ABSTRACT
The history of research into the Gnostics or Gnosticism properly begins with early Church Fathers, who, after the first cataloguing of heresies was under way (G. Smith 2015: 5–109), unwittingly founded the sociology of religion by classifying types of new religious groups, mainly according to distinctive beliefs, but sometimes also by practice (Trompf 1987: 96–8). The Gnostics were among those said by keen-eyed, polemical Patristic writers to hold “other views” (haireseis), dissentient from received traditions followed by most early churches. They were alleged to over-value special spiritual knowledge (gnōsis) above faith (pistis), and characteristically subscribed to a system of aeonic powers (aiōnes) that issued and descended from a Hidden God in a “fullness of emanations” (plērōma), with the last major aiōn, often named the Demiurge (artificer) and/or Sophia (Wisdom), giving rise to the material order, typically as a cosmic flaw (e.g., Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 1.1–8, 23–7; 29–30; Hippolytus[?], Refutatio omnium haeresium 5.1; 3; 6–8; 18; 23–6). The Christ figure, originating in the unspeakably perfect Being, descends and is sent through the aeons to overcome the mistake, with the offspring of the low, presumptuous aeon Sophia usually being responsible for the (inferior and tyrannical) creator God of the Old Testament. In Patristic characterization, the Gnostics are those who can escape from the entrapment of the material world, presenting themselves as a spiritual elite who, knowing the names of the aeons and taught by Christ, can safely ascend or return to the true source of their existence. The “sparks” left over from the huge cosmic unfolding inheres in their souls and is releasable from the unwanted body. Apart from Patristic rebuttals, the diatribe by Plotinus (260s) against comparable views from a Neoplatonic philosophical viewpoint (Ennead 2.9.5–17) was read by Porphyry as “Countering the Gnostikoi” (Vita Plotini 5, 16).
