Friday, January 18, 2008

Response (7) to Marvin Meyer: The Thirteenth Daimon

This is my final response, covering his material on Pistis Sophia. I found this part of his paper to be very interesting, although I think that it shows a Valentinian Gnostic pattern quite distinct from the Sethian. So it is not going to be as helpful illuminating the Gospel of Judas' pattern than Meyer might think. This is only my initial reaction. I need to study these patterns more closely, which I'm actually doing for the Codex Judas Congress. I have been researching patterns of 12 and 13, especially as they relate to the apostles and the cosmic structures and claims to authority.

So perhaps I will leave this whole discussion to that conference, and Meyer and I can have some common ground to discuss when he comes to town. Personally I would like to move the conversation on the Judas gospel and the Tchacos Codex beyond the deadlock we have been engaged in the last few months.

By the way, don't forget that Meyer and Wurst are going to be giving a public lecture (March 13, 7-8 p.m., Rice University) on how they restored the codex from a box of fragments, and what media involvement and corporations means for scholarship.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I admit it, I'm not an expert. Having read Meyer's article I had a couple questions:

1. Is Pistis Sophia a Sethian text?

2. When Meyer refers to Irenaeus' response to Valentinians is there a connection between the Valentinians and the Sethians?

It just seemed to me that different Gnostics have different myths and different ways of expressing those myths. Thus the number 13 may well mean different things in different traditions.

April DeConick said...

Bob,

Your intuition is correct.

Pistis Sophia is a fourth century text. It is a collection of random esoteric lore from many traditions and geographies. It is not a Sethian text.

Irenaeus' response is to the Valentinians who are using the numbers differently. They have a different mythology from the Sethians, so their mythology and numerology is not compatible with the each other

highlyeccentric said...

Hi, just a note to let you know that i linked to this series in the latest carnivalesque.