Talk:Demiurge

Christian Bible
@GreatLeader1945

Since this seems to be a rather extensive discussion, I don't think it should be discussed on edit summaries.

I am replying to "The God in Judaism and Christianity IS the same god, that's basic theology 101. In Christianity he's Triune, where the 'godhead' is 'God the Father', which is the same 'person' (cf. Trinity#One God in three persons) as Yahweh in the OT. It's absolutely untrue that "the Christian version of the Bible was made later, after the gnostic movements disappeared". The article on Gnosticism explicitly says the opposite - Gnosticism flourished AFTER Christianity emerged - in the 1st-4th c. CE "

I am really not an expert on matters of Christianity, only visited some lectures on early Christianity for the sake of History of Religion a few years ago, and read some Docetic literature, such as the Nag Hamadi libary. So, maybe I am prone to some misconceptions. Nontheless, I want to note my confusion about certain assertions here.

1) That the Jewish and the Christian God are the same. This hold true for the idea of Judeo-Christian and Abrahamic religion. Please be aware, I am talking about the concept, not the religions themselves. I don't want to go into ontology, since I don't believe either god truely exists, I just "determine" these deities as concepts by what people ascribed to them at a certain time period (genealogy of ideas). But before adressing this point, I would like to adress the second one, because I think my objection towards 1) relies on 2)

2) I wouldn't say that "Christianity" existed prior to Gnosticism. When we speak about Christianity, we usually refer to a theological framework which relies on the canonical Bible. According to the article, and it is well cited, "The canon of the Catholic Church was affirmed by the Council of Rome (AD 382), the Synod of Hippo (AD 393), the Council of Carthage (AD 397), the Council of Carthage (AD 419), the Council of Florence (AD 1431–1449) and finally, as an article of faith, by the Council of Trent (AD 1545–1563). Those established the Catholic biblical canon consisting of 46 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament for a total of 73 books"

There are also disagreements in the first centuries about what the Biblical canon consists of: "Marcion of Sinope was the first Christian leader in recorded history (though later considered heretical) to propose and delineate a uniquely Christian canon (c. 140). This included 10 epistles from Paul, as well as an edited version of the Gospel of Luke, which today is known as the Gospel of Marcion. By doing this, he established a particular way of looking at religious texts that persists in Christian thought today. After Marcion, Christians began to divide texts into those that aligned well with the "canon" (meaning a measuring line, rule, or principle) of accepted theological thought and those that promoted heresy. This played a major role in finalizing the structure of the collection of works called the Bible. It has been proposed that the initial impetus for the proto-orthodox Christian project of canonization flowed from opposition to the list produced by Marcion."

With that in mind, I would like to add, that "Gnosticism" as opposed to "Christianity" is a later phenomena. Thus, not Gnosticism is a later development, but designating heretized/unwanted Christian groups are. Origen called the "Gnostic Sethians/Ophites" Christians back then. "According to all other authorities the Ophites claimed to be Christians. Elsewhere Origen classes the Ophites as heretics of the graver sort with the followers of Marcion, Valentinus, Basilides, and Apelles (Commentary on Matthew 3:852)" (Ophites). Probably, Valentinism, Marcionism, Pauline Christianity, Sethianism, Ebionites, were all competing religious sects claiming to derive from Jesus, resulting in one victor who denounced every other sect as "Gnotic".

As stated by 1), since Christianity was not monolithic in the early years, and where was no "Christian Bible", the Gnostics couldn't refer to the God of the Christian Bible as Demiurge, because such a Christian Bible didn't exist. The Christian Bible only formed later, and with that, the Christian God only formed after Gnostics critizied the deity of the Hebrew Bible.

If this doesn't convince you, I would like to at least merge "Hebrew Bible" and "Christian Bible" into simply "the Bible". Because both that the distinction is unnecessary then, as well as this is playing save, as we don't need to find an agreement on at which time the Christian Bible came into existence. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 14:18, 8 November 2023 (UTC)


 * This is exactly what the Gnostics disputed. The term Demiurge was created to distinguish the Gnostic Christian God from the Hebrew God: Gnosticism did not agree they were the same. Only later Christian doctrine makes this claim and it is misleading to suggest otherwise. The Gnostics believed that the Hebrew god was evil, and that Christ represented the true god and came to liberate the Jews from their evil god. That later Christians rejected this view is not relevant here and confuses the issue. Skyerise (talk) 17:31, 14 December 2023 (UTC)