Hi Geo, this is a great point about the comparison to Plato. The Gnostic Gospels found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt included Plato’s Republic, indicating the continuity between his theory of knowledge and the Gnostic movement. So you are right, it looks like the Gnostics imagined they could set themselves up as philosopher kings, failing to see the Stalinist maxim that organisational control produces political power. But I feel there is a sense of tragic doom in the Gnostic project, a sense that the Jesus story reflected how the world was not ready for a philosopher king, and so that the suppression of the high wisdom in the construction of the Christ myth was fated.geo wrote:I see a correlation here to Plato's The Republic. Plato imagined a perfect society in which the people would be categorized into Rulers, Auxiliaries, Farmers, etc. The common person especially needed to accept his place in order to maintain social stability. So in Plato’s mind, the Noble Lie is rationalized as a way to keep people under control and happy with their lot in life. There's certainly a very Machiavellian or Marxist ("opiate of the masses") aspect to this doctrine.Robert Tulip wrote:. . . Freke and Gandy argue there was originally an inner church that only revealed part of its secret teachings to the public outer church. The ignorant masses called for signs and wonders before they would take any interest in new ideas. The early church serviced this mass demand for a new wondrous religion with the allegorical story of a historical messiah.
Thanks – this gold, silver, bronze, iron motif comes from India, with the idea of the cycle of the yugas between gold and iron ages. It is also in the Biblical dream of Daniel and in Hesiod’s vision of the golden age of the rule of Saturn.geo wrote: This "noble lie" is called the myth of the metals:
"Citizens, you are brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of command; and these he has made of gold, wherefore they have the greatest honor; others of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again, who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen, he has made of brass and iron; and the species will generally be preserved in the children. But as you are of the same original family, a golden parent will sometimes have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son. And God proclaims... that if the son of a golden or a silver parent has an admixture of brass or iron, then nature requires a transposition of ranks; and the eye of the ruler must not be pitiful towards his child because he has to descend in the scale to become a husbandman or an artisan, just as there may be others sprung from the artisan class who are raised to honor, and become guardians and auxiliaries. For an oracle says that when a man of brass or iron guards the state, it will be destroyed" (415).
Using this model to construct a hierarchical social order appears also in a corrupted form in Orwell’s 1984 with the inner party, the outer party and the proles.