Wikipedia resorts to an understatement when it says that, "[t]he history of Gnosticism is subject to a great deal of debate and interpretation".

In fact it is more correct to say that there is no agreement at all among scholars.

Here are two comments, both by great scholars of Gnosticism.

The first is an indirect quotation from Hans Jonas, Jewish and very famous scholar, possibly the most famous scholar of Gnosticism: 

Jonas describes the typical Gnostic use of biblical material as follows: vilification, parody, caricature, conscious perversion of meaning, wholesale reversal of value-signs, savage degrading of the sacred, and gleefully shocking blasphemy.³⁹ This leads him not only to reject the likelihood of Jewish origins but to characterize the Gnostic view of Judaism as saturated with “anti-Jewish animus.”⁴⁰
-- John G. Gager, The origins of anti-semitism: attitudes toward Judaism in pagan and Christian antiquity, Oxford University Press US, 1985, page 168 (with quotations [³⁹, ⁴⁰] from  H. Jonas, "Response to G. Quispel's 'Gnosticism and the New Testament'", in the The Bible in Modern Scholarshil, ed. J.P. Hyatt (Nashville and New York, 1965) pp. 287, 288 [#])

The second is a direct quotation from Ugo Bianchi, Christian Catholic and one of the foremost scholars of Gnosticism, albeit well known only within the circle of specialists:

In effect it is difficult to imagine in a purely Jewish environment, although penetrated by Greek thought, one would have been able to arrive at that extreme which is the demonization of the God of Israel... Only the perspective of a messiah conceived as a divine manifestation, as a divine incarnate person, already present in the faith of the New Testament and of the Church, but interpreted by the Gnostics on the basis of ontological presuppositions of the Greek mysteriosophic doctrine of soma-sema ('body'-'tomb') and of the split in the divine, could allow the development of a new Gnostic theology where the God of the Bible, the creator, became the demiurge ...
-- U. Bianchi, 'Le gnosticisme et les origines du Christianisme', Louvain (n. 8), p. 228. (from Pre-Christian Gnosticism, the New Testament and Nag Hammadi in recent debate, Edwin M. Yamauchi, Themelios 10.1 (September 1984): 22-27. [Reproduced by permission of the author], @earlychurch.org.uk).

So, can we safely conclude that Gnosticism has nothing to do with Judaism, that it did not originate in Jewish environment, not even as a corruption of Judaism? That, in fact, Gnosticism was, right from the start, heavily anti-Judaic?

Well, things are never as simple and cleartcut ...

Any comments? Any contributions?

MdS

[#] Here is another quotation from Jonas' 'Response':

'A Gnosticism without a fallen god, without benighted creator and sinister creation, without alien soul, cosmic captivity and acosmic salvation, without the self-redeeming of the Deity - in short: A Gnosis without divine tragedy will not meet specifications.'
-- H. Jonas,'Response', J. P. Hyatt (ed.), The Bible in Modem Scholarship (Nashville, 1965), p. 293 (from Pre-Christian Gnosticism, the New Testament and Nag Hammadi in recent debate, Edwin M. Yamauchi, Themelios 10.1 (September 1984): 22-27. [Reproduced by permission of the author], @earlychurch.org.uk, footnote #121)

YDOO

Nov 22, 2009 -- 12:39PM, teilhard wrote:

"Gnosticism" seems to have been a Set of Ideas that was "in The Air" in The Eastern Mediterranean Region and was picked-up in various Degrees in both "Judaism" and The Church ...

"In The Air"? This is a rather vague and un-scholarly comment, no?

Which "air"? Mainland Greek? Anatolian? Syrian? Mesopotamian? Palestinian? Egyptian?

Where and how did the "anti-cosmic" fundamental world-view of Gnosticism originate?

Can it be a "mix" of Greek mysteriosophic religion and of heavily corrupted Jewish Apocalypticism?

Can it be a late influx of Iranian Zoroastrianism?

Or all you can say is that it was ... "in The Air"?

MdS

YDOO

Nov 22, 2009 -- 1:35PM, teilhard wrote:

Since I wasn't "there then," all I can do is speculate ...

But "Gnostic"-Flavour Ideas DO turn in up in MUCH Eastern Mediterranean Thought ...

So ...

Trying to trace "Gnosticism" all-the-way-back to some particular Fella or Sect in a Monastery near a certain Wadi in South Yemen ... ???

I am not trying to do anything as silly as that.

I am try to see if, after hundreds of scholar, especially after Nag Hammadi (1945) have tried their best, to no definitive conclusion (in fact, heavily conflicting conclusions), some "brilliant maverick" may come up with some good ideas (maybe even backed up by facts, that would be marvellous!) as to the cultural, religious, philosophical, historical origins of that polymorphous hydra, to which the Church Fathers attributed one name, Gnosticism.

MdS

YDOO

Nov 22, 2009 -- 2:03PM, teilhard wrote:

Brother SmoudleringAshHeap -- So, then ... Go For It ...

It was a long time you hadn't called me with that affectionate nickname (a cynical reference to the tragic end of my namesake) ...

... have I touched a raw nerve? 

But, in fact your obscure hints are always precious ...

... you provoked in me a sudden insight.

Maybe (maybe ...) the Ein Sof, with its 10 sefirot is more closely related to the heathen-philosophical-hermetic "trinity", with its three hypostases, that scholars have ever so far suspected ...

... maybe Gnosticism (or ur-Gnosticsm) is at the root of both? What do you think?

MdS

Blü

Nov 22, 2009 -- 7:28PM, Blü wrote:

Gnosticism looks very like a development from Zoroastrianism (whose earliest writings are dated somewhere between 1000 and 500 BCE).

Its presence amongst 1st century CE Jews is thoroughly Hellenized and seems to be laced with elements from the Mysteries too.

That Gnosticism may be "a late influx of Iranian Zoroastrianism" is a hint that I had already provided, and, for instance, Norman Cohn, in his Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith (1993, revised edition 2001) argues along that line.

But the point is that a full-fledged Gnostic system (with the One, the ogdoad, the pleroma of 32 "aeons", etc. etc.) is ONLY to be found in "christian Gnosticism", and in no Jewish only system antedating the Earliest Christian writings.

[Blü] Paul arguably exhibits elements of both gnosticism and the Mysteries.  He borrows the eucharist from the Greek mysteries and Justin Martyr (100-165 CE) mentions the bread and wine used in the Mysteries of Mithras.  The Last Supper is therefore likely to be the same sort of back formation as the gospels' fulfillment-of-prophecy tales.

Here, about Paul, as usual, you present as "fact" what are, at best, unverified hypotheses.

As for Justin Martyr, and the analogies between the Christian Eucharist and the Mysteries of Mithras, the earliest reference to them is around the time of Domitian (d. 96 AD), so it does not prove anything: in fact it is much more rational and historically reasonable to argue the other way round, viz, that the loan is by Mithraism from Christianity.

[Blü] I mention this to suggest that Hellenization brought in a whole mixture of religious thought, and that it was available to Jews in the 1st century BCE, whence it found its way into the various forms of Christianity.

Once again, can you provide a single example of full-fledged (or even half baked) purely Jewish Gnosticism?

Mario