Introdction : GNOSTICISM, GNOSTICS,
AND THE GNOSTIC BIBLE
The gnostics were religious mystics who proclaimed gnosis, knowl-
• edge, as the way of salvation. To know oneself truly allowed gnostic men and women to know god directly, without any need for
the mediation of rabbis, priests, bishops, imams, or other religious officials.
1. Throughout the present volume we have tried to avoid unnecessary capitalization of the
word god and the names of personified spiritual powers and aeons. We are aware that the word
god may be used as a name for the divine, but it frequently functions as a general term for the
divine, so that even when "god" appears to be a name, it retains its primary nature as a term
signifying the concept of divinity. For the same reason, other names of divine expressions, such
as divine forethought, afterthought, and wisdom, are likewise left uncapitalized. Conversely, for
the sake of clarity, when the Greek word "Sophia" is used for wisdom, that is capitalized, as are
other names that are transliterated directly from other languages. We also want to avoid the
common practice of singling out a particular deity, for example, the Judeo-Christian-Islamic
deity, for the exclusive honor of the capitalized name "God," while other deities are relegated to
the status of mere "gods" and "goddesses." We do not wish to limit the divine by restricting
deity through name or selectivity. Traditionally the name and face of the divine are essentially
unknowable, and so it is in this volume.
2 INTRODUCTION
Religious officials, who were not pleased with such freedom and independence, condemned the gnostics as heretical and a threat to the well-being and
good order of organized religion. Heresiologists—heresy hunters of a bygone
age who busied themselves exposing people judged dangerous to the Christian masses—fulminated against what they maintained was the falsehood of
the gnostics. Nonetheless, from the challenge of this perceived threat came
much of the theological reflection that has characterized the intellectual history of the Christian church.
The historical roots of the gnostics reach back into the time of the Greeks,
Romans, and Second Temple Jews. Some gnostics were Jewish, others GrecoRoman, and many were Christian. There were Mandaean gnostics from Iraq
and Iran; Manichaeans from Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and all
the way to China; Islamic gnostics in the Muslim world; and Cathars in western Europe. The heyday of their influence extends from the second century CE
through the next several centuries. Their influence and their presence, some
say, continue to the present day.
Gnostics sought knowledge and wisdom from many different sources,
and they accepted insight wherever it could be found. Like those who came
before them, they embraced a personified wisdom, Sophia, understood variously and taken as the manifestation of divine insight. To gain knowledge of
the deep things of god, gnostics read and studied diverse religious and philosophical texts. In addition to Jewish sacred literature, Christian documents,
and Greco-Roman religious and philosophical texts, gnostics studied religious works from the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Zoroastrians, Muslims, and
Buddhists. All such sacred texts disclosed truths, and all were to be celebrated
for their wisdom.
Gnostics loved to explore who they were and from where they had come,
and hence they read creation stories such as the opening chapters of Genesis
with vigor and enthusiasm. Like others, they recognized that creation stories
not only claim to describe what was, once upon a time, but also suggest what
is, now, in our own world. The gnostics carried to their reading a conviction
that the story of creation was not a happy one. There is, they reasoned,
something fundamentally wrong with the world, there is too much evil and
pain and death in the world, and so there must have been something wrong
with creation.
Consequently, gnostics provided innovative and oftentimes disturbing interpretations of the creation stories they read. They concluded that a distinction, often a dualistic distinction, must be made between the transcendent,
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