I've been sorting through the first two archives of this blog, which I began seven years ago, in the compilation of what I tongue-in-cheekily call my 'greatest hits' album – a collection of sermons and articles to be published later this year.
I discovered some statements I'd made, and have since changed my mind about in light of new evidence. Here's a sampling:
1) Cathars and Gnosticism
When I first began researching the Cathars some 20 years ago, my French was not up to speed to read academically, and there was little material available in English. In those early days, I got the distinct impression that as of the 13th century, the Cathars could be seen as a surviving sect of pre-Nicene Gnosticism, just as the Mandaeans could be so classified. There seemed to be a straight line between the Paulicians to the Bogomils to the Cathars, with all the "Gnostic Paul" intact from the get-go.
In the last decade or so, I softened this position greatly. I was reflecting recent-ish North American scholarship. No, the Cathars were not exactly Gnostic, just sorta kinda thematically similar, but no linear heritage could be established. I deflected, obfuscated, and fudged around the edges. I was doing this as recently as a year ago.
In the last two years, though, I've been reading the material in French, including the source material obtained during the Inquisition. My current findings are that I got it right the first time: The Cathars were Gnostic, as Gnostic as the Basilideans, Ophites, Valentinians or Carpocratians, and there is indeed a straight line from Paulicians to the Bogomils to the Cathars. Further, this is the accepted norm in European scholarship: it is almost universally acknowledged that Catharism is a form of Gnosticism theologically, historically and archaeologically. So either the European scholars are behind the curve, or the North American scholarship to which I was exposed was perhaps overreaching. Either could be the case, but for now – until new evidence emerges, which is always welcome – the Cathars were Gnostic, in my book.
2) The Gnostic "All" and the Hermetic "All"
In the late 80s I read The Corpus Hermeticum for the first time, and I was blown away – not by what it was so much as by what it wasn't. It certainly wasn't what Sir James Frazer said it was. It wasn't even what Robert Graves said it was. It wasn't an ancient Greek Picatrix, which I had been lead to expect. Instead it was a uniquely Ptolemaic collection about enlightenment, about experiencing the divine in a direct, rational way.
Around the same time I read Layton's "The Gnostic Scriptures", and it was apparent to me that I was looking at a continuum of thought from the Hermetica. This was before I had a grounding in Egyptology with regards to religion. Largely due to nuances of translation (and the Gnostic material's generous sprinkling of ellipses) the Gnostics seemed wilder and darker and perhaps less articulate than the Hermetica, but only in the way that real gold is always much darker than we imagine it to be.
Regardless, it was obvious to me that when the Gnostics were talking about "the All", they were talking about the exact same "All" that is really the primary subject of the Hermetic texts. Same era, same geography, same mash-up between Greek dialogue and Egyptian mystery.
Again, exposure to predominantly North American scholarship (although from the Messina era, which is as antique as I am) lead me to soften that. No, scholars see the Hermetic All as monist, whereas the Gnostic All clearly only applies to things Gnosticism likes and not to things it doesn't. I bought into this for quite some time.
And it's silly, and I was wrong to do so. There is no evidence of which I'm aware (after crawling through JSTOR for a very very long time and talking with scholars) of any cause for this change in definition. In other words, there's no linguistic or theological event that changes the basic meaning of the word, either in Greek or Coptic, for its presentation in these texts but not those texts. Further, as I gained an understanding in the core idea of "Allness" in both Greek and Egyptian religion, it's obvious that any distinction is misleading and false. Hermetic All = Gnostic All. Until something proves otherwise.
3) Secret Mark
Like most Gnostics, I was very wary of Secret Mark as a subject. It's been used as a kind of shibboleth to identify those who engage in paleobabble. Start thinking of Secret Mark as authentic, and next you'll be declaring that the pyramids were built by UFOs.
My first exposure to Secret Mark was criticism not of the text, but of Morton Smith's interpretation of the text. This was a huge mistake. Rejecting Smith's conclusions (as I still do) is not the same as discounting the authenticity of the text. It was foolish of me to do so, but I stubbornly persisted until an in-depth exposé in BAR last year.
Basically, the evidence suggesting that the document is a forgery is threefold;
1) There's a "forger's tremor" evident in the manuscript,
2) That ancient texts don't get transcribed into modern books, and
3) That the "free flowing salt" mentioned in the text didn't exist in antiquity and was a Morton Salt joke embedded by the alleged perpetrator of this hoax.
The evidence, however, is that;
1) There IS no forger's tremor that any graphologist was able to discern,
2) That we DO have instances of ancient texts transcribed into modern books, and
3) That free-flowing salt WAS available in antiquity, and its existence is well-documented.
So the only reason left to believe that Smith forged Secret Mark is ad hominem – a well-respected scholar bet his entire career on a hoax because he was essentially a jerk. I don't buy it.
My current position, in light of new evidence, is that I agree with the minority opinion of Dr. Marvin Meyer: Secret Mark is likely an authentic (albeit likely pseudepigraphical) first century text. Aside from the need to re-locate the copy from which Smith was working, it's vital to do a literary analysis of Clement's style and see if it gels. That should shore things up one way or another.
The point of this post is that my opinions and responses are never finalized, never dogmatic. I seek out fresh perspectives, welcome new evidence, rattle my own cage. I'm not a scholar, I'm an enthusiast and afficianado and I'm damned curious about how all of these pieces fit together. I weigh perspectives from other disciplines – language, archaelogy – against the tools that I have ready: logic, theology, history. And because I'm fueled by curiosity, I'm always asking for input from religious scholars and Egyptologists and historians (none of whom will ever give me a straight answer, of course, but provide me with a great reading list). This cycle of inquiry, engagement, analysis, re-evaluation, I find affirming, challenging, and lifelong.
