ABSTRACT
It is this polemical sense of “false gnosis” that Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons took up in the title of his major anti-heretical work: Refutation and Overthrow of Falsely So-Called Gnosis, or Against Heresies, written c. ce 180.5 Irenaeus used 1 Timothy’s phrase not only to designate his opponents’ gnosis as false, but, even more important, to construct a broad category of classi¬cation, a “Tree of Gnosis,” which could be traced back to the “arch-heretic” Simon Magus.6 In this sense, “Gnosis” refers to a wide variety of “false” thinkers and groups with a common parentage: the Simonians, as well as “a multitude of Gnostics,” called “Barbelo-Gnostics, Ophites, and Cainites,” Irenaeus regards as “the source and root,” “the mothers, fathers, and ancestors” of his chief opponents, the Valentinians.7 With this adaptation of “falsely so-called gnosis” into the “Tree of Gnosis,” Irenaeus established the groundwork for both the pejorative and collective uses of “Gnosis” and its modern derivative, “Gnosticism.”
