Notes
Sunday 15 March 2020 - Saturday 21 March 2020
[Notebook: DB 84 Pam's Book]
[page 203]
Sunday 15 March 2020
Crotty Chapter 1: What Really is Religion?
page 2: 'I understand culture to mean the total shared way of life of any given Homo sapiens group. . . . Culture is a human fiction. . . . In short, cultures exist primarily in the mind. Robert Crotty: The Christian Survivor: How Roman Christianity Defeated Its Early Competitors
page 4: Moderate cultural relativism. Pinker: Language is an instinct. Steven Pinker: The Language Instinct
page 5: The need for order.
page 6: Culture and religion: Religion is a transcultural human universal.
page 7; 'As a reference point, writing could be used to stabilize large populations'. 'Religious adherents work toward common goals and can eschew self interest.'
page 8: 'At this point of the potential disintegration of a secular cultural world there is an urgent need for religious culture.'
page 11: 'Ultimacy in itself is the ultimate focussing of all things.'
page 12: Central phenomenon of any religion is its religious experience.
page 13: 'Whether the sacred story is ultimately true is of no importance. What is important is the religious experience the sacred story has generated.'
page 14: 'Myth is a metaphorical story that is intended to convey the most profound spiritual truth, a truth that cannot be communicated in everyday language [but maybe in music].'
page 20: 'The role of religious succession cannot be emphasized too much.'
page 34: Literary Jesus, Historical Jesus, Biblical Jesus - there was certainly a Historical Jesus.
page 50: 'Pietas defined religiosity for the Romans, the interior devotion to the gods, Roman religious experience.' Religio and cultus were simply rituals that maintained peace between the people and the Gods.
disciplina, gravitas, constantia, virtu, eusebia, dignitas, auctoritas 'This was the social world into which Christianity would flourish.'
page 51: Traditional Roman religion focussed on the supernatural, the numen. lares (ancestors), penates (household spirits) vesta (hearth)
[page 203]
Crotty page 52: Emperor worship based on genius, the spark of divinity. Rome moves East. 64 BCE Pompey ousts Tigranes 1.
page 55: Romans make Herod the Great king of Judea in 40 BCE and occupy Jerusalem for him in 37.
page 57: 'What is clear is that Christianity was born into a Roman world.
page 59: 'Conceding that our knowledge of the Jewish background is very limited, we have also to admit that we know virtually nothing about Jesus . . . What we do know is that Jesus provided a stimulus for a number of Jesus-movement groups . . . One of these would survive, Roman Christianity, and the others would flourish and then be subsumed and die out. . . . This process is very much like human evolution . . . Can the forerunner communities that preceded Roman Christianity be also reconstructed [like the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens]?
page 60: 'What follows is an attempt to do just that.'
page 72: James, Peter and Stephen were early Christian leaders. They were not telling the same story. Far from it. There were also other leaders, such as Paul and John. We will deal with both in due course.'
page 73: 'The Jesus-movement group in Rome was a very different story.
page 74: "Somewhere amidst the Jewish synagogues of Rome, Roman Christianity took it rise.'
[page 205]
Crotty page 77: 'The fact was that Christians in Rome no longer identified with Jews after the mid 50s CE. Between that time and the middle of the third century the Jesus-movement in Rome consolidated . . . The Roman Jesus movement had become the Christian Church in the West.
page 81: I Clement: 'This reinforcement of traditional authority by Clement is the first clear statement advocating a self perpetuating Church leadership in Christianity.'
page 86: 'We are here close to the basic building blocks of Roman Christianity. The Christians, forced by circumstances, . . . to leave the synagogues, established house-churches as substitutes . . . Because of the Roman concept of familia, authority was vested in an episcopos . . . The most important would have been the episcopos claiming succession to Peter. He was the Apostolos.
page 93: 'The historical likelihood is that Peter never came to Rome and naturally, was never buried there. . . . Presumably Peter and his group remained in Antioch,'
page 96: 'Who first underwent a vicarious sacrifice: The Jewish Isaac or the Christian Jesus defined as the New Isaac?'
page 97: The text [Gn 22:1-14] centres on the testing of Abraham.
page 100: 'The covenant, in Near Eastern society, meant that
[page 206]
between the High God as patron deity and the community there was a contract that regulated land possession and the treatment of those outside the community.
Crotty page 101: 'In short the Abraham complex in Genesis 11-25 is an alternative account of the acquisition of the land [controlled by the High God] by an 'Israel', an immigrant group which had arrived in the 'eretz and now inserted itself into the sacred narrative of the land.'
page 109: ' . . . there is growing emphasis [in post-biblical Christian literature] on the parallel between the sacrifice of Jesus and the sacrifice of Isaac.'
Parallel with Mithraism: Mithras slew the primordial bull in a sacrificial act and released his blood. From the blood primeval life began. Mithraism - Wikipedia
page 111: 'The conclusion from this survey is that at the time when the Christians interpreted Jesus' death as a blood sacrifice, they used the typology of Isaac to explain that God the Father allowed that blood sacrifice to eventuate.'
page 112: 'Christianity had inherited a new Isaac.' The Roman Christian literary tradition had by now the skeleton of the Nicene Creed - The Roman Christian Myth. Nicene Creed - Wikipedia
page 115: 'The Roman traditions would have been placed into written form by the Gospel of Mark . . . the heart of Roman Christianity.'
page 117: Roman history based on documentation [rather than oral].
page 118: Gospels in final form well into C2 CE.
[page 207}
Crotty page 119: '[The] . . . key theological issue in Roman Tradition . . . was that Jesus was willingly sacrificed by his Father. . . . It established a new covenant to replace the jaded covenant between Israel and Yahweh. Yahweh - Wikipedia
page 128; Nine Roman traditions.
page 124: 'good news' evangelion
page 125: Tradition 1: Jewish forerunner John; Jesus baptism; testing in wilderness;
Tradition 2: New Isaac, Messiah for Jews and gentiles;
page 154: Tradition 3: Entry into Jerusalem;
page 162: Tradition 4: Eschatological sermon;
page 168: Tradition 5: Messiah is anointed and has last meal;
page 174: Tradition 6: Prayer in Gethsemane - examination of Jesus' mind;
page 177: Tradition 7: Trials: Jewish Hierarchy and Roman administration;
page 182: Tradition 8: Crucifixion, death and burial - fulfilment texts;
page 189: Tradition 9: Empty tomb.
page 192: The Gospel of Mark ends with the women overcome by awe: 16:8 "So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror (tromos) and amazement (ekstasis) had seized them; and they spoke nothing to anyone, for they were afraid (phobos."
'Normal fear is not being described here. It is religious awe.'
page 194: 'The Jesus-movement in Rome adjusted to the [Roman] cultural form.
[page 208]
Acceptance of patriarchy made it a virtue. Sexual ethics became much more rigid than in the common Roman household, and more rigid than in Judaism.'
Crotty page 196: 'Roman Christianity is now stabilized by a formal and authoritative written text, although on its fringes, even in the capital, an enemy was lurking - Christian Gnosticism.
page 198: Christian Gnosticism: Nag Hammadi texts 350-400 CE. Nag Hammadi library - Wikipedia
page 199: Contents of the text explain why they were hidden: Their Jesus is very much contrary to the canonical Jesus.
page 201: Christian gnostics descended from Jewish gnostics seeking new saviour. They would be effectively wiped out (but never completely eradicated) by the Roman military in the fourth century CE.
page 202: 'By the time of Constantine in the fourth century CE, Gnostic teaching was seen as an abject corruption of the valid teaching of Jesus.'
' . . . the Christian Gnostic Myth (like all of Gnosticism) stressed the need for gnosis, a special knowledge, experience or illumination . . . reserved for the chosen few.'
page 203: The Monad → emanations; Father → Mother → Child: autogenes, monogenes, logos, word.
page 204: Demiurge, the defective god who created the world and humanity. Jesus a manifestation of god could act in the world.
[page 209]
Crotty page 213: 'One thing must be made clear. Palestinian Christianity had sparked Roman Christianity. But thereafter it did not have any lasting influence on it. In fact, the influence went the other way. Roman Christianity swamped both Palestinian Christianity and Gnostic Christianity.' With military help?
page 218: Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem (Aelia Capitolina) after 130 CE and Roman, non Jewish Christians moved to the rebuilt city.
page 219: Roman Christian move East would affect many forms of the Jesus movement there.
page 223: Acts is the first Church Story, the forerunner of the definitive early Christian history of Eusebius and his forerunners in the time of Constantine. Eusebius - Wikipedia, Constantine the Great and Christianity - Wikipedia
page 224: 'Acts presented Paul as another Jesus.'
page 226: 'Its purpose is to demonstrate how Paul inherited the mantle as leader of Christianity.
page 229: "Do the Galatians want Jesus or circumcision? They cannot have both?"
page 233: 'We have no evidence that Paul's communities practised anything like the Roman Eucharist.'
page 238: 'I Corinthians began life as a Gnostic discourse,' cf. 2:6 sqq.
page 243: '[Paul] has had a gnostic apokalypsis'
page 250: 'Gnostic Christians in Rome were Paul's prime audience in Rome.'
[page 210]
Crotty page 255; 'The only conclusion can be that Paul was a Gnostic leader whose influence and teaching were later rewritten by Roman Christians.
page 260: 'Literary Paul is definitely not a Gnostic, but a fully integrated member of the Roman Christian Church.
Historical Paul, constructed by 'historians'.
page 264; 'In short, Paul was a Gnostic who endeavoured unsuccessfully to make overtures with other Jesus-movement groups.'
page 266: Biblical Paul.
page 269: John of Patmos maybe worked on
page 271: The Book of Revelation
page 277: John's Gospel: '. . . called the "Spiritual Gospel" because of the beauty and expansiveness of its discourse.'
page 278: 'My hypothesis is the the Gospel of John, in an earlier form, was a compilation of Gnostic texts. See Crotty 2016. Crotty: Jesus, His Mother, Her Sister Mary and Mary Magdalene: The Gnostic Background to the Gospel of John
page 285: Independent Gnostic Treatises: The hymn of the Word [John 1:1 sqq.]
page 290: Roman Christians going East extensively amended the Gnostic compendium to yield the Roman Gospel of John.
page 295: Mathew was almost certainly written in a Palestinian setting.
[page 211]
Crotty page 297: Antioch is a strong possibility for Matthew's community.
page 303; Luke: By the time of Luke it seems that Jerusalem had been destroyed and the Jewish people were largely dispersed around the mediterranean, say 120 CE.
Monday 16 March 2020
Crotty page 309: 'The only immediate way to examine the impact of Roman Christianity on other forms of Christianity is to examine some of the early Christian literature that usually escapes our attention.'
page 351: 'The ultimate success of Roman Christianity needs to be acknowledged and its repercussions in modern times acknowledged.'
page 335; Constantine had been dismayed that his new Christian territories were ideologically split over the debate [about the nature of Jesus himself] (led mainly by Arius, an elder in Alexandria). Arius claimed that Jesus was only human, although he was the best human ever and could be called god-like but he was not divine.page 339: 'Constantine's use of Christianity as a mediator for social stability and organization in the Empire and his own eventual 'conversion' to Christianity should not have been so unexpected. He believed that he had come to power through his support of the Christian Jesus . . . '
Decree in 314 CE: Our purpose is to grant to Christians and to all others full authority to follow whatever worship each one has desired, so that whatever divinity dwells in heaven may be benevolent and propitious to us, and to all placed under our authority. Edict of Milan - Wikipedia
[page 212]
One of the beauties of the cosmological divinity is that it is governed by discernible laws of nature so that instead of having to beg and pray for it to be benevolent toward us we merely have to use the laws to implement the technology that we need to save ourselves.
Crotty page 340: 'Soon bishops became civil servants. They were given rights to rule, to judge, to apportion food supply.'
'Constantine saw himself as the Vicar of God, establishing finally the Reign of God by means of the Roman empire,' A role [eventually] usurped by the popes.
Tuesday 17 March 2020
Hawking and Ellis [from page 202. Friday 13 March] page 11 2.1 Manifolds Hawking & Ellis: The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time
page 11: Cr = r times continuously differentiable. C∞ no bound on r eg infinite polynomial.
'A Cr n-dimensional manifold M is a set M together with a Cr atlas {Ua , Φa}, a collection of charts (Ua , Φa) where the Ua are subsets of M and the Φa are one-one maps of the corresponding Ua to open sets in Rn such that;
1. The Ua cover M, ie M = ⋃aUa; and
2. If Ua ⋂ Ub is non-empty, then the map Φa o Φb-1: Φb(Ua ⋂ Ub) → Φa(Ua ⋂ Ub) is a Cr map of an open subset of Rn to an open subset of Rn.
[page 233]
Misner, Thorne and Wheeler Misner, Thorne & Wheeler: Gravitation
MTW page 51: Attempt to define a vector at a point like a gradient at a point by the limit used in calculus, which depends on space-time being continuous. How do we define a vector in a quantized world? The same problem arises in Hilbert space.
page 56: 'a 1-form is a liner real valued function of vectors ie a linear machine which takes in a vector and puts out a real number.'
page 57: 'the output of 1 form σ when vector u is inserted is 'the value of σ on u'.
page 59: the gradient df of f is a one form.
We may take it as read that the formation of a black hole is a consequence of a sufficiently large concentration of mass as predicted by the general theory and that the coalescence of the geodesics of all the particles in a closed region of space leads to a singularity. Hawking and Ellis surmise that the big bang is an instance of this process in reverse. There appear to be a number of difficulties here. The first is that black holes appear to be very durable and decay very slowly by quantum processes that might last longer than any conceivable age of the universe. Black hole thermodynamics - Wikipedia
The second is that the initial singularity may be considered to be a point with no structure outside the space-time manifold to which the general theory applies. The question, therefore, is how does an entity with no structure create structure from, effectively, nothing. Given the old adage ex nihilo nihil fit, it would seem that we ned ideas outside the current realm of physics to
[page 214]
explain how this happens [maybe we can invoke mathematical fixed point theory if it can be argued that the initial singularity fulfils the hypotheses of some fixed point proof]. The fundamental problem from the physical point of view is the conservation of energy. Black holes do not destroy energy [or electric charge or angular momentum]. They retain their mass as demonstrated by the fact that masses can be seen orbiting them outside their event horizon, and if they did in fact destroy energy, we can imagine them becoming massless and so no longer trapping themselves in a singularity, so to speak. A consequence of this is that the singularity, if it exists, may be considered to have zero size and a huge amount of energy packed at infinite density and consequently at infinite temperature.
The initial singularity presents similar problem since it might be considered to have the energy of the universe at an infinitesimal point. It therefore becomes necessary to deal with the energy problem first, and one common answer is that the universe has zero energy insofar as the sum of its kinetic and potential energy may be zero. We the have to explain how kinetic and potential energy may be differentiated in the initial singularity and what sets the system off to crate the big bang.
There may be a clue in geometrodynamics, the mathematical approach to describing the large scale structure of the universe used explicitly in Misner et al and less so by Hawking and Ellis. Speaking as Aristotelians we might say that form describes but does not cause [ie a form is not an agent] Aristotle saw this as a defect with Plato's forms - they do not motivate and so he invented the first unmoved mover which is pure act [entelcheia or energeia]. So in the past I have explored the idea that pure act, which has the dimensions of angular momentum
[page 215]
may be able to exist in a structureless system without causing any problems of infinity. We see this in electrons and other particles which are considered to have spin but no size . . .. So we will be looking for some quantum mechanical insight into the relationship between fundamental particles and the initial singularity, and so to bed. There lies the beginning of scientific theology.
I have thought about this for a long time and have produced a number of hypothetical stories, reproduced in naturaltheology.net, scientific-theology.com and theologyco.com and refined the problem down to a single question - where does gravitational potential come from? It seems that the general theory cannot explain it because [the origin of potential] antedates the general theory epoch of the emergence of the universe, so I am looking for a new story to build on the notion that we start with pure act, time emerges to give energy and time, energy bifurcates into potential and kinetic, which is in some way related to the emergence of space-time, and then we can invoke mathematical consistency to connect the special and general theories of relativity, but where did the velocity of light and the electric field come from [and, it seems, since there is no potential in inertial space, gravitational potential requires the existence of at least two independent inertial geodesics accelerating with respect to one another]?. First, it seems, we really need an explanation of gravitational field which is obviously very closely connected to action and energy. Round and round, but whatever emerges will have to be in some way circular because the universe is effectively closed.
All these problems and many more form the content of lust-4-life, and the problems give us a clue in the sense that they are questions demanding answers and therefore creating the potential whose gradient forces us toward finding answers, Aristotle's desire for knowledge.
[page 216]
Here is where creation saves. The coronavirus demands an answer, which scientists and administrators are trying to create, and when it comes in the form of a vaccine, social distance, paid sick leave and all the other coping mechanisms, we shall be saved, provided we can put all our creative ideas into action.
Life is a flow, punctuated with problems, small and great [every step forward, even those as small as a quantum of action, is the solution to a problem; the emission of an electron and the discovery of the general theory of relativity (by both the universe and Einstein) are formally identical processes].
Wednesday 18 March 2020
Pinker page 20: Darwin: 'language ability is "an instinctive tendency to acquire an art." Steven Pinker: The Language Instinct [link above]page 23: Chomsky: ' "The language each person acquires is a rich and complex construction hopelessly underconstrained by the fragmentary evidence available [to the child]. Nevertheless individuals in a speech community have developed essentially the same language. This fact can be explained only on the assumption that these individuals employ highly restrictive principles that guide the construction of grammar." '
An application of the principle of requisite variety. Applied to the emergence of the universe is shows the unity of the universal structure is a product of its origin being restricted to a single initial singularity.
page 25: New Guinea; 26: No mute tribe has ever been discovered.
page 28: Weinreich: ' "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy".'
page 33: Bickerton: 'a pidgin can be converted into a full complex
[page 217]
language in one fell swoop: all it takes is for a group of children to be exposed to the pidgin at the age when they acquire their mother tongue.'
Pinker page 39: 'Extraordinary acts of creation by children [occur] every time a child learns his or her mother tongue.'
page 45: 'If language is an instinct it should have an identifiable seat on the brain, and perhaps with a special set of genes that help wire it into place.' ? Heyes pp 169-96. Cecilia Heyes: Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking
page 55: Newspeak: effective insofar as thought is dependent on words.
page 58: 'As we shall see in this chapter, there is no scientific evidence that languages drastically shape their speakers' ways of thinking.' ie they do not constrain thought like though constrains language.
page 73: 'Turing . . . made the idea of symbolic representation scientifically respectable.etc etc.
Lust for Life - Irving Stone Nonesuch London 1954. Irving Stone; Lust for Life, Vincent van Gogh - Wikipedia
Thursday 19 March 2020
Estia shuts down visitors.
Stone Book 1: The Borinage - the struggle for life in the Belgian coal mines 1879-80.
Gravitation the crown (apogee? culmination? perfection? completion?) of classical physics. It can take us no further and we must turn to quantum mechanics for the next step. Gravity
[page 218]
is the classical frame for quantum reality, the continuum which is modulated to give us the world.
Friday 20 March 2020
Crotty 2016 Robert Crotty: Jesus, His Mother, Her Sister Mary and Mary Magdalene: The Gnostic Background to the Gospel of John [ref link above]
Crotty page 3: 'It must be stated that this book is not written from the viewpoint of the Christian Church . . . '
page 7: 'To what extent can the study of the Bible be described as an historical search? . . . second . . . did religion fall from the heavens? Or is it an explicable phenomenon within the ambit of human development?'
page 9: Religion and culture.
page 10: He repeats: "At this point, where secular culture cannot cope, there is an urgent need for something more - a religious culture.' Assuming, of course that there are things like war, plague, earthquake, tsunami beyond the reach of secular culture. Not really. So Ultimacy, which, to me, is not stronger than death,
pages 10-17: repetition of 2017 (or vice versa) Robert Crotty (2017) : The Christian Survivor: How Roman Christianity Defeated Its Early Competitors [ref link above]
page 19: Jewish background [source] of Christianity.
page 21: Literary forms of the Jewish Bible: Myth, legend, fable, poetry, wisdom and sometimes history,
page 22: So: Literary Israel / Historical Israel /
[page 219]
Crotty page 27: Intersection of Literary and Historical Israel. Liteary Israel C6 → C2 BCE. Before the Persian and Greek periods. 539: Perians took over Babylonians.
page 29: Persian immigrants to Jerusalem established new High God, Yahweh. 'What was the origin of the High God? Temple:
page 30: 'Royalty and temple administration combined as joint controllers of Ancient Near Eastern society.' ' A temple was in ancient times not solely a religious foundation. I was an institution that linked landowners and the official temple personnel with the ruling elite.'
' . . . Persia had a strategic policy that included . . . either the building or restoration of temples . . . and finally the establishment of law codes considered to have been provided by the temple deity.'
'If this "people of the land" wanted to be part of Yehud or the new Judah under the High God Yahweh, they must agree to the new definition of god, society and ethnicity.
page 33: Hellenization C4 BCE - belligerent introduction of Greek culture.
page 34: Hasmoneans. Hasmonean dynasty - Wikipediapage 37: From Judaism there emerged a new religion, a sect of Judaism which would eventually be called Christianity.'
[page 219]
My interest in this history stems from my desire to create a new religion with a cosmic God. I am no prophetic preacher with coals of fire in my mouth [Isaiah 6:6] but a mild mannered writer with a few ideas that seem good and need documentation, which is what I am doing here, imitating a Persian scribe without royal military backing.
Crotty page 38: So we are back to Literary Jesus again. It is heartening to see how much Crotty repeats himself in his books, as I do in my websites.
page 40: Quelle. Jesus-movements. Q source - Wikipedia
page 47: Multiple Jesus-movements - see Crotty 2017.
page 62: Christian Gnosticism.
page 63: Plato: 'True knowledge consists of the mental apprehension of the unchanging Forms.' All material things, including humans have derived ultimately from The One [the Form of Goodness].
This all sounds a bit like my plan for the emergence of the Universe from the initial singularity. Initial singularity - Wikipedia
'. . . aided by the divinity, humans can passively become the recipients of gnosis and find reunion with The One, with God.'
page 64; 'The Logos for Platonists was the invisible principle that permeated all reality.' → Hellenization → Plato → Jewish Proto-Gnosticism.
Saturday 21 March 2020
The fundamental errors and contradictions in Christianity mean that hypocrisy is in effect built in.
Where does love come from? Where does lust come from? Where does gravity come from? What is the source of potential? Why does the world go round? and finally why do I and so many other people want to answer these questions and many like them, that is, where does curiosity come from? Darwin gave us an easy answer to lust. Because life is short all species that could not reproduce fast enough (for whatever reason) have died out, and since reproduction is no easy matter it requires powerful motivation to get going, the lust for life [and thinking more generally, we might conclude that the origin of potential was a random event which, because of its tendency to reproduce itself, has propagated itself through the universe at all levels in all circumstances]
Matter is the carrier of information because it is quantized in waves. Why quantization? Why potential? Quantization enables counting, which enables statistical mechanics, which explains potential. Kerson Huang; Statistical Mechanics
Back to Crotty:
The Gnostic story is an hypothesis about the nature of the world which touched on enough points of human experience to give it a certain amount of credibility in a time of stress:
Crotty page 71; 'The religious structure of Judaism was under stress as is revealed in its literature. It was being manipulated as a religious population sought contact with Ultimacy. It is only at this point that we can understand Jewish Gnosticism . . . The Dead Sea Scrolls give evidence of this, . . . ' Dead Sea Scrolls - Wikipedia
[page 222]
From a marketing point of view I need to shape my theological trilogy as a new approach to cosmological "Ultimacy" which will solve all our problems through science, ie scientifically realistic dreams of future 'salvation' through evidence based action.
Crotty page 71: '. . . In some parts the Scrolls relate their own symbolic universe. It was based on dualism; Light and Darkness, Truth and Lie, Spirit and Flesh. This religio-cultural world was ruled by Darkness and Lie. The Ruler of the World was the Angel of Darkness, also known as the Devil. This is Gnostic language derived from the Hellenistic way of thinking being applied to Jewish thought.'
page 72: Conclusion; '. . . the trend toward immediate union was basically widespread in human thought, the contention that the human intellect can make direct contact with the Infinite . . . ' Beatific vision - Wikipedia
Christian Gnostics: 'there were rival successors to Jesus. . . . They were the Christian Gnostics.' Crotty 2107 pp 196 sqq.
Aristotle effectively refuted Gnosticism when he noted that Plato's forms are not efficient causes: we need the unmoved mover for that. In my piture the unmoved mover is potential, the spirit that drives thr world, dynamics translate as the lust for life. So it remains good to root modern theology in Book XII of thr Metaphysics as Aquinas did. In a way the most fortunate disaster in my life was to join the Dominicans and meet Thomas. Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, vii, 1072b3 sqq, Unmoved mover - Wikipedia
[page 223]
. . .
Crotty page 72 (cont): 'There was never anything like a recognisable and single "Gnostic Jesus-movement".' [at least according to the available sources]
page 74: Nag Hammadi
page 75: Nag Hammadi themes:
Alternative myths of Creation and Salvation
Gnostic Teachings
Gnostic liturgies
The Feminine Divine Principle
Gnostic Apostolic Writings
Sayings and Deeds of Jesus
Other
page 76: Gospel of Mary; Gospel of Judas Gospel of Mary - Wikipedia, Gospel of Judas - Wikipedia
page 77: 'Where there are parallels between Christian Scripture and Gnostic text direct dependence of one on the other should never be an automatic conclusion.'
page 78: 'Christian Gnosticism seems to have flourished mostly among hermits and ascetic monks living an austere life in desert regions, particularly in Egypt. . . . They were regarded by many of the Roman Church group in particular as The Enemy. Wiped out by Roman military C4 CE (Crotty 2017 p 201).
[page 224]
Crotty page 79: 'It is true that Christian Gnostics became the losers. They succumbed to the superior political (and military) power of the mainstream Roman Church.'
page 80: Gnosis: direct illumination given to the chosen few. Wrong!
page 81: 'Trimorphic Protennoia' Trimorphic Protennoia - Wikipedia
page 82: Sophia → emanation of the Demiurge. Sophia (Gnosticism) - Wikipedia, Demiurge - Wikipedia
page 83: 'Creation of humanity and the material world . . . was a mistake of cosmic proportions.'
Apocalypse of John Apocalyptic literature - Wikipedia
page 84: 'The divine Jesus came into this world to deliver the saving experience of gnosis, but why>'
page 86: '. . . the Gnostic Jesus did not have a human beginning (conception and birth) or a human end (death).' Eternally Platonic
page 87: The Apocalypse of Peter Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter - Wikipedia
page 91: Gnostic Salvation: 'The true Gnostic became Another Jesus and really understood the divine mysteries and thus found redemption even before death.' In the Thomas / Dionysius picture, God is omnino simplex and so there is nothing to understand. The fundamental ancient error is that there can be
[page 225]
knowledge / information without mattter (quantization, symbolization). Aquinas, Summa, I, 3, 7: Is God altogether simple?
Crotty page 92: Gnostic Creed and exegesis → to page 104.
page 104: 'We now turn to the major Jesus-movement group, Roman Christianity.' (Crotty 2017)
page 119: 'The period of Constantine saw the triumph of Roman Christianity. He gave it official imperial representation, and considered himself to be its centre'. Roman Christianity has continued to expand by military violence ever since, Crusades, British Empire, US Empire, and now its end times are coming, brought down by science and globalization, not to mention the transcendent stupidity of the imperial powers (Diamond). Christopher Tyerman: The World of the Crusades, Jared Diamond; Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
page 123: Paul. (Crotty 2017 page 224 sqq:. A gnostic rewritten by the Romans.
page 142: 'The Historical Paul was a Gnostic.'
page 144: John of Patmos: Book of Revelation
page 147: '. . . is a Christian apocalyptic. It belongs to a literary genre that uses symbols to pass judgement on world events and foretell events that will occur in the future.'
page 149: '. . . Western Asia Minor was a hive of Gnostic activity during the first century CE.
page 255: 'What will now follow is an analysis of the structure and interpretation of the Gospel of John.
[page 226]
Crotty page 156: '. . . John's discourse is largely symbolic.'
page 159: Seven independent Gnostic treatises.
page 206: 'The seven separate Gnostic treatises would have circulated as individual catechetical pieces to instruct beginners in the Gnostic Jesus.'
The Book of Seven Signs: 'these [signs] are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.'
page 209: Chiastic structure of the seven signs:
1 A. Cana and the Mother (2:1-12)2 B. The cure of the official's son (4:43-54)7 A1. The Cross and the Mother 19:26-303 C. The cure of the crippled man 5:1-186 B1. Raising Lazarus 11:1-574 D. Feeding the 5000 6:1-345 C1.Cure of the blind man 9:1-4, 10:19-21
Conclusion of the Signs 20:3--31
page 211: 'In fact the Wedding was that of Jesus, and he was the Bridegroom.
page 217: Sophie, the Mother, is presented as the Bride.
[Jesus] turns water into wine and those who are pneumatikoi can understand. The wine is gnosis; abundance of wine is the sign that gnosis is now about to be made available to the believers.
page 219; Second sign: The restoration of life and the notion of resurrection are closely aligned in Gnostic thought.
[page 227]
Crotty page 221: The cripple and the blind man. 'These are not physical ailments, they are the ailments of those who do not have gnosis.'
page 223: The 5000
page 335: John's central sign, the hub of the other signs, is that Jesus has come to provide this Bread, gnosis or the new Manna to the peaople, the Fish. They are the new people of Five and Twelve, the People of the Father.'
page 226: Blind Man
page 229: Lazarus
page 235: The Cross and the Mother. 236: 'The culmination of the Book of Seven Signs is this scene at the foot of the cross.
page 237: 'The original text would have run "Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his Mother, her sister Mary and Mary Magdalene".'
page 241: 'The Corruptible Sophia has been rehabilitated, the evil in the World has been conquered, the Archons no longer have power, the pneumatikoi have access to gnosis.'
'The book of the Seven Signs is a separate Gnostic 'gospel'. It begins in the first sign with the cosmic problem of the Mother, Sophia, who has brought disorder into the world and now requires rehabilitation. Then Jesus in the following five signs reveals himself as the centre of Gnostic expectation. Finally, in the seventh sign, Jesus reveals that the work has been completed.'
A tour de exegesis.[page 228]
Crotty page 242: The Fourteen Gnostic Discourses.
page 332: A Final Summary of the growth of the Gospel of John.
page 335: The three synoptics were all Roman gospels.
page 337: The human individual has a need for order. To make sense of the Universe, self and others the individual within a group requires a direction, a purpose, a basic meaning. All individual activity takes place in the contest of a cultural 'world' of meaning . . . The group members, committed to a culture's constructed world, makes sense of human existence through it.
page 339; ' [The Palestinian Gnostics] Fleeing persecution . . . brought with them their gnostic beliefs, texts and practices. But these, in the new situation, had to be adapted. The Gnostic belief system would have been adapted to the point where both Gnostics and Roman Churches felt comfortable.'
page 341: 'Based on the historical reconstruction above, we are now able, at long last, to present the Gospel of John with its component parts from the Gnostic Tradition and the expansions, corrections and added traditions from the Roman Jesus Tradition.s This was the gospel accepted by Rome as the canonical gospel.
page 349: Texts were created by communities. Communities changed and interpretations changed and combined. Texts changed accordingly.
[page 229]
Crotty page 352: 'The Gnosticism of John's gospel was muted and overwritten by the Roman tradition. That is the basis of the hypothesis underlying this book [adding to the endless Christian in house debate about the true nature of Jesus, which has precious little relevance to the modern post-Christian world].