Gnosticism
Gnosticism is a modern label for a range of religious movements and texts of the first centuries CE that taught salvation through gnōsis (knowledge), often with a distinction between a remote true God and a lesser creator of the material world.
The term
Established The noun "Gnosticism" is a modern coinage: it is usually traced to the English Platonist Henry More in the 1660s, while ancient writers spoke of particular groups and of "knowledge" (gnōsis).[1] Scholarly debate Whether the category is useful is disputed. Michael A. Williams (Rethinking "Gnosticism", 1996) proposed replacing it with "biblical demiurgical" traditions, and Karen L. King (What Is Gnosticism?, 2003) argued that the category was built by heresiologists and modern scholars; others keep the term as a working label for a recognisable family of myths.[2]
Sources
Established Until the twentieth century most information came from opponents, above all Irenaeus of Lyon's Against Heresies (c. 180 CE).[3] Original texts survived in a few Coptic codices (Askew, Bruce, Berlin) and, from 1945, in the Nag Hammadi library. Established G.R.S. Mead's Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (1900) gathered the patristic reports and the then-known Coptic texts in English.[4]
Main groupings
- Valentinianism and Sethian Gnosticism (modern scholarly groupings)
- Figures reported by the heresiologists, such as Simon Magus
- Later religions often compared with them: Manichaeism and Mandaeism
References
- ↑ Henry More, An Exposition of the Seven Epistles to the Seven Churches (1669), cited in modern discussions of the term.
- ↑ Michael A. Williams, Rethinking "Gnosticism" (Princeton, 1996); Karen L. King, What Is Gnosticism? (Harvard, 2003). Cited only; copyrighted.
- ↑ Irenaeus, Against Heresies (c. 180 CE). English in Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 1 (1885), CCEL and Wikisource.
- ↑ G.R.S. Mead, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (1900). Public domain; sacred-texts.com and Internet Archive.
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