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In my reading today of Manlio Simonetti’s Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church, three points stood out to me:
1. Page 32: Origen, De Princ. II 5, 1 reports some of these episodes (the flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, etc.) from which the Gnostics made out that the God of the Old Testament was just, but not good, unlike the God of the New Testament. The strict opposition between the two Testaments and between the just God of the one and the good God of the other, was also characteristic of Marcion (whom the ancients also considered a Gnostic), while modern scholars are less sure about categorising him in this way. In contrast to the Gnostics, Marcion would not recognise allegorical interpretation of Scripture. Given that the Gnostic rejection of the Old Testament originated in the opposition between the supreme God and the Demiurge, a lesser emphasis on this opposition might make it possible for the Old Testament to be used by the Gnostic in the same way as the New Testament. This is the case with the Pistis Sophia and the Exegesis of the Soul.
2. Page 42, on Origen: The difficulty in understanding fully the meaning of God’s Word thus lies in the fact that its deeper, essential and spiritual meaning is concealed beneath the literal expression which covers it, and clothes it like a veil, a garment, or a body…This difficulty has caused many to stop at the level of the external, ‘fleshly’ sense, and they fall into error; the literal meaning though not itself mistaken does not represent the ultimate goal of Scripture, but serves rather, as an educative starting-point which points the reader to an awareness of the deeper meaning. If this awareness remains defective, error results—as…with the Gnostics, who tooks the anthropomorphisms of the Old Testament at face value…(De Princ. IV 2:1).
3. Page 42, on Origen: The difference between the literal and spiritual meaning is developed by Origen, who extends the spiritual interpretation to every passage of the sacred text, and distinguishes different types of spiritual meaning…following influences from different directions: traditional typology, cosmological and anthropological exegesis in the style of Philo, a tendency, found not only in the Gnostics, to understand the earthly realities mentioned in Scripture ‘vertically’ , as symbols of heavenly realities.
So the Gnostics were a pretty complex group! Most of them believed that the God of the Old Testament was a mean Demiurge; a few Gnostics used the Old Testament as Scripture (in some manner). The Gnostics employed an allegorical approach to Scripture—unlike Marcion, who shared with most of them a disdain for the Old Testament. Yet, the Gnostics were literal when it came to the Old Testament’s anthropomorphic depiction of God. Was this because they believed that the mean Demiurge was like a man, whereas the highest God was incorporeal and transcendent? The Gnostics opposed matter and liked spirit.
