it is extremely unfair to those faculty members to deny them tenure on the basis of a requirement they were not informed of at an early stage of their employment at Baylor. It seems to me that this sort of change has to be introduced slowly, over a period of several years, so that incoming faculty know what the expectations are that they must fulfill. I can see why the tenure and promotion committee disagreed with the president, if this is something that he did in only three years. I teach at an institution that places a higher priority on teaching than research in gaining tenure. If over the period of three years a dozen junior faculty were denied tenure by the president because they didn't have sufficient publications, there would be howls of protest.

Apocryphote of the Day: 7-25-08

Jesus said, "Come to me, all who labor," that is, you who are seeking the truth and not finding it. And also he said, "My sheep hear my voice." And also, "Seek and find," since the truth does not lie on the surface.

Pseudo-Clementines, Homily 3.53 (third century; Syrian text that contains old traditions from Jerusalem)

Commentary: Even though this esoteric perspective was quite common in early Christianity, I think that this comment on Jesus' sayings was the type of perspective that the Sethian authors of the Gospel of Judas would have agreed with whole-heartily, and which formed the basis for their ability to rewrite the Judas story in the way they did. For them, the truth about Judas was not on the surface. It was subversive and had to be revealed.

Codex Sinaiticus maybe tomorrow?

Well if you want to see the Codex Sinaiticus on line, you may have to wait until tomorrow. There are over 100,000 viewers right now, and the system can't support any more. Who says that people aren't interested in ancient manuscripts?! HERE is the link. I will keep it on my sidebar under Internet Resources too.

Robin Parry's new blog and review of Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas

Robin Parry has started his own blog on theological musings called "Theological Scribbles." Welcome to the blog world! He is the editor for Pasternoster, a theological press in the UK. His says that his blog is his own, not affiliated with the press he runs.

I learned about his blog because several people have written me with a link to a review that he posted of my book, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas. His review is very kind! He writes:

Whilst I have read the enigmatic, so-called 'Gospel' of Thomas I have not read many books about it. It is most certainly a topic WAY out of my zone of knowledge. But one of the books that I did read I found to be absolutely exhilarating. It was April D. DeConnick's Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas: A History of the Gospel and its Growth (T&T CLark, 2005).

I love the sheer iconoclasm of her work. Almost everyone seems to think that Thomas was an early, non-eschatological document from a proto-Gnostic Christian group that saw Jesus in the mode of a philosophical Sage. But DeConnick says, in brief, "Rubbish! It is rooted in the mission of the early Jerusalem Church and, in its earliest versions, it was thoroughly eschatological!"

Continued HERE

Stephan Witetschek's review of The Thirteenth Apostle

HERE is a link to the RBL review by Stephen Witetschek of my book, The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says.

I want to say a few words in response because he raises a couple of questions. First he raises the question of this book's audience. This book was written for a broad general audience. Its title was created for that audience by my publisher. I wanted to call it something entirely different, but was vetoed, and with good reason. A book's title has to capture the thesis while also being of interest to the audience you hope will read want to read it.

Second, my academic work, upon which this book is based, contains many more details (as it should), details that will only be of interest to other scholars. These academic articles are just now beginning to see the light of day in terms of publishing. Why the lag time? Because academic presses take FOREVER to move articles through the process of publication. What is now being published on the Gospel of Judas in academic venues is already outdated, having been written in mid-2006! This is one of the reasons why I published The Thirteenth Apostle. I felt that I needed to get the information out in a timely manner to the public because I felt we were wrongly informed about what this gospel really says.

Third, the translation that I was criticizing was the original English translation, not the French.

Fourth, the book was in press long before The Critical Edition by the National Geographic team was released, an edition that cleaned up some of the problems in the original release. The NGS has since also released a new popular edition - the second edition of The Gospel of Judas - in which the clean-up work continues. The areas that were modified overlap with the areas of my criticisms, as well as the criticisms of other scholars. There wouldn't be any reason for concern IF these problems were not crucial spots in the texts for interpretation. But they are. So we need to address them, which is what I did and continue to do.

Fifth, I was surprised to read in the review Witetschek's statement that "a question remains that DeConick's book does not answer: If Judas is such a demonic villain in this text, why is he at the same time the hero of the text?" I wonder why my academic reviewer missed the main point of the book which my public reviewers articulate clearly? The point of my book: Judas isn't a hero in this text. He is a villian who learns about his fate from Jesus in a gnostic parody of the apostolic church. Here are some of the public reviewers' remarks taken right off the Amazon website:

Neil Godfrey
"For most of us who have read the National Geographic translation of the Gospel of Judas, be prepared for a radical re-think of what we have read there. The National Geographic translation depicts Judas as the only true saint; DeConick's, as the arch demon himself -- or at least destined to join with him in the end. Which immediately raises the question: Why would a gospel make the central character a demon? DeConick shows how the apparent structure and thematic development of the gospel aligns it with an agenda opposing that Christianity that traced its genealogy back to the Twelve Apostles...the Gospel of Judas was a parody and attack on apostolic Christianity and its doctrine of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus."

Spinozanator
"Judas, the good guy? No, indeed! He is even worse than previously thought. A closer translation and a thorough knowledge of gnostic mythology, derived partially from Plato, shows him to be a secret agent of the devil. The Gospel of Judas is a parody, written by someone from the Sethian subgroup of Gnostic Christians - to make mainstream Christians of the second century look asinine for relying on a demon ruler (Judas) and his minions (the twelve) for their teachings and practices. A more specific goal of the Gospel of Judas, according to DeConick, is to blast the doctrine of atonement and the effectiveness of the eucharist, on account of Judas's involvement."

Steve Esser
"According to DeConick, while Judas does have greater understanding than the other apostles (who are completely misguided), he is nonetheless a doomed and (literally) demonic figure. So while the text is still very much in opposition to apostolic Christianity (indeed she views it as a parody of sorts), the figure of Judas is still to be seen as a bad guy, not the good guy put forth by the National Geographic team."

Apocryphote of the Day: 7-23-08

"I left father and mother and brother and sister.
I became a stranger because of your Name.
I took up my cross. I followed you.
I left the things of the body for the things if the Spirit.
I despised the glory of the world because of your glory which does not pass away."

Manichaean Psalm-Book 175.25-30

Texas grand jury indicts polygamist sect members

This is the headline on the front page of the Houston Chronicle this morning. Here is the story:

ELDORADO, Texas — A Texas grand jury indicted polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs and four of his followers Tuesday on charges of felony sexual assault of a child. Another was indicted for failing to report child abuse.

Attorney General Greg Abbott said the five men are charged with one count of sexually assaulting girls under age 17. One of them, but not the 52-year-old Jeffs, faces an additional charge of bigamy.

Abbott said a sixth member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is charged with three counts of failure to report child abuse.

Jeffs, already convicted of being accomplice to rape in Utah and awaiting trial in Arizona on other charges related to underage marriages, is accused of assaulting a girl in Texas in January 2005, according to the indictment issued Tuesday.

"Our investigation in this matter is not concluded," said Abbott, whose office is acting as the special prosecutor in the case.

MORE HERE