/lit/ - Literature

>>21892903
The esoteric system the Gnostics developed lived on after them and went on to shape all sorts of Western esoterica, particularly Kabbalah (there were Jewish Gnostics too).

Principles of Hermeticism and Neoplatonism are readily apparent in the texts, as well as some precursor symbolism for alchemy.

>>21854787
Most broadly, Gnosticism was a type of Christianity and Judaism that was heavily influenced by Greek philosophy and mystery traditions that focused on enlightenment and spiritual knowledge/transformation over salvation from sin and bodily resurrection. Most early Gnostics were part of an Orthodox church. Gnosticism was an extra study group for people to read the biblical texts, early theology, and philosophy to try to uncover the true nature of reality and nature of God and the spirit. Essentially, it focused on enlightenment over salvation and was more focused on private practice than hierarchy and group worship.

So, there is a good argument that John is a Gnostic text. Parts of Paul's letters also fit the bill, and Gnostics did use these to justify their beliefs. Romans 7 for instance talks about Paul dying in sin as desire and instinct rules his body. This isn't a biological death. When he is resurrected by Christ, he isn't talking about biological life but a life of personhood where he is now free to choose what his spirit desires, God, instead of what his body desires, sin. This is the freeing power of the Logos from the "legion within."

I Corinthians in particular has language that can be taken in a Gnostic light.

More specifically, Gnostics tended to see this world as a shadow of higher, holy forms.

In terms of esoterica, Gnostics had a system for fathoming God based on abstractions that built on one another. This featured many emanations of God, Aeons, through which the ineffable Monad/Entirety could be known. Even as Gnosticism was suppressed, the system of the Ogdoad, not wedded to any one Gnostic branch, lived on as an esoteric teaching and would come to influence/be transformed into Kabbalah.

Of course, today, because Gnostics were suppressed as heretics, and because we mostly knew about them from heretic hunters until recently archeological finds, there is a huge focus on a specific type of Gnostic, the Sethians.

These said the God of Genesis was not God but the demiurge, a creature of imperfection who trapped the light of spirits in the material world. This demonic material God, Yaldaboath, gang raped Eve with his Archons, resulting in the birth of Cain and the hylics. Those with spirit were descendants of Seth, the third child of Adam and Eve.

This is hardly all Gnostics though. Some believed in reincarnation until universal salvation, something akin to Buddhism in ways.