I don't doubt that the gnostics used variants of the name for the highest aeon, (its it in hard copy), just a little surprised by it. I would have imagined that they'd be disinclined to use it especially since that revealed name is associated with a questionably moral god as he's depicted in the OT. Interesting why they chose to use it then.
The Gnostic Gospel of Bartholomew
by VM44 16 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Leolaia
Okay, I just did some checking and found that the form Iao was used by some Sethians to refer to a lesser archon (corresponding to either Jupiter or the sun, ruling over a day of the week), so this would be an example of Iao indeed having negative connotations, although not as a name for the Demiurge. A very different use of Iao occurs in the Pistis Sophia (ch. 136), which has Jesus invoking the name while calling out to his Father and explaining the meaning of Iao as embracing the full breadth of the universe unto the completion of all fullness (Iota Alpha Omega, from Alpha to Omega). In the Gospel of Truth, the ineffable name is the name of the Father which he gives to his son.
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Midget-Sasquatch
Thanks for those great finds. How the Name variants were used in the examples you gave, like Iao- covering first to last, does make more sense to me. Nice to see the kind of richness of allusion in these genuinely ancient works, whereas I don't think I'll be reading this book anytime soon. I like to follow other modern forms of mythology, although the gnostic paradigm itself is something I favour vs the orthodox view.
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Satanus
Does homer know that bart wrote a gospel?
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Narkissos
It is often better to focus on signifiers (nouns and names) rather than signified (concepts or characters like "the OT g/God") when we attempt at tracing the history of ideas and interpretations. The verbal "material" splits and merges constantly, changing the "referents" through new combinations of words (cf. the negative use of "the Jews" and the positive use of "Israel" in GJohn). That's why diachronic (and anachronistic) discussions of identity (e.g., is the OT Yhwh the NT Father, or Son, or both?) make little sense imo. Verbal material referring to one "character" in one constellation (Yhwh = God) is divided and redistributed in another (e.g. theos = "the Father" and kurios as a substitute of Yhwh = "the Son" in Paul). In Gnosticism we actually see the same thing. Some verbal stuff previously referring to "the OT god" goes to the (relatively) "bad" or lower side (e.g. Yaldabaoth) while other goes to the "good" or higher side (e.g. Iaô or other vocalic echoes of the divine name, or Barbelo as a reference to the Tetragrammaton). Identities do not subsist from one verbal configuration to another and each system must be understood separately.
On a different (practical) note, just a word of caution: "neo-Gnosticism" can get quite cultish too, as I have found recently through an acquaintance of mine, a friend of whom had just been 'disfellowshipped' from one 'neo-Gnostic' movement and was psychologically shattered. I don't know what particular branch Hitchcock & Co. relate to but one has to be careful with the organisations even if the ideas sound attractive. Fwiw.
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Satanus
Likely, lisa wrote it and bart stole it, slapped his name on it and marketed it. That's how bart is. Psuedopsuedograph, indeed.
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Midget-Sasquatch
How nouns are appropriated over time would be intriguing if one could find patterns or reasons to them. Its these sorts of things that keep me interested in comparative religion and mythology.
P.S. I'll keep your caution in mind Narkissos. I'll be careful about cults. The one common to all here, I wasn't entirely responsible for, but the other (the Amiga computer), I got entirely sucked into on my own. Pcs back then really did suck though in comparison so I wasn't completely delusional.
Just that I was as bad as the JWs, in waiting for the Amiga's supposed Second Coming.