Chapter 56 of 404

A Sign of Lateness

The absence of full gnosticism in any first-century sources is significant, since those extant sources from the early Empire report even prominent individual philosophers and orators in Greek cities. One could cite the gnostic claim of information passed on secretly, in contrast to the public transmission of information in philosophic schools or the apostolic church. Even to appeal to this secrecy, however, one must concede to a point that works against the likelihood of any pre-Christian gnostic sects: gnostics’ appeal to secret traditions constituted their own tacit admission that their traditions lacked any demonstrably early, publicly testable special information.⁴⁹ When we find clearly gnostic elements in a work, therefore, these elements indicate that the work in its current form cannot predate the first century.

Many respected scholars have argued for a pre-Christian, pagan gnosticism, ⁵⁰ but today an increasing number of them admit the scarcity of the evidence. ⁵¹ Certainly in the areas of NT scholarship with which I am most familiar (Synoptics, John, and Paul), appeals to gnostic backgrounds have declined substantially in recent years, supplanted by more concrete evidence from Jewish and Greco-Roman sources.

While “gnosticizing” tendencies as broadly defined clearly exist in pre-Christian middle Platonic and related traditions, the features unique to Christian gnosticism do not appear in any texts prior to the spread of Christianity. Alongside other elements in gnosticism, the Christian element is also clear in all extant bodies of gnostic literature.⁵²

Many of the early gnostic texts found in the Nag Hammadi corpus depend on Christian tradition.⁵³ The individual texts that do not, might presuppose Christian or at least mixed gnostic influence by virtue of the collections in which they appear.⁵⁴ Despite the contention of many scholars that these texts preserve pre-Christian gnostic tradition,⁵⁵ the clear Christian influence in many of these texts shifts the burden of proof to the defender of this thesis. Regardless of proposed antecedents, the gnosticism found in these documents is from the Christian period and at times clearly polemicizes against more traditional Christian “orthodoxy.”⁵⁶ The extant texts, therefore, do not prove a clear pre-Christian gnosticism.⁵⁷

Still later are other collections like the Hermetica; scholars most familiar with the documents do not date them before the Christian period.⁵⁸ Comparing the Hermetica with the latest of the canonical Gospels, John, shows far less overlap than some have supposed. Whereas only about 4% of John’s words do not appear in the most common Greek version of the Old Testament, 60% of John’s words do not overlap with the Hermetica; all words shared by John and the Hermetica also appear in the Greek translation of the Old Testament.⁵⁹ This may suggest that John’s vocabulary is derived most commonly from the Jewish Bible in its Greek form.⁶⁰

Among the canonical Gospels, by contrast, even John’s thinking is much farther from gnosticism than, say, the Jewish philosopher Philo’s is. The discovery of the Qumran scrolls moved Johannine scholars to a greater appreciation for John’s Palestinian Jewish elements; in chs. 14-16 we shall focus on various Palestinian Jewish elements of the traditions in the Synoptic Gospels. Even John includes substantial knowledge of Jerusalem’s topography, long after Jerusalem’s destruction;⁶¹ most gnostic gospels, by contrast, would probably not care about topography.

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