PLESE 2014 1SDB2019

Zlatko Pleše

„Evil and its Sources in Gnostic Traditions”, în

Die Wurzel allen Übels Vorstellungen über die Herkunft des Bösen und Schlechten in der Philosophie und Religion

des 1.–4. Jahrhunderts.

Ratio Religionis Studien III

Herausgegeben von Fabienne Jourdan/ Rainer Hirsch-Luipold

Tübingen. Mohr Siebeck 2014, pp. 101-132. (pdf.)

Fragment

„A great deal of recent scholarship on Gnosticism has been concerned with dismantling this modern typological coinage1 – a misleading label, so we are told, that reifies a wide array of diverging theological positions, ethical orientations, and ritual practices. The present study, as indicated by its title, does not follow such a radical deconstructionist program. While acknowledging numerous doctrinal divergences in the available primary sources, it still argues that multiple Gnostic traditions share a distinctive world-hypothesis and a unified set of presuppositions concerning the sources and nature of evil. Evidence for this claim comes not only from original Gnostic works, mostly preserved in Coptic translation, but also from a number of ancient anti-Gnostic treatises penned by Christian heresiologists and philosophically-minded pagan intellectuals. The first part of this study deals with various authors engaged in anti-Gnostic polemics and with their surprisingly uniform account of the “errors” of Gnostic theodicy. In the second part, this account will be tested against the selection of passages excerpted from genuine Gnostic texts. Comparison of these two bodies of evidence reveals a coherent doctrine of evil as derivative from a spiritual source and permeating all domains of a multiple-layered reality. Underlying this doctrine is the systematic application of a principle of transitivity and homologation, which postulates “the same structure in the universe and in each living creature” (Plot. Enn. II.9.7.25–27)” (pp. 101-102).