"penitent leper" <bastaschs@peak.org> wrote in message
news:23jd20tk9rkvngekriq7rap88vca3k58um@4ax.com...

It's a strange and interesting thing to contemplate all the furor
about Mel Gibson's new movie from a Gnostic perspective. As truly
"Catholic" iconography, the film surely promises more than one
cinematic meditation on "the Precious Wounds and Blood of Our Savior"
- which suggests some interesting Gnostic-related thoughts, e.g.:

1) Did Jesus really come "in the flesh"?

2) If he really came in the flesh, was he a human being who through
Gnostic insight realized himself as divine?

3) Was he a human being on whom/in whom the Logos/Spirit/Heavenly
Christ descended/or dwelled?

4) If an external spirit dwelled in Jesus' human persona, was It
consistently "there", or did it come and go? More importantly, did it
"abandon" Jesus at his death?

5) Can an external spirit undergo suffering? Did Jesus' "spirit"
suffer along with his human personality and his ape body?

6) Was Jesus' death on the cross a victimization, a martyrdom, or a
literal sin-expiating blood sacrifice? Did it happen in historical
spacetime or was it a mythic enactment projected on the material
plane?

7) If it was a literal sin-expiating blood sacrifice, what might
this say about the nature and "psychology" of Jesus and his God? What
kind of human being and what kind of deity collude to mutilate and
kill the said human being for "sins" committed by others?

8) If Jesus and his God were in sacrificial collusion, was his God
therefore the Demiurge? If so, was Jesus entirely hylic and mistaken
about the nature of God and our relationship to God?

9) While conservative Christians are flocking to the film - which
hasn't opened yet, but for which they are pre-purchasing mass tickets
- many Gnostics may be laughing up their collective sleeve - since for
many Gnostics, "the body avails nothing", and Jesus' death at most was
a hylic function, or a divine charade played out for the benefit of an
ignorant humanity. (As Pagels points out, they also took the same
view toward Christian martyrdom, which for them was a fruitless hylic
exercise.)

10) The film is said to contain a brief resurrection sequence. From
a Gnostic perspective, what does a resurrection mean, if the
resurrected One was always a pure spirit docetically appearing among
us? Jesus' "transformation" from mortal body to matter-manipulating
immortal spirit via the resurrection is only a true transformation
from the hylic perspective that he had been "in the flesh". From a
certain Gnostic viewpoint, since Jesus was always pure spirit, the
resurrection either didn't happen, or if it did, it was largely
irrelevant to his true nature and status.

= = =

Anyway, just some random thoughts while waiting for the debut of
this "much-awaited" film. Opinions most welcome.

- pl -