ABSTRACT
This is not a historical survey of Gnosis and Gnosticism, but of what scholars have taken Gnosis and Gnosticism to be, with particular regard to ancient individuals who called themselves “Gnostics”. Although the primary goal of this essay is to elucidate questions of definition and methodology, to help orient any reader interested in Gnosticism or Gnosis, it will also advance arguments regarding the relative utility of these terms. Specifically, “Gnosticism” is a term which has been thoroughly interrogated by contemporary scholarship, discussed and refined over the course of decades. While many scholars avoid it, others have tried to rehabilitate it to describe the distinctive “school of thought” characteristic of our extant evidence regarding the gnōstikoi, Christian heretics of the second and third centuries ce. On the other hand, while the term “Gnosis” has long been used interchangeably with “Gnosticism,” others have employed it to describe a vast range of discourses about disparate historical and philosophical phenomena, often related to, if not conflated with, “mysticism” and “esotericism.” The present article therefore begins by discussing the problem and attendant evidence of ancient “Gnosticism” before tracing the reception and development of ancient Gnostic traditions in the medieval world as well as the modern emergence of discourse about “Gnosis.”
