Gnosticism Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==Development== Three periods can be discerned in the development of Gnosticism:{{sfn|Perkins|2005|p=3530}} * Late-first century and early second century: development of Gnostic ideas, contemporaneous with the writing of the New Testament; * mid-second century to early third century: high point of the classical Gnostic teachers and their systems, "who claimed that their systems represented the inner truth revealed by Jesus";{{sfn|Perkins|2005|p=3530}} * end of the second century to the fourth century: reaction by the proto-orthodox church and condemnation as heresy, and subsequent decline. During the first period, three types of tradition developed:{{sfn|Perkins|2005|p=3530}} * Genesis was reinterpreted in Jewish milieus, viewing [[Yahweh]] as a jealous God who enslaved people; freedom was to be obtained from this jealous God; * A wisdom tradition developed, in which Jesus' sayings were interpreted as pointers to an esoteric wisdom, in which the soul could be divinized through identification with wisdom.{{sfn|Perkins|2005|p=3530}}{{refn|group=note|According to [[Earl Doherty]], a prominent proponent of the [[Christ myth theory]], the [[Q source|Q-authors]] may have regarded themselves as "spokespersons for the Wisdom of God'', with Jesus being the [[Wisdom (personification)|embodiment of this Wisdom]]. In time, the gospel-narrative of this embodiment of Wisdom became interpreted as the literal history of the life of Jesus.<ref name="JP-PPCO">{{cite journal |title=The Jesus Puzzle: Pieces in a Puzzle of Christian Origins |last=Doherty |first=Earl |journal=[[Journal of Higher Criticism]] |volume=4 |issue=2 |date=Fall 1997 |url=http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/jhcjp.htm |access-date=2017-03-14 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080608125009/http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/jhcjp.htm |archive-date=2008-06-08 |url-status=dead }}</ref>}} Some of Jesus' sayings may have been incorporated into the gospels to put a limit on this development. The conflicts described in 1 Corinthians may have been inspired by a clash between this wisdom tradition and Paul's gospel of crucifixion and arising;{{sfn|Perkins|2005|p=3530}} * A mythical story developed about the descent of a heavenly creature to reveal the Divine world as the true home of human beings.{{sfn|Perkins|2005|p=3530}} Jewish Christianity saw the Messiah, or Christ, as "an eternal aspect of God's hidden nature, his "spirit" and "truth", who revealed himself throughout sacred history".{{sfn|Magris|2005|p=3516}} The movement spread in areas controlled by the [[Roman Empire]] and [[Arianism|Arian]] Goths,{{sfn|Halsall|2008|p=293}} and the [[Parthian Empire|Persian Empire]]. It continued to develop in the Mediterranean and Middle East before and during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, but decline also set in during the third century, due to a growing aversion from the Nicene Church, and the economic and cultural deterioration of the Roman Empire.{{sfn|Magris|2005|p=3519}} Conversion to Islam, and the [[Albigensian Crusade]] (1209β1229), greatly reduced the remaining number of Gnostics throughout the Middle Ages, though Mandaean communities still exist in Iraq, Iran and diaspora communities. Gnostic and pseudo-gnostic ideas became influential in some of the philosophies of various esoteric [[mystical]] movements of the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe and North America, including some that explicitly identify themselves as revivals or even continuations of earlier gnostic groups. Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page