Talk:Christian Gnosticism

Off to a Great Start

Well I think that is a decent list Fathers of Christian Gnosticism. Any I've forgotten? We should work on fleshing them out and de-listifying the text. Any chance on re-phrasing the title to include the women? Bmorton3 20:21, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for fleshing it out so wonderfully. I was hoping someone would see my sparse beginnings and build it up. Excellent! SquirleyWurley 04:42, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

OK De-listed, and fleshed. Anything else to work on? Bmorton3 15:52, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Excellent! I just fixed a link and did some punctuation work in a few minor places. Bmorton, you rock! SquirleyWurley 05:57, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Kudos to those working on this article! What terrific progress! -- Writtenonsand 20:40, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Bmorton has to take the credit. All I did was put up a few measely paragraphs to get it started. Bmorton took the ball and RAN with it. SquirleyWurley 06:36, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Origen

Brian, did you write that Origin is controversially possibly a gnostic? What is the source for this statement and how could it be if we have the direct opposite statement here by someone who wrote a disseration on Origen:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/o/origen.htm

"In this environment, Gnosticism flourished, and Origen was the first truly philosophical thinker to turn his hand not only to a refutation of Gnosticism, but to offer an alternative Christian system that was more rigorous and philosophically respectable than the mythological speculations of the various Gnostic sects."

I don't remember which of the things I was looking at waffled on this one, but your source is certainly more persuasive that whatever I had. Bmorton3 16:08, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Based on this source, what you could add is that gnostic 'fathers' such as Valentinus had an 'influence' on Origen because their systematic approach prompted him to create a Christian philosophy that was more methodological than previously found in Christian thought. This trend would go on to prompt the development of a more 'orthodox' christian theology in the face of gnostic heresies, etc. Or something to that effect. Zeusnoos 16:42, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah that would be relevant on the Origen page, but probably not here. Bmorton3 17:59, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

What is Gnosticism??

I came looking for Gnosticism, but Christian Gnosticism redirects here, where the "fathers" are described but the theology is not explained in layman's terms. Thanks, people "contributing" to Wikipedia, for making Wikipedia utterly useless. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stimpy77 (talk • contribs) 12:15, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Just search for "Gnosticism"--that's the religion which was formerly connected to Christianity (and still arguably connected depending on what you believe). Qwyrxian (talk) 21:36, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Gratitude noted. ;-) In fact, many articles of wikipedia suffers from a diversity of diseases whereof confusion is one extra common one. The other being that an optimistic editor believes his/her personal view and concocts of facts constitute valid content ... which it doesn't. But I think that the current article actually constitutes a valid topic: Irenaeus mentions lots of gnostic teachers as being taught by each others. However, I believe the connection between gnosticism and christianity generally is overstated and the connection between gnosticism and judaism understated.

Christian Gnosticism is gnosticism incorporating Jesus and/or Christ. They generally put no weight in or outright rejected the bodily sacrifice of Jesus, but instead conveyed that Jesus provided those secret teachings to those called gnostics. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 08:53, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Multiple issues??

Now the text is marked with various issue tags:

tag	explanation	my response
merge with gnosticism	none	Why?!
needs additional sources	none	Yes, i can agree with that
weasel wording	none	could you please explain why?
personal essay	none	an explanation on this talk page would have been desirable, but I can partially agree with that because sometimes it makes undue WP:SYNTHesis

It is easy to tag a text, but it is also customary to make explanations on the talk page. Please! Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 09:11, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Merge with Gnosticism

Because many Christians (followers of Rome), deny relationship between Gnosticism and Christianity, the article "Christian Gnosticism " has the task Tell A is the of the relationship between Gnosticism and Christianity I think tag about merge must be deleted.Volodyka (talk) 16:37, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Vagueness needing citations

In the “Later Gnostics” section of this article, there is this:

"By the early 4th century, gnostics were kicked out the church and officially forbidden to meet, by the mid 4th century their books were widely banned and by the late 4th century Gnosticism carried a death penalty in the Roman empire."

I came to this page looking for the occasion (or occasions) when the Gnostic writings might have been banned by the Catholic Church. The phrases early, mid and late 4th Century are so vague as to be entirely unhelpful. "Officially forbidden" by what decree or fiat? Where and when were these writings officially banned by the Church? Which Emperor or Church Patriarch issued the fiat that condemned to death anyone associated with Gnosticism?

Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 185) condemmed certain of what he considered heretical books and these included the Gnostic writings of Valentinus, and what he considered canonical texts were adopted by various other Church fathers. But the banning of the Gnostic Gospels, as they have come to be known via the Nag Hammadi Library, doesn't seem to have occurred at Nicaea as the text quoted above implies. Indeed, "a number of erroneous views have been stated regarding the council's role in establishing the biblical canon. In fact, there is no record of any discussion of the biblical canon at the council at all." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea#The_biblical_canon

Helpful articles at Wikipedia on the issue of the establishment of the New Testament canonical texts are... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_Christian_biblical_canon#Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon

The problem is that neither page mentions the Gnostic Gospels as specifically being banned. So the question, it seems to me, remains open.

Also, a quibble: the phrase "kicked out of the church" is far too colloquial to be included in an encyclopedia entry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Luciusmichael (talk • contribs) 16:08, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

A confunsing concept

The item Pre-Christian is somewhat confusing with if gnosticism developed before or is contemporaneous with Christianity, this title need some distinction, maybe Gnosticism and the Old Testament?! Got confused when translating the article. Dianakc (talk) 23:55, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, not an expert on editing wiki but: "Their views and ideas on Jesus were the result of not having the canonical Bible in the early years of Christianity, giving them plenty of other supposed holy texts that they could read for guidance." Nobody had "The Bible" since it hadn't been compiled, not even the mainstream christians. Old testament was not read amongst any christians and it's inclusion in the canon was the result of judaisation. I just read some ignorant article about "separation of christianity and judaism". Those two were separate from the beginning. Their incompatibility comes clear in the mountain sermon and Pauls letters. They were as alien to each other as they were alien to polytheistic religions of that time. Moreover, even Buddhism has more similarities with the teachings of Jesus than judaism. Sure, in the early centuries romans didn't make much difference between them but that doesn't mean that they didn't make any difference between themselves. Any friendship these two might have had was purely political when both were persecuted. And because of the ultra-nationalistic nature of judaism, the first differences made by romans were between judaic jews and those who had converted to christianity. At first they didn't even care about former greecs or romans who had converted to christianity. Maybe because they were so few in numbers but maybe because early "christianity" was a philosophy and not religion at all. But going back to "holy" texts. There was many different letters in circulation and only some of them belonged to "gnostics". There was plenty of other "heresies" around that were not accepted by the two mainstreams. So saying that gnostics didn't have a Bible is as sensible statement as that they didn't have aeroplanes or submarines. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.150.65.10 (talk) 15:56, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

I agree with unsigned. The sentence "Their views and ideas on Jesus were the result of not having the canonical Bible in the early years of Christianity, giving them plenty of other supposed holy texts that they could read for guidance" contains subtle bias. The gnostics views on Jesus were the result of reading the available texts and forming a different view on which texts were credible. No doubt having a decision on which texts were canonical and the unavailability of non canonical texts because of their destruction would have altered the outcome. I would like to see the sentence reworded in more neutral language or deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tonyf1 (talk • contribs) 08:32, 1 June 2015 (UTC) PS the sentence was added by Jefferycoulter on 16 April 2015 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tonyf1 (talk • contribs) 08:57, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

I have edited the sentence in question to more neutral language Tonyf1 (talk) 04:00, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Was Gnosticism the Original Christianity?

Was Gnosticism the original Christianity? Or did it actually have nothing to do with Jesus' original teachings? Were Gnostic writings dated earlier than others, such as the Pauline Christianity, or did they come later?

Or was Gnosticism simply something that had been dated at the same time and co-existed with other denominations, though had just been early Christians who went in another direction and were more pagan-influenced, and thus, truly heretical when we consider the Abrahamic religions' stance on paganism?

Is the Bible as we know it today simply the final product of countless revisions over time, and did Jesus likely teach something entirely different?

I try to search for information though I never know how much of it is conclusive and non-biased. Though, of course, I understand the difficulty in proving something like this, when it's even disputable whether or not Jesus himself had ever really existed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.70.202.28 (talk) 03:24, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

What is "Christian Gnosticism"?

"Jesus is claimed as a gnostic leader by Christian gnostics (hence "Christian gnosticism")" - no source, and a pervasive smell of WP:OR. I tried to find sources for this term; there hardly are. Kathleen mcVey refers to Walter Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, stating that "some scholars believe that gnosticism represents a form of Christianity, the antiquity and legitimacy of which equals that of Christian orthodoxy." It seems that me that "Christan gnosticism" is a non-term, used by Chrisrian theologists in a polemical way. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 13:22, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

I've merged some of the contents of this article into Gnosticism; the distinction of a "Christian Gnsoticism" is too thin. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:00, 6 March 2017 (UTC)