A few scattered notes from Jarl Fossum’s book examining the links between the figure of the “angel of Yahweh” in Samaritan theology and the “demiurge” of gnosticism. 1) Fossum points out that Simon Magus, legendarily the fountain of Gnosticism, venerated the Torah, and that some of the church Fathers said Cerinthus advocated circumcision and the keeping of Sabbath. He also finds texts in the Nag Hammadi collection that express a similar veneration for the law as well. The first gnostics... Read more

In a 2006 book on the origins of gnosticism, Carl B. Smith offers an alternative account of the connections of Judaism and gnosticism. According to the JETS reviewer: Smith “proposes that gnosticism arose in a social context of ‘alienated Judaism’ influenced by Greco-Roman and early Christian ideas in the aftermath of the Jewish revolt against Emperor Trajan in AD 115-17. It is this historical location that is most distinctive about Smith’s proposal; the other elements, individually and together, have appeared... Read more

Origen says that the Ophite demiurge had the face of a lion and was connected with Saturn, and this has led some scholars to conclude that Jaldabaoth was a combination of Baal and Kronos. John of Damascus says that the Phoenicians held Kronos to be a kind of demiurge, and because Saturday was the day of Yahweh and the day of Saturn, the two were welded together. Given the syncretism that plagued Israel throughout much of her history, it’s not... Read more

According to Alfred Honig (writing in the late 19th century), the Ophite name for the demiurge, Jaldabaoth, comes from a Hebrew phrase meaning “child of chaos,” and the etymology goes back at least to the 1820s. Scholem argued, however, that the name was invented by a Jew and is a combination of “begetter” and “sabaoth.” Either etymology, however, suggestively indicates the Jewish roots of a key gnostic term. Read more

In the October 22 issue of TNR , Walter Russell Mead compares American foreign policy to Mr Magoo, since it seems to “wanter nearsightedly but relatively unscathed past one hazard after another.” The pattern goes back at least to the Jefferson administration, and Mead quickly summarizes Magoo’s foreign policy through World War I and II, the Cold War, and into the Bush Presidency. How does it work? How does Mr Magoo avoid the open manhole? Mead answers: “In a classic... Read more

Bossy again, from the same essay: He quotes Oberman’s claim that “in the old dispensation the holiness of the Church and its governors was made manifest by their power to transmit to the body of Christians the condition of peace, and conversely that the absence of peace was an indication of their failure to be holy.” Oberman considers this a separation of sacred and secular, but Bossy doesn’t see it: “Peace in most medieval thinking is not an abstract condition... Read more

In a 1977 review in Past and Present , John Bossy summarizes an essay by Heiko Oberman about the “closing gap between the sacred and the secular” in late medieval life (Oberman’s description). Bossy says this involved “an abandonment of metaphysical hierarchies in favor of a direct and covenantal partnership between God and man. His primary reference is to nominalist theology, but he sees this as common ground with humanists on the one hand and Reformers on the other, and... Read more