Discussing the recent SBL conference on her blogsite, (a conference not surprisingly dominated by Bart Ehrman, the notorious atheist who has spent the last two years undermining the Bible on public TV and radio, see our report here:
As a member of SBL and someone that attended the most recent conference, I find it a little odd that you think that the entire conference that included literally thousands of presentations from hundreds of different Universities from around the world was dominated by one man, least of all Ehrman, who quite honestly is barely a blip on the radar of biblical studies (yes, his work on Gnosticism has been 'important', but as you so aptly point out can sometimes be a little crazy).
But that is the net effect in this modern academic culture of "no fault" comparative religion, in which we are supposed to stay utterly neutral and 'politically correct' while observing various idiots and cults, from the human sacrifices of the Aztecs to the child burnings of NorthEast Africa and the Mediterranean.
As someone actively involved "in this modern academci culture" I was unaware that I was supposed to neutral about human sacrifices.
Oh, wait, academics judge culture all the time, yes, we are fascinated by ancient culture. But, would you accuse someone fascinated by batting averages of endorsing steriod use? Likewise, just because we are obsessed by ancient culture does not mean that we endorse all the terrible things that these cultures did.
As far as DeConick goes, unfortunately, though I am aware of her retranslation and her claim that Ehrman's was faulty, I have not had a chance to look into her specific claims and I do not read Coptic so I wouldn't be able to check their respective translations anyway. (Gnosticism is an interest of mine, but not a specialty). But I can say this, I would think long and hard before I would apply the term 'witchcraft' to any of the myriad groups of Gnostics. They certainly were crazy and some of them certainly believed in magical ideas, but the term witchcraft gives modern readers the impression of magic wands, boils on peoples' noses, frogs, culdrons, the Salem Witch Trials, and Harry Potter. These are not at all the types of things that the Gnostics were into (again, they believed some pretty wacky things, but they were not similar to what modern people think of as witchcraft).
Also, her claim that this group of Gnostics actually worchiped Judas seems a little off. Again, I have not actually read her research, but this just doesn't
sound Gnostic. There were many different groups of Gnostics with many different beliefs, but one thing they had in common was that they all hated the physical world including their own bodies (this lead some to asceticism and others to indulging their bodies every want). We can actually see this in the Gospel of Judas when Jesus speaks of shedding his body so that his spirit could be free. In other Gnostic accounts Jesus isn't even thought of as having a body because he was so holy that he
couldn't have been entombed in evil flesh. So, my question is: why would a bunch of Gnostics want to worship a
man. A man that notably was
not the teacher that is from the divine realm of
Pleroma (sort of like the Gnostic view of heaven. That isn't entirely true, but I could write an entire paper on what exactly
pleroma is and probably not cover even 1% of the information).
So the Gnostics worshiped Judas, just a man (an enlightened man, yes, but a man nonetheless) with an evil physical body that throughout at least the first half of the Gospel of Judas is portrayed as not understanding anything that the messenger from
pleroma (Jesus) is saying. Again, I haven't read her evidence, but I find this
extremely difficult to believe.
Well, anyway, that was my two cents on Gnosticism.
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