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  • From: "Liz Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: C-P: Paul and Plato
  • Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 09:22:22 -0400


> From: dhindley AT csi.com [mailto:dhindley AT csi.com]

>
> Jeffrey,
>
> You said:

>
> It looks as though your response involves two questions:
>
> 1) Is Platonism and Jewish apocalypticism mutually exclusive?
>
> and
>
> 2) Is Paul's apparent Platonism derived from
> Platonism/gnosticism, or from
> Stoicism?
>
> In regards to question #1 above, I think the answer is "no, they are not
> mutually exclusive." Pearson had cited at least two authorities
> who discuss
> Platonic ascent traditions (e.g., John D Turner, "The Gnostic
> Threefold Path
> to Enlightenment," NovT 22, 1980, pp 324-351; and Ruth Majercik, _Chaldean
> Oracles_, SGRR5, Leiden: E J Brill, 1989) and compares them to
> those current
> in Jewish apocalypticism.

If Apocalypticism involves a new world order in *this* world, with real-live
flesh and blood people, it seems then not to be Platonic. I think Paul's
notion of a spiritual body, not a flesh and blood body (See 1 Cor. 15:50),
suggest his Platonic view of the world. Paul's version combines Jewish
Apocalypticism with Platonic thought.

He also develops the case for a development of
> Sethian style Gnosticism by disaffected Jews, and notes the large
> number of
> apocalyptic keywords and ideas that these gnostics appropriated into their
> essentially Platonic world view.

In my opinion, Gnosticism developed out of Pauline thought, and from the
Gospels. It is not the other way. It is not indepentdent of the NT. Please
read: _A Separate God: The Origins and Teachings of Gnosticism_ , by Simone
Petrement. To me it is the definitive book on the subject of Gnostic
Origins. (Of course, it wasn't, I guess nothing is ever the definitive
statement on anything, but it ought to have been!)

Liz

Lisbeth S. Fried
Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies
New York University
51 Washington Sq. S.
New York, NY 10012
lqf9256 AT is3.nyu.edu
lizfried AT umich.edu





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