This article seeks to demonstrate the utility of the concept of “esotericism” for gaining insights into how ancient sources approach matters of identity, ritual, soteriology, and eschatology through discourses of secrecy and revelation. The article takes the Nag Hammadi Gospel of Philip (NHC II, 3) as a case study, analysing how the image of the Jerusalem temple (the heart of Jewish apocalypticism and mysticism) has been adapted for polemical purposes in order to create boundaries between perfect Christians on the one hand, and imperfect Christians and Jews on the other hand. By paying careful attention to how the text uses the language of esotericism, expressed via temple imagery, to rhetorically distinguish between these groups, new light is shed on both its doctrine of transformational soteriology, and how these distinctions are retained eschatologically. In concluding, it is suggested that by placing the concept of “esotericism” at the heart of our analysis, insights regarding the Gospel of Philip’s date and provenance are also possible.
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Turner, The Gospel According to Philip, 255–256; cf. Schenke, ‘Das Evangelium nach Philippus’, 33; van Eijk, ‘The Gospel of Philip’, 104.
Wilson, The Gospel of Philip, 188; cf. Janssens, ‘L’Évangile selon Philippe’, 132; Ménard, L’Évangile selon Philippe, 6; Buckley, ‘Conceptual Models’, 4168–4169; Thomassen, ‘How Valentinian is the Gospel of Philip?’, 279.
Buckley, ‘Conceptual Models’, 4168; Pagels, ‘Ritual in the Gospel of Philip’, 280–281.
Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 153–399; cf. Iricinschi, ‘If You Got It, Flaunt It’, 264: ‘the Gospel of Philip is still in need of a thorough analysis of its mechanisms of self-definition, strip[p]ed of any “gnostic”, “East-Valentinian”, or “heretical” academic preconceptions.’
E.g. Philo, Spec. 1.66; Jos. Ant. 3.180–182; Clem. Alex. Strom. 2.1.1.2; 5.6.32–40. See Hofius, Der Vorhang, 4–27; Levenson, ‘The Jerusalem Temple’, 51–53; Janowski, ‘Die heilige Wohnung des Höchsten’; idem, ‘Der Tempel als Kosmos’; for later Jewish tradition, see Rowland and Morray-Jones, The Mystery of God, 328–330.
Philo, Mos. 2.109–135; Spec. 1.84–87; QE 2.51–124; Jos. Ant. 3.151–187; J.W. 5.184–237; Clem. Alex. Strom. 5.6.37–38. For analysis and comparison of these allegorical interpretations, see van den Hoek, Clement of Alexandria, 116–147.
Philo, Somn. 2.189, 231 (trans. Colson and Whitaker, Philo: Volume V, 275).
Attridge, Hebrews, 97–103; 244–266; Koester, The Dwelling of God, 26–40.
Stökl Ben Ezra, The Impact of Yom Kippur on Early Christianity, 237.
See Schenke, Das Philippus-Evangelium, 404; van Os, ‘Baptism in the Bridal Chamber’, 189; for an alternative schematic, see Schmid, Die Eucharistie ist Jesus, 119. However, Schmid also suggests that, ‘vermutlich hat der Philippusevangelist keine konkrete Architektur vor Augen’.
Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 385–394; cf. Wolfson, ‘Becoming Invisible’, 116–120.
Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 338–341, 385–386; Lundhaug perceptively suggests that this is an allusion to Jewish matrilineage, whereby one’s Judaism is inherited from one’s mother alone. Cf. 77.19–20, which reads ⲧⲙⲁⲁⲩ ⲧⲉ ⲧⲁⲗⲏⲑⲉⲓⲁ ⲧⲅⲛⲱⲥⲓⲥ ⲇⲉ ⲡⲉ ⲡⲧⲱⲧ which translates literally as, ‘The Mother is Truth, knowledge is the mingling.’ Several commentators emend ⲧⲱⲧ to ⲡⲉⲓⲱⲧ (e.g. Isenberg and Layton, ‘The Gospel according to Philip’, 196; Schenke, Das Philippus-Evangelium, 64), and translate something like, ‘The Mother is Truth, the Father is knowledge’, which if correct would be an allusive parallel given that the initiates are said to have become free via ‘knowledge of the Truth’.
Wilson, The Gospel of Philip, 179; Wilson makes the same observation, only characterises the distinction as being between ‘material men’, ‘the psychics’, and ‘the Gnostics’; cf. Schenke, Das Philippus-Evangelium, 492–493.
Thus Stroumsa, Hidden Wisdom, 32–38; Williams, ‘Secrecy, Revelation, and Late Antique Demiurgical Myths’, 35–37; Kaler, ‘Those Sneaky Valentinians’; Burns, ‘Ancient Esoteric Traditions’.
Trans. Pietersma and Wright (eds.), A New English Translation of the Septuagint, 304. See also Exod 25:16–21; 38.1–8; 1Kgs 8:7; 1Chr 28:18; 2Chr 5:7–8; Heb 9:4–5; see Haran, ‘The Ark and the Cherubim’.
Tertullian, Bapt. 8.17–25; Cyprian of Carthage, Unit. eccl. 6; Ep. 69.2; 74.11; 75.15; Augustine, Serm. 264.5; Catech. 20.32, 34; cf. Justin Martyr, Dial. 138.2–3; see Jensen, Living Water, 267–269. Ap. JohnBG 72.14–73.12 (= NHC III 37.16–38.5; NHC II 28.34–29.12; NHC IV 44.22–45.9) also equates Noah’s Ark with the Ark of the Covenant, making it the place of salvation for ‘the immoveable race’ (ⲧⲅⲉⲛⲉⲁ ⲉⲧⲉⲙⲁⲥⲕⲓⲙ), where the Flood is the work of the chief Archon.
Cf. Origen, Comm. Jo. 10.210–215; Origen describes the Valentinian Heracleon’s interpretation of John 2:13–16 in the following words: ‘he considers the holy of holies to be the temple, which the high priest alone may enter. He says, I think, that the pneumatics advance to that place. The forecourt of the temple, where the Levites too are found, he considers to be a symbol of the psychics who attain salvation outside the pleroma’ (trans. Heine, Commentary on the Gospel according to John, 302).
Segelberg, ‘The Antiochene Background’; Isenberg and Layton, ‘The Gospel According to Philip’, 134; Siker, ‘Gnostic Views’, 288; Thomassen, Spiritual Seed, 350; Iricinschi, ‘If You Got It, Flaunt It’, 256–261; Schmid, Die Eucharistie ist Jesus, 14; cf. Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures, 325; Schenke, Das Philippus-Evangelium, 5, who prefer Edessa.
Isenberg and Layton, ‘The Gospel According to Philip’, 134; van Os, ‘Was the Gospel of Philip Written in Syria?’, 88; Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 361–362.
Thomassen, Spiritual Seed, 398–401; Lundhaug, Images of Rebirth, 359–361.
Bradshaw, ‘Baptismal Practice’, 92–98; Johnson, Liturgy in Early Christian Egypt, 15.
Ibid., 392.
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This article seeks to demonstrate the utility of the concept of “esotericism” for gaining insights into how ancient sources approach matters of identity, ritual, soteriology, and eschatology through discourses of secrecy and revelation. The article takes the Nag Hammadi Gospel of Philip (NHC II, 3) as a case study, analysing how the image of the Jerusalem temple (the heart of Jewish apocalypticism and mysticism) has been adapted for polemical purposes in order to create boundaries between perfect Christians on the one hand, and imperfect Christians and Jews on the other hand. By paying careful attention to how the text uses the language of esotericism, expressed via temple imagery, to rhetorically distinguish between these groups, new light is shed on both its doctrine of transformational soteriology, and how these distinctions are retained eschatologically. In concluding, it is suggested that by placing the concept of “esotericism” at the heart of our analysis, insights regarding the Gospel of Philip’s date and provenance are also possible.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 295 | 33 | 3 |
Full Text Views | 242 | 2 | 1 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 56 | 8 | 2 |