Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/727

Rh GNOSTIOISM feeling about an obnoxious teacher rather than a state- ment of actual facts ; but there seems no doubt that Cerinthus represented, in the close of the lst century, a type of doctrine especially opposed to that of the fourth gospel. He is supposed to have been of Jewish descent, to have been educated in Alexandria, and to have diffused his doctrine in Asia Minor. Opposed as he was to the Christianity of the church in attributing the creation of the world, not to the Supreme God, but to “a power separate and distinct fron1 ” Him, and in conceiving Jesus as a mere man to whom the Christ was united at baptism, and from whom the Christ departed before His death (Iren., i. 2 ; Hippolytus, vii. 33), he was yet far from being the mere anti-Christian impostor that Simon was. He makes no claim to miraculous or divine powers in himself, but holds a distinct, however erroneous, Christology. The idea of ‘redemption is not only recognized by him, but recognized as verified in Christ and in Him alone. His chief concep- tion of the Creator of the world being other than the Supreme God was probably borrowed by him from the Egyptian schools in which he seems to have taught. The sects of the Naasseni, the Peratze, the Sethiani, and the followers of Justin, placed, as we have said, by Hippoly- tus before Simon, may probably all be ranked along with him and Cerinthus in the early and still undeveloped stage of Gnosticism. It is very diﬁicult to attain to any certainty as to their chronological position. Bunse11 traces the origin of the Ophites as far back as the Pauline age ; but on very deﬁnite grounds it may be concluded that the sect, if existent then, could l1ardly have acquired any prominence or intellectual interest,—not even in the time of St John ; and certain details of their teaching cannot well be earlier than the beginning of the 2d century. Hippolytus gives a distinct and lengthened account of these several sects. The N aasse11i, he says, borrowed their opinions from the Greek philosophers and the teachers of the mysteries ; the Peratze took them “not fron1 the Scriptures, but from the Astro- logers;” the Sethiani “patched up their system out of shreds of opinion taken from Musaeus, and Linus, and Orpheus ;” and Justin was indebted for his to the “marvels of Hero- dotus 3” He says, moreover, of the Naasseni that they “call themselves Gnostics.” We must leave here, as else- where, the more particular descript-ion of these sects to special articles. All of them, however, may, with Mansel ((_}'2zo.stic Ilcresies, p. 96), be regarded as branches of a common sect to which the title of Ophites particularly answers. The serpent was more or less a common symbol with them all ; and the idea of the serpent as in some manner a redeeming power for mankind—“ a symbol of intellect by whose means our ﬁrst parents were raised to the knowledge of the existence of higher beings than their creator ”——-seems to have run through them all. The serpent no doubt tempted man, but he fell from allegiance to the Demiurge, or Creator of the present world, only to rise to the knowledge of a higher world. Thus to iden- tify the serpent with the Redeeming Word or Divine Son came very near to converting the power of Evil into the ideal of Good. This was the logical conclusion which pro- bably lay more or less in all their systems; but it only showed itself fully in a cognate sect called the Cainites, the description of which follows that of the Ophites and the Sethians in the ﬁrst book of the treatise of Irenaaus (c.
 * <xxi.). This sect carried to its extreme form the inver-

sinn of Biblical story, and raised the serpent into a creative aml redeeming power. All the evil characters in the Old Testament, with Cain at their head, are set forth as the true spiritual heroes; and, in consistency with the same view, Judas Iscariot, in the New Testament, is repre- -sented as alone “knowing the truth,” and so accomplishing the betrayal of the Saviour, as some later theorists have 703 also supposed, in order that His good work might be com- pleted. They had a gospel of their own in the interest of such views, which they styled “the gospel of Judas." Another name in the history of Gnosticism, that of Carpocrates, may be classed in this earlier period, although he is said to have been still active as a teacher in the time of Hadrian (117-138). The followers of Carpocrates, as already mentioned, are represented by Irenaeus (i. 25) as ﬁrst styling themselves Gnostics. His opinions had a certain aﬁinity both with those of Cerinthus and the Ophites. They are described at length by Irenazus (i. 25) and Hippo- lytus (vii. 20). Both writers also ascribe to this teacher and his disciples a great devotion to magical arts, and accuse them of voluptuousness and even licentiousness of life. They seem to have cherished an esoteric doctrine which inculcated the indifference of all actions, and that nothing was really evil by nature. Some of the teachers of the sect marked their pupils by branding them on the inside of the lobe of the right ear. Epiphanes, a son of Carpocrates, is associated with his father in the reign of Hadrian as actively promot- ing the spread of their heresy, and, dying young, he is said to have been worshipped as a god by the inhabitants of a town in Cephalonia, of which his mother was a native. He must have been a remarkable youth, credited as _he is with a work on Justice, fragments of which have been pre- served by Clement of Alexandria, advocating a very out- rageous for111 of communism. Vomen of note allied them- selves to this free confederacy, one of whom, Marcellina, came to Rome in the time of Anicetus (d. 168), and “ led multitudes astray ” (Iren. i. 25 ; see also CARPOCRATES). II. But, as already indicated, it is not till the ﬁrst quarter of the 2d century that we see Gnosticism in full a11d systematic development ; and then it ranges from two main centres—Antioch in Syria, and Alexandria. (1.) Menander, the pupil of Simon, settled at Antioch, and there laid the foundation of the Syrian Gnostic school, whose chief representatives in the 2d century are Saturninus, Tatian, and Bardesanes, the last two of whom were more or less connected with _the church—Tatian, as a pupil of Justin Martyr, and the writer of a harmony of the four gospels under the name of Diatessm-on, and Bardesanes as one of the ﬁrst of the interesting series of hymn-writers for which we are indebted to the Syrian church. The Syrian Gnosis is distinguished by its admixture of Zarathustrian elements, and the consequent sharpness and precision with which it seizes the idea of conﬂict between the powers of Good and Evil——the Supreme God, on the one hand, and the Demiurge and his angels or aeons, on the other hand. For a more particular account of the characteristics of the system, see articles on the names above mentioned. (2.) Along with the Syrian school, and occupying a more prominent place in the development of the religious thought of the 2d century, stands the great school of Alexandrian Gnosticism, represented especially by Basilides and Valen- tinus and their followers. Basilides appears to have been a native of Syria, and to have taught in Alexandria about the year 1 25. “ He is the ﬁrst Gnostic teacher,” says Bunsen (Hippolg/tus and his Age, p. 107), “ who has left an indi- vidual personal stamp upon his age. . . . His erudition is unquestionable. He had studied Plato deeply. . . . All that was great in the Basilidean system was the originality of thought and moral earnestness of its founder.” Bunsen also maintains that “ Basilides was a pious Christian, and worshipped with his congregation,” while admitting that his sect fell away from the church and from Christianity by refusing to recognize the authority of Scripture and the necessity of practical Christian communion. Valentinus was probably educated in the school of Alex- andrian Gnosticism, as he developed Gnostic ideas in their connexion with Hellenic, rather than Persian, modes of