That seems fair. With the passage of time, I think I would also substantially discount the value of the argument made towards which group of texts had the earlier origin point. It's really hard to know in the abstract like this. The question is basically about which individual point of data is first out of all three groups, instead of a comparison of groups. As you point out, they are all eventually contemporaneous.Given that all three groups were almost certainly coexisting at the same time I am dubious about whether the rewriting of Eugnostos the Blessed (Group 3) to become the Sophia of Jesus Christ (Group 2) indicates that the origin of Group 3 is earlier than the origin of Group 2...............................................
What is the relationship of Group 3 to Group 2? Did Group 2 start later? There is at least one piece of evidence that Group 2 started later. The text Eugnostos the Blessed belongs to the third group, presenting its beliefs in relatively plain terms. The text Sophia of Jesus Christ has recast the original as a dialogue with "Jesus" the "Christ," and it belongs to the second group. Given this reuse of the document from group 3 in the document from group 2, as well as the greater pileup of terms present in group 2, we can suggest that group 2 was a development out of group 3 (although some elements of group 3 may also be later than some of the earlier texts of group 2).
(To clarify; Eugnostos may well be earlier than the earliest letters of Paul but I don't think this argument establishes this.)
Andrew Criddle
I meant to quote it recently more for the way it aggregates categories of early Christian writings in a very different way, compared to some conventional arrangements that seem to be mainly prioritized around later opinions regarding orthodoxy (i.e. New Testament scripture, church father literature, and apocryphal literature).
Such a categorization is based on the data of the texts themselves, which avoids the anachronism of those other divisions. I would say that its strength is giving us these conceptual categories to think about further. I also think it could be interesting to feed in different data, which could result in different categorizations, depending on what is of interest.
Pulling my reply into this thread for anyone who stumbles onto it.
Statistics: Posted by Peter Kirby — Tue Jun 04, 2024 5:52 pm