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Gnosticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

Arthur Darby Nock
Arthur Darby Nock
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

Shortly before his death Professor Nock asked me to arrange publication of the following lecture on Gnosticism (which had been read at the Harvard Divinity School and elsewhere). Of several unfinished lectures and papers he wished it alone to be printed. Anyone who knows his work or who could have seen the mass of material which he had already collected to supplement and annotate this paper will understand the hesitations which such a perfectionist must have overcome in order to authorize its appearance in so incomplete a form. He was clearly preparing to transform it into a major article with full augmentation and reference to other work. Though it remains only a sketch, however, it presents his final evaluation of a subject to which he had devoted frequent attention in articles and reviews for almost forty years. A few months before his death he wrote an important summary of recent work and of his own views on early gentile Christianity as an introduction to the recent paperback reprint of Early Gentile Christianity and Its Hellenistic Background (Harper Torchbooks, 1964). There he said that Gnosticism “may fairly be called the crucial issue today in the study of early Christianity.” In his brief discussion the present lecture was evidently very much in his mind.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 57 , Issue 4 , October 1964, pp. 255 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1964

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References

1 Especially in his Il Dualismo Religioso: Saggio storico ed etnologico (Rome, 1958).

2 2nd ed. (New York, 1957).

3 The Savage as He Really Is (London, 1929), p. 6.

4 Bhagavad Gītā, II (Cambridge, 1944), 7f.

5 [Nock planned to refer to the introductory chapters of C. Clemen, Religions-geschichtliche Erklärung des Neuen Testaments (Giessen, 19242)]

6 [Nock felt that it might be necessary to modify this statement in view of Hippocrates, Morb. Sacr. 3, as discussed by A. J. Festugière, Les Moines d'Orient, I (Paris, 1961), 25]

7 M. Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls (New York, 1955), p. 386. [1QSx.15]

8 Personal Religion among the Greeks (Berkeley, 1954), pp. 53ff.

9 Comment, in Epicteti Enchiridion, c. 27.

10 Die Antike 5 (1929), 79.

11 In Porphyry the term apokalypsis (“revelation”) as a book title has no known parallel among pagan book titles.

Note that Iamblichus (quoted in Stobaeus, I, 375 Wachsmuth), in listing various explanations of the activities which make the soul descend to earthly life, includes, “according to the Gnostics, madness or a deviation.” A. J. Festugière, La Révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste, III (Paris, 1953), 210, n.2, remarks that the precise terms do not occur in Plotin. 2.9.

12 E.g., Strom. 4.21 (II, 305, line 21 Stählin). But he can object to people calling themselves gnostikoi: Paedagog. 1.6 (I, 121, line 9 Stählin).

13 See G. F. Moore, Judaism, II (Cambridge, 1927), 239.

14 See Class. Philol. 43 (1948), 124 [in Nock's review of W. L. Knox, Some Hellenistic Elements in Primitive Christianity].

15 On Jonah cf. Strack-Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, I, 646.

16 F. M. Cross, Jr., The Ancient Library of Qumran (rev. ed. New York, 1961), p. 207.

17 See H. Loewe in Enc. of Rel. and Eth. VII, 622; and for an interesting example, L. Wallach, JBL 65 (1946), 393ff.

18 See L. Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia, 1910–38), V, 881.

19 See Hennecke-Schneemelcher, Neutestamentliche Apokryphen, I (19593), iii, and parallels in the Gospel of Thomas.

20 References in the Psalms to rulers who are hostile to God may have helped to shape the picture of the “rulers of this world” as we see it in Paul. Cf. R. M. Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity (New York, 1959), pp. 62f.

21 Le Dualisme chez Platon, les Gnostiques et les Manichéens (Paris, 1947), p. 129.

22 [On some of the problems posed by the interpretation of this passage see A. D. Nock, Vig. Chr. 16 (1962), 79ff.]

23 In Hermès Trismégiste, III (Paris, 1954), clxxvii–ccxix.

24 See J. Doresse, “Hermès et la Gnose,” Novum Testamentum 1 (1956), 57.

25 See Hermès Trismégiste, I (Paris, 1945), xxxvii.

26 Quoted by K. Stendahl, The Scrolls and the New Testament (New York, 1957), p. 12.

27 F. M. Cross, Jr., op. cit. (note 16), p. 160.

28 JTS 42 (1941), 142.

29 Cf. Matt. 25:1–13, with the remarks of A. Strobel, Novum Testamentum 2 (1958), 199 ff.

30 [In this paragraph Nock had in mind the discussion of H. J. Schoeps, Paulus (Tübingen, 1959), esp. pp. 102 and 121; Eng. ed. (London, 1961), pp. 103f. and 120f. Cf. also Nock's review of Schoeps, Gnomon 33 (1961), 581–90.]

31 La Révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste II (Paris, 1949), p. 345.

32 [In connection with these questionings Nock would have quoted and discussed the passage of Augustine on the Manichees (De Agone Christiano 1.4 = Augustini Opera, VI, 293, in Migne edition [Paris, 1841]): eligunt capitula de Scripturis, quae simplices homines non intelligunt; et per illa decipiunt animas imperitas, quaerendo unde sit malum (i.e., Rectores harum tenebrarum, et spiritualia nequitiae in coelestibus).]

33 Acts 14:17.

34 Entretien d'Origène avec Héraclide (Sources Chrétiennes No. 67 [Paris, 1960]), p. 39.

35 42:39ff., K. Grobel, The Gospel of Truth (New York, 1960), p. 198.

36 See J. Doresse, The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics (New York, 1960).

37 Gnostiques et Gnosticisme (Paris, 19252), p. 490.

38 His theology includes a bold development of the parallelism in Paul of Adam and Christ.

39 Grobel, op. cit., p. 24.

40 Edited by Guillaumont, Puech, Quispel, Till, Masīh (New York, 1959); another translation in J. Doresse, The Secret Books …, and in R. M. Grant, The Secret Sayings of Jesus (New York, 1960).

41 [At this point Nock planned to make use of B. Gärtner, The Theology of the Gospel according to Thomas (New York, 1961).]

42 See Grant, op. cit., (note 20), p. 92.

43 [See W. Schmithals, Die Gnosis in Korinth, FRLANT, NF 48 (Göttingen, 1956).] For excellent critiques of the Bultmann-Schmithals hypothesis see S. Pétremont, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 65 (1960), 385ff., and Joh. Munck, Stud. Theol. 15 (1961), 181ff.

44 See W. D. Davies in K. Stendahl, The Scrolls and the New Testament, pp. 166ff.

45 Corinth and Colossae were not like Rome and Alexandria, where any eccentricity might have had its representative cosmopolitan centers.

46 Ignatius, Eph. 19, on the star which appeared in the heavens and destroyed the operations of magic, etc., may, as has been suggested, give a story anterior to that of the Magi and the star. But Ignatius lived at a time when early floating material existed.

47 Geschichte der Griechischen Religion, II (Munich, 19612), 622.

48 Adv. Haer. 2.41 (I, 349 and 351 Harvey). A similar attitude ascribed to Daniel Stylites in the anonymous Life: A. J. Festugière, op. cit. (note 6), II, 156f.

49 Confessions of a Convert (London, 1913), p. 152.

I mention as well a passage (apropos of King Lear) from a letter which John Keats wrote to his brother George in December, 1817 (cited by Philip Wheelwright, Heraclitus [Princeton Univ. Press, 1959], p. 118): “It struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possesses so enormously. I mean negative capability; that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”