/lit/ - Literature

>>20935419
52 posts in and no one has said the answer so I'll say it:

Gnosticism essentially arose from people being perplexed by the God of the Old Testament (indifferent, wrathful) being so incredibly different than the God of the New Testament (unconditional forgiveness and love) and so some lay-literary/lay-philosophers came up with a lot of meta-textual explanations for why the "God of the material world" (i.e. Old Testament God) gave way to the "God of the spiritual world" (i.e. New Testament God).

Long story short, during the time of Gnosticism's rise, religion and law were one and the same and Gnosticism was seen as a sort of loop-hole for people to try and justify not following various laws (e.g. taxes and other sex cult stuff) under the premise they "connected hidden truths that weren't in the bible" and thus knew more about God than the executives in power.

They failed.