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Rethinking the Gospel of Truth: a Study of Its Eastern Valentinian Setting

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Rethinking the Gospel of Truth: a Study of Its Eastern Valentinian Setting Rethinking the Gospel of Truth: A study of its eastern Valentinian setting J¨orgen Magnusson August 15, 2006 2 Dissertation at Uppsala University To be publicaly examined in Geijersalen, Engelska Parken, Friday, September 29, 2006 at 09:15 for the degree of Doctor of Theology. The examination will be conducted in English. Abstract Magnusson, J. 2006. RETHINKING THE GOSPEL OF TRUTH: A study of its eastern Valentinian setting. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Theology. 191 pp. Uppsala. Already in the second century, the Church Father Irenaeus warned against reading the Gospel of Truth that was used among the so-called Valentinians. For more than one and a half millennium GospTruth was lost until in the 1950s a Coptic text was discovered that could be a translation of that work both loved and hated. Since the discovery scholars have tried to determine whether the Coptic text represents the one mentioned by Irenaeus, and whether its author might even be the famous Gnostic teacher Valentinus of Alexandria. The text is very complex and the present study the first attempt to use text linguistic tools for analysing GospTruth. A new and sometimes radically different translation is presented, and an hypothesis of date of redaction and authorship is put forward. Previously Gnostic texts have usually been read in light of the reports of the Church Fathers. In this study an at- tempt is made to detect topics that were interesting for the Valentinians and that have so far been neglected. The analysis presents a new ethical debate among early Christians regarding the Biblical law, and a hypothesis of how the author of GospTruth wanted his or her community to act towards the neighbouring communities is elaborated. In addition my investigation draws attention to an interpretation of the crucifixion that seems to have distinguished Valentinians from others. For a long time scholars depicted the Gnostics as evil opponents to the church. During the last decades this view has been criticized, and today many scholars abandon the term Gnostic altogether, and instead only use the term Christian. In my opinion such an approach risks to conceal the unique features of Valentinianism, and the results of the present study will hopefully shed new light on a branch of Christianity which still is relatively unexplored. J¨orgenMagnusson, Department of Theology, Uppsala University, Humanis- tiskt centrum, Thunbergsv¨agen 3 B, SE-751 20 Uppsala Sweden To King Che 4 Contents Abstract . 2 Abbreviations . 9 Preface ................................. 10 1 A challenge in a bewildering discourse 13 A discovery that changed the scholarly landscape . 13 The GospTruth and Valentinianism . 16 The argument of title . 16 The argument of authorship . 18 Building on IrenHaer 1.11 . 18 Valentinian schools and protological myths . 20 The Saviour according to the eastern school . 21 The Saviour according to the western school . 25 Eastern and western protological myths . 28 The argument of non-expulsion . 29 The argument of style . 32 The argument of the implicit developed system . 33 The arguments of language . 33 The counter-arguments . 35 Contradictory arguments . 38 The discourse of Valentinian Gnosticism . 39 The impact of the Gnostic discourse . 44 The purpose reformulated . 44 2 Communication centred approaches 47 5 6 CONTENTS Text linguistics . 47 The usefulness of text linguistics . 47 Text linguistic tools . 48 The metacommunicative sentence or clause . 49 Substitution on abstraction-level . 50 Episode and iteration . 50 Instructive and thematic markers . 51 Resistance in the information flow . 52 Intertextuality . 53 Reflections regarding the translation . 54 Translation as transferring or explaining a message . 54 Edition . 57 3 Applying the method on the GospTruth 59 16.31-17.4a . 60 Macro-structural analysis . 60 Micro-structural analysis . 61 Semantic analysis . 62 The analyses applied on the analytical translation . 65 17.4b-18a . 65 Macro-structural analysis . 65 Micro-structural analysis . 65 Semantic analysis . 73 17.18b-27 . 73 Macro-structural analysis . 73 Micro-structural analysis . 74 Semantic analysis . 74 17.28-30a . 78 Macro-structural analysis . 78 Semantic analysis . 78 17.30b-36a . 80 Macro-structural analysis . 80 Micro-structural analysis . 80 CONTENTS 7 Semantic analysis . 80 17.36b-18.4a . 80 Macro-structural analysis . 80 Micro-structural analysis . 81 Semantic analysis . 81 18.4b-11a . 82 Macro-structural analysis . 82 Micro-structural analysis . 82 Semantic analysis . 82 18.11b-16a . 83 Macro-structural analysis . 83 Micro-structural analysis . 83 Semantic analysis . 84 18.16b-21a . 84 Macro-structural analysis . 84 Micro-structural analysis . 84 Semantic analysis . 84 18.21b-26a . 85 Macro-structural analysis . 85 Semantic analysis . 85 18.26b-31a . 85 Macro-structural analysis . 85 Micro-structural analysis . 86 Semantic analysis . 86 Evaluating the analysis . 87 What is Error? . 87 Gardeners, archons and fruits of knowledge . 88 Error as a state of mind of those of the middle . 89 Why should Error be disregarded? . 90 4 Translations 93 Translations . 94 8 CONTENTS 5 The Gospel of Truth and Valentinian discourse 129 The All and earlier definitions . 129 The maximalistic view . 130 The minimalistic view . 131 The intermediate view . 132 The birth of the All in two steps . 132 The living book of the living . 136 The enlightenment, the crucifixion and the Eucharist in 18.5-31139 30.14-31.1 as post-crucifixal revelation . 140 The Gnostic as redeemer . 143 Conclusion . 147 6 The socio-religious context of the Gospel of Truth 149 Presuppositions . 150 The Procedure . 150 The paraenesis . 150 Critique of immorality and legalism . 151 Structural analysis . 151 Semantic analysis . 151 Intertextual analysis . 155 The benefit of the analysis . 159 In search of a parallel view of the law . 160 The exhortation to rescue the lost sheep from the Cosmos: an analysis of 32.17b-33.11a . 161 The Sabbath . 162 Intertextual analysis . 163 The benefit of the analysis . 165 The paraenesis as a whole . 166 The paraenesis in its context . 167 An appeal to discard strife and division . 168 Structural analysis of 25.35-27.4 . 169 Semantic analysis of 25.35-27.4 . 170 Intertextual analysis of 25.35-27.4 . 171 ABBREVIATIONS 9 The function of 25.35-27.4 with regard to 25.19-25 . 172 The importance of 25.25-35 with regard to 25.19-25 . 173 Conclusion to 25.19-25 . 174 What happens with the rest? an analysis of 42.39-43.16 . 174 7 Rethinking The Gospel of Truth 177 8 Bibliography 183 Abbreviations ExcTheod Excerpta ex Theodoto GospTruth Gospel of Truth HippHaer Hippolytus refutation of all Haeresis IrenHaer Irenaeus Adversus Haeresis NHC Nag Hammadi Codex NHS Nag Hammadi Studies TertullianVal Tertullian against the Valentinians TripTrac Tripartite Tractate 10 CONTENTS Preface To write a thesis about the Gospel of Truth has been a tough job that I many times have thought would be impossible for me. Because I am blind I have encountered many difficulties when I tried to learn enough Coptic to analyse the text, but maybe the challlenge has provoked me to carry through my work in the most chalenging text-centred direction. But all efforts of will would have been fruitless, if it were not for all good friends who have supported me and come up with creative technical solutions that has made it possible for me to read and write Coptic and Greek. To mention names is difficult as so many have contributed in this respect, but some stand out. Without the aid of Johan Alwall, Fredrik Larsson and Patrik Granholm it would have been much harder to handle these problems. However, there still remain many typographical problems that will be solved if this book will be published. Fortunately, Magnus Holm and my wife King Che has helped me to correct many scribal errors, and hopefully the scholarly results in this manner have become possible to decipher for the readers. This work is a product of the long tradition in Uppsala. For centuries scholars have devoted their skills in order to study what we now call history of religions in general, and to a large extent to Gnosticism in particular. Scholars as, for instance, Geo Wiedengren, Torgny S¨ave-S¨oderbergh and Eric Segelberg are all well known. At the seminar for late antiquity studies I have found many friends who embody this long tradition. I would especially like to thank Carl-Martin Edsman who has encouraged me and supported me with creative and well-founded suggestions. Without Lars Hartman the text linguistic tools still would have been an unknown resource for me. The scholar who introduced me to Gnosticism was Jan Bergman who is not among us.
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