Talk:Teachings of Silvanus

"Not Gnostic"?
This article gives the impression that it is a definite fact that the Teachings of Silvanus is not a Gnostic text. Well by that standard, the Gospel of Thomas is even less so (being so muted about cosmology). If you take the position that the recognition of a lower Demiurge as the one who did the creation, separate from the True God who did not create Cosmos, is the definite litmus test of Gnosticism, then Silvanus was not a Gnostic. But if you take the more big-tent position that affirms Clement and Origen were far nearer the category of Gnostic, and which indeed allows the Gospel of Thomas to be considered a Gnostic text, then Silvanus is definitely a Gnostic: almost everything else is clearly there. There were so many variations on the theme, and somewhere in between the totally full-blown and docetist Gnostics like Sethians and Naasenes (the sects that anyone but a deconstructionist would have no trouble assigning the category), and the orthodox on the other side, was the proto-monophysite Silvanus. 74.133.104.185 (talk) 03:07, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Before Nicea
The date given in the 2007 revised translation edited Marvin Meyer is "sometime in the late third century". The last word on the matter is "the tractate contains very early material including traditions that could even go back to first-century Alexandrian Christianity" and cited in Birger A. Pearson's 2004 Gnosticsim and Christianity in Roman and Coptic Egypt pp.95-99. Church of the Rain (talk) 22:00, 8 February 2016 (UTC)