i would caution bringing any 'Simonians' into this
we can say something about Cerdon and co. but there's absolutely nothing we can say about an even earlier group the 'Simonians'
for all we know those guys would be totally opposed to whatever Cerdo, or the other gnostics were cooking up (or to broaden that statement, to include the epistles).
put it another way, Ev and the epistles may be suspected to be in use among/created by contemporaries to Cerdo, Marcion, etc
but we have no proof that is true for an earlier phase
you could go further
that there were no 'Simonians' and this was a later appellation to make it seem like an aberrant group existed, when they were once the majority
thus to say the Simonians were involved in the composition of the original epistles becomes:
a corrupted form of the Simonians were involved in the composition
which becomes:
a corruption of something original created the epistles
we can say something about Cerdon and co. but there's absolutely nothing we can say about an even earlier group the 'Simonians'
for all we know those guys would be totally opposed to whatever Cerdo, or the other gnostics were cooking up (or to broaden that statement, to include the epistles).
put it another way, Ev and the epistles may be suspected to be in use among/created by contemporaries to Cerdo, Marcion, etc
but we have no proof that is true for an earlier phase
you could go further
that there were no 'Simonians' and this was a later appellation to make it seem like an aberrant group existed, when they were once the majority
thus to say the Simonians were involved in the composition of the original epistles becomes:
a corrupted form of the Simonians were involved in the composition
which becomes:
a corruption of something original created the epistles
Statistics: Posted by davidmartin — Fri May 10, 2024 4:54 am