Knowra Gnosticism Gnosticism Gnosticism is a family of ancient religious movements that taught that saving knowledge of spiritual reality frees people from a flawed material world.
Demiurge : A creator or ruler of the material cosmos, often portrayed as ignorant or hostile in Gnostic traditions. The flawed world is often traced to this subordinate creator rather than the highest God.
Nag Hammadi library : A collection of fourth-century Coptic manuscripts containing Christian, Gnostic, and other ancient writings. Its discovery supplied the largest surviving body of primary texts associated with Gnostic groups.
Valentinus : A second-century Christian teacher from Alexandria associated with the movement later called Valentinianism. His teaching inspired one of antiquity’s most influential Gnostic schools.
Apocryphon of John : An ancient Christian Gnostic text recounting creation, the origin of evil, and the liberation of humanity. Its detailed myth is a central example of the Gnostic critique of the creator and cosmos.
Neoplatonism : A philosophical tradition deriving reality from a supreme first principle through successive levels of being. Both envision spiritual reality beyond the sensible world, but Neoplatonism does not generally condemn the cosmos as a Gnostic prison.
Pleroma : The fullness of divine reality in several ancient religious systems, especially Gnostic ones. It names the spiritual realm contrasted with the material cosmos.
Codex Tchacos : A Coptic manuscript codex containing the Gospel of Judas and other ancient religious writings. It preserves a text that recasts Judas and Jesus in a distinctive Gnostic framework.
Basilides : A second-century Christian teacher in Alexandria whose system is known mainly through later reports by opponents. His reported cosmology illustrates the diversity hidden beneath the label Gnosticism.
Gospel of Thomas : An early Christian sayings collection attributed to Jesus and preserved in a complete Coptic copy at Nag Hammadi. Its status as Gnostic is disputed, making it a useful test of the category’s boundaries.
Zoroastrianism : An Iranian religion whose traditions include conflict between truth and falsehood and between forces of good and evil. Its cosmic dualism invites comparison, but it differs in theology, history, and accounts of creation.
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