Robert Tulip wrote:
The essential hypothesis that I am supporting in this thread builds on the analysis of Dr Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, whose early book
The Gnostic Paul explores how the prominent theologians of the early church read and understood Paul’s writings in a very different way from orthodox dogma.
As I say in the opening post, “My view, following Pagels, is that Paul had some grasp of the allegory in his letters, but carefully concealed this to make his message palatable to a mass audience.” My review of Pagels’ book The Gnostic Paul is at
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2803T62V90MTR There I say “Pagels explains how Valentinus and other Gnostic theologians read Paul as speaking at two levels. The Gnostics say that Paul's letters distinguish between a secret spiritual or `pneumatic' level of teaching aimed at initiates and a popular simplified `psychic' version for ignorant newcomers. As in other mystery philosophies who provided esoteric spoken instruction within their schools and exoteric written material for the general public, the Gnostics claimed that Paul had secret teachings that are explained in code in his public writings such as the letters to the churches in Rome and Corinth.”
I haven't read
The Gnostic Paul, Robert, though I want to. I find it easy to accept that an interplay of forces was involved in the development of Christianity, and that Gnosticism (maybe that should be the gnosticisms) was a major player. We say that orthodoxy won and in fact as the victor did its best to wipe out the literary traces of the heretics, but that was quite far on. It's likely that our imagining of two opposed camps in the first few centuries isn't quite the way it was. Thus there is contribution from gnosticism even in the final, dominant religion that triumphed as an institution. The Book of John is one example, a gnostic-flavored work that Pagels believed was canonized only because it said that salvation could come only through Christ. That was the type of restrictive statement that sat well with both the church leaders and the masses, but the rest of the book could lead one to different conclusions.
There is another good review of Pagels' book that I'll quote toward the end. It gives a more detailed synopsis than your Amazon review was intended to do.
I now assume my usual role, pointing out boring realities. First, how Paul was interpreted by Gnostics is just that, a use that they made of his writings. That they discerned two levels doesn't mean that Paul was writing for two audiences, cloaking his meaning in order to reach out to the Gnostics who were his true constituency. That would be a historical claim and is not warranted. It doesn't mean that here we have the original intent of what Paul did. Again, I haven't read Pagels' book, but I just ask you to please be careful about attributing to her an assertion that Paul was writing for two different audiences in a duplicitous fashion I'm fairly certain from reviews I've read that she does not claim that, despite the book's title Paul was a Gnostic, so I would be surprised if this scholar commits herself to the view you hold yourself.
A comparison may help. Some of the English Romantics claimed that Satan was the hero of
Paradise Lost. They interpreted the work in this way because of Satan's indomitable spirit against an oppressive God. But it's clear from the work as a whole that Milton's artistry is what engendered this assessment. Satan indeed has the courage of a hero, but it is very clear that Milton views his cause as criminal, and that he progressively degrades Satan as the poem goes on.
My view is that the Gnostic reading of Paul as explained by Professor Pagels is vastly more plausible than Orthodox literalism, as I explain in my review.
What does this say about the motive for concealment of Gnostic cosmology? Essentially, the social context of the rise of Christianity was the building of a mass movement within the turmoil of the Roman Empire. As Christianity grew through the second and third centuries, this context included a very strong Roman ban on sedition, and the rather bullying context that Rome had completely obliterated Israel from the face of the earth as a demonstration of Rome’s might and intolerance.
Now, if the Paul school had associations with a range of mystery religions, and wished to use ideas emerging from these sources to create a new mass movement based on the idea of the presence of the prophesied Jewish messiah in history, then we have a good explanation for the motive for Paul’s epistles to speak at two levels, for the initiates and for the public.
The "rather bullying" example of Rome's destruction of Israel--I should say so! But I see nothing in what Paul
wanted to say according to you that would have increased the heat on Christian sects. There was, after all, little interest in politics in gnosticism, which was all about individual spiritual fulfillment. What was threatening about Christianity was that it was separatist, a private cult rather than a civic institution as Roman religion was. "Orthodox" Christianity, though that didn't exist yet, was a threat in itself, whereas exoteric doctrines would not add to the threat and would not need concealment. The existence of many gnostic writings from the time attest to the openness of expression by Gnostics. Why didn't
those documents use similar cloaking mechanisms?
Your analysis also misconceives the literary form of the epistle, a form by which the writer addressed a particular audience. That Paul would have used this this form to write to other factions, outside of the churches at Rome or Corinth, to which the letters are addressed, makes no sense. I wish that sometime you would read all the Pauline letters in sequence merely as a reader and think that you would see that the preponderance of the content relates unambiguously to Paul's mission, even if precisely what Paul means isn't clear in these letters supposedly dictated to a scribe. Proportionality is very important in judging any literary work, and in my view you sometimes distort meaning and intention by inferring the entirety of both from isolated passages.
The public message is that Jesus Christ has appeared in history, while the initiate message is that this public story is a simplified version of a cosmic myth. This reading of Paul aligns to the observation that his Epistles have almost no details about the Historical Jesus, and that as Christianity evolved these details were filled in through the imaginative construction of the Gospel story in Mark.
The motive for concealment therefore is that a claim to be discussing a real God is far more efficacious than admitting your God is invented. So if Paul invented features applying to the Jewish messiah as Jesus Christ, then the church found that concealing this fictional method gave these beliefs far more political traction.
The lack of biographical detail on Jesus isn't a serious argument that Paul believes Jesus is the expression of other myths. His purpose in the letters is crystal clear, to meld into a single unit the fractious groups that claim Christ as their god. It is natural that he would not be interested in telling about "Jesus in the flesh." That he regarded Jesus as having lived is not in doubt, in my opinion, as well. The whole argument about Jesus is what kind of
being he was. Even Gnostics or figures like Marcion who said he was pure spirit refer to someone who appeared along with other regular mortals. There is no school that claimed Jesus didn't assume personhood. Even the Romans, who of course ridiculed Christianity for several centuries, didn't say that this man-god never existed, only that the god-part was false. Of course, I have no idea what supposed details about Jesus' life were circulating during Paul's time. And Paul may have had little interest in them, perhaps partly because of the tension between him and those apostles who claimed to have known Jesus.
It is similar to how believers want to insist that Adam and Noah are real, because the moral teachings associated with them become more pertinent and easy to convey when they are wrapped up in a magical theory of God walking on the earth. The initiates understand that this story about a real presence of God is to be understood allegorically, but they must conceal this reading from the masses in order to avoid confusing the simple believers.
There isn't a parallel case with Paul, no fables he tells. And are you really saying here that in an Old Testament context, the assertion of the "magical God", Yahweh, was consciously done by an elite in order to--well, for what conceivable purpose I couldn't possibly say. This theme of a controlling, elite cabal persisting over centuries is getting old. In the words of the old Yardbirds song, "When will it end, oh when will it end?"
The real main issue regarding concealment is the agenda of the early church to build a mass movement that would enable it to subvert the Roman Empire in a context where military methods had failed. With Jesus Christ of Nazareth considered as Lord and Saviour of a New Age, orthodox Christianity is far more subversive than the esoteric cosmic blueprint that the founders used to construct the myth. "Lord" admits of no rival, but this is precisely what Christianity presents.
In order for the political subversion of Rome to be effective, it had to be believed within the church that Jesus Christ was a historical individual, so the story of invention had to be carefully concealed within the church. But what then happened was that the walking mop of literal faith escaped from the control of the Sorceror’s Apprentices, as the original basis of faith was concealed, forgotten, suppressed and denied, because of the compelling emotional and political power of the story they had invented.
Robert, you're confusing me with all this concealment. After the first concealment by Paul, hiding from the Romans his true intended message, we now have the early church in effect concealing the concealment? It decides it's better to go with the pedestrian account it knows is false, for marketing reasons. But you're right that in the esoteric stuff there would be little to worry the Romans. That isn't what you said initially about this, however. Also, I don't think you're on solid ground historically in supposing that in the 100s and 200s there is some massive resistance against the sometimes faltering empire by diaspora Jews.
I am only interested in secret information that has a simple coherence with scientific knowledge. I know there are moronic bigots out there who will try to distort and malign the discussion of such topics, but I prefer to ignore the hypocrites and focus on scientific analysis.
This is not meant to offend, but your always bringing science into this is the strangest part of your thinking. Certainly, whether we're talking about either orthodox or gnostic Christianity, the supernatural plays a huge role. It's as though you're doing a cut and paste, with regard to your beliefs of the present and the people of the ancient world.
Oh, yes, an excerpt from a review of Pagels' book by Dan Geddes. I believe that if Geddes is accurate, Pagels is very judicious in her appraisal of the reasons that Christianity had to reject gnosticism in order to become a world faith. Gnosticism died a natural death. When its texts were suppressed, it was already on the mat. It does seem too bad it had to be this way, but so it does go.
Conclusion
In her Conclusion, Pagels recounts how the Gnostic/orthodox debate was a fierce one, and that there was nothing inevitable about the orthodox victory. In fact, their victory still frames all debates within Christianity. The orthodox “won” because their theories and practices lent themselves to mass religion; the Gnostics’ did not. Gnostics focused on the internal quest for gnosis; orthodoxy focused on relations with other people, and established rituals to mark the milestones of life: “the sharing of food, in the eucharist; sexuality, in marriage; childbirth, in baptism; sickness, in annointment; and death, in funerals” (176).
Pagels sees the rigor of orthodoxy as a prime reason for its survival, but laments the complete banishment of Gnostic ideas from orthodoxy. Orthodoxy’s inability to please all inquisitive minds is seen in the work of: Jacob Boehme, George Fox, Swedenborg, Blake, Rembrandt, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky, and so many others who studied Jesus incessantly. Pagels believes that the central question in this debate is: “What is the source of religious authority?” The Gnostic Gospels helps show that religious authority is often grounded in the acceptability of its teaching; its ability to provide satisfying answers to the fundamental questions of life, as well as the strength of the institutions claiming authority.
Evaluation
The Gnostic Gospels' central thesis—that political factors shaped the form of orthodox Christianity—seems well established. Too often we assume that the history of ideas is a debate between differing ideas, and that the strongest (most valid) idea necessarily survives. Instead, we see here how the strength of ideas is measured by the ability to create and sustain institutions, rather than ideas’ philosophical sophistication. The informality and egalitarianism of the Gnostics did not support the establishment of enduring institutions. Nor did it answer clearly the fundamental questions that people want answered; instead it offered only the means to conduct an arduous search (and perhaps futile) within the individual soul.
Importance
The Gnostic Gospels serves an important reminder that spiritual authority is forged in the crucible of worldly problems. Religious leaders must always adapt their teachings to accommodate the problems of the moment; otherwise it holds few adherents. The Gnostics deprecated the flesh and the things of this world, focusing more on the discovery of the esoteric gnosis. The orthodox, while also stressing the preferability of the hereafter to worldly existence, did offer its members some spiritual sustenance for the events of this world.
The Gnostic Gospels also serves a good introduction to Gnosticism. More people (and especially Christians) should be aware of the debates that shaped the early church.
6 June 1999
http://www.thesatirist.com/books/GnosticGospels.html