The sources of Gnosticism are to be found in diverse forms of religious and speculative culture antecedent to Christianity, especially in the theology of the Alexandrian Jews, as represented in the writings of Philo, and again in the influences flowing from the old Persian or Zarathustrian religion and the Buddhistic faiths of the East. To the theosophic system of Philo, with its mixture of Platonic and Old Testament ideas, some of the most characteristic conceptions of Gnosticism are certainly to be traced, such as the infinite separation between God and the world, and the necessity of a mediating power or powers in the creation of the world. This class of ideas prevailed largely at the time of the introduction of Christianity, especially in Alexandria, which was the great meeting-point of Jewish and Hellenic culture. The more the state of the pre-Christian Jewish mind and Jewish literature is investigated, the more do we recognize everywhere a strange commingling of old with new thoughts, of tradition with philosophy, of religion with speculation. The age was in all its aspects eclectic, and the Jewish no less than the Gentile schools of the time were centres for the fusion of old streams of culture from many quarters, and the rise of broader intellectual tendencies. Ever since t 1 ιe captivity, Judaism had borne more or less the impress of the old state religion which it encountered in its exile. How far post-Exilian Judaism was moulded by Zarathustrian conceptions is a very difficult question; but no historical student can doubt that its cosmogony, its angelology, and even its anthropology, were largely modified by contact with Persia. But not only was Zarathustrianism active in and through Judaism. In itself, it spread westward, and became directly and indirectly both a precursor and a parent of Gnostic speculation. Certain forms of Gnosticism seem little else than adaptations of the Persian dualism to the solution of the great problem of good and evil. In other forms of it, again, the Pantheism of India seems to have been a pervading influence. This, too, has its representative in the Jewish schools of the time, in the secret doctrines of the Kabbala, which many carry considerably beyond the time of Christ, although the two books through which we alone know these doctrines— the Book of Creation and the book called Zohar or Light —are plainly of much later production. These doctrines sprang up in Palestine, and not among the Hellenistic Jews. The philosophy on which they rest is plainly pantheistic. Whereas the principle lying at the foundation of the theosophy of Philo makes almost an absolute distinction between the Supreme indefinable Source of all things and the world, the philosophic postulate of the Kabbala is the identity of God and the world—the one being the Eternal Substance of which the other is the manifestation and form. “In place of the personal God, distinct from the world, acknowledged in the Old Testament, the Kabbala substitutes the idea of an universal and infinite substance, always active, always thinking, and in the process of thought, developing the universe. In the place of a material world distinct from God and created from nothing, the Kabbalist substitutes the idea of two worlds—the one intelligible, the other sensible,—both being, not substances distinct from God, but forms under which the Divine Sub stance manifests itself” (Mansei’s Gnostic Heresies, p. 35).

Gnosticism is found reproducing one and all of these conceptions, with the additional idea of redemption directly borrowed from Christianity. In all its forms, it may be said to represent the efforts made by the speculative spirit of the time to appropriate Christianity, and to make use of some of its most fertile principles for the solution of the mysteries lying at the root of human speculation. The more advanced writers of the present day refuse to recognize Gnosticism as a heresy, or to speak of the Gnostics as deserters from the Christian Church. And they are right so far. The Gnostic schools were always so far outside the church. They were not heretical, therefore, in the ordinary sense. But it is no less true that Gnosticism, in all its developments, is only intelligible in connexion with Christianity. It was the impulse of Christian ideas which alone originated it, which constituted the vital force of thought that made it one of the most significant phenomena of early Christian history; and it is only its connexion with Christianity which can be said to make it any longer interesting.

The question as to the date of its origin has been much investigated of late by such writers as the late Dean Mansel among ourselves, and Lipsius, Harnack, and Hilgenfeld in Germany. Do we find traces of it in the New Testament writings'? or are the supposed allusions to it there to be otherwise explained? It is well known that this question has an important bearing upon other questions as to the origin of some of the New Testament writings, and the special object for which these writings were composed. Without entering into details, or attempting to examine the several passages which may be supposed to contain allusions to Gnosticism in the New Testament, it may be said that such allusions, more or less definite, seem to occur in the later epistles of St Paul, especially the epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, and in the Pastoral epistles. A supposed allusion has also been traced in the first epistle to the Corinthians, where the word γvωσις, for the first time in the New Testament writings, is found in a depreciatory sense, in the phrase η γvωσtς φvσιοι, η δε αγάπη οlκοδοpeι (1 Cor. viii. 1). In so very general a use of the expression, however, even in its connexion with the question of eating meats which had been offered to idols, it must be held very doubtful whether anything more than a general meaning is intended. And the same remark applies to many even of the more defined modes of expression, such as Pleroma and Aeon, which occur in the later epistles. The true explanation of all these phrases, as well as much else in St Paul’s writings, is probably the fact that the spirit of Gnosticism, and the language which it afterwards developed and applied, were “in the air” of the apostolic age. Its modes of thought, as already seen, were prevalent in Philo and in other quarters, and the tendencies which were afterwards worked up into systems were no doubt in existence in the time of St Paul, and still more in the later apostolic time. It seems plainly against such tendencies, rather than against any special sects or schools, that the cautions of St Paul are directed. In the Apocalypse, and in the epistles and gospel attributed to St John, these tendencies are seen in a more developed although hardly in a more distinct state. The second chapter (vv. 6-15) of the Apocalypse has been held to mention a sect of the Gnostics by name—the Nicolaitans—a sect supposed to derive its name from Nicolas, one of the seven deacons, who had departed from the faith and fallen into licentious doctrines and practices. Even in such a sect as this, however, we recognize rather the expression of those lax and restless tendencies which sought everywhere to corrupt the doctrines of the gospel, than any clear philosophical bias. Upon the whole, it may be concluded that what we see in the writings of the New Testament is exactly what w e might expect. The Gnostical spirit is present, but Gnosticism is as yet undeveloped. The apostolic age is an age of transition, in which the speculative and ethical spirit of the time is everywhere seen encountering the new life of Christianity, and new seeds of creative thought are everywhere springing from the encounter. There are teachers of all kinds, especially Jewish teachers, busy throughout the Roman world. But Gnosticism properly so-called, as a series of speculative systems, is not yet born. Its approach is heralded by many tendencies forecasting it; but it is only in the Syrian and Alexandrian schools of the beginning of the 2d century that we see it coming forth into distinct shape. Men like Simon Magus and his pupil Menander, the former the opponent of St Peter, and again men like Cerinthus, the opponent of St John, may be called Gnostics. In such traditions of their teaching as survive, we see the workings of the Gnostical spirit—the spirit which sought to transmute the facts of Christianity into some ideological theory. But none of these leaders elaborated systems, or at least we are no longer able to trace with precision of outline the doctrines which they taught. Properly speaking, therefore, they are the precursors of Gnosticism, rather than the founders of Gnostic schools. It is implied by Irenaeus (i. 25) that the followers of Carpocrates first called themselves Gnostics; and again by Hippolytus that this designation was first assumed by the Ophites (1. v.). But little can be gathered from writers like Irenaeus, or even Hippolytus, as to the true order of development of the Gnostic systems. With the former, for example, Saturninus and Basilides stand not only before Carpocrates, but before Cerinthus, the Ebionites, and the Nicolaitans (i. 24, 26). The last thing to seek in the early fathers is either accuracy of chronology, or a clear sequence of thought. They handle topics, for the most part, quite irrespective of either; and the student is forced back mainly, if not exclusively, on internal evidence as his only trustworthy guide in analysing and classifying the systems of thought which prevailed in the first two centuries.

According to such evidence, and the bias of individual writers, the Gnostic systems have been very differently classified. Mosheim has divided them with reference to their greater or less recognition of the Dualistic principle; Neander with reference to their relation to Judaism; F. Baur with reference to their relation both to Judaism and heathenism. Lipsius, one of the most recent and careful writers on the subject, arranges the Gnostical systems in a threefold order—1st, in so far as they arise within the Jewish schools, and aim to distinguish between Christianity and Judaism; 2d, in so far as they appear within the broader sphere of Hellenism; and 3d, in so far as they approach the circle of Christian faith, and become more or less united with the doctrines of the church.

The most intelligible principle of classification seems to be that already indicated, which recognizes first an inchoate period corresponding to the New Testament age, and represented by many diverse teachers, chiefly of Jewish origin, and then fixes attention upon the great schools of Syria and of Egypt, with the addition of that of Asia Minor, represented by Marcion. These schools are distinguished by their internal features, and their respective relations to Judaism on the one hand and dualism on the other; but they stand out more clearly from their geographical centres, perhaps, than from any other distinguishing features.

I. The inchoate phase of Gnosticism is represented by men like Simon and Cerinthus, both prominently associated with apostles and sects, such as the Ophites or Naasseni (from tJ ’ ∏2, serpent), the Peratae or Peratics,the Sethiani, and the followers of one Justinus, author of a book called the Book of Baruch i which was written probably not earlier than the beginning of the 2d century. All these sects are elaborately described by Hippolytus in the fifth book of his Refutation of Heresies. Simon Magus follows them in his order of treatment (1. v.). There can be little doubt, however, that Simon must be placed in the very front of the history of Gnosticism, in so far as he belongs to this history at all. This is the position that he occupies in the treatise of Irenaeus (Adv. Haereses, 1. i. c. 23); and his association with St Peter, as well as the account of him in the apostolic history in which he appears (Acts viii. 5, 9, 10) within seven years of the ascension of our Lord, plainly indicates that this is his true position. The character of his teaching, moreover, points to the same conclusion. It is a form of anti-Christianism, rather than any mere depravation of the Christian system. It is true that lie is represented in the passage of the Acts of the Apostles already referred to (viii. 13) as having professed himself a believer, and having been baptized; but his whole career afterwards, and the doctrines attributed to him, prove that, whatever may have been his feelings for the moment, he neither understood Christianity, nor came under its practical influence in any degree. Probably he regarded the apostles as only magicians of remarkable skill, and enrolled himself for a time in their company in order that he might learn their secrets and be able to exercise their powers. He was plainly an impostor of the first magnitude, who must be credited with a marvellous and unblushing audacity rather than with any clear philosophic or spiritual aims. He gave himself out as “the great power of God” (Acts viii. 10). “Ego sum sermo Dei,” he said of himself, according to St Jerome (on Matt, xxiv. 5), with much blasphemous nonsense besides. He carried about with him a “certain woman named Helena,” a prostitute whom he had purchased in the city of Tyre, and who he said “was the first conception (Έννοια) of his mind, the mother of all things, by whom in the beginning he conceived the thought of making the angels and archangels” (Iren., Adv. Haer., i. 23). He recognized Christ as Redeemer, but only as occupying an inferior position to himself. He was the true Logos or Power of God, which had previously in an imperfect degree appeared in Jesus. He himself is “the God who is over all things, and the world was made by his angels” (Zδz√., i. 23). It is clear that a teacher of this kind had little relation to Christianity, except in so far as it came across his own designing and ambitious path. He had knowledge and intellectual address to avail himself of the prevailing conceptions of the Alexandrian philosophy, so as to impart some coherency to his own insane dreams; but he was characteristically a magician (as his character has survived in history) rather than a philosopher or spiritual thinker. He claims the position assigned to him in the history of Gnosticism mainly in virtue of his pupil and successor Menander who laid the foundation at Antioch of the Syrian Gnostic school more conspicuously represented by Saturninus and others.

For an account of Cerinthus and his system we refer our readers to the article Cerinthus. The account of his relations with St John, as given by later Christian tradition, may be a mythical expression of the popular Christian feeling about an obnoxious teacher rather than a statement of actual facts; but there seems no doubt that Cerinthus represented, in the close of the 1st century, a type of doctrine especially opposed to that of the fourth gospel. He is supposed to have been of Jewish descent, to have been educated in Alexandria, and to have diffused his doctrine in Asia Minor. Opposed as he was to the Christianity of the church in attributing the creation of the world, not to the Supreme God, but to “a power separate and distinct from” Him, and in conceiving Jesus as a mere man to whom the Christ was united at baptism, and from whom the Christ departed before His death (Iren., i. 2; Hippolytus, vii. 33), he was yet far from being the mere anti-Christian impostor that Simon was. He makes no claim to miraculous or divine powers in himself, but holds a distinct, however erroneous, Christology. The idea of redemption is not only recognized by him, but recognized as verified in Christ and in Him alone. His chief conception of the Creator of the world being other than the Supreme God was probably borrowed by him from the Egyptian schools in which he seems to have taught.

The sects of the Naasseni, the Peratae, the Sethiani, and the followers of Justin, placed, as we have said, by Hippolytus before Simon, may probably all be ranked along with him and Cerinthus in the early and still undeveloped stage of Gnosticism. It is very difficult to attain to any certainty as to their chronological position. Bunsen traces the origin of the Ophites as far back as the Pauline age; but on very definite grounds it may be concluded that the sect, if existent then, could hardly have acquired any prominence or intellectual interest,—not even in the time of St John: and certain details of their teaching cannot well be earlier than the beginning of the 2d century. Hippolytus gives a distinct and lengthened account of these several sects. The Naasseni, he says, borrowed their opinions from the Greek philosophers and the teachers of the mysteries; the Peratae took them “not from the Scriptures, but from the Astrologers;” the Sethiani “patched up their system out of shreds of opinion taken from Musaeus, and Linus, and Orpheus and Justin was indebted for his to the “marvels of Herodotus !” He says, moreover, of the Naasseni that they “call themselves Gnostics.” We must leave here, as elsewhere, the more particular description of these sects to special articles. All of them, however, may, with Mansel (Gnostic Heresies, p. 96), be regarded as branches of a common sect to which the title of Ophites particularly answers. The serpent was more or less a common symbol with them all; and the idea of the serpent as in some manner a redeeming power for mankind—“a symbol of intellect by whose means our first parents were raised to the knowledge of the existence of higher beings than their creator ”—seems to have run through them all. The serpent no doubt tempted man, but he fell from allegiance to the Demiurge, or Creator of the present world, only to rise to the knowledge of a higher world. Thus to identify the serpent with the Redeeming Word or Divine Son came very near to converting the power of Evil into the ideal of Good. This was the logical conclusion which probably lay more or less in all their systems; but it only showed itself fully in a cognate sect called the Cainites, the description of which follows that of the Ophites and the Sethians in the first book of the treatise of Irenaeus (c. xxxi.). This sect carried to its extreme form the inversion of Biblical story, and raised the serpent into a creative and redeeming power. All the evil characters in the Old Testament, with Cain at their head, are set forth as the true spiritual heroes; and, in consistency with the same view, Judas Iscariot, in the New Testament, is represented as alone “knowing the truth,”and so accomplishing the betrayal of the Saviour, as some later theorists have also supposed, in order that His good work might be completed. They had a gospel of their own in the interest of such views, which they styled “the gospel of Judas.”

Another name in the history of Gnosticism, that of Carpocrates, may be classed in this earlier period, although he is said to have been still active as a teacher in the time of Hadrian (117-138). The followers of Carpocrates, as already mentioned, are represented by Irenaeus (i. 25) as first styling...

We have a key to many parts of their system, when we know that they held matter to be intrinsically evil, of which, consequently, God could not be the author. Hence arose their fundamental tenet, that the creator of the world, or Demiurgus, was not the same with the supreme God, the Author of good, and the Father of Christ. Their system allowed some of them to call the creator God; but the title most usually given to him was Demiurgus. Those who embraced the doctrine of two principles supposed the world to have been produced by the evil principle; and, in most systems, the creator, though not the father of Christ, was looked upon as the God of the Jews, and the author of the Mosaic law. Some, again, believed that angels were employed in creating the world; but all were agreed in maintaining that matter itself was not created, that it was eternal, and remained inactive, till _Dispositam, quisquis fuit ille Deorum, Congeriem secuit, sectamque in membra redegit._ OVID. [Some God, whoever he was, separated and arranged the mass, and reduced it, when separated, into elements.] The supreme God had dwelt from all eternity in a _pleroma_ of inaccessible light; and beside the name of first Father, or first Principle, they called him also Bythus, as if to denote the unfathomable nature of his perfections. This being, by an operation purely mental, or by acting upon himself, produced two other beings of different sexes, from whom, by a series of descents, more or less numerous according to different schemes, several pairs of beings were formed, who were called _æons_, from the periods of their existence before time was, or _emanations_, from the mode of their production. These successive _æons_ or emanations appear to have been inferior each to the preceding; and their existence was indispensable to the Gnostic scheme, that they might account for the creation of the world without making God the author of evil. These _æons_ lived through countless ages with their first father; but the system of emanations seems to have resembled that of concentric circles; and they gradually deteriorated, as they approached nearer and nearer to the extremity of the _pleroma_. Beyond this _pleroma_ was matter, inert and powerless, though coëternal with the supreme God, and like him without beginning. At length, one of the _æons_ passed the limits of the _pleroma_, and, meeting with matter, created the world, after the form and model of an ideal world which existed in the _pleroma_ or in the mind of the supreme God. Here it is that inconsistency is added to absurdity in the Gnostic scheme. For, let the intermediate _æons_ be as many as the wildest imagination could devise, still God was the remote, if not the proximate, cause of creation. Added to which, we are to suppose that the Demiurgus formed the world without the knowledge of God; and that, having formed it, he rebelled against him. Here, again, we find a strong resemblance to the oriental doctrine of two principles, good and evil, or light and darkness. The two principles were always at enmity with each other. God must have been conceived to be more powerful than matter, or an emanation from God could not have shaped and moulded it into form: yet God was not able to reduce matter into its primeval chaos, nor to destroy the evil which the Demiurgus had produced. What God could not prevent, he was always endeavouring to cure: and here it is that the Gnostics borrowed so largely from the Christian scheme. The names, indeed, of several of their _æons_ were evidently taken from terms which they found in the Gospel. Thus we meet with _Logos_, _Monogenes_, _Zoe_, _Ecclesia_, all of them successive emanations from the supreme God, and all dwelling in the _pleroma_. At length, we meet with Christ and the Holy Ghost, as two of the last _æons_ which were put forth. Christ was sent into the world to remedy the evil which the creative _æon_ or Demiurgus had caused. He was to emancipate men from the tyranny of matter, or of the evil principle; and, by revealing to them the true God, who was hitherto unknown, to fit them, by a perfection and sublimity of knowledge, to enter the divine _pleroma_. To give this knowledge, was the end and object of Christ’s coming upon earth; and hence the inventors and believers of the doctrine assumed to themselves the name of Gnostics. In all their notions concerning Christ, we still find them struggling with the same difficulty of reconciling the author of good with the existence of evil. Christ, as being an emanation from God, could have no real connection with matter: yet, the Christ of the Gnostics was held out to be the same with him who was revealed in the Gospel; and it was notorious that he was revealed as the Son of Mary, who appeared in a human form. The methods which they took to extricate themselves from the difficulty, were principally two: they either denied that Christ had a real body at all, and held that he was an unsubstantial phantom; or, granting that there was a man called Jesus, the son of human parents, they believed that one of the _æons_, called Christ, quitted the _pleroma_, and descended upon Jesus at his baptism.

We have seen that the God who was the father or progenitor of Christ, was not considered to be the creator of the world. Neither was he the God of the Old Testament, and the giver of the Mosaic law. This notion was supported by the same argument which infidels have often urged, that the God of the Jews is represented as a God of vengeance and of cruelty; but it was also a natural consequence of their fundamental principle, that the author of good cannot in any manner be the author of evil. In accordance with this notion, we find all the Gnostics agreed in rejecting the Jewish Scriptures, or, at least, in treating them with contempt. Since they held that the supreme God was revealed for the first time to mankind by Christ, he could not have been the God who inspired the prophets; and yet, with that strange inconsistency which we have already observed in them, they appealed to these very Scriptures in support of their own doctrines. They believed the prophets to have been inspired by the same creative _æon_, or the same principle of evil, which acted originally upon matter; and if their writings had come down to us, we should perhaps find them arguing, that, though the prophets were not inspired by the supreme God, they still could not help giving utterance to truth.

Their same abhorrence of matter, and their same notion concerning that purity of knowledge which Christ came upon earth to impart, led them to reject the Christian doctrines of a future resurrection and a general judgment. They seem to have understood the Apostles as preaching literally a resurrection of the body; and it is certain that the fathers insisted upon this very strongly as an article of belief. But to imagine that the body, a mass of created and corruptible matter, could ever enter into heaven, into that _pleroma_ which was the dwelling of the supreme God, was a notion which violated the fundamental principle of the Gnostics. According to their scheme, no resurrection was necessary, much less a final judgment. The Gnostic, the man who had attained to perfect knowledge, was gradually emancipated from the grossness of matter; and, by an imperceptible transition, which none but a Gnostic could comprehend, he was raised to be an inhabitant of the divine _pleroma_. If we would know the effect which the doctrines of the Gnostics had upon their moral conduct, we shall find that the same principle led to two very opposite results. Though the fathers may have exaggerated the errors of their opponents, it seems undeniable, that many Gnostics led profligate lives, and maintained upon principle that such conduct was not unlawful. Others, again, are represented as practising great austerities, and endeavouring, by every means, to mortify the body and its sensual appetites. Both parties were actuated by the same common notion, that matter is inherently evil. The one thought that the body, which is compounded of matter, ought to be kept in subjection; and hence they inculcated self-denial, and the practice of moral virtue: while others, who had persuaded themselves that knowledge was every thing, despised the distinctions of the moral law, which was given, as they said, not by the supreme God, but by an inferior _æon_, or a principle of evil, who had allied himself with matter.

With respect to the origin of this system the same author observes: There is no system of philosophy which has been traced to a greater number of sources than that which we are now discussing; and the variety of opinions seems to have arisen from persons either not observing the very different aspects which Gnosticism assumed, or from wishing to derive it from one exclusive quarter. Thus, some have deduced it from the eastern notion of a good and evil principle, some from the Jewish Cabbala, and others from the doctrines of the later Platonists. Each of these systems is able to support itself by alleging very strong resemblances; and those persons have taken the most natural and probably the truest course, who have concluded that all these opinions contributed to build up the monstrous system, which was known by the name of Gnosticism.