Gnostic Wolfe

James Jordan · 05 Nov 2002, 12:39 · from urth-v0211.mbox · original

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From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at cox.net>
Subject: RE: (urth) Gnostic Wolfe
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2002 06:39:30 -0600
Message-ID: <urth-v0211-2038 at digest.urth.net>
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At 05:38 PM 11/4/2002, you wrote:

> > Middle-eastern
> > myth believed that the world was created well but became
> > damaged or flawed in some ur-event; most Middle-eastern
> > religious ritual was aimed at bringing back the prelapsarian
> > time, or at least making the present more like it. (Israelite
> > religion, as was usual for Israel, took up this theme and
> > transformed it into something quite different -- yes, the
> > world had Fallen, but no amount of ritual was going to undo
> > that; you had to live in the world as it was. Religion was
> > not aimed at bringing back the golden past but at present
> > blessings.) I don't really see _any_ of these attitudes in
> > "classical" myth.
>
>I don't see a belief in Judaism that the world has fallen.  Adam and Eve
>were punished, partly by being expelled from Paradise, but the world
>wasn't changed.  (Their descendants didn't become sinful either.)  And in
>the only other Middle Eastern myth I know, that of Gilgamesh, Paradise
>still exists and is reachable by ship.

The world is not fallen in the sense of being sinful, but is it "under a=20
curse for the sake of humanity" so that it does not cooperate with sinful=20
humanity. Hence, only as humanity shapes up will the world return toward=20
paradise. The issue in Middle Eastern religion can from this perspective be=20
boiled down to this: Does the world get renewed as a result of bargaining=20
with various gods, and/or as a result of doing rituals right, and/or as a=20
result of searching for paradise; OR does the world get renewed as a result=20
of the spiritual/moral renewal of humanity (the Jewish/Christian answer)?
         I would suggest that as time went along, and thought matured, the=20
former answer devolved into gnosticism: the world is cursed in itself, and=20
thus a bad place. The early Church had to answer that the world is good in=20
itself, and that "only man is vile." A "new earth" is coming, but only when=20
humanity is redeemed and resurrected.

FWIW

Nutria


--=20

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