Chapter Four. Deification And Christology In The Gospel Of Philip

Abstract

[ The aim of this chapter has indeed been to treat the two selected Nag Hammadi texts as far as possible on their own terms as complete and coherent literary expressions. In studies of the Nag Hammadi texts, including gospel of Philip ( Gos. Phil. ) and exegesis on the soul ( Exeg. Soul ), the texts themselves and their own internal logic have often come to play second fiddle to the wealth of comparative material, mostly heresiological, that has been adduced to shed light upon them. Therefore the chapter chooses to focus on the internal logic of Gos. Phil. and Exeg. Soul , and have thus tried to analyse how they make sense on their own terms, that is, in a reading that takes seriously the production of meaning that arises from the interplay with Scripture created by the quotations and allusions that pervade them. It compares Gos. Phil. and Exeg. Soul with each other. Keywords: exegesis on the soul ( Exeg. Soul ); gospel of Philip ( Gos. Phil. ); Nag Hammadi texts , In addition to the use and function of cognitive models derived from or related to embodied experience, however, there is also another important aspect of these texts that must be taken equally into consideration. Most studies on the NagHammadi tractatesmention parallels, influences and borrowings from Scripture, but few have actually analysed the patterns and functions of such intertextual connections from a literary perspective. This chapter shows how rituals and Scripture are interpreted in reciprocal processes where concepts based on basic embodied experience are central. Methodologically the investigation is built around a two-pronged approach to the selected texts, namely an analysis of the interpretive combination of conceptual structures and of texts. The way in which the above outlined questions are tackled in the present study constitutes in many ways a new approach to the study of the Nag Hammadi texts. Keywords:Cognitive Models; Gnosticism; Nag Hammadi Codex II ]