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Many elements of gnosticism are pre-Christian, and it is generally accepted that orthodox Christianity and its canonical texts do not predate the Gnostic movement, but grew up alongside it, out of some of the same sources. Many of today's scholars are convinced that the Gospel of Thomas was used by 1st Century gnostics as well as orthodox writers.
The name of gnosticism comes from the Greek word for knowledge, gnosis (γνῶσις), referring to the idea that there is special, hidden knowledge ( esoteric knowledge) that only a few possess. The occult nature of Gnostic teaching and the fact that much of the evidence for that teaching comes from attacks by orthodox Christians makes it difficult to be precise about the differences between different Gnostic systems.
The word Gnosticism is also used to describe many modern sects. However, their doctrines have sometimes little to do with ancient Gnosticism.
There is really no uniervsal symbol for the variant Gnostic movements, whether ancient or modern.
One of the main gnostic sects of ancient time was the Valentinians. They are usually depicted as holding matter to be essentially evil, and the human body especially. Indeed they are often described as being little more than a Christian heresy with extreme, negative views on matter.
However, modern efforts to assess this view have found it to be too simplistic. Firstly, the notion that early, orthodox Christianity came into being fully possessed of a rigid doctrinal body and a similarly strict corpus of canonical texts is unlikely. Primitive Chrisitianity was a most fluid entity, and encapsulated many contradictory movements and beliefs; what we would now call orthodox was just one of many. Thus the notion of a central orthodoxy from which 'Gnosticism' - or any other 'heresy' - deviated, is an improper approach. (One might note that the original meaning of 'heresy' - denoting 'those who have made a choice' - possessed no derogatory or negative connotations common in the modern sense: it was purely adjectival). Furthermore, in the particular case of the Gnostics, the common view is all too dependent on representations of the movement observed from the point of view of its detractors.
Some Gnostics, in common with such Neoplatonic philosophers as Plotinus, held matter to be evil only as a method of depicting its extreme distance from the monadic source of the universe (which is, of course, supremely good). Thus matter is not evil in and of itself, but only in its distance from and its contrast to its monadic source. It would be more accurate to characterise the Gnostic relationship with matter as one taut with ambivalence; their views an attempt to explain and clarify the divine's relationship with the imperfect universe, and to create a contextual basis for the individual Gnostic's feeling of alienation within that universe.
Gnosticism generally taught that the Earth was ruled over by a lesser "god" called Yaldabaoth, also known as the Demiurge, after Plato. The Demiurge was the head of the ArchonArchon (Gr. alpha;ρχων, pl. alpha;ρχοντες) is a Greek word that means "ruler" or the like, though it is frequently encountered as the title of some specific public office. In form the word is simply ts, "petty rulers" and craftsmen of the physical world. But human bodies, although their matter is evil, contained within them a divine spark or pneuma that fell from the Source, or Nothingness from which all things came. Knowledge ( gnosis) enables the divine spark to return to the Source from whence it came.
Many Gnostics (especially the followers of ValentiniusValentinius or Valentinus (c. 153) was the name of a Christian Gnostic thinker, ca 140 A. He is believed by some to have been the father of Gnosticism. He was born in Phrebonis in Egypt. He was a follower of Theudas who was in turn a follower of St. Paul) taught that there was the One, the original, unknowable God (the Monad as it is called by MonoimusMonoimus (lived somewhere between 150 210) was an arabic gnostic (arabic name: Mun'im), who was known to us only from one account in Theodoret Haereticarum Fabularum Compendium i. 18) until a lost work of anti-heretical writings Refutations of All Heresie, or the first AeonThe Latin word on means forever''. It is derived from the Greek word. Temporal AEon This means the same thing as the word eon: an eternal frame of time, eternity. Quantitatively, eon refers to a period of time of 1,000,000,000 years. Though, geologists re); and then from the One emanatedEmanationism is a component in the cosmology of certain religious or philosophical belief systems that claim that the supreme god did not create the physical universe, but instead emanated lower spiritual beings who consequently carried out the actual wor other AeonThe Latin word on means forever''. It is derived from the Greek word. Temporal AEon This means the same thing as the word eon: an eternal frame of time, eternity. Quantitatively, eon refers to a period of time of 1,000,000,000 years. Though, geologists res, pairs of lesser beings in sequence. (Valentinius listed 30 such pairs.) The Aeons together made up the Pleroma, or fullness, of God. The lowest of these pairs were Sophia ("Wisdom" in Greek) and Christ.
In the Valentinian Gnostic creation myth, Sophia sought the unknowable One. In one account, she saw a distant light which was in fact a mirror image, and thus drifted even farther away from the pleroma.
Sophia's fears and anguish of losing her life, just as she lost the light of the One, caused confusion and longing to return to it. Because of these longings the matter (Greek: hyle, ὕλη) and the soul (Greek: psyke, ψυχή) accidentally came into existence through the four classical elements fire, water, earth and air. The creation of the lion-faced Demiurge is also a mistake during this exile, according to some Gnostic sources, as a result of Sophia trying to emanate on her own, without her male counterpart. The Demiurge proceeds to create the physical world in which we live, ignorant of Sophia, who nevertheless manages to infuse some spiritual spark into the creation of the Demiurge. This spark is the pneuma.
After this the savior (Christos) returns and lets her see the light again, bringing her knowledge of the spirit (Greek: pneuma, πνεῦμα). Christ was then sent to earth in the form of the man Jesus to give men the gnosis needed to rescue themselves from the physical world and return to spiritual world.
The three sensations experienced by Sophia creates three types of humans: hylics (bond to the matter, the principle of evil), psychics (bond to the soul and partly saved from evil) and the pneumatics, who can return to the pleroma if they achieve gnosis and can behold the world of light. The gnostics regarded themselves as members of this group.
Gnostics identified the Demiurge with the God of the Old Testament, thus they rejected the Old Testament and Judaism and often celebrated those who were rejected by the Old Testament God. Some Gnostics were believed to identify the Demiurge with Satan, a belief which contributed to the suspicion with which many Christians regarded them.
Other Gnostics regarded the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a heroic figure because it wanted to help humanity free itself of the chains of Yaldabaoth: After the Demiurge comes to rule over the physical world, Sophia sends a message by way of the Serpent. She gives gnosis to the humans this way, which causes the wrath of the Demiurge, who believes himself to be the sole creator of the universe and the exclusive ruler of this world. The "original sin" thus is in a gnostic context the "original enlightenment", and not an act of sin at all. Humans also learn that Seth, the third son of Adam, was introduced to the gnostic teachings by both his father and his mother, and that this knowledge has been preserved throughout creation.
It should be noted that the Gnostics perceived the Old Testament as myth, and thus subject to interpretation.