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  • From: "David Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>
  • To: "'Corpus-Paul'" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Hebrews
  • Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2006 10:07:05 -0500

Bob,

Some cautions about gnostic hypotheses might be in order.

The usual conclusion among those who study such things in non-NT sources,
from what I have been reading, is that there is little evidence for organized
Gnostic movements before the 2nd century CE. The middle Platonic ideas that
these later organized movements are based on, and perhaps the formative
stages of some of the more developed myths they later employ, were certainly
in the air, but principally (and maybe exclusively) confined to philosophical
circles in the 1st century.

Christians did not seem to enter into this kind of intellectual circle until
the mid to late 2nd century with the apologists, and later Origen and Clement
of Alexandria during the height of the Sophist movement (which was a sort of
philosophical fad at the time).

The developed gnostic texts, such as those in the Nag Hammadi library, were
copied around the 3rd or 4th century and thus probably took their literary
form shortly before then, so it is hard to judge exactly when they or their
prototypes were first authored.

The earliest evidence for organized Gnostic movements is in Origen and
Clement and point to Egypt. This may reflect an accident of preservation of
literary sources rather than a true indication of the localization of such
movements, though.
Some of the later texts, such as the Gospel of Thomas (which in its earliest
form such as found in the Oxyrhynchus fragments is not truly gnostic but a
kind of sapiental wisdom literature) suggest a Syrian origin, but I am not
aware of much evidence for Gnostic movements in Asia Minor.

I am shooting from the hip here, so please forgive me for a lack of
precision.

Also, while NT documents are themselves sources that should be considered,
everyone is aware there are many many problems inherent in dating them on
internal grounds. While I think there are allusions in the Apocalypse that
could be associated with external events as early as you suggest, keep in
mind that the letter to the seven churches which mention the Nicolaitans
appears to be independent of the apocalyptic portion, where the datable
allusions exist, and thus may represent a later redactional level in the
development of the text as it has been preserved for us.

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio USA








-----Original Message-----
From: corpus-paul-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:corpus-paul-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of
khs AT picknowl.com.au
Sent: Friday, March 31, 2006 1:26 AM
To: corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Hebrews


Dear Bob,

I don’t have much time to contribute – especially to your list of questions –
but you asked in your first e-mail, “Who were the Hebrews?” On that I would
like to offer a suggestion which, if correct, may help with some of the other
questions.

My view comes out of being convinced that the Revelation was early – earlier
than most of the New Testament (i.e. 62). If I am right about this then there
was a particular problem group in the Church in Asia (and probably beyond
Asia) that was causing considerable harm to the Church. That group was the
Nicolaitans (Rev 2:6&15). Not much is known about the Nicolaitans which is
testimony to how early they operated. Cerinthus was a contemporary of the
Apostle John (e.g. the story of their encounter in the Ephesian baths). But
Irenaeus says that ‘the error of Cerinthus had been “disseminated among
men...a long time previously by those termed Nicolaitans.”’ (Irenaeus,
Against Heresies, III.11.1).

What he means by ‘a long time’ is not clear but surely we may assume decades.
The point I am making is that if the Revelation was early enough to precede
much of the NT then parts of the NT, especially those letters written to
Asian situations, are likely to have dealt with the Nicolaitan problem.

1 Tim 1:7, written to Timothy in Ephesus (where the Nicolaitans were active –
and accepting the epistle as authentically Pauline), speaks of some who
desired ‘to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they
(were) saying or the things about which they (made) assertions’. It was
probably the same people who were preoccupied with ‘godless and silly myths’
(1 Tim 4:7) and ‘endless genealogies…speculation… (and) vain discussion’ (1
Tim 4:4-6, c.f. Tit 3:9). It is likely that the same or a similar group were
meant in the letter to Titus, there the group was absorbed by ‘Jewish myths’
(Tit 1:14). In Colossae there were those who passed judgment on the ‘shadows’
of the Old Testament, ‘food and drink, festivals, new moon, sabbath’ (Col
2:16-17).

My suspicion is that the Nicolaitans were predominantly Jewish converts to
the Christian faith who had, in the twenty years from Pentecost to Paul’s
mission to Asia, syncretized their Jewish and Christian beliefs with Gnostic
ideas. (They were probably the first of the Gnostics with which the Church
had to deal. Cerinthus, who shared their ideas, was certainly a Gnostic).

Hebrews, then, was written (by Paul, I believe) to counter the powerful and
evangelistic Nicolaitans who sought to teach from the Old Testament
Scriptures but who did not rightly understand them. Rather, they perverted
them with their ‘silly myths’, ‘speculation’ and so on.

Hebrews was not written specifically to a Jewish readership but to the Church
(in Asia in the first instance) which was troubled by the Nicolaitan
perverters of the (O.T.) law etc. For that reason the book deals mostly with
the Old Testament. The relatively short life of the Nicolaitans (I doubt that
any would call themselves Nicolaitans – or than any Nicolaitans would call
themselves Christians, once Nero’s persecutions began) means that the context
into which Hebrews was written was quickly forgotten.

All a bit speculative, perhaps, but it makes sense of what we have.

Best wishes,

Kym Smith
The Anglican Parish of the Barossa
South Australia


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