Concept

Gnosticism

Overview

Gnosticism is a collection of different religious and philosophical ideas and systems that fully developed by the mid-second century among sects of early Christianity and other faiths. 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. These diverse Gnostic groups generally emphasized personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) above the authority, traditions, and proto-orthodox teachings of organized religious institutions. The Gnostic worldview typically distinguished between a hidden, uncorrupted supreme being and a flawed demiurge responsible for creating material reality. Gnostics held this material existence to be evil and believed the principal element of salvation was direct knowledge of the supreme divinity, attained via mystical or esoteric insight. Many Gnostic texts deal not in concepts of sin and repentance, but with illusion and enlightenment.

Although the exact origins of Gnosticism cannot be traced, Gnostic writings flourished among certain Christian groups in the Mediterranean during the second century. In the Gnostic Christian tradition, Christ was seen as a divine being that had taken human form in order to lead humanity back to recognition of its own divine nature. Judean–Israelite Gnosticism, including the Mandaeans and Elkesaites, blended Jewish–Christian ideas with Gnostic beliefs focused on baptism and the cosmic struggle between light and darkness. Syriac–Egyptian groups like Sethianism and Valentinianism combined Platonic philosophy and Christian themes, seeing the material world as flawed but not wholly evil. Other traditions include the Basilidians, Marcionites, and Thomasines. Manichaeism, which adopted Gnostic concepts such as cosmic dualism, emerged as a major religious movement in the third century, briefly rivaling Christianity.

Early Church Fathers denounced Gnostic ideas as heresy, although early Gnostic teachers such as Valentinus saw themselves as Christians. Efforts to destroy Gnostic texts were largely successful, resulting in the survival of very little writing by Gnostic thinkers and theologians. After declining in the western Mediterranean, Gnosticism persisted in the Near East until at least the sixth century, remaining influential as far as China until the late ninth century. Gnostic ideas resurfaced periodically in medieval Europe with groups like the Paulicians, Bogomils, and Cathars. Islamic and medieval Kabbalistic thought also reflect some Gnostic ideas, while modern revivals and discoveries of Gnostic texts have influenced numerous thinkers and churches up to the present day. Gnosticism survives through Mandaeism, an ancient Middle Eastern religion sometimes described as a Gnostic sect or tradition. The second contemporary religion that may be regarded as a continuation of ancient Gnosticism, particularly Sethianism and Ophitism, is Yezidism, originally practised in northern Mesopotamia, between Mosul, Mount Sinjar and Mardin.

For centuries, most scholarly knowledge about Gnosticism was limited to the biased and often incomplete anti-heretical writings of early Christian figures such as Irenaeus of Lyons and Hippolytus of Rome. There was a renewed interest in Gnosticism after the 1945 discovery of Egypt's Nag Hammadi library, a collection of rare early Christian and Gnostic texts. Surviving Gnostic writings such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Apocryphon of John reveal a very diverse and complex early Christian landscape; some scholars believe Gnosticism may contain historical information about Jesus from the Gnostic viewpoint, although the majority conclude that apocryphal sources, Gnostic or not, are later than the canonical sources or may have depended on or used the Synoptic Gospels. Elaine Pagels has noted the influence of sources from Hellenistic Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Middle Platonism on the Nag Hammadi texts.

Since the 1990s, scholars have debated whether "Gnosticism" is a form of early Christianity; an artificial category created by early orthodox Christians to label heresies; or a distinct religious tradition in its own right. Academic studies of Gnosticism have evolved from viewing it as a Christian heresy or Greek-influenced aberration to recognizing it as a diverse set of movements with complex Jewish, Persian, and philosophical roots; consequently, modern scholars question the usefulness of "Gnosticism" as a unified category and favor more precise classifications based on texts, traditions, and socio-religious contexts.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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At one time we are in the clouds of mythology, at another among the abstractions of mathematics or metaphysics; we pass imperceptibly from one to the other. Reason and fancy are mingled in the same passage. The ideas are sometimes described as many, coextensive with the universals of sense and also with the first principles of ethics; or again they are absorbed into the single idea of good, and subordinated to it…
Plato, Meno
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It was from this source that the ethical systems, both the philosophical and those which are supported by systems of religion, took their rise. Both seek constantly in some way or other to connect happiness with virtue, the former either by means of the principle of contradiction or that of sufficient reason, and thus to make happiness either identical with or…
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
States what Gnosticism is; the author is tied to Gnosticism in the knowledge graph.
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The doctrines concerning those two subjects were considered as making two distinct sciences. What are called metaphysics, or pneumatics, were set in opposition to physics, and were cultivated not only as the more sublime, but, for the purposes of a particular profession, as the more useful science of the two. The proper subject of experiment and observation, a subject in which a careful attention is capable of…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
States what Gnosticism is.
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