Talk:Sophia (Gnosticism)

No mention of Athena, the goddess of wisdom

It's an odd omission. An explanation of the difference would be apt.77.250.197.189 (talk) 01:23, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Break out of overweight material from sophia (wisdom)

The sources for this article/essay suggest that they were culled from some c1890s text. The whole thing may be cut-and-paste. Anyway, here it is. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:50, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I added a {{Copied}} template above. Melchoir (talk) 04:01, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

There was an attribution at the bottom of the Sophia (wisdom) page that indicated the source. If you're going to change all of the references (and many of these are helpful), be sure to check for style issues like missing periods and capitalization that wreak havoc with the text. I'm not sure that the article should be called "Wisdom," as "Sophia" is used as a proper name in distinction from (and far more frequently than) "wisdom" in a general sense. See usage:

• Sophia: One Two Three
• Wisdom: One Two Three

You're right, the introductory paragraphs under "Gnostic tradition" need some work. Kramden (talk) 19:46, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Yep I'm assuming it's mainly copied from Schaff, except the 1st few paras which are just blogging/OR. There's always an issue of what to do with what are in effect Primary Sources when cut pasted from old encyclopedias. As far as I know they'd be in the text bracketed not footnoted in Schaff too. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:38, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

The article is from Lipsius, and, at the very least, provides a wealth of primary sources that are dead easy to verify (if you have some perverse desire to do so) via Wikisource or your preferred copy of ANF. All of these Gnosticism articles have been rather neglected since I added the material years ago. Recommend moving this to "Sophia (Gnosticism)". Have fun changing every link on every Gnosticism page. Kramden (talk) 18:33, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

"Sophia" is predominantly used as the name of an Aeon in Gnostic texts and scholarship (see above). Kramden (talk) 18:45, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, you want to rename with the Greek word for Wisdom? Wisdom is only a "name" if it is personified, but even if it is personified it doesn't have to be Greek - it isn't in Hebrew Bible or rabbinical lit. Is the Aeon a being? The Nag Hammadi texts in Coptic will use the Coptic word for wisdom (like they use soun instead of gnosis. Under these circumstances WP:English applies. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:22, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

But the Coptic texts do use the Greek word. For instance, it appears as as ΤCOΦΙΑ here (line 31) in the Gospel of Philip, and here (line 6) in (Hypostasis of the Archons). As to personified--yes, yes it is. Shrug. Kramden (talk) 07:32, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi Kramden, I didn't know that - I mean I knew that Coptic has a large vocabulary of Greek loan-words, drawn from the Sahidic and Boharic Septuagint/New Testament, but I didn't know that whatever the original Afro-Asiatic Coptic word for wisdom was (tmntsabe?) had been replaced in some texts. Not enormously surprising I guess. Still not seeing immediately a justification for departing from WP:naming conventions (use English), not yet anyway. I suppose Google Scholar might change that. But finding the correct naming convention (Greek or English) is a minor issue on the road to hopefully getting some more solid WP:RS to say what really these 3rd century Christian texts (or third hand reports in the case of Iraenaeus) really tell us about the churches/sects that wrote them? In ictu oculi (talk) 09:50, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Given that Gnostic texts and scholarship in every language a) overwhelmingly use Sophia and b) do not treat "her" as an abstract concept, it still feels better to try to move this (seeing as no-one else has any input on the subject). Kramden (talk) 03:46, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

This seems like an incorrect article

After reading the Origin of the World from The Nag Hammadi Library, it says that Sophia created God and Jesus (I may have misunderstood, so please let me know as it took 5 times reading it to connect the dots); and that God was jealous and made the rules for Adam and Eve to not eat from the tree of wisdom because he didn't want them to know the truth. It's a very interesting read. According to the Origin of the World, there are 2 Adams and 2 Eves. The first Eve hid in the tree of Wisdom from God, God being the one Pistis Sophia had created from darkness (shadow - the one who had no soul but was ruler over matter) (Starting from paragraph 5 http://gnosis.org/naghamm/origin.html). That is why God said to not eat from the Wisdom tree to the 2nd Eve, because the first Eve knew the truth and hid. According to the text, its Yaldabaoth, unless I am reading it wrong (I have read it 5 times and this is what i got from it) who is the prime parent of all the Gods, angels and the 8 heavens spoken about.

I would suggest doing more reading from the actual translations of the books that were found in the 1940s, that the Church hid, I believe in 1773, because they didn't want anyone knowing the truth. Here is the website and you can even order the book if you would rather read from that then the website. It gives the names of who translated. Unlike the bible which has been translated over 20 times from humans of the church.

Thank you

Amy — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.148.158.243 (talk) 16:18, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

References

Messy

Most of the article is a big Non-primary source needed and says who?. Some of it is messy, what f.ex. is "Baruch-Gnosis"? The Book of Baruch is not known to be Gnostic, and 'knowledge' outside of a Gnostic context isn't refered to as 'gnosis'. Only "church father" texts seems to be used in most places, but for certain there are many more sources than the antagonists of the Gnostics? Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 08:13, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Word Niggle

I have been a Gnostic myself a few years and I'm hitting my first Sophia Service tonight (on Zoom) so I was using this page to look up a bit about her. I noticed the intro says "Gnostics held that she was the syzygy...". My trouble is the past tense for held. We still exist so is the implication we do not or that the belief has changed? As mentioned I was coming here to learn myself so I don't actually know if that is a currently maintained view but it feels familiar. A friend (also Gnostic, same person who introduced me to this church) jokingly oversimplified it as female Jesus a couple years back so anecdotally it seems alive. Peace! ZepawFox (talk) 00:32, 25 April 2020 (UTC)