Judean–Israelite Gnosticism Although Elkesaites and Mandaeans were found mainly in
Mesopotamia in the first few centuries of the common era, their origins appear to be Judean–Israelite in the
Jordan valley. The members of this sect performed frequent baptisms for purification and had a Gnostic disposition. According to
Joseph Lightfoot, the Church Father
Epiphanius (writing in the 4th century AD) seems to make a distinction between two main groups within the
Essenes: "Of those that came before his [Elxai (Elkesai), an Ossaean prophet] time and during it, the Ossaeans and the
Nasaraeans."
Mandaeism ) in
Nasiriyah, southern Iraq, in 2016, a contemporary-style
mandi Mandaeism is a Gnostic,
monotheistic and
ethnic religion. The Mandaeans are an
ethnoreligious group that speak a dialect of
Eastern Aramaic known as
Mandaic. They are the only surviving Gnostics from antiquity. Their religion has been practiced primarily around the lower
Karun,
Euphrates and
Tigris and the rivers that surround the
Shatt-al-Arab waterway, part of southern Iraq and
Khuzestan province in Iran. Mandaeism is still practiced in small numbers, in parts of southern Iraq and the Iranian province of
Khuzestan, and there are thought to be between 60,000 and 70,000 Mandaeans worldwide. The name 'Mandaean' comes from the Aramaic
manda meaning knowledge.
John the Baptist is a key figure in the religion, as an emphasis on
baptism is part of their core beliefs. According to
Nathaniel Deutsch, "Mandaean anthropogony echoes both rabbinic and gnostic accounts."
Mandaeans revere
Adam,
Abel,
Seth,
Enos,
Noah,
Shem,
Aram, and especially John the Baptist. Significant amounts of original Mandaean Scripture, written in
Mandaean Aramaic, survive in the modern era. The most important holy scripture is known as the
Ginza Rabba and has portions identified by some scholars as being copied as early as the 2nd–3rd centuries, There is also the
Qulasta (Mandaean prayerbook) and the
Mandaean Book of John (Sidra ḏ'Yahia) and other
scriptures. Mandaeans believe that there is a constant battle or conflict between the forces of good and evil. The forces of good are represented by
Nhura (Light) and
Maia Hayyi (
Living Water) and those of evil are represented by
Hshuka (Darkness) and
Maia Tahmi (dead or rancid water). The two waters are mixed in all things in order to achieve a balance. Mandaeans also believe in an afterlife or heaven called
Alma d-Nhura (
World of Light). In Mandaeism, the World of Light is ruled by a Supreme God, known as
Hayyi Rabbi ('The Great Life' or 'The Great Living God'). manifested from the light, surround and perform acts of worship to praise and honor God. They inhabit worlds separate from the lightworld and some are commonly referred to as emanations and are subservient beings to the Supreme God who is also known as 'The First Life'. Their names include Second, Third, and Fourth Life (i.e.
Yōšamin,
Abathur, and
Ptahil). Therefore, Mandaeans are baptized repeatedly during their lives. Mandaeans consider John the Baptist to have been a
Nasoraean Mandaean. John is referred to as their greatest and final teacher. Others claim a southwestern Mesopotamian origin. However, some scholars take the view that Mandaeism is older and dates from pre-Christian times. Mandaeans assert that their religion predates Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as a monotheistic faith. Mandaeans believe that they descend directly from Shem, Noah's son, Due to paraphrases and word-for-word translations from the Mandaean originals found in the
Psalms of Thomas, it is now believed that the pre-Manichaean presence of the Mandaean religion is more than likely. The Valentinians embraced a Mandaean baptismal formula in their rituals in the 2nd century AD.
Birger A. Pearson compares the
Five Seals of Sethianism, which he believes is a reference to quintuple ritual immersion in water, to Mandaean
masbuta. According to
Jorunn J. Buckley, "Sethian Gnostic literature ... is related, perhaps as a younger sibling, to Mandaean baptism ideology." In addition to accepting Mandaeism's Israelite or Judean origins, Buckley adds:
Samaritan Baptist sects According to Magris, Samaritan Baptist sects trace back to
John the Baptist. One offshoot was in turn headed by
Dositheus,
Simon Magus, and
Menander. It was in this milieu that the idea emerged that the world was created by ignorant angels. Their baptismal ritual removed the consequences of sin, and led to a regeneration by which natural death, which was caused by these angels, was overcome. The Samaritan leaders were viewed as "the embodiment of God's power, spirit, or wisdom, and as the redeemer and revealer of 'true knowledge. The
Simonians were centered on Simon Magus, the magician baptised by Philip and rebuked by Peter in Acts 8, who became in early Christianity the archetypal false teacher. The ascription by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and others of a connection between schools in their time and the individual in Acts 8 may be as legendary as the stories attached to him in various apocryphal books. Justin Martyr identifies Menander of Antioch as Simon Magus' pupil. According to Hippolytus, Simonianism is an earlier form of the
Valentinian doctrine. The
Quqites were a group who followed a
Samaritan,
Iranian type of Gnosticism in 2nd-century AD
Erbil and in the vicinity of what is today northern
Iraq. The sect was named after their founder Quq, known as "the potter". The Quqite ideology arose in
Edessa,
Syria, in the 2nd century. The Quqites stressed the
Hebrew Bible, made changes in the New Testament, associated twelve prophets with twelve apostles, and held that the latter corresponded to the same number of
gospels. Their beliefs seem to have been eclectic, with elements of Judaism, Christianity, paganism, astrology, and Gnosticism.
Syriac–Egyptian Gnosticism Syriac–Egyptian Gnosticism includes
Sethianism,
Valentinianism,
Basilideans,
Thomasine traditions, and
Serpent Gnostics, and a number of other minor groups and writers.
Hermeticism is also a western Gnostic tradition, though it differs in some respects from these other groups. as is even
St. Paul. Most of the literature from this category is known to us through the Nag Hammadi Library.
Sethite-Barbeloite Sethianism was one of the main currents of Gnosticism during the 2nd to 3rd centuries, and the prototype of Gnosticism as condemned by Irenaeus. Sethianism attributed its
gnosis to
Seth, third son of
Adam and Eve and
Norea, wife of
Noah, who also plays a role in
Mandaeism and
Manicheanism. Their main text is the
Apocryphon of John, containing two earlier myths. Earlier texts such as
Apocalypse of Adam show signs of being pre-Christian and focus on Seth. Later Sethian texts continue to interact with Platonism. Sethian texts such as
Zostrianos and
Allogenes draw on the imagery of older Sethian texts, but use "a large fund of philosophical conceptuality derived from contemporary Platonism, (that is, late middle Platonism) with no traces of Christian content." According to
John D. Turner, German and American scholarship views Sethianism as "a distinctly inner-Jewish, albeit syncretistic and heterodox, phenomenon", while British and French scholarship tends to see Sethianism as "a form of heterodox Christian speculation". Roelof vandenBroek notes that "Sethianism" may never have been a separate religious movement, and that the term refers rather to a set of mythological themes which occur in various texts. According to Smith, Sethianism may have begun as a pre-Christian tradition, possibly a
syncretic cult that incorporated elements of Christianity and Platonism as it grew. According to
Temporini, Vogt, and Haase, early Sethians may be identical to or related to the
Nazarenes, the
Ophites, or the sectarian group called
heretics by
Philo. According to Turner, Sethianism was influenced by
Christianity and
Middle Platonism, and originated in the second century as a fusion of a Jewish baptizing group of possibly priestly lineage, the so-called
Barbeloites, named after
Barbelo, the first emanation of the Highest God, and a group of Biblical exegetes, the
Sethites, the "seed of
Seth". At the end of the second century, Sethianism grew apart from the developing Christian orthodoxy, which rejected the
Docetic view of the Sethians on Christ. In the early third century, Sethianism was fully rejected by Christian heresiologists, as Sethianism shifted toward the contemplative practices of Platonism while losing interest in their primal origins. In the late third century, Sethianism was attacked by neo-Platonists like
Plotinus, and Sethianism became alienated from Platonism. In the early to mid-fourth century, Sethianism fragmented into various sectarian Gnostic groups such as the
Archontics, Audians,
Borborites, and Phibionites, and perhaps
Stratiotici, and Secundians. Some of these groups existed into the Middle Ages.
Valentinianism Valentinianism was named after its founder
Valentinus (), who was a candidate for
bishop of Rome but started his own group when another was chosen. Valentinianism flourished after mid-second century. The school was popular, spreading to Northwest Africa and Egypt, and through to Asia Minor and Syria in the east, and Valentinus is specifically named as
gnostikos by Irenaeus. It was an intellectually vibrant tradition, with an elaborate and philosophically "dense" form of Gnosticism. Valentinus' students elaborated on his teachings and materials, and several varieties of their central myth are known. Valentinian Gnosticism may have been monistic rather than dualistic. In the Valentinian myths, the creation of a flawed materiality is not due to any moral failing on the part of the Demiurge, but due to the fact that he is less perfect than the superior entities from which he emanated. Valentinians treat physical reality with less contempt than other Gnostic groups, and conceive of materiality not as a separate substance from the divine, but as attributable to an
error of perception which becomes symbolized mythopoetically as the act of material creation. Basilidianism survived until the end of the 4thcentury as
Epiphanius knew of Basilidians living in the
Nile Delta. It was, however, almost exclusively limited to
Egypt, though according to
Sulpicius Severus it seems to have found an entrance into
Spain through a certain Mark from
Memphis.
St. Jerome states that the
Priscillianists were infected with it.
Thomasine traditions The
Thomasine Traditions refers to a group of texts which are attributed to the apostle Thomas. Karen L. King notes that "Thomasine Gnosticism" as a separate category is being criticised, and may "not stand the test of scholarly scrutiny".
Marcion Marcion was a Church leader from
Sinope (a city on the south shore of the Black Sea in present-day Turkey), who preached in Rome around 150 AD, but was expelled and started his own congregation, which spread throughout the Mediterranean. He rejected the Old Testament, and followed a limited Christian canon, which included only a redacted version of Luke, and ten edited letters of Paul. Some scholars do not consider him to be a Gnostic, but his teachings clearly resemble some Gnostic teachings. He 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. Like the Gnostics, Marcion argued that Jesus was essentially a divine spirit appearing to men in the shape of a human form, and not someone in a true physical body. Marcion held that the heavenly Father (the father of Jesus Christ) was an utterly alien god; he had no part in making the world, nor any connection with it.
Other Gnostic groups • Serpent Gnostics. The
Naassenes,
Ophites and the Serpentarians gave prominence to snake symbolism, and snake handling played a role in their ceremonies. •
Cerinthus (c. 100), the founder of a school with gnostic elements. Like a Gnostic, Cerinthus depicted Christ as a heavenly spirit separate from the man Jesus, and he cited the demiurge as creating the material world. Unlike the Gnostics, Cerinthus taught Christians to observe the Jewish law; his demiurge was holy, not lowly; and he taught the Second Coming. His gnosis was a secret teaching attributed to an apostle. Some scholars believe that the First Epistle of John was written as a response to Cerinthus. • The
Cainites are so-named since Hippolytus of Rome claims that they worshiped
Cain, and venerated
Esau,
Korah, the
Sodomites, and
Judas Iscariot. There is little evidence concerning the nature of this group. Hippolytus claims that they believed that indulgence in sin was the key to salvation because since the body is evil, one must defile it through immoral activity (see
libertinism). The name Cainite is used as the name of a religious movement, and not in the usual Biblical sense of people descended from Cain. • The
Carpocratians, a
libertine sect following only the
Gospel according to the Hebrews. • The school of
Justin, which combined gnostic elements with the
ancient Greek religion. • The
Borborites, a libertine Gnostic
sect, said to be descended from the
Nicolaitans Persian Gnosticism The Persian schools, which appeared in the western Persian
Sasanian province of
Asoristan, and whose writings were originally produced in the
Eastern Aramaic dialects spoken in
Mesopotamia at the time, are representative of what is believed to be among the oldest of the Gnostic thought forms. These movements are considered by most to be religions in their own right and are not emanations from Christianity or
Judaism.
Manichaeism . Manuscript from
Qocho,
Tarim Basin. Manichaeism was founded by
Mani (216–276). Mani's father was a member of the
Jewish Christian sect of the
Elcesaites, a subgroup of the
Gnostic Ebionites. At ages 12 and 24, Mani had visionary experiences of a "heavenly twin" of his, calling him to leave his father's sect and preach the true message of Christ. In 240–241, Mani travelled to the
Indo-Greek Kingdom of the
Sakas in what is now
Afghanistan, where he studied
Hinduism and its various extant philosophies. Returning in 242, he joined the court of
Shapur I, to whom he dedicated his only work written in Persian, known as the
Shabuhragan. The original writings were written in
Syriac, an Eastern Aramaic language, in a unique
Manichaean script. Manichaeism conceives of two coexistent realms of light and darkness that become embroiled in conflict. Certain elements of the light became entrapped within darkness, and the purpose of material creation is to engage in the slow process of extraction of these individual elements. In the end, the kingdom of light will prevail over darkness. Manicheanism inherits this dualistic mythology from
Zurvanist Zoroastrianism, in which the eternal spirit
Ahura Mazda is opposed by his antithesis,
Angra Mainyu. This dualistic teaching embodied an elaborate cosmological myth that included the defeat of a primal man by the powers of darkness that devoured and imprisoned the particles of light. According to Kurt Rudolph, the decline of
Manichaeism that occurred in Persia in the 5th century was too late to prevent the spread of the movement into the east and the west. In the west, the teachings of the school moved into Syria, Northern Arabia, Egypt and North Africa. There is evidence for Manicheans in Rome and
Dalmatia in the 4th century, and also in Gaul and Spain. From Syria, it progressed further into
Syria Palestina,
Anatolia, and
Byzantine and
Persian Armenia. The influence of Manicheanism was attacked by imperial edicts and polemical writings, but the religion remained prevalent until the
6th century, and still exerted influence in the emergence of
Paulicianism,
Bogomilism, and
Catharism in the Middle Ages, until it was ultimately stamped out by the
Catholic Church. In the east, Rudolph relates, Manicheanism was able to bloom, because the religious monopoly position previously held by Christianity and Zoroastrianism had been broken by nascent Islam. In the early years of the Arab conquest, Manicheanism again found followers in Persia (mostly amongst educated circles), but flourished most in Central Asia, to which it had spread through Iran. There, in 762, Manicheanism became the state religion of the
Uyghur Khaganate.
Middle Ages After its decline in the Mediterranean world, Gnosticism lived on in the periphery of the Byzantine Empire, and resurfaced in the western world. The
Paulicians, an
Adoptionist group which flourished between 650 and 872 in Armenia and the Eastern Themes of the
Byzantine Empire, were accused by orthodox medieval sources of being Gnostic and quasi-
Manichaean. The
Bogomils emerged in
Bulgaria between 927 and 970 and spread throughout Europe. It was as
synthesis of Armenian
Paulicianism and the
Bulgarian Orthodox Church reform movement. The
Cathars (Cathari, Albigenses or Albigensians) were also accused by their enemies of the traits of Gnosticism; though whether or not the Cathari possessed direct historical influence from ancient Gnosticism is disputed. If their critics are reliable the basic conceptions of Gnostic cosmology are to be found in Cathar beliefs (most distinctly in their notion of a lesser, Satanic, creator god), though they did not apparently place any special relevance upon knowledge (
gnosis) as an effective salvific force.
Islam depict
Iblis as ruling the material desires in a manner that resembles the
Gnostic Demiurge. The Quran, like Gnostic cosmology, makes a sharp distinction between this world and the
afterlife. God is commonly thought of as being beyond human comprehension. In some Islamic schools of thought, God is identifiable with the
Monad. However, according to Islam and unlike most Gnostic sects, it is not rejection of this world but the performing of good deeds that leads to
Paradise. According to the Islamic belief in
tawhid ("unification of God"), there was no room for a lower deity such as the demiurge. Sufis, a sect of Islam, also integrated traces of an entity given authority over the lower world in some early writings:
Iblis is regarded by some
Sufis as the owner of this world and humans must avoid the treasures of this world since they would belong to him. Although in mainstream Islam, these beliefs do not exist. In the
Isma'ili Shi'i work
Umm al-Kitab,
Azazil's role resembles that of the demiurge. Like the demiurge, he is endowed with the ability to create a world and seeks to imprison humans in the material world, but here, his power is limited and depends on the higher God. Further traces of Gnostic ideas can be found in Sufi anthropogeny. Like the Gnostic conception of human beings imprisoned in matter, Sufi traditions acknowledge that the human soul is an accomplice of the material world and subject to bodily desires similar to the way
archontic spheres envelop the pneuma. The
ruh (pneuma, spirit) must therefore gain victory over the lower and material-bound
nafs (psyche, soul, or anima) to overcome its animal nature. A human being captured by its animal desires, mistakenly claims autonomy and independence from the "higher God", thus resembling the lower deity in classical Gnostic traditions. However, since the goal is not to abandon the created world, but just to free oneself from lower desires, it can be disputed whether this can still be Gnostic, but rather a completion of the message of Muhammad. It seems that Gnostic ideas were an influential part of early Islamic development but later lost its influence. However light metaphors and the idea of
unity of existence () still prevailed in later Islamic thought, such as that of
ibn Sina.
Kabbalah Gershom Scholem, a historian of
Jewish philosophy, wrote that several core Gnostic ideas reappear in medieval
Kabbalah, where they are used to reinterpret earlier Jewish sources. In these cases, according to Scholem, texts such as the
Zohar adapted Gnostic precepts for the interpretation of the
Torah, while not using the language of Gnosticism. Scholem further proposed that there was a Jewish Gnosticism which influenced the early origins of Christian Gnosticism. Given that some of the earliest dated Kabbalistic texts emerged in medieval
Provence, at which time
Cathar movements were also supposed to have been active, Scholem and other mid-20th century scholars argued that there was mutual influence between the two groups. According to Dan Joseph, this hypothesis has not been substantiated by any extant texts.
Moshe Idel however has argued that the Gnostic or esoteric ideas found in Kabbalah have Jewish roots from ancient times, though we do not have written records of them.
Modern times Found today in Iraq, Iran and diaspora communities, the
Mandaeans are an ancient Gnostic
ethnoreligious group that follow
John the Baptist and have survived from antiquity. Their name comes from the Aramaic
manda meaning knowledge or
gnosis. A number of 19th-century thinkers such as
Arthur Schopenhauer,
Albert Pike and
Madame Blavatsky studied Gnostic thought extensively and were influenced by it, and even figures like
Herman Melville and
W. B. Yeats were more tangentially influenced.
Jules Doinel "re-established" a
Gnostic church in France in 1890, which altered its form as it passed through various direct successors (Fabre des Essarts as
Tau Synésius and Joanny Bricaud as
Tau Jean II most notably), and, though small, is still active today. Early 20th-century thinkers who heavily studied and were influenced by Gnosticism include
Carl Jung (who supported Gnosticism),
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.
René Guénon founded the Gnostic review,
La Gnose in 1909, before moving to a more
Perennialist position, and founding his
Traditionalist School. Gnostic
Thelemite organizations, such as Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica and
Ordo Templi Orientis, trace themselves to Crowley's thought. The discovery and translation of the Nag Hammadi library after 1945 has had a huge effect on Gnosticism since World War II. Intellectuals who were heavily influenced by Gnosticism in this period include
Lawrence Durrell,
Hans Jonas,
Philip K. Dick and
Harold Bloom, with
Albert Camus and
Allen Ginsberg being more moderately influenced.
Alfred North Whitehead was aware of the existence of the newly discovered Gnostic scrolls. Accordingly,
Michel Weber has proposed a Gnostic interpretation of his late metaphysics. ==Sources==