Gnostic Gospels, Transcript and Tables

T&MP The Gnostic Jesus - Centre Place

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Transcript:

The Historical Jesus and the Disciples' Confusion

(00:02) Our topic this evening is the Gnostic Jesus. We've done several past lectures on Gnosticism and Gnostic texts, including recently when we were in Leon. We talked about uh one of the most important early critics of the Gnostics, Erynaeus of Leon. And we've also done a number of lectures on Jesus. Both the way Jesus is reconstructed academically uh the historical Jesus, the search for the historical Jesus, but also the way different groups um contemporary groups and then later historical groups remember Jesus and

(00:50) understood Jesus. And so not too long ago, we looked at uh how Jesus is understood in Islam. And tonight we will talk about how the Gnostics understand Jesus, the different ways they do. Among the few points of general academic consensus about the historical Jesus, we can say that there are a few basic points that all historians sort of agree about the historical figure.

(01:24) And one of these is that he was executed by the Romans during the governorship of the Roman uh Pontius Pilate. And and so because we know the dates uh the Pontius Pilate uh was in office and we also can do kind of the calculation to find out when there was an appropriate uh Passover time. People have dated uh Jesus execution either to 30 or 33.

(01:54) But essentially we have that idea as a kind of historical point in the timeline that we can actually anchor to. So when we're looking at that crucifixion picture and it's envisioned in artwork uh the last 2,000 years um Jesus crucified is all often portrayed with the beloved disciple which according to Christian tradition is the uh John the beloved along with different women including Mary Jesus' mother and they're pictured then uh at the crucifixion scene and That comes from the description in the Gospel of John

(02:37) which places some of Jesus' female disciples including his mother unnamed in that gospel and one male disciple again unnamed the beloved disciple at the foot of the cross. By contrast to John's account of the crucifixion, the earliest account that we have in the Gospel of Mark has all of the male disciples flee and uh sometimes in some cases even deny that they knew Jesus.

(03:08) Most particularly the story of Peter denying uh that he had been a disciple of Jesus three times. And so in addition to that uh in all the gospels but especially beginning in Mark, the disciples are also portrayed of not really understanding who Jesus was and not expecting that he would be executed. And they also didn't understand why uh if Jesus is the Messiah, why an execution would have happened at all.

(03:40) What's the point of that? How how does that work? And so there is confusion even in the gospels as they are written. And indeed in our earliest texts, Christians have competing views on this. And so um I think most scholars of the historical Jesus um imagine that there were no disciples present at the crucifixion likely uh and therefore um because the disciples were not expecting it and they were themselves in danger of being arrested.

(04:13) So how could the disciples not know? Um as we read the canonical gospels the disciples confusion just seems bizarre. Jesus actually is continuously predicting this outcome. He's telling them that he's going to be killed. He's telling them that he's going to be resurrected. Um and yet, uh as we read the gospel accounts, we can't help but ask ourselves then how dense are these disciples that they are not just listening to even more and more explicit predictions of the outcome and why it has to happen by Jesus. But what I'll

(04:51) say is in terms of the that's certainly how it works in the texts, but this is because the gospels are all written decades after the events and they're already written by Christians who have decided for themselves the answer to this question. So Christian communities had been wrestling with this for decades already by the time the gospels are written.

(05:17) And so those explanations are then put back into the text as um as explanations in Jesus lips and predictions in Gene Jesus lips. All of which are anacronistic. All of which are not um dated to the historical Jesus but to Jesus of the gospels. What's also interesting is how radically different understandings were right out of the gate.

Early Christologies: High vs. Low

(05:44) So, who was Jesus? What does it mean to say that he's the Messiah? That he's the Christ? So, very early on, Christians do not agree on the answers to those questions. and our earliest Christian author who we often cite when we are trying to get back at the historical Jesus, Paul um who met the brother of Jesus and some of the disciples of the historical Jesus but never himself met the historical Jesus in person.

(06:19) He describes a spiritual experience with the risen Christ uh but not meeting the historical Jesus. Paul already develops and expresses a very high christologology even though his writings are happening just 20 years after Jesus execution. So christologology is how Christians talk about what does it mean? What what does Christ's life mean? Who is Christ and so on.

(06:51) And when we talk about a high christologology, we're talking about um Christians who are really emphasizing Jesus divinity. So Jesus as the Lord or Jesus as the only begotten, the one son of God, whereas a lowristologology um more is concerned with Jesus humanity. And so just by just logically um the closer you get in time to when the historical Jesus was alive since when a uh a man was walking around and gathering disciples and teaching, you would think that um that this would develop from a low Christology to a high christologology and that our earliest

(07:36) writings would actually uh have a low christologology. But that isn't the case. We actually have both right from the start, including a fairly high christologology. Not all Christians though in the first century agreed with that high christologology that Paul had. Paul's focus on Jesus as the Christ and on Christ as Lord.

The Jamesian Church and the Role of James

(08:03) In other words, Christ as the um the visible glory of God made manifest. um an idea that henistic Jews like Pho of Alexandria had already uh sort of talked about when he they creating their own sort of philosophical Greek philosophical understanding of um of Jewish monotheism and how do we perceive the creator who is ineffable and unseeable un invisible we're not even supposed to say his name how can we relate to this unknowable creator in the world.

(08:43) Well, through his uh glory or through creation itself and this is uh understood anyway use the word Lord uh in those um for that manifestation or for that reflection or that hypothesis of God which then Paul describes as Christ the risen Christ. So for example uh among the early Christian groups we often talk about the Jamesian or Jacoban church the church that's led by Jesus brothers um as we've seen in previous lectures on that group they seem to have seen Jesus as part of a movement that included many authoritative prophetic martyrs.

(09:30) U prophets whose sealed their testimony um by being killed and those included John the Baptist who was killed by one of the Herodians uh James the brother of Jesus who was killed by um a high priest in Jerusalem and uh and then of course Jesus. In addition to that group, um the author of the Gospel of Mark, who is actually not part of that group and is antagonistic towards that group, emphasize Jesus' humanity throughout his gospel by tr portraying Jesus as really emotional and very very humanlike and often he even just gets angry and

(10:17) sometimes for no reason, which that seems to express a lower christologology. Jesus is not this imp impassible manifestation of a divine man walking around as much in Mark. And so if we look at back back at that Jamesian churchy um the author of the New Testament epistle of Jude um when he's identifying himself and he's probably a pseudopigraphic author but claiming to be Jude um and identifies Jude as a brother of James even though James is the brother of Jesus.

(11:02) And so you would think um that Jude would say James the brother of I'm sorry this is written by Jude the brother of Jesus or maybe even Jude the brother of Jesus and James. Anyway, rather than claiming to be Jesus' brother though, um this author claims to be Jude, brother of James, which may indicate a reverence within this Jacob and church, the Jamesian community, a reverence that they had for James in addition to Jesus and John the Baptist.

(11:33) In another one of these texts that come from this group, the New Testament's epistle of James, uh, which claims to be written by the brother of Jesus. Again, it's probably a pseudopagraphical text, but written in James's name. The author shares teachings where James more or less is quoting, you know, not quoting, he's he's teaching themself as if he was just sharing these teachings.

(12:02) But these are sayings that in the gospels for example would be attributed to Jesus. But in the epistle of James he's not saying Jesus taught us this. It's just James teaching us this. So again this might again indicate a a higher level of authority for uh the person of James within this community. And reverence for James is indicated in the 12th saying of the sayingings gospel Thomas.

(12:31) We're going to talk about this sayings gospel because it also includes a lot of ideas that are identified with Gnostic Christianity. But um many scholars think that there are different layers or different um different components of these sayings that have been gathered together. And this one um wouldn't be from the Gnostic component of it if that's the case.

(12:59) But anyway, let's read it. This is one that is indicating again a a kind of an amazing reverence for the figure of James, the brother of Jesus. The disciples said to Jesus, we read,

"We know that you will depart from us. Who is it who will be great over us?" Jesus said to them, "Wherever you have come, you will go to James the just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.

(13:28) " So this is uh assigning to James the brother of Jesus, James the just um an exalted place in cosmology. You know the heaven and earth have come into being for his sake. Um and uh anyway he's also saying that he's to be Jesus successor. So this may have come again a saying that is coming from the Jamesian community originally that's make made its way into Thomas.

(13:57) We also talked about in addition to the Jamesian community this Markan lowris Christologology the low christologology that we see in the text of the gospel of Mark. And so for example um in the original text of chapter 1 of Mark verses 40-42 Jesus reacts in anger for no particular reason seemingly anyway when a man who um has leprosy just asks Jesus to have his disease healed.

Humanity and Emotion in the Gospel of Mark

(14:33) So we read

there a leper came to him beseeching him and kneeling said to him if you will you can make me clean. Moved with anger Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him I will be clean. And immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean.

So that already just sounds very strange in terms of our probable conception of Jesus that most people have.

(15:00) He doesn't seem like kind of guy who's just moved with anger for no seeming reason anyway. And Christian scribes were also very uncomfortable with this portrayal. And they seem to have corrected the text by replacing the word anger with the word compassion. And so in many translations people will use this later uh version.

(15:23) It will say moved with compassion Jesus stretched out his hand. Um but uh Bart Arman and other scholars make um arguments I think that are very strong for the original for the anger as being the original reading. Um because uh again they they this is when Luke and Matthew are using this phrase they don't have they just leave it out that the whole emotion at all together and they wouldn't delete moved with compassion.

(15:54) Um and uh and Jesus is reacting in anger at several other points in Mark's narrative as well. So he heals somebody um when he's angry in Mark 3:5. So in other words, there's anger and this may be um a special example that Christians later found uh odd and wanted to maybe clean up. So let's just ground ourselves a little in the first century so that we can kind of um see this time period when these early um different competing visions of who Jesus was, you know, from his actual lifetime ministry that we can see at the

(16:37) left hand side of the timeline here where he's maybe, you know, if he died in 30 as opposed to 33, the three years prior to that between his baptism under John the Baptist and his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate uh and then um before him John's uh execution by Herod Antipus and then after him um James's ministry where for a couple decades he is leading uh the church in Jerusalem sometimes called the poor of Jerusalem before his martyrdom and simultaneously um Paul's ministry which occurs first in um the Levant it's called Arabia but

(17:24) anyway probably the area uh kind of the desert area on the outside of Palestine then later in Syria and finally in Anatolia and Greece before the very end of his career when he plans to go to Rome and ultimately Spain but is arrested and killed along the way. So those are the um lifetimes of the historical figures which we have in those blue bars.

(17:50) And we're only starting to get writings, you know, again after Jesus' death. Um while Paul is um disputing uh with his enemies, enemies which in other lectures we have made the case are probably um from the Jamesian church. But in any event, then we start having other writings. So there's possibly as early as the 50s and the 60s uh a saying source which um scholars hypothesize and call Q uh which would then later known to the authors of Matthew and Luke but has subsequently been lost in that same kind of time frame.

(18:33) possibly a source of the sayings uh that later get incorporated into Thomas which goes through much development and um exist uh in its present form in a much later um uh version. Then the earliest and we also have on there possibly the science gospel which is a source hypothetical source for uh the gospel of John and then the gospels that we actually have uh beginning with Mark around the year 70 Matthew Luke and John in the 80s and 90s.

(19:12) Okay. So in that amount of time um from when people had actual contact with the historical Jesus and then all the way up through the middle of the century when people who had known Jesus were still alive. We already are having competing christoologgies both low and high developing and they are being written down then by Christians in the second half of the century towards the end especially.

Visualizing Jesus: From Roman Garb to Diverse Cultures

(19:45) So um just like we don't have any writings from the historical Jesus we don't have any portraits of him or any um descriptions even of his likeness. And so during his own lifetime, he and his followers lacked the importance and wealth to create portraits that survive. And like I say, the texts also don't give descriptions.

(20:12) By the time Christianity um spreads enough and that there is is that it's present among elite people who can pay for uh creating artwork, that's already the end of the 3rd century and into the fourth century. And when that happens, as in this uh portrait of Jesus, one of the earliest really um from Roman Gaul, you can see here that Jesus doesn't look like we would portray him.

(20:39) He doesn't have the beard and he's dressed essentially uh like a Roman, like a Roman philosopher or even a senator. uh and and it's because ancient people have very little historical awareness and so they often then will just picture everybody uh the way they picture themselves. Um this also happens here in a similar a contemporary uh 4th century depiction uh of Jesus again without a beard raising Lazarus.

(21:13) Lazarus is the little little guy on the right in all wrapped up in his shroud. So again, this is Jesus as a Roman. So when Roman portraits occur, they tend to picture Jesus as a contemporary Roman garbed as a a senator or philosopher. Often he has a wand because he is performing um miraculous feats, magic tricks, and that's how it's portrayed artistically.

(21:36) In the earliest pictures, Jesus rarely has a beard, although when he is resurrected as the risen Christ, then he often appears bearded. And so he is a um two versions of this divine man. The divine man who in his lifetime ministry is portrayed as kind of a magic philosopher and then as the risen Christ.

(21:58) He's essentially takes on the the visage or form of Zeus or Jupiter. And the Romans aren't alone in depicting Jesus like themselves throughout history. Um we have medieval Chinese Christian pictures of Jesus where he's dressed Chinese. We have uh medieval um European ones where he's dressed you know like the medieval medieval European times and we have um you know churches African ones for like Africa and so forth.

(22:27) So the modern academic disciplines of history and literary criticism allow scholars to propose various reconstructions of the historical Jesus. And we've talked about this when we've done lectures on that topic. And so the most common um with whom Bartman is a ma major proponent is Jesus as a failed apocalyptic prophet.

(22:54) U another academically defensible portrait is Jesus as a social reformer perhaps akin to what cynic philosophers contemporaneously are doing in the Roman Empire. And this is proposed by um uh by folks like John Dominic Crossen and others. Um or possibly as uh a zealot, a political revolutionary. I I think that this is the least compelling by far, but it's popularized by um what's his name? Resa Yeah, Raa. Anyway, Alan.

(23:34) Anyway, so a person who is not really a a a a specialist on the topic. Yeah. But anyway, but he's a popularizer. So anyway, those are different potential pictures. However, first century Christians did not have access to, you know, the modern academic tools, history, literary criticism, so forth. And they're really not trying to write history.

(24:00) Um the author of Luke is trying to give their gospel a historical veneer but in but they're still have a a different agenda than a historian has. Historians's goal is to um determine what is the most likely thing that happened historically and what is things that are very unlikely to have happened or impossible to have happened.

(24:24) Um, and in fact, all of the evangelists, their goal is instead to convince you that Jesus is the Christ and to convince you to become Christians, which is a different goal. So, like I said, we had a lecture on the Muslim view of Jesus. Um, and in Islam, Jesus is seen as the Messiah. Um, but it's just a different definition of what Messiah means.

(24:51) He's also seen as an incredibly important prophet uh and can do miraculous things. But um Islam is very clear. He is not God in any way or a divine son of God. And so as we saw all the Muslim texts are very late but they may have been heirs to a tradition that was maybe born from an offshoot of the Jamesian church the Ebianites which are um Christians who continued to follow Jewish law and that group seems to have maintained a low christologology.

(25:31) In other words, Jesus is the Messiah, but not that doesn't mean that he's God or the son of God. It means that it's a very particular uh title that uh is important but not um anyway but is separate. They're maintaining a stricter monotheism. So while some early Christians had that lowristologology like I say um defining Jesus messiahship as important but a human prophetic role others uh the protoorthodox community the community that eventually wins out and becomes nine Christianity which most all of Christianity today is descended from

(26:10) those group sought to balance their view of Jesus as both divine and human and this ultimately um gets resolved into the creeds as the Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. Nevertheless, uh they're they're kind of striking the balance on there, the centrists. There were some Christians early on who saw Jesus as being fully divine, who really only seemed human.

Defining Gnosticism and the Concept of Nosis

(26:40) And so, as we've had in several lectures, we call this last group the dosatists from the Greek word doain, which means to seem. So, he only seemed like a human. He only seemed to suffer. He only seemed to die on the cross. He was actually um a divine being sent to us as a savior.

(27:03) Um there is a wide community of uh theologies and christoologies or not community diversity of um of groups that that kind of fit into this category some of whom are gnostic although not all gnostics or dosatists uh and some of which are not gnostic. So no gnosticism does propose higher christoologgies. So in other words, a focus of Jesus as divine.

(27:32) And while some gnostic writings have a dosetic view of Jesus, others do not. In the same way, uh early Christianity generally included a wide diversity of beliefs about Jesus. A wide diversity existed among Christians who have been by their enemies and also by scholars grouped together under the label Gnostic.

(27:58) So our word gnostic comes from the Greek nosticos which means having knowledge and it's not a unlike some of the other names for pjorative names that you have for your enemies. This is not one that I think the Gnostics would particularly dislike. Gnostics because Gnostics did emphasize attaining personal knowledge, knowledge of the true universe as uh the most important thing.

(28:28) That which is essential to salvation. that which essentially frees us in our from our material concerns, our temporal mortal concerns so that we can ex contemplate um the divine and imperishable and understand that we are part of that imperishable realm. So generally um like I say this includes their nosis their knowledge includes the idea that the material universe that we can sense the sensible universe as Plato described it is flawed and probably evil a mistake and that the true universe is the immaterial and imperishable

(29:13) spiritual realm uh what Plato would have called the intellectable realm that the realm that can only be you sensed by our intellect, not by our our our physical senses. So there are competing ideas about gnosticism's origins and I think we'll have to do that in a completely different lecture because we want to go to the gnostic portrait of Jesus.

(29:40) But different scholars have made cases that um thatnosticism emerged out of Judish Jewish mysticism the maraba mysticism. There's also the idea that maybe it is from a Jewish group in Alexandria like Pho who have a kind of hellenistic uh Jewish philosophy or they're interpreting um Jewish scriptures through the lens of Platonism.

(30:09) And other scholars have suggested that there are all kinds of sources within Zoroastrianism, the world religion of the Persians that may have been the source of inspiration fornosticism. And just because people like to throw it into the mix, people wonder is it possible that some Buddhist ideas which seem similar are in fact transmitted uh from India across Persia and across the Middle East to um to the Levant.

(30:40) So ideas that can be labeled as Gnostic are found early on in Christian writings including Paul's letters and also in the Gospel of John, the Janine letters. But um there are also you know Paul is not a gnostic asnosticism uh emerges in its full form when we have a fully gnostic text let's say uh and nor is really the gospel of John in the form that we have it but nevertheless um those texts could still fit within um the universe of gnostics as they might have they might have used or enjoyed them or use them to help develop their

(31:24) ideas depending on exactly how early is emerging within Christianity. So in in contrasting the spiritual realm with the sensible material world, gnostics following Plato frequently made use of the analogy of light. And so as we're just looking at sort of these gnostic um maybe gnostic seeming teachings that are within the gospel of John, the gospel of John makes dozens of references to Jesus as being light.

(32:04) Those include, for example, chapter 8:12, when Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life. And so that would be very that would be very um understandable to anostic. So I am already is a um a saying that equates Jesus with uh with God and also um I am light, you know.

(32:37) So light is this analogy to that even Plato used to the um uh to the imperishable world and if you follow me you'll get out of darkness the material world and you'll have the light of life eternal. So again light leads you to the imperishable. Um and in 12 46 Jesus says I have come into the world as a light so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.

(33:06) So there's plenty more where that came from in the Gospel of John. So the proto orthodox bishop Irenaeus of Leon that we talked about uh when we were visiting Leon a month ago came from a church in Anatolia in Asia Minor what's now Turkey. It was a church that really valued the gospel of John. And Irenaeus as a result of that was the first pro-Orthodox Christian leader or maybe the first early Christian leader altogether to argue that uh Christians should really be using all four gospels that ended up into the New Testament cannon. So Mark, Matthew, Luke, and

(33:50) John. So said that he had kind of had a mystical reasons why he felt that those should all be included. while all of the other contemporary gospels, many of which he was aware of, should be rejected and kept out of the canon. So, Erynaeus also wrote a very lengthy condemnation of uhnosticism, different forms ofnosticism.

(34:16) And um it's possible that he did that in part because he wanted to include the gospel of John in the Orthodox cannon. So contemporary uh contemporaries who uh came from a church let's say that simply used the gospel of Matthew as their gospel and that was for their community the main Christian scripture and they see this gospel of John which portrays Jesus so differently than the gospel of Matthew does and then they see that these gnostics are using quotations from the gospel of John to show a very different kind of Christologology.

(34:57) than what they have. You know, there was always dangerous any gospel that can be used that way. Protoorthodox people want to condemn it and get rid of it and make it sure that it's suppressed so that um they don't have the competition of it. And so, Irenaeus who uh really liked this gospel wanted to maybe rescue it from gnostics.

(35:19) So while some ideas expressed in John accord withnosticism, others don't. And so a significant component of Gnostic writings are creation myths that explain the meaning of life and purpose and the purpose of the universe through a cosmogyny. That is to say, a creation myth. And that that kind of cosmogyny usually includes Plato's idea that there is a craftsman god a demi urge as the name comes to us from the Greek is actually responsible for the material creation as opposed to um the rest. And um this takes the name this

(36:07) demi- urge in some of the gnostic stories uh of the um god yaldaboth or yalt u by contrast the craftsman of the material world in the gospel of John depending on how you interpret it as it's often read anyway is Christ as God's logos. So this follows the Jewish wisdom tradition that equates the word. So God in the beginning of the Genesis story says let there be light.

(36:39) He spokes a word in Genesis with the embodied wisdom Sophia. And so in the wisdom tradition of the book of proverbs uh embodied wisdom Sophia says that she was with God in the creation and helped God in the whole rest of creation. So at the beginning of the gospel of John, we read

in the beginning was the word uh and the word was with God and the word was God.(37:10) He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made and without him nothing was made that has been made.

And so at at first glance anyway, this would seem to be a different um at odds with the uh with the Gnostic understanding since if is since the creation is happening all of the creation is happening through the logos through Christ.

(37:35) On the other hand, as I've thought about it, um it may well be that the Gnostics would argue um when they say all things here, they're not talking about material things because material things aren't even real. So, so it could be that way. So, it could be a contradiction from the most elaborated gnostic cosmogynes, although gnostics, I think, would have uh an apologetic way of recovering this text if they wanted to.

(38:02) So the point here has not been to argue that the gospel of John is a gnostic text but simply to illustrate that there was a great diversity of thought early on among the various Christianities and some components of these earliest traditions could be read in harmony with gnostic theologies. Um the gnostics themselves had diverse different ideas and they also evolved.

The Gnostic Library and the Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel of Truth and Valentinian Theology

(38:29) They also became elaborated and they began to use some of these early Christian texts to inspire their later understanding of the evolution of the Gnostic Christology and cosmology. So because the Gnostics lost out against their protoorthodox rivals um the Christian bishops that ultimately formed the Nyine church under Constantine which later became the state Roman state religion of the Roman Empire.

(39:01) So most of the history throughout most of history the p primary surviving description of gnostic beliefs came from detractors and antagonists people like Irenaeus who were writing books against u gnostics in their various forms. Um there are some and we'll look at them there are some fragments that survived that we had but um the bulk for the bulk of this was true until 1945 when a library of cotices was discovered near Nagamadi Egypt that includes numerous texts written with a gnostic perspective they're not all gnostic but

(39:43) they all have maybe let's say a broad appeal to gnostics so for example one of the texts text is simply a partial reworking of Plato's Republic. So, by no means is the Republic a Gnostic Christian text, but Plato, as I've already mentioned him several times in this lecture, Plato has ideas that um appeal to people who were Gnostics.

(40:08) Um most all of the texts, like I say, then include themes that would be of interest to Gnostic Christians. For scholars today, the most important text recovered at Nakamadi is the gospel of Thomas. This is a saying gospel like the hypothetical Q sayings source but distinct from Q. So scholar, some scholars anyway have argued that um the Gospel of Thomas preserves a distinct tradition of the historical Jesus.

(40:42) And if so, that helps us with our um our multiple attestations. So when we're trying to get back to um what may or may not have happened with uh for the historical figure Jesus, we would like to have um independent traditions all talk about uh the same thing or the more the large larger number of them. So, as soon as the saying's Gospel of Thomas was recovered, um scholars immediately started to wonder about the relationship it had with Q.

(41:18) And some initially hoped that the text might actually be Q. I know some of you who are listeners in the audience really want it to be Q, but this has proved not to be the case. There is um Q has we know about Q because Matthew and Luke are literally dependent on Q uh and Thomas has um versions of sayings that are literarily independent witnesses to the sayings of Jesus.

(41:47) So there are similar materials for many of the Thomas sayings. There are parallel sayings in Q or in methan or Lucan material or in Mark or in other uh quotations from uh the early Christian corpus uh that have parallels with Thomas but they aren't literally dependent on any of those. So it's not like um the author of Thomas had a copy of Q or the author of Thomas had a copy of Matthew or something like that.

(42:20) So the version of Thomas that we have from Nagamadi is a Coptic Egyptian translation of a mostly lost Greek original. We have a couple fragments from uh the Greek. And many of the sayings in the version that we have have Gnostic themes. Many of them have themes that don't relate to nasticism and are maybe even contradictory ofnosticism.

(42:49) Um I argued that that one saying about James the just doesn't seem to fit in with a gnostic worldview. So some scholars have argued that the text is altogether late so maybe in the second century and doesn't have an independent witness for reconstructing the historical Jesus. others who think it's important and does preserve this independent witness.

(43:15) Some of them argue that there are stages in the development and the Gnostic ideas are later additions. Um, and so we have maybe an earlier version that has some connection to the Jamesian church or something like that. Others though see the Gnostic ideas as fairly early like Ela Paggels and would like to use this text to datenosticism to an earlier stage.

(43:42) And so the case can be made for any of those. Um so that's the background that I wanted to give aboutism and the context of some of these texts. And now I want to use five of them to um see what sort of picture of Jesus emerges from the texts. Some of the detractors ofnosticism, including our friend Irenaeus, took all of the views um that are categorized as gnostic, lumped them together, and then when they contradict each other um attackednosticism as self-contradictory.

(44:23) So a less partisan assessment is that there are different differences of opinion and belief among gnostic authors. Um, and it may well be that um, these texts are also not fully gnostic anyway. They may preserve non-nostic um, uh, witnesses as well. So, let's look at the different portraits beginning with uh, the Gospel of Thomas, which has a bunch of Gnostic um, sayings within it, but is not entirely Gnostic.

(44:56) I want to look I'm not going to look specifically at just the Gnostic teachings, but I want to look at the teachings that the Gospel of Thomas has about Jesus. And so it's largely this gospel consists of of sayings attributed to Jesus, but uh and so sometimes Jesus is answering disciples questions or sometimes we have a little dialogue as Jesus is talking to the disciples and they answer and they have a little conversation.

(45:24) But most often the sayings in this gospel are simply in introduced with the phrase Jesus said. And so the collection begins with the preface. These are the hidden words that the living Jesus spoke and Ditimus Judas Thomas wrote them down and he said whoever finds the meaning of these words will not taste death.

(45:52) So, uh, Ditimus, Judas, Thomas. Judas would be the name of this apostle Thomas. Um, where because Ditimus is Greek for twin and Thomas, uh, is Aramaic for twin. And so, the idea is it's Jude the twin, but it's the Apostle Thomas as opposed to the Apostle Judas. So, this already, this first saying equates eternal life.

(46:16) You're not going to taste death. It says if you find meaning within hidden words. So that's a very central gnostic theme. The whole meaning of life and salvation finding eternal life is learning hidden meaning that exists. The nosis most of the sayings reflect teachings of Jesus and like I say they include varants of sayings found in the synoptic gospels.

(46:41) However, in some of the sayings, Jesus role is described described. For example, in saying 13, Jesus says to his disciples, "Compare me and tell me who I am like." And Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a just messenger. You are like an angel." Matthew said to him, "You are like an especially wise philosopher.

(47:10) " But Thomas said to him, "Teacher, my mouth will not bear at all to say whom you are like." So Jesus says,"I not your teacher, for you have drunk. You have become intoxicated at the bubbling spring that I've measured out." And Jesus took Thomas and withdrew. And he said uh three words to him.

(47:34) But when G Thomas came back to his companions, they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?" And Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the words, he said to me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me, and then fire will come out of the stones and burn you up." So in contrast uh to Peter and Matthew here who are serving as foils, I think, or standins for the protothodox Christians.

(48:08) um people who do not understand Jesus' true role according to the author of this saying, Thomas, the apostle Thomas here understands that Jesus is something more than can be spoken openly. Indeed, after Jesus has shared true nosis with him in secret, Thomas believes that if he then goes on to share it with Peter and Matthew, like I say, if you go and share this now with protoorthodox Christians who accept the authority um of Peter, they will condemn um the Gnostic as a heretic, which will lead to um the protoodox Christians subsequent

(48:50) damnation. So, nothing good will come of that. The saying tells us that Jesus identity is important and likely to be regarded as blasphemous by other Christians if you if the Gnostics say it to them in in public. But it's also a secret and it's told offcreen. So we don't know what those three words are at least explicitly in the text.

(49:17) However, elsewhere in the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is a bit less circumspect. And so for example in saying 77 Jesus says I am the light that is over all. I am the all. The all came forth out of me and to me the all has come. Split a piece of wood. I am there. Lift the stone and you will find me there. So while it's not the same saying as we have in the gospel of John, this I am all or I am the all. I am the light.

(49:57) This resonates with all of those I am statements like I am the way, the truth and the light. All that we find in the Gospel of John, statements of Jesus divinity. The all innosticism is um a jargon term or uh for the whole of reality. So the idea that the all came forth out of me uh align with the equation of Christ and the logos through which the cosmos was created in the prologue of John that we read.

(50:34) And it also finds parallels in Paul for example in the first letter of the Corinthians chapter 8 verse 6 where Paul says for us there is but one God the father from whom all things came and for whom we all live. So there's that one ineffable source, but there is one but one Lord Jesus Christ through whom all things came and through whom we live.

(51:03) So it's expressing again the the one ineffable God and then the um God's word made manifest, the Lord uh that is also present at creation, the source of creation. So this could again conflict with mainline gnosticism's idea of a demi urge creating the sensible cosmos. But again this also could be just talking about the all as in the gnostic sense of the the true universe where the physical world doesn't really count as part of the all since it's simply a false shadow.

(51:39) Um the second part of the saying split a piece of wood I am there. lift the stone and you will find me there. I feel also diverges from a purely gnostic picture because um it's talking about Jesus um presence in material creation. So in other words, the a piece of wood is a physical object. A stone is a physical object.

(52:08) And so perhaps is representing more of a pantheistic worldview of u Jesus as the animating as the Christ the animating u presence of the the world spirit or something like that. Um, another observation about Jesus in Thomas is more in keeping with the more traditional gnostic view of the material world.

(52:32) And that can be found in saying 79 where a woman in the crowd, it says, said to Jesus, "Hail to the womb that carried you and the breasts that fed you." He said back to her, "Hail to those who have heard the word of the father and have truly kept it. For there will be days when you will say, 'Hail to the womb that has not conceived and to the breasts that have not given milk.

(53:01) " So, so he's kind of responding to a personal observation that Jesus's mo Jesus's mother is blessed. So, um, he's born of a woman. and rather than rather than saying, "Yeah, that's that's true." Or maybe he's maybe even kind of trying to tamp down on that as an idea. So this idea of Hail Mary, um which is a uh a prayer that derived from the account of the Christmas story in the Gospel of Luke.

(53:32) Jesus here indicates maybe a preference for a kind of aeticism rec refraining altogether from procreation. So you won't be having children if you are following uh the father and kept the word of the father truly. And so that may be consent with the view that some gnostics have that mortal life is a prison for immortal sparks of life and that when you have sex, when you um which is a a work of the flesh and when you then conceive and bear children that merely renews the cycle of imprisonment and so therefore it's not a great idea. and some gnostic

(54:13) uh religions um the perfect people at the center of the movement will refrain from you know having sex and procreating. Also in the gospel of Thomas saying 108 equates Jesus with the source of knowledge the source of nosis which when made known will unite the disciple with him.

(54:42) So Jesus says, "Whoever will drink from my mouth will become like me. I myself will become he and what is hidden will be revealed to him." So there are many other sayings in Thomas that align withnosticism and many others that don't really. But the portrait of Jesus that emerges from the Sang's gospel is limited and have ideas that may diverge from mainline gnosticism or may require mainline gnostics to have apologetics to explain why they would still keep this.

The Secret Book of John and Gnostic Cosmology

(55:18) So that's Thomas. Now I want to look at the secret book of John, the Apocryphan of John. So the Nagamadi library actually includes three versions of this apocryphon or secret book of John which shows its popularity. The text citigraphically claims to be uh written by the apostle John the son of Zeb Zebedee but uh no scholars really credit that claim.

(55:52) Um it's rather it's a second century text. It's one of the ones condemned by um Irenaeus. So it has to be written before 180. The secret book of John gives a clear example of kind of the main gnostic cosmogyny, the creation myth and included within that is Christ's role. So it's a good um text to look at to kind of get um the core gnostic portrait of Christ.

(56:21) So Christ in the secret book of John um as the cosmology is explained as the theology has explained the highest principle of the universe is the monad that is to say the ineffable god. The monad is described as monarchy with nothing above it. The monad is described as supreme absolute eternal self-sufficient holy and so on.

(56:48) But it's also um described in ways that are very transcendent, ineffable, invisible, unknowable, unseeable. It is very hard for humans to have a direct relationship with the highest principle. And this is one of the reasons why we have all of the emanations from the monad in order for us to connect to what really matters. So from its first thought, the monad produces a feminine divine principle known in the apocryphon of John and elsewhere as the barbell.

(57:22) And in this text that principle is also called things like mother, father and holy spirit. The barbello is also the first of a class of divine principles known as aons. This maybe is an equivalent or is an elaboration on the Platonic idea of forms or the highest forms and the aons uh interaction between the barbell and the monad produces many other aons including mind and light which are born from the monad's reflection on the barbell.

(58:06) And so light is synonymous in this text with Christ. And we've seen that before um and also explain why all of the sayings about light in the Gospel of John therefore had appealed to uh Gnostic Christians. And so we read about Christ in the secret book of John. Well, this is not Christ at first, but anyway, the um the principal looked on the barbell with p with the pure light which surrounds the invisible spirit and with his spark, and she conceived from him.

(58:43) And he begot a spark of light with a light resembling blessedness, but it does not equal his greatness. This was an only begotten child of the mother, father, which had come forth. It is the only offspring, the only begotten one of the father, the pure light. So the only begotten receives a number of additional titles in this text, including Christ.

(59:10) So we're seeing that this is part of the Christologology and the location of Christ within this um pantheon of emanations. uh and the other titles include the autogenes, the self-generating one in addition to being only begotten and so on. Christ's divine aon partner as light is mind and the interactions between light and mind result in the rest of creation of the true spiritual realm the pluroma.

(59:42) So the mind wanted to perform a deed through the word of the invisible spirit and his will became a deed and it appeared with the mind and the light glorified it and the word followed the will for because of the word Christ the divine autogenes created everything and the eternal life and his will and the mind and the fornowledge attended and glorified the invisible spirit and Barbello.

(1:00:12) for whose sake they had come into being. So um also in addition to all of the spiritual creation that comes into being through Christ, the first perfect spiritual man also comes into being as a will as a result of the will of Christ the atineses. And so we read

from the fornowledge of the perfect mind through the revelation of the will of the invisible spirit and the will of the atines the perfect man appeared.

(1:00:43) The first revelation and the truth. It is he whom the virginal spirit called pigera Adamas and he placed him over the first aon with the mighty one the autogynes the Christ by the first light our Mosul and with him are his powers and the invisible one gave him a spiritual invincible power. So we're starting to see if you read these gnostic texts, there are many many names um that are elaborated as all of the many aons and their partner aons are outlined in how uh the divine realm spiritual realm came into being.

(1:01:25) However, the glorious streak of spiritual creation is derailed when one of the other aons, holy wisdom, Sophia, she's called in Greek, declares to uh I'm sorry, desires to conceive on her own. And she does this without the consent of her Aon partner. So all these Aons are operating in partnership and also without consent of the spirit.

(1:01:53) The result because of the incredible power she have has was the creation of a weak archon that happens immediately. And so when she Sophia when wisdom saw the consequences of her desire, it changed into the form of a lion-faced serpent and its eyes were like lightning fires which flash.

(1:02:17) And she cast it away from her outside that place that not one of the immortal ones might see it. for she had created it in ignorance and she called his name Yaltoth. So Yaveoth takes great power from his mother and then sets about attempting to mimic the spiritual creation process that the true Aons have been doing. And this results in a flawed material cosmos, the universe that we could sense, the sensible world.

(1:02:49) Yet in the course of this is revealed as the god of the old testament. So for example, the text mimics the first um sentence of Genesis when it says uh he yalttaboth said to the authorities which attended him, come let us create a man according to the image of God and according to our likeness that his image may become a light for us.

(1:03:15) And they created by means of their respective powers in correspondence with characteristics which were given. And so their plot here seems to be that they are understanding themselves uh to be lesser than the aons and when they have this new creation they will that is made in the image of the true god that that will uh that will help empower them and get their power back.

(1:03:39) So each authority supplied a characteristic in the form of the image which had uh which he had seen in its natural form. He created a being according to the likeness of the first, the perfect man that we saw created before spiritually. And they said let us call him Adam man that uh his name might be a power of light for us. So these lesser limited archons then create what become the material bodies of humanity against the desire of the spiritual aons. But the aons strike back.

(1:04:15) They make a plan to recover all of that power that Yalttaboth has stolen from Sophia and they trick him into blowing that light and life that he had seized into his physical creation into Adam into man. And so having tricked Yelt into releasing light into certain human bodies, the final role of the autogynes is to come into this flawed material creation seemingly as a human to bring knowledge to humanity so that these sparks of life can be freed from the snares of the ignorant material world. And so that reveals the

(1:04:56) autogynies as the savior as as Christ. So that's the picture that we could try to piece together from the gospel of Thomas, the more um traditional or full-blown view of Christ from uh the secret book of John. Let's look at another uh book that we recovered from Nagamadi, the gospel of truth. So, Valentinus was a brilliant theologian in the 2 century, probably lived from around 100 to 180, who took those Gnostic ideas like the one I just read, um, and brought them and refined them and included now as Christianity has

(1:05:43) started to define, let's say, the gospel texts and also letters of Paul as being authoritative and so bringing um updating and bringingism more into line with that uh and making it more palatable for the second century um Christian audience and he did a great job of doing this. The popularity of Valentina's teachings alarmed our friend Irenaeus his contemporary uh who focused much of his time in his book against the gnostics writing counterarguments against the Valentinian conception ofnosticism.

(1:06:22) So although we had all of Erenus quotations of Valentinis um the original of the texts of all his texts were lost prior to the discovery of the Nagamadi library um where we found a text called the gospel of truth and although the manuscript doesn't actually name Valentine as an author many scholars argue that this is the gospel of truth um that was previously a lost work of Valentinis a known lost work.

(1:06:56) So as opposed to a sayings gospel or a narrative story about Jesus ministry, the gospel is actually a theologic theological treatise um which includes a lot of explanations of um a Valentinian view of Christologology or an Gnostic view if it is Valentinian. The gospel of truth we read

at the very start of this is joy to those who have received from the father of truth the gift of knowing him by the power of the logos who has come from the plleoma and who is in the thought and mind of the father.

(1:07:35) So the father again, the ineffable one. We now have it being called the father instead of the monad. Um but is nevertheless the same source that can't be known except through the logos. Uh the Christ who came from the spiritual realm, the plleoma. He it is who is called the savior since that is the name of the work which he must do for the redemption of those who have not known the father.

(1:08:04) So already right here in the very first sentences the logos is described as thought in the mind of the true father and is sent from the plleoma the fullness spiritual heaven and is sent as the savior in order to redeem people and what do they need to be redeemed from? They need to be redeemed from ignorance their ignorance of the father.

(1:08:30) So the text goes on to say the terror and fear in the world is caused by ignorance of the father. And so this is the um Valentinian idea for the uh the problem of evil. All all calamities, fear, terror, all bad things are resulting from ignorance of the father which we can't know unless we are are experiencing through um through the logos through the word.

(1:09:01) So the father though through his mercies has prepared truth as a solution to the problem the true gospel which is the hidden mystery Jesus the Christ. So we read

that through him Jesus the father enlightened those who were in darkness because of forgetfulness. He enlightened them and gave them a path and that path is the truth which he taught them.

(1:09:26) And for this reason error was angry with him. So he it persecuted him. Error was distressed by him. So it made him powerless. He was nailed to a cross. He became a fruit of the knowledge of the father. He did not however destroy them because they ate of it. He rather caused those who ate of it to be joyful because of the discovery.

(1:09:52) So this is not a vengeful picture of uh of Christ. Uh there is a reinterpretation here of what the crucifixion is for or an explanation um from this Gnostic Valentinian perspective. ignorance being the source of the world's problems, the solution is the illumination um getting rid of ignorance, the truth uh that is lived uh by Christ.

(1:10:20) So we read

as it go continues for where there is envy and strife there is incompleteness but where there is unity there is completeness since this incompleteness came about because they did not know the father so when they know the father incompleteness from that moment on will cease to exist.

(1:10:42) So as one's ignorance disappears when he gains knowledge as and as darkness disappears when light appears so also incompleteness is eliminated by completeness. So I think that's pretty clear. So ignorance of the father is what's causing incompleteness. That's the source of all pain and suffering and everything else. truth and knowledge nosis of the father brought by Christ creates completeness which creates unity which edges creates light it edges out darkness until no suffering will occur.

(1:11:18) So as the beloved son of the father, Christ brought knowledge of the pleoma, the true spiritual world to this material world. He appeared informing them of the father, the illimitable one. So one we can't really know of unless through um an intermediary here. Many received the light and turned towards him.

(1:11:45) But material men were alien to him and did not discern his appearance nor recognize him. For he came in the likeness of flesh, and nothing blocked his way because it was incorruptible or and unrestrainable. Moreover, while saying new things, speaking about what is in the heart of the father, he proclaimed the faultless word.

(1:12:11) light spoke through his mouth and his voice brought forth life. So we have already here we're saying he came in the likeness of flesh probably a continuation of a of a worldview that is going to have a very high crystal christologology that is dosetic that Christ only seems this important uh being only seems to have been human. There are all kinds of other positive formulas though in the Gospel of Truth of how to understand Jesus that are familiar to the New Testament reader.

(1:12:43) So it says Jesus is the shepherd who left behind the 99 sheep which had not strayed and went in search of the one that was lost and he rejoiced when he had found it. uh and then those that one joins the group and becomes part of uh the number that are numbered with the ineffable source the father. So the gospel of truth um dispenses with a lot of the esoterica of the earlier gnostic cosmologies, you know, with all this talk of monads and aons and emanations and so on.

(1:13:18) And it ultimately ultimately when you read it, it's a pretty not not a long text. I think it provides a rather upbeat um take on the anti-materialist dualism ofnosticism. So if it is written by Valentinis, it's easy to see why um 2 century Christians, many second century Christians found the ideas appealing and why and other protoorthodox leaders were alarmed by how popular these might get.

The Gospel of Mary and the Role of Mary Magdalene

(1:13:49) So that's vision, what we can see of um gnostic portrayals or portraits in the first three of these. Let's look now at the gospel of Mary. So prior to the recovery of Nagamadi, this is one of the Gnostic gospels that had survived in fragment form. The gospel of Mary. So named because a disciple of Jesus that's named Mary is the major character.

(1:14:19) So we don't get a surname or a further identification in the text, but most scholars I think argue that the character is the disciple Mary Magdalene. The Gnostic texts in general tend to look on um disciples like Thomas and Mary and Levi as being more authoritative and look at go text um uh disciples like Peter and uh and Andrew as being more like foils that they use to represent the protoorthodox uh Christians.

(1:14:54) So the text in the Gospel of Mary continually refers to Christ as the savior and it's a fragment right and so our fragment that survives begins with some uncomfortable teachings. So the disciples asked will matter be destroyed or not? And the Savior answers, "All nature, all formations, all creatures exist in and with one another, and they will be resolved again into their own roots.

(1:15:23) For the nature of matter is resolved into the roots of its own nature alone." So, it's not entirely clear. You can interpret that a couple ways, but it doesn't sound very encouraging. It does sound like maybe um everything in the material world um is just ground in nature and from you know it's like ashes to ashes, dust to dust kind of thing.

(1:15:45) So that doesn't sound encouraging. Peter next asks the savior, well what is the sin of the world? And um and I'm missing a slide, but I'll just say that here that um that um that the Savior's response is that we're there really isn't a sin, but you make the sin. You bring the sin in with your with all of your kinds of confusions.

(1:16:12) So then after the savior has departed from earthly life, Peter goes to Mary and says, "Sister, we know that the savior loved you more than the rest of women or woman kind. Tell us the words of the savior which you remember, which you know, but which we do not, nor have we heard them." Um Mary answers and says, "What is hidden from you, I will proclaim to you.

(1:16:43) " And so this again as gnostics tend to is privileging Mary and Mary's testimony as a disciple. So Mary shares this secret a secret vision that she says she had and nosis that the savior gave her. And the part that we have is about stages of the ascent of the spirit from the darkness of the material world into eternal life.

(1:17:08) And so it is a um so considering we just had um uh Jesus more or less uh dismiss the the the continuation of matter, this is a a much more encouraging response about whether or not humans have a spirit that will live on eternally. Unfortunately, um the cosmological portions of the text which might have explained the more detailed role of the savior are lost in our fragment.

(1:17:40) And so I can't um draw a portrait of Christ so much from the gospel of Mary, but I did want to highlight it because interestingly at the end of the text, the Apostle Andrew, which I would say is a standin for protoorthodox leaders, rejects Mary's testimony. So after she's told this entire um gospel to them, Andrew answered and said to the brethren, you know, say what you wish to say about what she has said.

(1:18:06) I at least do not believe that the Savior said this, for certainly these teachings are strange ideas. And Peter answered and spoke concerning the same things. He questioned them about the Savior. Did he really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us? And therein Mary wept and said to Peter, "My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I have thought this up myself in my heart or that I'm lying about the Savior?" And Levi answered and said to Peter,

(1:18:43) "You know, Peter, you have always been hot-tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well. This is why he loved her more than us. Rather, let us be ashamed.

(1:19:07) Rather, let us be ashamed and put on the perfect man and separate as he commanded us and preached the gospel. So let's um become again focused on the true spirit as the testimony that um that Mary has given us about what Christ's teachings were. So Andrew's response that Mary's teachings represent strange ideas, I think, was likely a very common reception that many Gnostics received from their protoorthodox Christian neighbors when they might have come up to them in church or after church and tried to share their understanding, the secret nosis that

(1:19:44) they had learned from one of these gospels. These Christians, mainline protoorthodox folks might say, "That's weird. That's strange. I'm not sure if I believe that that act that that Mary actually was taught that by Jesus. And so the Gnostic um complaint that protoethodox Christians um had begun devaluing the testimony of women in the church was also present in Thomas.

(1:20:08) And so that I think is also an interesting component that we get out of the gnostic worldview here. And so that's kind of portraits that we can see in these first four books. Thomas, Apocryphan of John, the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Mary. Let's look at one last text uh discovered more recently the gospel of Judas.

(1:20:27) So in addition to the Nagamidi text, another leather leatherbound Coptic codeex dating from the second century was discovered in the 1970s. It's also damaged. So fragments of it have been deciphered and translated and it's now known as the Gospel of Judas which may be the same gospel of Judas that was known to Irenaeus but had been lost for all of the intervening centuries.

(1:20:55) The text uh as it's now uh refound consists of a dialogue between Jesus and his disciple Judas Escariat the betrayer the betrayer which the canonical gospels portray as just a black and white villain. Judas role in this gospel of Judas emerges as a much more complex. On the one hand, Jesus does tell Judas, you shall be cursed for generations for what you're going to have to do.

(1:21:31) But he adds that eventually uh Judas will exceed all others of the apostles and man because you are going to perform this important act which is to sacrifice the man that clothes me. So this body um this physical body is nothing is not the real Christ. So Jesus shares then with Judas alone uh secrets of the kingdom in this gospel.

(1:21:59) The gospel is set when Jesus appeared on the earth. So once again understanding Jesus as a divine being that comes to the physical world. In the first vignette of the gospel, the disciples are offering a prayer of thanksgiving over bread. In other words, it seems to be the um sacrament or the ritual of the eukarist um as central as it is becoming central to the protoorthodox Christians and Christians generally.

(1:22:31) And this causes Jesus to laugh. So the disciples say, "Master, why are you laughing at our prayer of thanksgiving? We have done what is right." And he answered and said to them, "I'm not laughing at you, but you are not doing this of your own will, but because it is through this that your God will be praised.

(1:22:53) " And they're thinking, "Well, wait a second. You're the son of our God." And they're like, he's like, "Yeah, I don't think you know what God you're praying to." So, the texts here sees the Eucharist ritual as honoring a false material God because it's making use of physical material. It is being modeled on um the ancient um I'm sure the previous uh Jewish practice of of sacrifice um and sacrificial offerings which are being made not to the true ineffable god but to the material uh demiurge the creator of this world. The disciples are

(1:23:29) confused and they're troubled in spirit. And as the narrative continues only Judas has the courage to ask for clarification. And part of this is that he already has a testimony and realizes that Jesus has come. He says from the immortal realm of Barbo. And as we saw in u previous texts that Barbello is usually seen as the first emanation of God, the female principle, the mother uh the mother father in uh gnostic cosmogyny.

(1:24:01) So Jesus then reveals a whole bunch of Gnostic secrets to Judas. Jesus says, "Come that I may teach you about secrets that no person has ever seen. For there exists a great and boundless realm whose extent no generation of angels has seen in which there is a great invisible spirit." The Gospel of Judas then refers to a number of different ideas about gnostic cosmology and pictures Christ as the divine self-generated one as we've seen in other texts.

(1:24:41) And Jesus next explains to Jude Judas a luminous cloud appeared there and said let an angel come into being as my attendant. A great angel, the enlightened divine self-generated one emerged from the cloud. And because of him, four other angels came into being from another cloud. And they became attendants for the angelic self-generated.

(1:25:03) And the self-generated said, "Let we the text is lost here, come into being." And then it did come into being whatever this kind of um spiritual creation that the autogenes that Christ um is performing in the retelling of Genesis. This puts Christ in the role of creator but probably here creator only of the true spiritual realm of the barbelloo his mother father.

(1:25:33) And so it is only after the spiritual creation that a material creation occurs. Beginning again with a fragment of the text, something about an Aon. And after that, that Aon said, "Let 12 angels come into being to rule over chaos and the underworld." And look from the cloud there appeared an angel whose face flashed with fire and whose appearance was defiled with blood.

(1:25:59) And his name was Neabro, which means rebel. and others called him Yaltoth. So in addition to Nabro or Yaldoth, another rebel angel appears in this text called Sacas. And um they then create six more rebel angels. And then Sacas and the rebel angels create humanity. Sacri Sac says to his angels, "Let us create a human being after the likeness and after the image.

(1:26:26) " and they fashioned Adam and his wife Eve who is called in the cloud or in the um spiritual realm Zoe. And so Jesus further reveals that interactions humanity has had with the so-called god of the Old Testament are actually with Nabro Yaltoth which is why Jesus laughs at things like uh the protoorthodox understanding of Eucharist.

(1:26:51) So concerned that humans are simply material, Judas asks Jesus, "If there's no afterlife, are we just going to die with death?" To which Jesus explains that humans have within them eternal spirit. The true God, it turns out, ordered Michael, one of the angels of light, to give spirits of pe give the spirits of people as a loan into Yaldabio's flawed creation.

(1:27:19) But this loan will come due is coming due. So Jesus as the self-generated son of the barbella has come from the imperishable realm to save entrapped spirits from the material world by sharing this true cosm cosmological knowledge with them. And so ultimately we find then that Jesus I'm sorry Judas role his role as the betrayer will actually aid in the sacrifice of Jesus material form which brings all of this about.

(1:27:51) And so um from that we can kind of see there's a bunch of common themes withinnosticism about the gnostic image or the gnostic portrait of Jesus. um but they just because there are differences and and and it doesn't mean that um that they are self-contradictory. It just means that there again is a diversity of views among the different authors uh of this interesting early tradition.

The Gospel of Judas and the Sacrifice of Material Form

(1:54:44) Um we are going to next week do something new, I think, Landra. Right. So what we're going to we do at the end of this um Q&As's and so what we're going to do next week rather than have a a formal lecture we're going to have as solicit your questions uh between now and end of the week and as you have questions like these we'll put them into a list and I will have that in the bank and then people can ask any new questions as well.

(1:55:12) So, we've done a question time lecture before, but this time what'll be a little different is if you want to send us questions ahead of time, we'll also uh take a look at those. So, thanks very much.

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