The Nature of Primary Sources Layton, pp' xxiii ff'

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• The Nature of Primary Sources (Layton, pp. xxiii
  ff.)
• The works we will read were originally in Greek
• Our Greek evidence is of 3 types
• 1. mss.
• almost none survive -- at some crucial moment
  copying stopped.
• - Hermetic writings (we will see later) did
  survive and were copied down to the Renaissance
• - Oxyrhyncus papyri provide us with fragments
  of GTh and one Grk ms. of Pearl and ActsT
• 2. verbatim citations in ancient Greek authors
• - Valentinuss Summer Harvest
• - Ptolemys Letter to Flora
• - other fragments
• 3. summaries and descriptions from ancient Greek
  authors

2
Layton uses - Irenaus of Lyons (130-200) -
Adversus Haereses (180-192) (earlier, Justin,
150-155, First Apology mentions Simon,
Menander, Marcion and a compilation
(Syntagma of heresies) (also Tertullian,
150-223) - Clement of Alexandria (150-215) -
Hippolytus of Rome (170-236) - Origen of
Alexandria (185-254) - Porphery of Tyre
(232-305) - Epiphanius of Salamis (315-403)
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Other language sources 1. We now have Irenaeus
mostly in Latin, and used (plagiarized) by
those who followed 2. Translations into
local languages (Coptic, Syriac, Gothic,
Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, Nubian) - mss.
here and there but most have disappeared -
One great exception is Coptic library, especially
Nag Hammadi (see Table 2, p. xxvi)
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Gnosis (Layton, p. 9) Ancient Greek could
differentiate between 2 kinds of knowledge -
propositional knowing -- knowledge that something
is the case (e?de?a? French savoir) - personal
acquaintance with an object, esp. with a person
(?????s?e?? French connaître) Thus for Layton,
English acquaintance always translates gnosis or
its equivalent in Coptic or Latin.
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Sectarian features (pp. 9-10) - complex and
distinctive myth of origins a distinguishing
mark of gnostic lit. - strong sense of group
identity - genealogical psychological analysis
2 types gnostic / non-gnostic - special
jargon or in-group language a unique
sociolect - ritual of baptism - left in
background is any information about organization
or daily life.
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Main features of ideology and mythology (Rudolph,
pp. 53-59)
54 ... everywhere one notes a masterful
practice of the method of extracting as much as
possible out of the thoughts and expressing it in
ever new ways. In this process the interpretative
method of allegory and symbolism, widely diffused
in the ancient world, was freely employed. That
is, a statement of the text was given a deeper
meaning, or even several, in order to claim it
for ones own doctrine or to display its inner
richness. This method of exegesis is in Gnosis a
chief means of producing ones own ideas under
the cloak of the older literature -- above all
the sacred and canonical.
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55 Thus, not a tradition of its own but a
borrowed one. Its mythology is a tradition
consciously created from alien material, which it
has appropriated to match its own basic
conception. Considered in its own light, however,
it is for Gnosticism a further confirmation of
its truth, which it often traces back to a primal
revelation, i.e. derives from primitive times
the knowledge of it was only temporarily
extinguished or concealed.
8
The idea of Gnosis - not aiming at any ideal
philosophical knowledge nor any knowledge of an
intellectual or theoretical kind, but a knowledge
which had at the same time a liberating and
redeeming effect. The content of this knowledge
or understanding is primarily religious, in so
far as it circles around the background of man,
the world and god, but also because it rests not
upon ones own investigation but on heavenly
mediation. It is a knowledge given by revelation,
which has been made available only to the elect
who are capable of receiving it, and therefore
has an esotaeric character. ... All gnostic
teachings are in some form a part of the
redeeming knowledge which gathers together the
object of knowledge (the divine nature), the
means of knowledge (the redeeming gnosis) and the
knower himself. - see continuation bottom 55,
top 56.
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This knowledge is opposed not only to ignorance,
but also to faith --- and this constituted one of
the central themes of debate.
10
Basic ideas Messina conference of 1966 (see p.
50) came up with this statement which gives and
essential basic idea the idea of the presence
in man of a divine spark ..., which has
proceeded from the divine world and has fallen
into this world of destine, birth and death and
which must be reawakened through its own divine
counterpart in order to be finally restored. This
idea ... is ontologically based on the conception
of a downward development of the divine who
periphery (often called Sophia or Ennoia) has
fatally fallen victim to a crisis and must even
if only indirectly produce this world, in which
it then cannot be disinterested, in that it muct
once again recover the divine spark (often
designated as pneuma, spirit).
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• Dualistic view of the world (good / evil light /
  dark material /spiritual body / soul etc.).
• - but interwoven with a monistic idea -- which
  give a basis to the identification of human and
  divine
• - imbedded in this dualism with a monistic
  background is the notion that God is ineffable,
  unknown, beyond all that is sensible and
  incorporates a Pleroma (a fullness) of angels and
  other heavenly beings, whether abstractions or
  hypostases.

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2. Cosmogony a prominent focus on the creation
of the world as a way of expalining the present
condition of humans, remote from God. The world
(as perceivedin late antiquity) a prison from
which there is no escape, unless the liberating
act of the transcendent God and his helpers opens
up a way on which humans (strictly, the divine
spark within humans) can espcape.
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3. This involves Soteriology 4.
Eschatology 5. Cult and community - an
example of the close weaving of ideology and
sociology