Gnosticism
Prior
to the first half of the twentieth century such early heresiologists (defenders
of Christianity against heresy) as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and
Epiphanius were our principal sources of information concerning the Gnostics.
These heresiologists were scathing in their denunciations of the Gnostics, who
were perceived as leading Christians astray by the manipulation of words and
the twisting of scriptural meanings. Of particular interest to Gnostic
interpreters were the stories of Genesis, the Gospel of John, and the epistles
of Paul. They used the biblical texts for their own purposes. Indeed, Gnostics
such as Heracleon and Ptolemaeus were the first commentators on the Fourth
Gospel. But Irenaeus likens such interpretations to someone who takes apart a
beautiful picture of a king and reassembles it into a picture of a fox
The heresiologists regarded Gnosticism as the product of the combination of Greek philosophy and Christianity. For instance, after detailing the Gnostic heretics, Tertullian announces: "What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and Christians? Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition" (On Prescription Against Heretics 7). The heresiologists' view concerning Gnosticism was generally regarded as acceptable even at the end of the nineteenth century, when Adolf Harnack defined Gnosticism as the "Acute secularizing of Christianity."
The
breadth of Gnostic orientations, however, has been confirmed by the discovery
of a Gnostic library at Nag Hammadi in Egypt. In the thirteen ancient codices
are included fifty-two tractates which are of various types and orientations. A
large number clearly present a Christian Gnostic perspective, the most familiar
being the three so-called Valentinian gospels: the Gospel of Thomas (composed
of a series of brief sayings of Jesus), the Gospel of Philip (a collection of
sayings, metaphors, and esoteric arguments), and the Gospel of Truth (a
discourse on deity and unity reminiscent of the language of the Fourth Gospel
but definitely bent in the direction of Gnostic mythology and possibly related
to the Gospel of Truth by Valentinus noted in Irenaeus). Also among the
Christian Gnostic tractates are the Apocryphon of James, the Acts of Peter and
the Twelve Apostles, the Treatise on the Resurrection, the long collection
known as the Tripartite Tractate.