Once again, Ben the Amateur Exegete strikes, as from a posting of his, Robyn Faith Ehrman Walsh is flat wrong if she thinks there was no such thing called Gnosticism. Wiki does note that there is no one religion called Gnosticism, but says it does work as an umbrella term. RFE spoils her case further by citing Karen King as the main source for her argument. See more here from me on the issue of Gnosticism and of King's problematic-ness. See also my well-read "Paul, Passover, Jesus, Gnosticism."
Beyond that, the King book is 20 years old. Plenty of scholars who are not Westar/Jesus Seminar flunkies nor Ehrman flunkies have thought on these issues. Wiki's footnotes reference David Brakke's book, among others, that are newer than King.
So, if rather, RF Ehrman is saying there's no such thing as what was called "Gnosticism" say, pre-2000, she's strawmanning and leaning too much on the slender reed of King.
Getting back to Wiki. It notes Gnosticism was not entirely a Christian or para-Christian phenomenon. Books have been written about the idea of Jewish Gnosticism, after all. And, a bit about Mandean and pagan Gnosticism.
I quote the first paragraph of the Wiki entry:
It is not a singular, homogeneous tradition or religion, but an umbrella term used by modern scholars to describe different groups and beliefs that shared certain characteristics.
So, yea, RF Ehrman is strawmanning. And I told Ben that, only being more polite than using the word "strawmanning." We'll see if there's any response.
He's getting closer to being deblogrolled, which doesn't matter so much anyway if Blogger doesn't fix its recent problem of not updating RSS feeds.
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