Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | Juli/August/2022 |
Spalte: | 670–672 |
Kategorie: | Religionswissenschaft |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Markschies, Christoph, and Einar Thomassen [Eds.] |
Titel/Untertitel: | Valentinianism: New Studies. |
Verlag: | Leiden u. a.: Brill 2019. XI, 510 S. = Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies, 96. Geb. EUR 143,00. ISBN 9789004413719. |
Rezensent: | Guy G. Stroumsa |
This very rich collection of nineteen articles on various aspects of Valentinianism represents the end product of an international con-ference held in Rome in 2013 with the participation of many among the best scholars in the field, from both Europe and North America. The two convenors of that conference and editors of this book, both distinguished scholars of Valentinian texts and traditions, rightly thought that time was ripe to take stock of the state of research. A generation ago, another international conference, held at Yale University in 1978 under the leadership of Bentley Layton, when the Coptic texts of Nag Hammadi were being made available, had focused on Valentinianism as well as on »Sethianism«, as the two main trends of Gnosticism in the first Christian centuries. The result of new research since the eighties of the twentieth century permit to sharpen or/and emend the scholarly consensus on most aspects of Valentinianism.
In their introduction, the editors briefly survey the history of research, noting that the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, which did much to understand the broader context of Gnosticism among late ancient Near Eastern dualist movements, in particular Manichae-ism and Mandaeism, did not contribute much to the study of Valentinianism, a movement more squarely inscribed into the history of Early Christianity, »an ekklesia whose history stretched at least two and a half centuries« (2). More recently, the full impact of the Nag Hammadi texts on research took a new turn only in the last generation, with serious attempts to fully integrate what the Patris-tic sources tell us about the Valentinians to the new evidence of the primary Coptic sources. The editors classify the contributions to the volume into three main areas. The first area deals with the historical development of Valentinianism and its relationship with that of »Sethianism«, the sociological characteristics of the Valentinian communities and the social profile of their members. A second area focuses on Valentinian doctrine, on responses to persecution, in particular the question of martyrdom. Finally, the third division of the book’s chapters centers on the relationship between Valentinianism and the New Testament, more precisely on the ways in which Valentinian theologians interacted with the canonical Gospels and with Paul’s letters.
In contradistinction with a monograph, a collection of articles does not quite permit a summary of its central thesis and its discussion. Reviewing each one of the nineteen articles, moreover, is not really an option. I propose, then, to briefly mention a few core issues in the contemporary study of Gnosticism, after surveying some of the core discussed themes. Einar Thomassen starts with issues of chronology, preliminary to any precise understanding of the movement: how are we to understand the evolution of Valentinian doctrines from both the Patristic heresiographies and the Gnostic primary sources, in particular the Tripartite Tractate of Nag Hammadi? What are the earliest forms of the systems known from Irenaeus and Hippolytus? Following him, Christoph Markschies searches for the links between the system as presented by Irenaeus in the so-called »Grande Notice«, at the start of his Adversus Haereses, and other Gnostic doctrines, discussing the views of Giuliano Chiapparini, for whom this text represents the original doctrine of Valentinus. Chiapparini himself discusses here some lost Valentinian doctrines. Antti Marjanen, on his side, deals with the relationship between Valentinian and Sethian versions of the Sophia myth.
The book’s second part focuses on Valentinian doctrine itself. Jean-Daniel Dubois returns to the expression »saved by nature«, concluding that it refers more to a disposition of the soul than to an ontological identity of the Gnostic. Different conceptions of salvation in the Tripartite Tractate and the Excerpta ex Theodoto (Alexander Kocar), baptism as a sacrament in the Gospel of Philip (Louis Painchaud), martyrdom in the first Apocalypse of James and among Valentinians (Karen King), and myth in the Gospel of John and among the Valentinians according to Irenaeus (Ansgar Wucherpfennig), are the subjects of other chapters. Barbara Aland reflects on the relationship between Valentinianism and Platonism, while John Turner discusses the key issue of Plotinus and the Gnostics.
In the book’s third and last subdivision, five chapters discuss aspects of Valentinian New Testament exegesis: Pheme Perkins considers the problem of the biblical canon, David Jorgensen studies early allegorization of the New Testament, Harold Attridge analyses the Valentinian reading of John, Ismo Dunderberg compares questions of morality for Paul and for the Valentinians, and Judith Kovacs studies Pauline motifs in Exc. Theod.
If we compare the results of these various investigations to those discussing Valentinian texts in Bentley Layton, ed., The Rediscovery of Gnosticism, I The School of Valentinus (Leiden 1980), the progress achieved since the Yale Conference immediately appears as strik-ing. We now understand much more precisely the nature and evolution of Valentinian doctrine, and its central status in the early history of Christian thought. The change of perspective since then is no less striking. Layton’s second volume, dealing with what he considered to be »the second variety of Gnosticism« was entitled »Sethian Gnosticism«. Following Hans-Martin Schenke, Layton considered »Sethian« Gnosticism (which took its name from the importance of the Biblical figure of Seth in its core myths) to be »a parody or ›inversion‹ of elements from Judaism, essentially non-Christian in character«, which represented the original version of Gnosticism. Since then, however, closer textual studies, following the lead, in particular, of John Turner, have highlighted the many important links between Platonic concepts and doctrines and those of various »Sethian« texts from Nag Hammadi – on which see Turner’s chapter in the book under review). It seems, however, that these studies ignore more often than not the original »Sethian« character of those texts. In particular, they remain unable to offer a satisfactory explanation of the presence of the figure of Seth, which makes no sense in a purely Platonic milieu. [See however the sig-nificantly different approach of Herbert Schmid, Christen und Sethianer (Leiden/Boston 2018).]
In the Preface to The Rediscovery of Gnosticism, Layton had pointed out that »the exact historical relationship of these two varieties of Gnosticism, and the dialectic of Gnosticism, Catholicism, the Marcionites, Middle-Platonism and the religion of Mani, are questions that now lie before us« (XII). Despite the many im-portant results of Valentinianism: New Studies, it is clear to the historian of religions in late antiquity that much in this agenda, start-ing with the origins and earliest phases of Gnosticism, and the emergence of Valentine’s thought, remains before us.