– The Tree of Gnosis: Gnostic Mythology from Early Christianity to Modern Nihilism (1992)
Philo’s influence on early Christian Logos theories was overwhelming. Did he influence gnostic mythology as well?
From our perspective, the question as formulated is not relevant. What should be emphasized is that Philonic exegesis is a transformation of the myth of Genesis according to a set of rules deriving from Platonism. Obviously these rules are not the only possible ones, nor is Philonic exegesis the only possible exegesis of the Tanakh, according to the same or to other rules that can be defined as Platonic.
Gnostic exegesis of Genesis admits a definition strikingly similar to Philonic exegesis: It is an interpretation of a Jewish text according to a set of rules derived from Platonism. Yet we may add: If all rules may indeed derive from Platonism, not all of them would be subscribed to by Platonists. This distinction is fundamental.
We already noticed that Philonic biblical exegesis showed occasionally more concern with Judaism than with Platonism. Philo’s biblical God is identified with the world of Ideas, not with the (lower) Platonic demiurge. What would occur if an interpreter instead identified the Creator God of Genesis with the Platonic demiurge? A transformation of Philo would ensue, in which the Philonic Logos would become the God of the Tanakh. The immediate consequence ofsuch a simple operation would be a God superior to the Old Testament god.
A Platonist who moved along this transformative line would stumble upon a problem that Philo scarcely had to face: the repeated declarations of the Tanakh God that he is the only God. This would be quite justifiable in a setting in which other gods made similar claims, but it would certainly be more than suspicious in a situation in which the god who brags about being supreme is known not to be.
An interpreter of the Bible who was basically more Platonic than Jewish would immediately stumble upon this contradiction, which would set in motion the principle of inverse exegesis, in which the content of the Bible is taken not at face value but in the light of previous information that contributes to the escalation of a “hermeneutic of suspicion.” Yet the characteristic of this hermeneutic, of which gnostics seem to be the earliest systematic representatives, is that it is performed not in the name of any reductive principle but in the name of metaphysical antireductionism. In other words, the gnostics would not only criticize Judaism for being a reductive form of Platonism (which is inevitable if Judaism is taken to be a form of Platonism!) but would not hesitate to judge Platonism itself as a reductive form of metaphysics.
By stating that the gnostics were simply the champions of metaphysics in the late Hellenistic world, do we claim an understanding of the rules that produce the different gnostic doctrines as transformations of a Platonizing Jewish myth and of each other? We should proceed along the lines of the system generated from this premise in order to assess whether a Platonic exegesis of Genesis would indeed have a gnostic appearance.
Pp. 123-4