We are reading the Gospel of Thomas. This gospel was known about but existed only in fragments until the unearthing of a jar of manuscripts in the desert. This collection, which included Thomas, is now known as the Nag Hammadi Library. This library and Thomas itself is generally taken to represent the early teachings of Gnostic Christians.Now it used to be the case that historians saw Gnosticism, Mystery Religion and Hermeticism as all sort of similar kissing-cousins kind of critters. The study of the Nag Hammadi texts may have changed this idea. I do not know.
Mystery religion (and Gnosticism) is older than Christianity. They claimed to come from either Egypt or Persia. Christianity borrowed concepts from them. You may note the Magi who came to worship baby Jesus were from Persia and after they left Jesus and his family escape into Egypt. Just Luke's way of saying, see our Lord's better than your lord -- nyah nyah naah-naah. Other borrowings include founders who were born from a virgin - or an egg (Mitras) or resurrected (Osiris). We also borrowed glossolalia (tongue speaking) from the Dionysians.Mystery Religions tended to be very hierarchal. You were initiated into secret mysteries at each level that you were forbidden to reveal to those beneath you. So the modern notion that this is about individual mystical experience instead of arcane head bound teachings is a bit off. The modern analogue is more like the Freemasons than the Buddhists. Now for those of you with a knee-jerk reaction to the word hierarchy, this isn't all that bad. In the ancient world, there was a very strong hierarchy with slaves on the bottom and the Emperor at the top. The mystery religions would have a hierarchy based upon inward initiation rites and not social class -- so a slave could rise high in the mysteries and a noble may remain low in the cult.
Another aspect of these mysteries is the tendency to adopt a Manichean stance. By this I mean -- equating matter with evil and the spirit with good. Some go so far as to teach that the visible world is created by an evil power who uses it to trap souls. Instead, the Christianity that became dominant and ultimately became orthodoxy -- sees the material world as created good by God, yet fallen. And spirits as being either holy (clean, in the bible) or demonic (unclean).
There are also good aspects to these groups. I already mentioned that while they were hierarchal, their hierarchies tended to undermine the oppressive hierarchies of the world around them. They also admitted women, sometimes in greater numbers than men. Women had full participation and may even have held leadership roles. Early Christians may also have admitted women and given them significant leadership roles -- the Bible seems to witness to that. Christianity purged itself of such things a few hundred years before we started burning heretics at the stake.
It is true -- at the heart of Mystery is Mystical experience. But as near as I can figure, it wasn't meditation but group rites and ceremonies that led to that mysticism. And in that respect, is no different, no better or no worse, than say a Catholic Mass or a Quaker Meeting for Worship.
2 comments:
Thanks, David, for this discourse.
The gist of what you've written seems to me to suggest that these words: Gnosticism, Mystery Religion and Hermeticism- and mysticism have indefinite denotations and many, many connotations.
When we talk about gnosticism, we need to define it before we can make definite statements about it. The Church Fathers defined it in terms of all that they found repulsive; that's about all we knew about it until recent scholarship.
Re the Nag Hammadi Library my understanding is that most of the material was considered gnostic literature, but students of Thomas have found it less so (that in spite of the book that Pagels wrote called The Gnostic Gospel).
(There's a thriving Gnostic Church in Sou. Cal., but I know little about their doctrine.)
I have a (poetic?) definition of gnosticism in terms of spiritual authority as a dependence upon the individual relationship with God, and in my History of the Church I identified many of the 'deviant' (declared heretical) groups throughout history who placed primary emphasis on the authority of the H.S. relating to the individual. Quakers were included in this category, and there are others who came after us.
David is certainly right about the Magi; I read about them in Joseph Campbells little book, Thou Art That (highly recommended). I'm sure he's also right about the virgin, the mystery religions, the tongues, and the manichean influence on Chrstianity.
I'd like very much to pursue mysticism with him , but Ellie is just about to announce lunch, so farewell for now.
Thank-you Larry for your clarifications.
The word Mystical has itself been attacked and vilified at certain points by those claiming to have cornered the markert on Truth. We'll have to discuss that at some point.
Meanwhile, I've backed off a bit on that discourse: on my own blog.
Post a Comment