| spdk1 said: You seem to have a christian view rather than a historical view on Gnostics.... Most Christian Gnostics (the ones directly at odds with the Orthodox church of the time) did not believe in what you speak, in fact gnosticism was a large movement of many unrelated groups. Some were more philosophers, as Plato's teachings were found in the Nag Hamandi texts, Some Worshipped John the Baptist, others worshipped Seth from the bible, some saw the creator God as pure evil and worshipped anything that stood against him such as Cain. Most Gnostics actually believed that Christ was still the son of God, but not the son of the Demiurge (their name for the creator God), and others believe that Christ and Jesus were two seperate entities merged only temporarily. The Gospel of Judas, a recently discovered Gnostic text, lays out exactly how Jesus plays into the Sethian grand scheme of things, and it is not the "we hate Christ" mentality you are speaking of. Of course some of the apostles hated the Gnostics, they had a book of Mary Magdalene that basically said "men and women are equal" as well as a book that showed Jesus not to be completely free of flaws. They also did this with the Apocryphal texts by making Simon Magus look like a crazed madman even though what happens in the text is obviously false. On Heresy hunters: actually Christian persecution of Gnostics by heresy hunters is fairly well documented by scholars. Someone had to have made many of them dissapear from history didn't they? By the fourth century Christianity was the ONLY religion allowed in the Roman Empire, so a mass wave of "false doctrine" burnings, temple burnings, and a "witch hunt" for heretics began. This can be seen the most eloquently by The utter destruction of a few Gnostic sects caused by one of the movers and shakers of the old Orthodox church, Iraneus. Iraneus did not hold a sword by himself, as I can recall, but his writings incited mobs of "heresy hunters" much in the same way that Eupopean witch hunts began after writings were published. This is ironic, as Iraneus was one of the folks that had to flee Rome when Christian persecution was going on. Iraneus's book "against heresies" http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103.htm The first recirded man killed by heresy hunters was Pricillian, who was thought to be a magician, this continued well into the 1800's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priscillian I'm not sure how you can claim that there was no persecution as many of these groups went as far as to hide in mountains, bury their holy books etc.. Obviously something went down... Also the same thing about "not loving" and "hating the material word" can be pretty well observed by many Christians - Monks for instance don't want any sort of pleasure in their lives, some monks even mutilate themselves to repent for their sins. how is that mentality any better? |
You are showing the said first one from the fourth century. What I wrote about is second century, before Constantine decided to become a benefactor of the Christian faith.
The tendency of the gnostic camp was to elevate personal revelation and knowledge above what happens in the world. Such individuals will come up with new revelations and insights and work out all sorts of theological variants that deviated from the traditions that were handed down. That was a source of flak.
In regards to the rest, it isn't a case of "hating Jesus". It is a case of denying the flesh and the physical world. There is issues with Jesus as God coming in the flesh, that is found offensive. One can't say this is a universal given, but it is a norm among gnostics. One can actually believe they love Jesus, as an entity, but then totally undermine what really mattered. But there were also individuals who were mostly in the Christian camp who had gnostic influences.
Anyhow, here is Wikipedia on the gnostics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnostics
