Corpus-Paul

["David C. Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>]

Liz Fried said:

>>Petrement in _A Separate God_ argues (convincingly, imo) that
Gnosticism followed Pauline Christianity, not preceded it.<<

I thought Simone Petrement's work was only in French (_Le Dieu separe:
les origines du gnosticisme_, Paris, 1984). Birger Pearson, at the
time he wrote _Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity_ (1990),
considered her to be the foremost advocate of the argument that
Gnosticism began and developed as a Christian heresy. Is it then
available in English? Unfortunately I do not read French.

Pearson offers his assessment of her work in "Early Christianity and
Gnosticism: A Review Essay," RSRev 13 (1987) 1-8, but I do not have
ready access to this for a few days. I shall have to look for it along
with Charles Talbert's "Myth of a descending-ascending redeemer myth
in Mediterranean antiquity," _NTS_ 22. Like you I am curious to
discover whether this myth precedes the 1st century CE in a
pre-Pauline non-Gnostic context.

Frank W. Hughes mentions his _Early Christian Rhetoric and 2
Thessalonians_ (JSNTSup 30; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989) 86-89, where
he mentions relating Colossians to the myth of a "Makroanthropos." I
have heard of man being conceived of as a "macro-cosmos" and the
living God as a "makro-anthropos," but I thought that this was
associated with Isaac Luria's 15th century Kaballism. Luria may have
developed an existing Kaballistic tradition to a high point, but do
such traditions go back to 1st century CE? Hopefully Frank Hughes
would expand on what he means by the myth's "almost completely
fulfilled eschatology" which is contrasted with "that of the
historical Paul." Perhaps that's another book to look out for this
weekend. <g>

Regards,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA