Gnosticism
Antiquity
Medieval
Early modern
Modern
Iran
India
East-Asia
Gnosticism from , 'having knowledge' is the collection of religious ideas & systems which coalesced in the behind 1st century advertising among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasised personal spiritual cognition gnosis above the orthodox teachings, traditions, and a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. of religious institutions. Viewing fabric existence as flawed or evil, Gnostic cosmogony generally portrayed a distinction between a supreme, hidden God and a malevolent lesser divinity sometimes associated with the Yahweh of the Old Testament who is responsible for creating the material universe. Gnostics considered the principal factor of salvation to be direct knowledge of the supreme divinity in the hold of mystical or esoteric insight. numerous Gnostic texts deal non in picture of sin and repentance, but with illusion and enlightenment.
Gnostic writings flourished amongChristian groups in the Mediterranean world around thecentury, when the Fathers of the early Church denounced them as heresy. Efforts to destroy these texts proved largely successful, resulting in the survival of very little writing by Gnostic theologians. Nonetheless, early Gnostic teachers such(a) as Valentinus saw their beliefs as aligned with Christianity. In the Gnostic Christian tradition, Christ is seen as a divine being which has taken human cause in layout to lead humanity back to recognition of its own divine nature. However, Gnosticism is non a single standardized system, and the emphasis on direct experience gives for a wide family of teachings, including distinct currents such(a) as Valentinianism and Sethianism. In the Persian Empire, Gnostic ideas spread as far as China via the related movement Manichaeism, while Mandaeism, which is the only surviving Gnostic religion from antiquity, is found in Iraq, Iran and diaspora communities. The Mandaeans may have been the inventors of Gnosticism, or at the very least, contributed to its development.: 109
For centuries, most scholarly knowledge of Gnosticism was limited to the anti-heretical writings of orthodox Christian figures such as Irenaeus of Lyons and Hippolytus of Rome. There was a renewed interest in Gnosticism after the 1945 discovery of Egypt's Nag Hammadi library, a collection of rare early Christian and Gnostic texts, including the Gospel of Thomas and the Apocryphon of John. A major impeach in scholarly research is the qualification of Gnosticism as either an interreligious phenomenon or as an self-employed person religion, with some modern scholars such(a) as Michael Allen Williams and David G. Robertson contesting if "Gnosticism" is still a valid or useful historical species at all. Scholars have acknowledged the influence of domination such as Hellenistic Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Platonism, and some have subject possible links to Buddhism and Hinduism, though the evidence of direct influence from the latter direction is inconclusive.