ABSTRACT
Early work on gender issues in ancient Gnosticism can be found in small sections in seminal works like Kurt Rudolph’s Gnosis (1977), while Elaine Pagels’s The Gnostic Gospels (1979) is among the earliest and best known to deal in more detail with the subject. Raoul Mortley’s Womanhood (1981) focused on redressing the shortage of scholarship on women and the female within Gnosticism, as did Karen King’s edited work Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism (1988). Much of the early work concentrated on texts about men and women and their relative standing in the communities and within the authoritative texts, as well as details on heavenly female figures. While the early work dealt with the broad spectrum of Gnostic groups, only recently did scholars like Kevin Coyle (2001), Madeleine Scopello (2005), and Majella Franzmann (2007; 2010) begin more detailed work on the same issues within Manichaean communities.
