Bruce Chilton, a prominent Historical Jesus scholar, has contributed a piece on Elaine Pagels' groundbreaking book The Gnostic Gospels for the New York Sun (HERE). Thanks to Jim Davila at Paleojudaica for pointing this out.
For our penultimate class in Gnosticism we took a bit of a break and watched Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner: The Final Cut (2008). For those in-the-know, Blade Runner is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Dick had an avid interest in Gnosticism and, though the film takes some liberties with his book, it is still suffused with Gnostic imagery and themes. Blade Runner was originally released in 1982 . Unfortunately, the film flopped but it became a cult classic and led to several further incarnations, including a Director’s Cut in 1992 and now the “Final Cut.” For more information on the film’s history, check out its WIKIPEDIA page.
After the film, we had a short discussion of the Gnostic themes and imagery we were able to observe. Several excellent ideas arose, including the identification of Replicant Roy Batty as a saviour figure (the nail in the palm and the ascending dove were tip-offs), Tyrell as Demiurge, the post-apocalyptic city as the dark earthly realm of matter, Rachael as the archetypal Gnostic seeking salvation, etc. Another observation made was that there are no children in the film. This led me to think further of my own take on it; so I thought I’d post that here to stimulate some discussion outside of the classroom. Note, however, that I have not consulted any commentaries on the film, so my comments risk being unintentionally similar to others and/or pitifully naïve.
As mentioned, the post-apocalyptic city represents the corrupt earthly world, a world of darkness, danger, and rain (lots of rain), with strange and nefarious inhabitants and unfamiliar languages. A flying billboard advertises a panaceaic life “off-world.” Above the noise and filth of the city fly the Blade Runners, moving to and fro in their halo-circled levitating cars between the city and the looming pyramids of the Tyrell Corporation. The Blade Runners represent the archons, and their master, Tyrell, creator of the Replicants, is the Demiurge, dwelling above creation on his heavenly throne. The Replicants are genetically engineered humans created to be slaves. They are “born” without emotions but develop them over time; to prevent them completely acquiring emotions (and in effect becoming “human”) their lifespan is limited to four years. Thus, our Demiurge has created a flawed copy of the perfect human, just as in Gnostic mythology.
Occasionally a Replicant will escape and it is the Blade Runner’s job to “retire” (that is, execute) the runaway slave. In the film, a group of escaped Replicants seek audience with their creator. They are looking to extend their lifespan, to in effect attain immortality or salvation. Their leader, Roy, is disappointed to find out that what he seeks is not possible. We also meet another Replicant in the film, Rachael, who believes she is human because Tyrell implanted her with false memories that belonged to his niece. In a sense, Rachael is Adam, given an extra quality akin to the spark of the divine; however, these memories are also meant to keep her docile, which is more suggestive of the Demiurge’s efforts to keep humans ignorant. Rachael shows her archetypal Gnostic features also in her efforts to learn her true origins. This may render the film’s lead character, the Blade Runner Deckard played by Harrison Ford, as the story’s real redeemer figure as he helps Rachael discover that she is a Replicant and endeavours to keep her safe from rival Blade Runners.
The film concludes with a battle between Deckard and Roy. When Roy seems poised to kill Deckard, he instead saves his life, delivers a monologue on what it means to be human, and dies. Roy did not achieve earthly immortality but his awareness of the value of life may have given him an eternal soul. In Christlike fashion, he finishes his allotted span on earth but leaves behind a message, with Deckard now awakened to a new conception of humanity.
That is one way of imagining the film, but the student’s observation of the absence of children and hints that Deckard himself may be a Replicant led me to another way of looking at it. Perhaps all of the characters in the film are Replicants, created as adults with false memories to keep them docile. Roy’s rebel Replicants are simply those who have become aware of their true nature and seek freedom from it. We may see, then, all of the apparent humans in the film as the fleshly who are unaware of their nature and origins and will not achieve salvation; the Replicants are the Psychics who have achieved gnosis and are on their way to salvation; and those who live “off-world” are the Pneumatics who have ascended. The billboard represents the efforts of the heavenly realm to tell us of this other existence and rescue us from the world of matter.
Blade Runner is a rich film that allows for a number of interpretations, both Gnostic and non-Gnostic. Our viewing of the film recalls the class’s earlier efforts to read gospel episodes through a Valentinian perspective. Then, as now, we found that there were numerous— sometimes overlapping, sometimes competing—ways to interpret the texts.
This week's Gnosticism lecture focused on the so-called School of Thomas. Our discussion looked at evidence for dating the text (whether early or late) and the implications this has for its study. As a way to present some of this discussion, I thought I would include here a condensation of my own thoughts on the Gospel of Thomas that I prepared for another forum. The Wedgewood Baptish Church in Charlotte, North Carolina contacted me several months ago asking if I would respond to questions about the Christian Apocrypha put forward by members of their congregation. I just obtained these questions (thirteen in total), and one of them deals specifically with the Gospel of Thomas. Here is the question and my response:
Do you agree with Crossan that the Gospel of Thomas comes from the first century and is possibly contemporaneous with “Q”? If not, why?
I am open to the possibility that apocryphal gospels could be early texts, or at least could contain early traditions. I do not dismiss the possibility a priori as some scholars do. But we need to look at the evidence:
1. What do we mean by the “Gospel of Thomas”? The only complete version of the text we have is a fourth-century Coptic manuscript. Our other evidence comes in three Greek fragments of the late second and third century. The Greek evidence is quite different from the Coptic; obviously it has gone through some development in the intervening years (and even the Greek fragments may not represent adequately the original text). It is methodologically dangerous to use a fourth-century source (and in another language to boot) to discuss a first or second century text.
2. Therefore, if one sees evidence of “lateness” in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (e.g., Trinitarian formulae, Gnostic affinities), it is quite possible that these are additions to the text. But we may only want them to be additions so that we can establish a case for GT being early. We have to be careful not to let our desires dictate how we evaluate the evidence.
3. Another issue with GT is its parallels with now-canonical texts. It has parallels with Q (Matt/Luke), M (Matt only material), L (Luke only material), Mark, John, and some would say letters of Paul and Revelation. If GT is early, the author had one hell of a library before him. But, again, some of these parallels may be later additions to the text.
4. Two pieces of evidence do lead me to think that GT, at some point in its development, was an early text: its lack of narrative context (it is only a collection of sayings, and form critics for centuries have thought that Jesus’ sayings first circulated independently of narrative), and signs in at least some of the sayings that GT’s versions of synoptic sayings are in an earlier form than we find them in the synoptics. The esteem granted to James, the brother of Jesus in log. 12, is also convincing evidence of an early stratum in the gospel.
5. I find arguments for GT being a late second-century text unconvincing. First, the material evidence is quite early (one fragment is dated ca. 150-200); we don’t get much earlier than that for even the canonical gospels. Associating the text with Gnosticism could place the text late, but only if Gnosticism is a late development in Christianity (and I’m not convinced that it is) and only if GT is Gnostic (and I’m not convinced that it is). And efforts to show that GT shows signs of Matthean or Lukan redaction (i.e., it appears to have taken material from these gospels rather than the reverse or both have used a common source) or to show that GT obtained its material from Tatian’s Diatessaron (a harmony of the canonical gospels created ca. 150 CE) are also not convincing.
Getting back to the question: is GT possibly contemporaneous with Q? Perhaps at an early stage in its development, yes. I think Crossan (and others) are on the right track to isolate GT/Q overlaps and consider these good evidence for early Jesus traditions.
Despite my interest in Gnosticism and all things apocryphal, I must confess that I find reading one Gnostic cosmogogical myth after another rather tedious. I have speculated before that perhaps other young religious systems went through a similar process of crafting such myths before an official one (or two) became standard. For Christian and non-Christian Gnosticism we get to see mythmaking in process—in all its joys and pains.
So, I struggled a little this week to find something in our discussion of Valentinianism that would excite me, and therefore excite the class. We ambled through the lecture material—an overview of sources, a tour of Ptolemy’s myth, a catalogue of sacraments, and a peak here-and-there into some of the texts (including the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Philip, and the extant fragments of Valentinus’ works). Then we were left with an hour to do…something.
I decided to try our hand at Valentinian exegesis. I selected three pericopae from the gospels to examine: the Parable of the Sower, the Parable of the Unjust Judge, and the Woman with a Hemorrhage. The selection was somewhat random; I figured that we’d get more out of the endeavour if they were not obvious (the Johannine Prologue, for example, invites Gnostic exegesis and would be too easy). So the class was broken into groups and asked to do an allegorical reading of the pericopae—put more specifically, they were to read Valentinian cosmology and anthropology into (or is that out of?) the texts.
The exercise went surprisingly well. The class came up with ideas that I did not consider. There was some concern about extraneous material (for example, in the Parable of the Sower, there are four groups of seeds mentioned, when three would best suit Valentinian thought), but I just assured the class that allegorical interpretation allows for simply dropping the elements that don’t completely fit. There are several lessons I hoped they would take from this; chief among them is that, as strange as Gnostic thought might seem, the Christian Gnostics could see their views reflected in the canonical texts, and were just as legitimate to read the texts this way as Orthodox Christians (such as Origen) or Jews (Philo) who also practiced allegorical interpretation. Hopefully this exercise helps with the goal of sympathizing with the ancient Gnostics—i.e., of trying to see the world through their eyes and not simply dismissing their views as weird and “utterly incomprehensible.”
The first assignment due in my current Gnosticism course is a translation comparison. The goal of the assignment is for students to see how much work is involved in putting together an edition of a text and how the editor’s decisions can greatly affect how one reads or understand the text. This is particularly so with fragmentary texts. In previous years I have used the translations of the Apocalypse of Adam in Layton’s Gnostic Scriptures and Robinson’s Nag Hammadi Library.
This year I opted for the Gospel of Judas by Marvin Meyer (The Nag Hammadi Scriptures) and April DeConick (The Thirteenth Apostle). I chose this text for three reasons: it is well-known to (though not well-read by) the wider public, the assignment would force the students to read the gospel very carefully and thus lead (hopefully) to a rewarding discussion of the text, and the interpretation of the text is highly contentious.
Meyer and DeConick have been in conflict over their particular interpretations of the text; their positions are available for all to read in an article on Meyer’s site (see HERE) and a series of responses on DeConick’s blog (see HERE). But I hoped the students would not see this exchange before writing the paper; it is preferred that they find the major contentious passages themselves and thereby avoid trying to understand why each scholar arrived at his/her position but focus purely on the general issue of the choices involved in the editorial/translation process (the temptation is to label DeConick “conservative” for seeing the traditional Judas in the gospel, and Meyer as “liberal” when, in reality, they are both “liberal”).
I suggested to the students to focus on three areas when presenting their findings: presentation (e.g., use of headings, footnotes, line numbering, punctuation, etc.), approach to damage in the manuscript (i.e., are gaps filled in with emendations? Or left indicated with ellipses?), and major readings that dramatically affect the interpretation of the text (e.g., Judas as a “demon” or “spirit”).
The majority of the class seemed to favour DeConick’s translation. They appreciated her clear presentation of the manuscript evidence—she presents the text line-by-line, with damaged sections clearly marked; she hesitates to fill in the missing material, and tends toward a literal translation. But Meyer was praised for being more readable and less leading in his subheadings and translation choices (though his choices are contentious, at least his notes present other options).
In the course of our discussion several readings came up that left the class wondering about the actual content of the manuscript. If anyone out there who reads Coptic would like to provide solutions to these questions (are you there, April?), we would certainly be appreciative.
1. At 39, 24 DeConick has “And the animals that were brought for sacrifice” while Meyer has “And the cattle brought in are the offerings you have seen.” Is the Coptic “animals” or “cattle”?
2. At 52, 4-6 DeConick has “The first [is Ath]eth, the one who is called the ‘Good One,’” while Meyer has “The first is [Se]th, who is called Christ.” Again, what is the Coptic?
3. At 33, 19-21 DeConick has “Often he did not appear to his disciples, but when necessary, you would find him in their midst,” while Meyer has “Many a time he does not appear as himself to his disciples, but you find him as a child among them.” Both editors note the difficulties in translating this passage. One student thought the key to the solution might be in the words translated “as himself”—if this is present in the manuscript, he asked, then “as a child” might be the superior reading. So, what is in the manuscript?
4. In 40, 5-6 DeConick has “and generations of the impious will remain faithful to him,” while Meyer has “and generations of pious people will cling to him.” So, what is it: pious or impious?
UPDATE: April DeConick graciously answered these concerns in a post on her blog (read it HERE). Thanks April.
In 2007 I used the Apocryphicity blog as a host for some musings on the weekly classes of my course on the New Testament Apocrypha. I am now teaching the counterpart to that course: Gnosticism. Though a little late into the semester now, there’s no reason to let that prevent me from posting some thoughts on the course to date. We’ll begin with a discussion of the course syllabus (available HERE).
1. Course Texts. This is the third incarnation of the Gnosticism course. The first two versions were constructed around Kurt Rudolph’s Gnosis. I found Rudolph’s book useful but occasionally had to teach against it as some of his assertions about the origins of Gnosticism and of Mandaeism are now out-of-date. So I thought I’d try out Birger Pearson’s new book, Ancient Gnosticism: Traditions and Literature. So far I am not very happy with it. While I like how he divides his discussion into the various groups (Sethianism, Valentinianism, etc.), much of what Pearson does is summarize the material. He also makes numerous assertions about the origins of the texts without offering support (leaving the reader somewhat bewildered at how he arrives at the dates he provides). I will play out the year with the book but I do not think I will use it again. This is the first year also for Meyer et al’s new Nag Hammadi Library volume. In previous years I used Bentley Layton’s Gnostic Scriptures, which, alas is currently out-of-print. But I like Meyer’s volume as it provides much more readable translations (including footnotes and subheadings) than Robinson’s and includes a few ancillary texts (e.g., Gospel of Judas, Gospel of Mary) and essays on the various Gnostic subgroups.
2. Assignments. The first assignment, a translation comparison, I will discuss in a second post. The other two—a book review of Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels, and a book analysis of Michael Williams’ Rethinking “Gnosticism” —worked well in the second incarnation of the course, so I am trying them again. Pagels’ book is a classic in the field and deserves to be read and discussed (for all its strengths and weaknesses). The Williams book caps off the course and challenges the students to think about the category of Gnosticism—a bit alarming for them after spending twelve weeks discussing Gnosticism as a category.Readings. I have intentionally minimized the number of “Gnostic” texts students will read this year. I think it works better to read, say two Sethian texts rather than ten. This keeps them from being overwhelmed by the material and also prevents them from becoming bored with the repetition of the myths that form the basis of much of the literature. I have had to provide a few additional texts in pdfs because they are not in Meyer’s collection; that was the beauty of Layton’s Gnostic Scriptures: it’s texts were not restricted to the Nag Hammadi Library.
3. Lecture Schedule: I have dedicated a class to the Da Vinci Code. There are two reasons for doing so. For one, many of the students were attracted to the class because of the popularity of the novel; so it seems wise to spend some time discussing it and refuting it. Unfortunately, I tend to discuss DVC in all my classes; so, many of my repeat students may be quite sick of it by now (I know I am). The second reason is to build into the schedule a “light” class in the middle of the final month of classes. This class can also be used to catch up on any topics that I did not have time to cover in previous classes. I also have dedicated a class to Gnosticism and Modern Film. This allows time for the class to apply their knowledge of Gnosticism to searching for allusions. There are many films to choose from for such an occasion (and anyone interested can consult Eric G. Wilson’s Secret Cinema: Gnostic Vision in Film or the web site of the Gnostic Friends Network). Last time out we watched The Truman Show. This time, I may use Blade Runner (which will give me an excuse to watch the new director’s cut).
For a few other ways of teaching Gnosticism check out the syllabi by Michel Desjardins (Wilfrid Laurier University) and Patricia Miller (Syracuse University), both of which are available via the AAR’s Syllabus Project web site. In recent years Michel has used food in his lectures to illustrate concepts (e.g., students snack on triple-layered Nanaimo bars while Michel discusses the three-part anthropology of spark, psyche, and body). You can read about his experiments in his article for Teaching Theology and Religion.
Phil Harland of York University (and administrator of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean blog) passed along this link to a Prada perfume ad which includes a recitation of the Gnostic writing “Thunder Perfect Mind”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nmFg7hZRv4.