20 Facts About Gnosticism

Gnosticism is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects.

However, Gnosticism is not a single standardized system, and the emphasis on direct experience allows for a wide variety of teachings, including distinct currents such as Valentinianism and Sethianism.

Centuries, most scholarly knowledge about Gnosticism was limited to the anti-heretical writings of orthodox Christian figures such as Irenaeus of Lyons and Hippolytus of Rome.

Contemporary scholarship largely agrees that Gnosticism has Jewish Christian origins, originating in the late first century AD in nonrabbinical Jewish sects and early Christian sects.

Gnosticism'spherd of Hermas is a Christian literary work considered as canonical scripture by some of the early Church fathers such as Irenaeus.

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Early research into the origins of Gnosticism proposed Persian origins or influences, spreading to Europe and incorporating Jewish elements.

Valentinian Gnosticism is a form of monism, expressed in terms previously used in a dualistic manner.

In normative early Christianity the Church administered and prescribed the correct behaviour for Christians, while in Gnosticism it was the internalised motivation that was important.

Gnosticism's is occasionally referred to by the Hebrew equivalent of Achamoth.

Moral judgements of the demiurge vary from group to group within the broad category of Gnosticism, viewing materiality as being inherently evil, or as merely flawed and as good as its passive constituent matter allows.

In late antiquity some variants of Gnosticism used the term archon to refer to several servants of the demiurge.

Dillon notes that Gnosticism raises questions about the development of early Christianity.

Syrian-Egyptian Gnosticism includes Sethianism, Valentinianism, Basilideans, Thomasine traditions, and Serpent Gnostics, as well as a number of other minor groups and writers.

Gnosticism rejected the Old Testament, and followed a limited Christian canon, which included only a redacted version of Luke, and ten edited letters of Paul.

Gnosticism preached a radical difference between the God of the Old Testament, the Demiurge, the "evil creator of the material universe", and the highest God, the "loving, spiritual God who is the father of Jesus", who had sent Jesus to the earth to free mankind from the tyranny of the Jewish Law.

Early 20th-century thinkers who heavily studied and were influenced by Gnosticism include Carl Jung, Eric Voegelin (who opposed it), Jorge Luis Borges (who included it in many of his short stories), and Aleister Crowley, with figures such as Hermann Hesse being more moderately influenced.

Reconstructions of incomplete Gnostic texts were attempted in modern times, but research on Gnosticism was coloured by the orthodox views of those heresiologists.

Johann Lorenz von Mosheim proposed that Gnosticism developed on its own in Greece and Mesopotamia, spreading to the west and incorporating Jewish elements.

Persian Gnosticism possesses more dualist tendencies, reflecting a strong influence from the beliefs of the Persian Zurvanist Zoroastrians.

Gnosticism uses Rodney Stark and William Bainbridge's sociological theory on traditional religion, sects and cults.