Never done this before, but I figured there may be some people interested in this kind of thing. This is the final paper I wrote for my Heresy course. I'm pretty damn confident that if there is any general information on Gnosticism you'd like to know, it can be found in this paper. I could be wrong, but I did a crap ton of research for this thing, and pretty much covered the entire semester's worth of information in twelve pages. Enjoy. http://writer.zoho.com/public/misterparadigm/gnosticism-and-proto-orthodoxy/script
Great stuff! I was heavily into Gnosticism for a while and even wrote a paper on it during my journalism studies. I still admire the Gnostics, although my view of them isn't blurred by romanticism anymore. Thumbs up!
It's an incredibly interesting topic to study, mostly because it's amazing what they took from both canonical and non-canonical gospels and books of Judaism and Christianity. Just as interesting is the presence of gnostics in general: where they operated, how they operated, etc. Some of their beliefs are pretty far out there, but still interesting. The Sethian stuff is REAL strange, not in and of itself, but mostly because of how imaginative they were when it came to pulling stuff from Scripture and developing it into some highly removed interpretation.
Pretty solid. I’ve always been interested in the history of early Christianity, and in college I wrote a paper or two on this very subject. I also recall referencing Elaine Pagels as you did. She’s one of the behemoths in the field. The idea of the Pleroma and creation by emanation was not exclusive to this Sethian group. It had many variations, and stood in contrast to the orthodox Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo.
Yeah, groups like the latter Marcionites and Valentinians developed them further, as well as other lesser known groups and sects. What's funny is reading the polemics by Ignatius and Tertullian. It reads like a poorly developed political slandering campaign.
