Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Page from the Gospel of Judas Mandaean Beth Manda in Nasiriyah, southern Iraq, in 2016, a contemporary-style mandi. Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek: γνωστικός, romanized: gnōstikós, Koine Greek: [ɣnostiˈkos], 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among early Christian sects.
Gnosticism used a number of religious texts that are preserved, in part or whole, in ancient manuscripts, or lost but mentioned critically in Patristic writings. There is significant scholarly debate around what Gnosticism is, and therefore what qualifies as a "Gnostic text."
Gnosticism teaches that the natural or material world will and should be destroyed (total annihilation) by the true spiritual God in order to free mankind from the reign of the false God or Demiurge. A common misperception is caused by the fact that, in the past, "Gnostic" had a similar meaning to the current usage of the word mystic.
Widely regarded as the founder of modern academic study of the Kabbalah, Scholem produced the hypothesis that the source of the 13th century Kabbalah (such as the Zohar) was Jewish gnosticism that preceded Christian gnosticism. For example, in the title of his 1960's Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and the Talmudic Tradition.
In it, Irenaeus identifies and describes several schools of Gnosticism, and other schools of Christian thought, whose beliefs he rejects as heresy. He contrasts them with orthodox Christianity. Until the discovery of the Library of Nag Hammadi in 1945, Against Heresies was the best surviving contemporary description of Gnosticism.
According to the Christian scholar Epiphanius of Salamis, he was born in Egypt and schooled in Alexandria, where the Gnostic Basilides was teaching. However, Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215), another Christian scholar and teacher, reports that Valentinus was taught by Theudas , a disciple of the apostle Paul . [ 5 ]
Most Gnostic sects did not accept the Old Testament moral law. For example, the Manichaeans held that their spiritual being was unaffected by the action of matter and regarded carnal sins as being, at worst, forms of bodily disease. [21] The Old Testament was absolutely rejected by most of the Gnostics.
Esoteric Christianity is a mystical approach to Christianity which features "secret traditions" that require an initiation to learn or understand. [1] The term esoteric was coined in the 17th century and derives from the Greek ἐσωτερικός ( esôterikos , "inner").