Homosexuality in Ancient Greece

Homosexuality in History

@copyright2000 by

Reverend Robert J. Buchanan

Durham, NC 27713 (919) 875-5250

minister at Grace Community



http://hometown.aol.com/GraceEACA/chapter2.html


Homosexuality in Ancient Greece


" Greek culture is often promoted as the most accepting of homosexuality. To some extent, this may be true. The Greeks developed a hedonistic attitude toward the human body and sexuality. Although we may think of hedonism as lustful today, Greek philosophers wrote of hedonism in much more glowing terms. They believed that the naked human body, both male and female, was worthy of respect and admiration. They took great pride in the physical form. Public nudity was both tolerated and often encouraged.
The art and statuary of the ancient Greeks reflects this love for the body, particularly the male body. A major negative of this attitude is that those who were handicapped or unattractive children were often left to die, killed, or used in sacrifice to a god. It was not unusual for men to comment on the attractiveness of other men, or for them to express affection for one another. At least part of the reason for this fascination with physical attractiveness and sex is that the Greeks had developed into a culture that had a great deal of leisure time. They were not required to work constantly in order to survive. Blumenfeld and Raymond wrote: “Similarly, the Greek attitude toward sex was, for the most part, value-neutral. …And, though exclusive homosexuality was probably discouraged as a threat to the family, it was widely tolerated both for older men who had children and for younger men prior to marriage.” (Blumenfeld and Raymond 1988, 155)
The Greek military attitude toward homosexuality was that it brought a sense of comradeship. It was often believed that a person would fight harder to protect his unit if that unit included a lover or lovers. This unique form of male bonding is attributed by some to the greatness of the Greek military might. In spite of this encouragement of homosexual practices, the picture is different for those who were exclusively passive at anal sex. They were believed to be polluted, and to have become like women. Therefore, they were expelled from military service as untrustworthy.
The issue of being exclusively homosexual was extremely difficult. Although the Greeks recognized passion and erotic attraction to both and either sex, they were not tolerant of those who were not also attracted to women. This could very well be due to the recognition that society must be able to reproduce in order to survive. The union of a man and a woman is required to reproduce. “After the age of nineteen or so, the young man was expected to marry and establish a family. Those who did not, or who continued to engage in homosexual relations exclusively, were subject to ridicule, or worse. In addition, exclusive sexual passivity in men was met with criticism and, at times, treated severely. ... rape of a free boy/young man (no such sanctions existed for conduct with slaves) was harshly punished, and male prostitution (again, by citizens) was condemned severely.” (Ibid. 157-158)
Greek society only negatively defined homosexual activity when it was exclusive or related to prostitution by a citizen. In nearly every other instance, homosexual conduct was considered acceptable and practical. It was simply a way of enjoying the beauty and awesomeness of the male bodies that they revered so highly.
The attitude toward the family and education could have also played a role in the attitude toward homosexuality. The family was considered the basis for reproduction. Women were restricted in their sexual activity because they were needed in order to bear children. Men could have sex with either women or men, so long as they met their societal obligation to reproduce. This is probably why exclusive anal sex was prohibited. Catamites could not bear children for their partners.
Fathers were not seen as the primary agent of socialization, and the mothers were often only useful for nursing and caring for children. The state took the greatest amount of responsibility for the child. Education was the responsibility of the teachers and philosophers. Girls were excluded from the education system that was designed to teach boys how to be men. The student was expected to respect and admire his teacher. The teacher was expected to gain the devotion and affection of his student. Therefore, homosexual conduct between a teacher and student was considered a valuable part of the education process. The family, on the other hand, was simply needed for procreation."

Lambent Traces: Franz Kafka

complete article available at:http://www.fabula.org/actualites/article9023.php

Stanley Corngold, Lambent Traces: Franz Kafka, Princeton University Press, 2004, 296 p.
ISBN: 0-691-11816-7

On the night of September 22, 1912, Franz Kafka wrote his story "The Judgment," which came out of him "like a regular birth." This act of creation struck him as an unmistakable sign of his literary destiny. Thereafter, the search of many of his characters for the Law, for a home, for artistic fulfillment can be understood as a figure for Kafka's own search to reproduce the ecstasy of a single night.

In Lambent Traces: Franz Kafka, the preeminent American critic and translator of Franz Kafka traces the implications of Kafka's literary breakthrough. Kafka's first concern was not his responsibility to his culture but to his fate as literature, which he pursued by exploring "the limits of the human." At the same time, he kept his transcendental longings sober by noting--with incomparable irony--their virtual impossibility.

At times Kafka's passion for personal transcendence as a writer entered into a torturous and witty conflict with his desire for another sort of transcendence, one driven by a modern Gnosticism. This struggle prompted him continually to scrutinize different kinds of mediation, such as confessional writing, the dream, the media, the idea of marriage, skepticism, asceticism, and the imitation of death. Lambent Traces: Franz Kafka concludes with a reconstruction and critique of the approaches to Kafka by such major critics as Adorno, Gilman, and Deleuze and Guattari...

Wiliam Blake, The Last Antinomian and the First Prophet of the Modern World?

The Last Antinomian and the First Prophet of the Modern World

The Last Antinomian and the First Prophet of the Modern World
The word 'antinomian' was formerly more in usage than at present, when 'anarchist' has probably taken its place (though they are not exactly the same). According to my dictionary, an antinomian is 'one who holds that under the gospel dispensation of grace the moral law is of no use or obligation because faith alone is necessary to salvation'; also: 'one who rejects a socially established morality.' More practically, from a concrete historical perspective, the Civil War and Interregnum in England, 1640-1660, is the 'classic period of the rise of the antinomians, generally of the poorer classes, who rejoiced in the overthrow of the monarchy, the execution of the King, and the suspension of royal law. Hence, their version of Christianity emphasized the indwelling of faith, in sharp contrast to the 'outward show' of pomp and circumstance associated with the aristocracy.

During that era, a Londoner named Thomason made the rounds of the booksellers, purchasing a copy of every new publication, including the wildest tracts, prophecies of the end of the world, etc. I have had the pleasure of using this remarkable collection, which is one of the treasures of the British Museum. Indeed, manby of these tracts survive in single copies, preserved by Thomason, three and a half centuries ago. Some of these have recently been reprinted, and will be reviewed in future issues. Amon the many diverse radical groups of the period were the Levellers, Diggers, Quakers, Ranters, and the Muggletonians. It is this last group and its connectinos to the poet Wiliam Blake, which is the subject of a new book by the late British historian, E.P. Thompson, Witness: William Blake and the Moral Law(New York: The New Press, 1993). Other scholars have previously noted the connection between various themes and images in Blake's work, and the Muggletonians, but Thompson has drawn together the curcial documentation and argument for how the connection worked. This has not always beena problem, since the Muggletonians flourished in the mid to late 17th century, and were vaguely known to have survived as an obscure religious sect until Blake's own times a century later.

William Blake was born in London in 1757, the son of a hosier. Early in life, he displayed artistic ability, and was apprenticed to an engraver, becoming a journeyman in that trade. As a young man, Blake befriended Thomas Paine and the other radicals, and expressed his rebellious tendencies in books which he published himself, combining original graphics with poetry and prose of his own composition. These were similar in some ways to the illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages, but were actually printed, and then hand-colored. In addition, the content of these books ranged from the seemingly simple lyrics, as in teh Songs of Innocence and of Experience to the openly revolutionary, as in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Blake produced enigmatic but somehow archetypal poetic narratives of the American Revolution (in America), and the French Revolution (in The French Revolution, which survives only in a single set of page proofs, and apparently was never published). Others of these 'prophetic books' area radical reinterpretation or revision of the Bible itself: The Book of Urizen, The Book of Los, and so on. Though Blake was clearly proud of his work, he soon was the victim of the generally reactionary response to the French Revolution, and 'public opinion' such as it was, considered him to be eccentric, if not actually insane. For the rest of his life, he continued to survive as an engraver, and through commissions of a very few friends and patrons who recognized his genius. His 'illuminated books' were printed from his own plates, to order, and were often gorgeously colored. His great masterpiece, the epic Jerusalem, survives in one colored copy, and few printed in black. A biography by Alexander Gilchrist, published in 1863 began the process of rescuing Blak from the charge of madness. The studies of S. Foster Damon in the 1920s demonstrrated the logic and significance of Blake's unique personal mythology. David Erdman showed how the poetry reflected the political events of his times, in Blake: Prophet Against Empire. The 1960s produced what amount4ed to a Blake rennaissance, in which he was viewed by young radicals as a forerunner of their own rebellion against the established order. Indeed, at that time, Blake's reputations became international, from France and England, to china and America. From the obscurity of his own times, Blake finally came to be recognized by many as the equal of Chaucer, Milton and Shakespeare--and the only 'major' British poet who was clearly of working class origins. This is surely one of the most remarkable transformations in the history of literature.

There is not space here to explore his oetry in greater depth. A few libraries around the country may have a long out of print volume, edited by Norman Rudich, and entitled Weapons of Criticism (Palo Alto: Reamparts, 1976), which includes my illustrated essay, 'William Blake and Radical Tradition.'

Edward Thompson's monumental book The Making of the English Working Class, which was published here in 1964, evoked the world of plebeian radicalism of the early 19th century, a turbulent scene in which the new factories of the Industrial Revolution supplanted the samll-scale cottage industries of the countryside. Based on original sources, Thompson's study rescued from oblivion, the many courageous attempts of the people to confront the injustices of the time, in riots, massacres, in their own newspapers, and so on. This was clearly Blake's own culture, as distinct from the 'regency' culture of the upper classes.

At the end of the introduction to present book (his last), Thompson recalls, '...in 1968 I gave an early lecture on Blake at Columbia University (in New York City), at the time of excitement when some sort of campus revolution against the Moral Law was going on, and I startled the audience by acclaiming Blake as 'the founder of the obscure sect to which I myself belong, the Muggletonian Marxists.' Instantly I found that many fellow-sectaries were in the room. As the years have gone by I have become less certain of both parts of the combinations. But that is still the general area in which this book falls.'

For the record, I'd like to say that not only was I present on that occasion at Columbia University; Mike Friedman and I were the sponsors of the event, under the auspices of the Students for a Democratic Society Radical Literary Project (members=two!). We had sponsored a few events, sparely attended, so we were both astonished when the whole place was packed for Thompson's lecture, around 200 or so, standing room only. A few were aware of A.L. Morton's 1958 study of Blake, which linked him with the 17th century traditions of radicalism, and called him 'The Last Antinomian.' Now Thompson made the link specific, in the form of a connection with the followers of Lodowich Muggleton. These constituted a tiny remnant by Blake's time, but some of the imagistic similarities (of which, more in a moment), were too unusual and too close to be accidental. Those of us there on that occasion had the pleasure of 'being in' on the announcement of the solution to an intellectual puzzle of some significance.

Word of Thompson's findings soon got around to Blake scholars, and to those interested in the intellectual history of proletarian movements. After 1968, when people met Thompson, they would often ask him when his long=awaited book on Blake was going to be published, somewhat to his vexation, I believe. When the book appeared at last, 25 years after that original lecture at Columbia, the reasons for Thompson's delay were revealed. It turns out that while various of the Muggletonian publications (and some scholarship about them) were available previously, there remained various unanswered questions. Thompson recalls how a correspondence about the Muggletonians developed in the Times Literary Supplement in 1975. In TLS, Thompson mentioned that he was searching for the archive of the Muggletonians, which had survived at least until 1869, when the Reverend Alexander Gordon visited their reading room in London. Through a message from a friend, Thompson learned that aMr. Philip Noakes, of the town of Matfield near Tunbridge Wells in Kent, was 'the last Muggletonian,' having transferred the archive to his safe-keeping during World War II. Searching through some 82 boxes, Thompson found 18th century manuscript songbooks of the Muggletonians, and other contemporary books. Thus, through luck and decades-long persistence, Thompson was at last in possession of 'inside' documents which dated to Bolake's own day.

So, exactly what is Thompson's argument? 'The Muggletonian Church,' he says, 'preserved a vocabulary of symbolism, a whole cluster of signs and images, which recur--but in a new form and organisation, and in association with others--in Blake's poetry and painting. I will go further: of all the traditions touched upon, I know of none which consistently transmits so large a cluster of Blakean symbols.' That is to say, whereas it has long been thought that Blake invented his own mythology (a claim he in fact made), he had a real and explicit cultural context for it. Not only did the Muggletonians participate in the 'anti=Moral Law' currents of the antinomians generally, they specifically developed a curious doctrine unique to them, 'the explicit and repetitive identification of 'Reason' as the Satanic principle, the fruit of the Trea of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.' 'No theme,' says Thompson, 'recurs more in Muggletonian discourse.' Thompson readily demonstrates the persistence of this theme in Blake's work.

In addition, he emphasized two more elements of doctrine: 'the unusual symbolism of the Fall, and the Serpent-Angel's actual copulation with Eve and transmutation into flesh and blood in her womb.' With striking acuity, Thompson discusses the numerous disturbing examples of serpent imagery in Blake's poetry and his graphic art. The strange emphasis ion sexuality and religious corruption, in the form of a Rational Serpent is noted throughout Blake's work, for instance in the 'I saw a Chapel All of Gold.' This poem is surely one of the most 'blasphemous' ever written, but if we study the Muggletonian literature, its context becomes at once apparent. Biblical artists often depicted Satanic serpents, of course, but the connection of Satan and Reason is unique to the Muggletonians, according to Thompson.

Thompson does not find Blake or any of his known friends among the records of the Muggletonians. He speculates that Blake's mother might have been the connection, but that nothing definite can presently be established on that score.

Witness Against the Beast, then, is partly an account of the survival of the Muggletonians, a study of their connection with the imagery and ideas of William Blake, and an explication of some of the shorter lyrics in terms of that imagistic inheritance. The culture of various other sects, such as the Swedenborgians, is also explored. This is carefully wrought special study of how some core puzzles about one of the most important English poets might be addressed, if not entirely solved. Given the fragmentary nature of the documentation, we might never know for certain what Blake's actual connection to the Muggletonians was. For one thing, Frederick Tatham, on of Blake's friends, is alleged to have destroyed some of his most 'heretical' writings or books; that might have been the evidence we need.

What is Blake's connection with the history of Freethought? We have noted his ties to working-class radicalism, and his friendship with Paine, but it is his critique of the 'Enlightenment' that is, perhaps, most interesting. Blake believed that skepticism, Deism in his day, would have a reductive effect on mankind. Locke's denial of faith and his emphasis on experience meant that we would be at the mercy of events themselves. The skepticism of Hume and Gibbon would arrive at a dead end. Newton's mechanistic concept of the universe was, in Blake's memorable phrase, 'single vision.' Thompson demonstrates that the Muggletonians seem to have had an intellectual anti-Rationalist philosophy, which Blake shared, and elaborated into enduring poetry. This is why Blake's view of the world doesn't seem to comfortably fit into any easy pattern. He was a heretic of a particular kind, a radical Christian with no use for the great and powerful of the world.

'Blake did not achieve any full synthesis of the antinomian and the rationalist,' concludes Thompson. 'How could he, since the antinominan premised a non-rational affirmative? There was, rather, an incandescence in his art in which the incompatible traditions met--tried to marry--argued as contraries--were held in polarised tension.' Then, Thompson trenchantly observes: 'The busy perfectionists and benevolent rationalists of 1791-6 nearly all ended up, by the later 1800s, as disenchanted men. Human nature, they decided, had let them down and proved stubborn in resistance to enlightenment. But William Blake, by denying even in the Songs of Experience a supreme societal value to rationality, did no suffer from the same kind of disenchantment.' One ponders on the trajectories of various kinds of reformers in our own day, and why they lacked staying power on the road to a better human future.

My only criticism of Thompson's book is that he somehow failed to grasp the meaning of Blake's longer, more difficult 'prophetic books,' including three epic poems. Admittedly, these are dense in texture and obscure in their action, but I think that in creating his own mythological characters and plots, Blake achieved a breakthrough that not only summarized the received tradition of the antinomians, but illuminated the structure of class conflict in the modern world. In the terrible burning landscapes of the epics, we can glimpse the devastation's of our own times, to which Edward Thompson bore an eloquent witness in his more contemporary books. In his last work, Thompson the master historian remained true to Blake, and to the spirit of English radicalism.
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Were the Gnostics the Original Christians?

Were the Gnostics the Original Christians : Part Three Enlightenment

Entire article found at: http://www.awitness.org/journal/gnostic_enlightenment.html


In part one of this discussion I made the case that the violence and threats of the Christian conversion experience leads to a traumatic stress disorder common to victims of violence, which then evolves into a Paranoid Personality Disorder. In part two I discussed the origins of the doctrine of sin, since it is the fear inculcated by this doctrine that creates the disorder. This disorder is regarded as very difficult to treat, but the treatment involves the gradual introduction of doubt. Given the harmful effect of the doctrine of sin (paranoia) and the irrational inconsistency of the doctrine (it is reactionary) a satisfactory conclusion can be drawn the revolutionary doctrine of Gnosticism was the original Christian doctrine in that, unlike the doctrine of sin, its revolutionary philosophy is match (rather than a hindrance) to the cross symbol.



Gnosticism : Knowledge and Enlightenment
Revolution and reaction in the early church
A mini commentary on the Gospel of Thomas
In a desert in Egypt around the middle of the previous century a collection of previously hidden documents was discovered (now known as the Nag Hammadi library). The books were written by persecuted early Christians, and are often referred to as the Coptic Gnostic texts. Gnosticism was not one monolithic movement but rather a number of different groups are typically classified under the blanket umbrella of Gnosticism.

It was the attractiveness of the gnostic teachings and their resulting popularity that made necessary the persecution of this early gnostic movement on the charge of heresy, and scholars have discovered extant copies of manuscripts that were once previously known only through the polemical attacks launched against them in writingsb the early church Patriarchs.

Anyone who first reads these ancient Christian texts is at first struck by how incomprehensible, how utterly foreign is the language of these documents. The view of the world represented by the Gnostics was so completely oppressed, and so thoroughly was every trace of their thought removed from our collective history that their ideas have become so alien to our culture's way of thinking that it seems that they can no longer be understood.

The defining difference between gnostic Christianity (the word gnosis means ‘knowledge' or ‘insight') and what came to be known as Orthodox Christianity is a controversy over the meaning of ‘salvation'. In what became orthodox thought the world is to be understood in terms of sin and punishment or redemption and reward. To the Gnostics what was important was knowledge, insight and understanding which then led to enlightenment. Their Gnosis (knowledge or insight) was not of the scientific sort but rather consisted of an intuitive, very personal way of knowing something, in the same way that through personal experience you might know another person (and one of the highest goals is to know yourself, since if you knew yourself you gained an understanding of human nature that resulted in prophetic insights into the course of the future as well as an understanding of the nature of God, since your nature was a product of the working of God, and thus to know oneself was to know God). The problem with the world then was a kind of ignorance, rather than ‘sin', and in Gnostic thought then ‘salvation' consisted of enlightenment.

As orthodox Christianity developed as a patriarchal hierarchy, there was an emphasis placed on the authority of certain sources of ‘divine revelation' which were located outside the individual (situated then in some authority figure) while to Gnostics the most important source of revelation was to be found by each person embarking on a search for enlightenment within themselves (in this way Gnosticism developed in a way which was not hierarchical).

The difference in outlook between these two viewpoints can then be seen in the political and social order which would result from the application of these two divergent ideologies. Buddhism was another ideology which emphasized ‘enlightenment' rather than a doctrine of ‘sin and atonement' (and it is this viewpoint that characterizes the historical differences meant when comparing ‘East' and ‘West'). According to the Buddha's doctrine crime was the result of poverty. At the time, the Eastern Kings regarded crime as ‘sin' and dealt out severe punishments which were then criticized by the Buddha because they were unjust in that they failed to deal with the fundamental problem. In this way the Orthodox Christian doctrines of ‘sin and punishment versus redemption and reward' can be seen to be a proxy for a system of punitive justice which characteristically ignores all the root causes of social problems and focuses instead on punishing individuals while the doctrine of enlightenment emphasizes a collective social responsibility. An analysis of such things as the intransigent violence surrounding the conflict over resources in the world's poorest nations would then be seen as a problem with ‘individual sinners', a world view which logically results from viewing the world from the perspective of ‘sin and redemption', and in this way it can be seen that what has been called ‘Orthodox theology' actually perpetuates class divisions and inequality, focuses on treating symptoms, and if we ask whose interests are served by such an approach this leads to the conclusion that the doctrine of ‘sin and redemption', with its characteristic dualistic polarity between good and evil, between judge and sinner, mimics the polarity of a society with rigid class divisions, and in that sense is actually an elitist doctrine. The fact that this doctrine was formulated by elitist priests, who were then granted authority by the ultimate elitist, Caesar, and who then ruled as part of the elite alongside Caesar, can be seen as logically connected, in that elites created a doctrine which in the end protected the interests of the elite. The doctrine of sin then cemented into place class divisions by rationalizing the subjugation of lower classes who were ‘defective' by their very nature (having been ‘born sinful').

It can then be understood that the Gnostics were persecuted, and eliminated, not because their doctrine was ‘heresy', but rather because the political implications of the doctrine of ‘enlightenment' was that this would result in a challenge to the class structure of Roman society and would also result in the loss of influence of religious authorities, who placed the emphasis on the outside, in outside sources of revelation, such authorities as ‘scripture' and ‘canon law'. When an individual looks within themselves for Gnosis, religious hierarchy is nullified, and this nullification of the religious elite only mirrors the inevitable political challenge to the Roman elite in general, since if all individuals can seek revelation, then all individuals must be equal and all supposed differences in authority or equality between individuals must be artificial. This classless analysis of social problems would lead to a critique of society at large, and demands for sweeping reforms in the system (of the type demanded by the Buddha, as one example) in contrast to the focus on ‘individual sinners' which is the logical outcome of the opposing doctrine of sin and redemption, which then serves to perpetuate inequality and hierarchical class divisions in society by ignoring root causes and focusing on an erroneous analysis of the symptoms (with the root cause, it is claimed, being ‘inherited sinfulness', such an evil nature being it is claimed the natural state of all humanity apart from the saving intervention of powerful religious elites...that such a thing is a self serving doctrine which perpetuates a power structure should be self evident upon even a cursory examination).

This difference is emphasized in the opening verses of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, where we are told not to look outside oneself for enlightenment and thus ‘salvation', but rather to look within. To turn away from outside revelation is considered the most natural course of action (since it is suggested that by nature this is what the birds and the animals do) and in this sense then what we have here is an argument which insists that God must have created the world correctly (in opposition to the doctrine of ‘sin and redemption' which incongruously attempts to make the argument that humanity is ‘defective and sinful' from birth, while at the same attempting to uphold the contradictory doctrine which states that God is perfect and thus incapable of error...on this matter the Gnostic doctrine provides a more intellectually satisfying description of the nature of reality than Orthodox thinking ever has).

According to the Gnostics, salvation, we are told is to be found both inside of oneself and can also be discerned in the natural world, being displayed without any doubting or second thoughts, without the need for any leaders, by such creatures as the birds and the animals and the fish. The Gnostics mad a call to people to ignore the religious leaders, and then draw the conclusion that by rejecting their necessarily authoritarian doctrines the path would be open to ‘come to know yourself' which would then lead enlightenment, this enlightenment being the only ‘salvation' people require in Gnostic thought, with the implication being that religious leaders and authority figures are actually an impediment to human salvation, since it would appear then that people need to be saved from religion. There is no doctrine of ‘punishment' in Gnostic thought, but rather if you fail to achieve enlightenment, you pay the price by living a life of inner ‘poverty'. When you achieve enlightenment then you will realize that you were not born an incomplete or somehow defective ‘sinner', and thus in the need of authoritarian religion as a form of social control, but rather you are by your very nature children of God. On the other hand, it is implied, if you continue to listen to your religious authorities then you become an impoverished pauper as a result of accepting their doctrines, which are hostile to your very nature, and to the nature of the world around you (which is very true of Orthodox doctrines of ‘corrupted nature' and ‘fallen Eden' and ‘hereditary sinfulness').

Friedlander Revisited: Alexandrian Judaism and Gnostic Origins

Friedlander Revisited: Alexandrian Judaism and Gnostic Origins
Pearson, Birger 1990 Gnosticism, Judaism and Egyptian Christianity
Fortress Press, Minneapolis ISBN 0-8006-3104-8

Friedlander Revisited: Alexandrian Judaism and Gnostic Origins

entire article available at: http://www.dhushara.com/book/consum/gnos/jgnos.htm

In many fields of human endeavor it sometimes happens that a person sets forth seemingly outlandish theories; the work is dismissed lightly, or perhaps ponderously refuted, and then lies unnoticed by the next generation. At last, however, someone takes notice of what had been proposed many years before, and the earlier work tums out to be exceedingly useful when looked at with new evidence and by a different generation. For example, Alfred Wegener, in a book entitled The Origin of Continents and Oceans, published in 1915, put forward the thesis that South America once lay alongside Africa, but that in a process of many aeons the two continents drifted far away from each other, having been split apart by forces generated beneath the earth's crust. He went on to observe that all of the earth's continents have shifted and broken apart over vast spaces of fime, and are still in the process of drifting. Wegener was laughed out of court by the geologists of his day, and died in 1930 surrounded by incredulity and derision. Now, as we all know, the theory of continental drift has become almost an orthodoxy.' The field of the history of religions also has its Wegeners, and scholars whose interests lie in the complex history of the religions of the Hellenistic-Roman world are well advised to look into the work of bygone eras of scholarship for 'new' light on current areas of interest. Much is currently being written on the question of the origins of Gnosticism and the relationship of Gnosticism to Judaism. It seems to me useful, for the purpose of further discussion, to exhume from the dust of many decades some interesting and provocative ideas set forth by Moritz Friedlander, whose theses did not meet with the approval of his contemporaries, but which may very well be taken more seriously now. In a book entitled Der vorchristliche jiidische Gnosticismus, Friedldnder put forth the thesis that Gnosticism is a pre-Christian phenomenon which originated in antinomian circles in the Jewish community of Alexandria. This Gnosticism, against which Philo polemicizes, came early to Palestine; and the rabbinic polemics against the Minim are directed specifically at such Gnostics. Christian Gnosticism is simply a secondary version of the older Gnosticism' which attached itself to the emergent Christian sect and appropriated for itself the figure of Jesus Christ.



FRIEDLANDER'S ARGUMENTS

Friedlander's thesis is worth considering in some detail. In this article I first want to set forth his main arguments, concentrating especially on what he derives from his reading of Philo. Then I shall comment briefly on the issues he raised from the vantage point of modern scholarship and on the basis of materials unknown to Friedlander and his generation that we now have at our disposal.

It should be mentioned that Friedlander did not write in a vacuum; others had for many years and even decades written on Gnosticism, and specifically on the relationship of Gnosticism to Judaism. Two of the most important of these are H. Graetz and M. Joel. But Friedladnder was the first, to my knowledge, to suggest that Gnosticism originated in Judaism.

Friedlander begins his discussion by referring to the cultural and religious situation in the Jewish Diaspora prior to the time of Jesus. It was a situation in which the 'new wine' of Hellenistic culture and philosophy was being put into the 'old wineskins' of Jewish religion. The allegorical method of scripture interpretation was one of the manifestations of this trend. The Mosaic law was being interpreted allegorically by Jews who had imbibed of Greek philosophy, and the Law was taken to be a 'revelation' of 'divine philosophy.' Indeed, since Moses was more ancient than the Greek philosophers, it was natural to suggest that the latter had learned from the former. Philo is a good example of this trend, but he had forerunners, such as Aristobulus, Pseudo-Aristeas, and Pseudo-Solomon.

The allegorical interpretation of the Law must have led to divisions in Diaspora Judaism between 'conservative' Jews who observed the letter of the Law and 'philosophizers' who regarded the letter of the Law as peripheral. Such a division is not merely a hypothetical reconstruction, but is well documented in historical sources. Eusebius specifically speaks of two parties in Diaspora Judaism whose differences are precisely delineated along the lines here suggested . Philo himself provides clear evidence of such divisions. A key text in Friedlander's argument is On the Migration of Abraham 86-93, which Friedlander quotes in full. In this text, wherein Philo polemicizes against allegorists who neglect the letter of the Law and derive from it only spiritual truths, we have reflected a full-blown schism in the Diaspora. An 'antinomian' party of Jews is referred to here. They differ from the Therapeutae, the Palestinian Essenes, and Philo himself not so much in their use of allegory, but precisely in their antinon-dan tendencies.

A number of Jewish sects are known to us from antiquity whose views were suspect in the eyes of law-abiding Jews, Friedlander continues. Among these are the 'Sibyllists' known to Origen, probably identical to the 'pious ones' referred to in the Sibylline Oracles, book 4. Justin Martyr refers to some pre-Christian sects among the Jews , at least one of which, the 'Hellenians,' is surely a reference to a Diaspora group. Hegesippus derives all Christian heresies from pre-Christian Jewish heresies. According to him the Gnostic heresy reared its ugly head in the church soon after the death of the apostles. The implication of Hegesippus's statement is that 'false' gnosis was already extant in apostolic times, but the powerful influence of the apostles kept it from blosson-dng in the church. The origin of this 'false gnosis,' if we consider the testimony of Hegesippus, is found in pre-Christian Judaism. The view of some later fathers that heresy is necessarily later than orthodoxy is obviously tendentious (9-17).

Friedlander goes on to set forth the daring hypothesis that such 'Christian' heresies as those of the Ophites, the Cainites, and the Sethians, as well as the Melchizedekians, are the progeny of the radical antinomians against whom Philo had polemicized. According to the oldest patristic accounts, the Ophites-who according to some accounts are closely associated with the Sethians -were antinomian and venerated the serpent as the revealer of gnosis and as an incamation of the divine Wisdom. Reflected in these ideas is the Alexandrian-Jewish doctrine of the divine dynamis. Philo and other Alexandrian Jews regarded Sophia as a divine dynamis. The Ophites simply took up this doctrine and interpreted it in a heretical fashion.

The Cainites venerated Cain as the divine power, rejected all moral conventions, and rejected the Law along with its God. And what, asks Friedlander, is 'Christian' about that? The Alexandrian school provides the most plausible link for the origin of this heresy. Indeed, the Cainite sect was already well known to Philo. Friedlander quotes in this connection On the Posterity and Exile of Cain. In this text 'Cain' is a symbol of heresy, and the specifics of the heresy represented by him are such that one can only conclude that Philo is arguing against a philosophizing sect characterized not only by construcfing myths contrary to the truth, but by gross antinomianism. Philo speaks against these heretics precisely as Irenaeus speaks against the Gnostics. There can be no doubt that the heretics combated by Philo are the forerunners of the Christian Gnostics later combated by the church fathers.

The Sethians shared in the errors of the Ophites and Cainites, teaching that the world was created by angels and not by the highest God. The dynamis from on high came down into Seth after Abel's death, according to the Sethians, and many held Seth to be the Messiah.

Ophites, Cainites, and Sethians all derive from the Jewish Diaspore. Their members were recruited from the Jewish radicals known to us from Philo, and from philosophically oriented proselytes who had attached themselves to the synagogues. Indeed, Filastrius numbers the Ophites, Cainites, and Sethians among the sects that flourished in Judaism 'before the advent of Jesus." It is obvious that these sects could not have originated from within Christianity, from the very fact that their chief doctrines are derived from the Old Testament rather than from the New. The divine power was seen by them to reside in the Old Testament figures of the serpent, Cain, and other such biblical personages as were not fied to the Law. These Old Testament figures were adhered to even after the Gnosfics came into contact with Christianity. Their origin, in short, is traceable to the situafion in Alexandrian Judaism wherein allegorical exposifion of the Law flourished, and wherein antinomianism also developed. Friedldnder tums next to the Melchizedekians. This group held Melchizedek to be a 'great Power', a being higher than the Messiah, a 'Son of God' who occupied a place among the heavenly angels. Such a belief cannot have originated in Chrisfianity. The figure of Melchizedek, of course, is derived from the Old Testament, and becomes for antinomian Alexandrian Jews a powerful symbol of Law-free religion. When the Melchizedekians came into contact with Christianity, Jesus was incorporated into their system, but his position was below that of Melchizedek. As Jesus is an advocate for humans, so also is Melchizedek an advocate for the angels.

The Alexandrian origin of Melchizedekianism is also demonstrated with reference to Philo himself, for whom Melchizedek is not only a heavenly being but identified with the Logos. Philo nevertheless stresses in his version of the Melchizedek mystery that there is no other God beside God Most High, and he is One. That in this passage a polemic is directed against antinomian heretics is shown also with reference to the 'Ammonites' and 'Moabites' who are excluded from the divine congregation.

The Alexandrian author of the Epistle to the Hebrews obviously knew of the Melchizedek mystery, Friedlander continues, and indeed presents a modified Melchizedekianism to his erstwhile coreligionists, trying to prove to them that Jesus is indeed superior to Melchizedek. In Heb. 7:3 the Melchizedek mystery is qualified with the phrase [greek].

Friedlander distinguishes the Melchizedekians from the Ophites and Cainites, suggesting that the former were not so aggressive in their antinon-danism as the latter. He even suggests that Melchizedekianism is the one form of pre-Christian Gnosticism that qualifies best as the point of departure for Christian Gnosticism.

On the origin of pre-Christian Jewish Gnosticism, Friedlander summarizes his position by stating that it began with the 'Hellenization of Judaism in the Diaspora."o Gnosficism served as the medium by which Judaism should become a world religion. It remained orthodox so long as the Law was observed, as is the case with Philo, and became heretical when the letter of the Law was rejected, as was the case with the radicals' combated by Philo.

In the second half of the monograph Friedlander discusses further the content of gnosis and its propagation among the Jews of Palestine. The chief content of the oldest gnosis consists of cosmogonical and theosophical speculation; the means by which an amalgamation of the old religion with newer philosophical ideas was achieved was allegory. This characteristic of Gnosis-evident in the oldest known Gnostic sect, the Ophites-is found also among the most ancient Mishnah teachers under the designations maseh bresit (the 'work of Creation') and maseh merkabah (the work of the Chariot).

That cosmogonic and theosophical speculations had taken a heretical turn very early in Palestine is demonstrated, according to Friedlander, by the following Mishnah, which is referred to as a tradition of the sages by the first-century rabbi, Yohanan ben Zakkai:

The laws of incest may not be expounded to three persons, nor the Story of Creation before two persons, nor the subject of the Chariot before one person alone unless he be a Sage and comprehends of his own knowledge. Whoever puts his mind to these four matters it were better for him if he had not come into the world-what is above? What is below? What is beyond? What is in the opposite beyond? And whosoever has no regard for the honour of his Creator it were better for him had he not come into the world.

Clearly reflected in this Mishnah, and severely condemned, is the antinomian Gnostic differentiation between the highest God and an inferior Creator. But one finds a polen-dc against such obscene esoterica, Friedlander suggests, already in the second half of the second pre-Christian century in Sir. 3:21-24, a passage actually quoted in the Talmud later in an anti-Gnostic polemic. Heretical gnosis reached Palestine at least by the early first century. 'Gnostic' mystical doctrines were tolerated and fostered by some in orthodox circles, so long as 'the honor of the Father in Heaven' was served and the unity of God maintained. Thus a distinction was made between 'true' gnosis and 'false' gnosis, the latter characterized by arrogance over against God.