/lit/ - Literature

>>9410228
Jonas sounds like an interesting fella. I think his observations are correct, and that ultimate nihilism inherent in the world-illusion would have been one cause for the failure of gnostic sects. It's hard to reconcile living your mundane existence with knowing that the field you plowed to grow the grain to bake the crust of bread in your mouth will only prolong your suffering. Gimme me bright light and my escape hatch now dammit. I NEED MY NUGGETS.

>Gnostics thought the world Evil, and didn't think Christ's death was enough to save this world.
Well yes that is part of the gnostic deal. It is performative. Same with the cross-bearers. Christianity is something you do, not an opinion you hold. Especially not the braindead KMart brand "just believe and you will be saaaaived!praisegeesus".

I'm not sure on the gnostic's answer to the problem of evil. The world is suffering and illusion, very much in the tradition of Maya. I suppose there would be no evil. The word should not have a definition. There is only what is undesirable and self-destructive to the individual and the community, and then we're back to Old Testament moral instruction.

>>9410193
>The Coptics didn't "write" anything

So if I asked you to translate a text you would take a sheet of paper, hold your pen in your hand and... then what? You would turn one set of letters into a different set of letters by writing. You are infuriating to talk to.

>"true Gnosis" which lets the Christian reach "a mystical union with God".
Clement of Alexandria sounds like a scrub who became a political power but didn't understand his work by any means but the language of his youth. A union with God is present all the time. I'll allow that translation, the gulf of years, and the difference of my experience and his would cause him to place an emphasis on a mystical communion that I just don't see could be anything but the hysteria of a fanatic.

>Paul speaks of Christ as the "new Adam" --- that sounds heretical af if you ask me.
I've had this thought lately. It's a fitting superimposition of the myth of Adam as the original Christ, the first born of God. Just as all men are a subclass of Adam, so was Christ the Adam of our mortal age. As Adam steered Eve/Mary away from destruction, so did Jesus teach his flock. Doesn't seem heretical at all unless one uses a literal interpretation of the text.

>There's no such thing as progress, they are works produced to answer to the religious and spiritual questions of given communities at a given time, and once the questions they answered to are no longer relevant, they disappear.
Very Fichte.

>>9410129
So much of the modern Christ's message seems to be recalling apocryphal remnants in the bible. Holy spirit as the word from the invisible throne, Mary as vessel for the logos and stand-in for the student. Christ as logos manifested. Salvation from the hell that is immanent in this world by imitation of Christ.

The similarity to a gnostic belief in a great deceiver who has trapped the soul in mortal flesh and escaping only by the wisdom of a Christ-idea you cannot touch (noli me tangere much? lel) is too much to bear.

>The ideas which you would have funding the gnostic identity, are ideas of the Spätantiker Geist, which are extremely common in late antiquity, and to be found way outside of gnosticism.

I was unclear, when I say gnostics I mean the pre-Christian ascetics who renounced wealth, abstained from wine, and believed in a Christ who delivered them from the illusions of a deceiver (archon). Also the Coptics who wrote the Nag Hammadi texts at a time when a Christian orthodoxy was being developed, and the Manicheans and Cathars. That's a long span of time and it's all over the map, so I'm sorry if I was not very careful with my usage earlier in the thread.

The bits that I've seen in Thomas and in my reading of the canonical gospels suggest a reading of the bible that is heretical by Catholic standards but (imo) more accurate than the theological contortions designed by centuries of church scholars using literal readings of a gimped source material and their Protestant interlocutors.

>Give it two hundred years, and you can feel the despair in their works

I think that's just human nature at work, the progress of science without proper tools. Pre-alchemical figuring with a dosh of psychological projection. The job of the theologian is to invent systems that can interpret the human experience and reveal the divine. There have been lots of those blokes, and most of their works were only stepping stones to newer (but not necessarily better) systems.

>>9409782
>>9409791
kek u mad. Aside from the snide remarks, this was much more helpful/informative. Thanks anon.

>I study Thomas at a graduate level.
I'm glad your six months (kek) of studying Thomas is being put to use.

>youtube conferences and wikipedia articles
No.

>If you had any knowledge about the times, you'd know that there is no such thing as heresy
Oh please. Every Catholic kid knows the Council of Nicea was in 325. Any persecution before then would have been at the local level. I somehow doubt all the skinflint no-fun gnostic communities just dried up and died on their own, however. They made the world their enemy and the locals made them into martyrs. Christianity was made from the cults that survived and gnostic teaching became apocrypha. That's all I meant.

>The colloquium on gnosticism held in 1966 in Messine, quite aptly explained the issue : gnosticism is a historical manifestation of a religion split in different schools.

I'm aware. This is where you fucked up. Gnosticism was both. It was a set of ideas AND (at one time) a cultural identity AND a series of extinct sects. It doesn't mean only what you say it means. That's not how language works.

>GNOSTICISM IS NOT A SET OF IDEAS OR THEMES. I-IT'S A HISTORICAL MANIFESTATION... OF A RELIGION... SPLIT INTO DIFFERENT SCHOOLS OF IDEAS.

You really make me laugh.

>>9409643
>>9409660
Shame, I was really willing to hear you and be enlightened and you came at me with meaningless localization pasta that does nothing to confirm your claims.


>>9409652
So the world-denying ascetics at Edessa were not gnostics but they practiced like gnostics and held the same beliefs (e.g. Christ as emanation of light, the temporal immanence of the kingom of heaven) and used the same symbols as gnostics. You really showed me, fella.

I think we're getting tripped up on the vague language of "is this gnostic." I presume you mean to say it is not because it was not written by a gnostic. I am saying it is because these ideas were quickly adopted by gnostics like Basilidies and spread as a heresy against Mithraism and (((Christianity))). You could say this was written by Thomasites, but hardly anyone would know it by that association.


>>9409676
>>9409686
I don't know why you mentioned Peterson, but I'm sure you're a dolt. Thanks for contributing absolutely nothing to the discussion.

>>9409621
I'd love to hear your interpretation, anon.

>>9409498
>Take a look at the 28th, the christology of Thomas isn't gnostic at all.

It is irresponsible to cherry pick one line and say it represents the rest. And anyway I disagree. Read 27 before it for context. The Encratites who followed the sayings in Thomas and abstained from wine were reading it literally. The words of Jesus spoken in 27-28 are an exhortation to deny the world. He speaks of masses of people drunk and sated. Literally not thirsty for the message from heaven. Their contentment with temporal pleasure blinds them to the message. The great archon of the world has consumed them, in the metaphor of logion 7.

All of the references to being of the light, as well, were later adopted by the better known followers of Mani. So when OP asks "is this gnostic" I say yes of course it is. Early gnostics wrote it, later gnostics built their cosmology around it.

>>9407828
>So, /lit/, is it gnostic or what?

7. Jesus said, "Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human."

22. ..."and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]."

50. Jesus said, "If they say to you, 'Where have you come from?' say to them, 'We have come from the light, from the place where the light came into being by itself, established [itself], and appeared in their image.'

51. His disciples said to him, "When will the rest for the dead take place, and when will the new world come?" He said to them, "What you are looking forward to has come, but you don't know it."

61. ... "For this reason I say, if one is whole, one will be filled with light, but if one is divided, one will be filled with darkness."
Yes, OP. I'm sure the references to world-carcasses and metaphor of the lion "eating" as being literally consumed by world illusion are not lost on you.


Also, tell me logion 22 isn't clearly an early understanding of anima and animus and the process of individuation as a road to happiness.

>>9407339
The Road to Wigan Pier

>>9406878
Isaiah, Psalms, Matthew.

>>9406953
No, and fuck you.

Buddhism in the west is literal, actual cultural appropriation. It is ill-suited to a westerner's psyche. Buddhism would destroy the ego to find the self. This is a fallacy at odds with the western world, but accepted as adequate social conditioning for people who value the selfless dogma of a Gautama or Confucius.

This is not the same selflessness of Christ, incidentally. Where the mythic figure of Christ led as an example and sacrificed and endured pain to spare his brother -- a relatable scapegoat whose lessons of forgiveness are clear -- the Buddha tempts the practitioner's ego with spiritual power and superhuman compassion. It places an inordinate burden on the individual to negate himself and his human nature in favor of the tribe's greater good. It is a system RIPE for abuse.

>t. a former Buddhist

>>9406517
MFA ex-gf put out a poetry chapbook, i bought some copies.

>>9406224
are you left handed op

>>9406280
You should have been so clear in your initial post, anon.

Analysis of the text for unusual word choice that can imply a poetic meaning that has been lost over time and translation is fine, but it doesn't negate my assertion. This is a parable meant to turn inbred, shameless savages into a people fit for their God.

>>9406070
>So fuck the scholars who have spent a career learning the languages, the literature, and the customs of the ancient near east. This text teaches social platitudes and nothing more.


Yes, fuck them.

This passage in particular has no deeper mystical meaning, sorry. Much of the OT is like this, rules upon rules designed to raise filthy fucking dirt-scratching heathens up into a clean, prosperous civilization. A lack of literacy made parables told by an authority figure the ideal method of transmission.

I am not denying that parts of the OT and NT are mystical and have hidden meaning. Just this one doesn't. And if some theologian's misguided understanding of the work causes him to believe EVERYTHING has a hidden meaning, fuck him. Yes. He is part of the problem of religion and its inflated importance in conflict today.

>>9405800
This, OP: >>9405920


>22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.

lol guise look at him he passed out naked what a fool he is, amirite???

This sentiment of respect for the parent (honoring thy father and mother) is simply social law. This is a parable that teaches moral law and a responsibility to moral action, nothing more. The same sort of moral instruction is repeated in Ecclesiastes, where lazy people starve or die by the sword and children of God (ie, self-actualized, responsible) plow the fields and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

>>9405947
You should write a story about a man who is better at everything than a woman, including being a woman.

>>9405359
False.

>Am I becoming one of "those" people who buys books but doesn't actually read them?

OP didn't ask anyone for advice.

>>9404390
Don't listen to anyone in this thread who tells you how to be happy. Do what you want, don't submit to the judgment of these hypocrites.

>>9405159
>Book of Acts
>doesn't even come close to Magic Mike

>>9390344
>agamben's homo sacer

mi negrito!

>>9402659
The ones >>9402491 recommended. Individuation means just what this other anon said: getting to know yourself. Conscious, unconscious. Pay attention to your dreams, it is your unconscious self speaking to you in symbols. Learn what those symbols mean to you. Listen to yourself. Figure out what your fears are, what drives you, and why you are into granny porn.

The works that anon recommended will stir you, and your reaction to them will give you a reflection of your whole self back to you. It's a process of reflection that susses out an image of a whole you. Your view will never be complete, but it can get close.

>>9402646
>>9402682
You are wasting your time.

>>9402265
>>9402436
Alright well supposing this isn't a bait thread to make normies and edgelords mad I'll give you an honest answer.

Consider that humanity needs religion, and its existence as a science of the spirit is a crutch used to support parts of our brain that we don't fully understand yet with the scientific method. If you were raised in religion, your head is swimming in myths and symbols so pervasive they are inescapable. So why try to escape them?

I would recommend you read the comparative mythology work of Campbell and Frazer, Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane, and research Jung's idea of individuation and collective unconscious. You will soon form your own opinion about the human need for faith, religion, and its place in your life. This is something you can't be told.


ps Atheism is for edgelords and agnosticism is for pseuds. Hitchens and Dawkins are very sad cases, sadder than true believers who live and die without ever understanding why the symbols they worship have such power over them.