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The Earliest Christan Gnosticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Robert M. Grant
Robert M. Grant
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

In recent years new methods of approaching the study of gnosticism have arisen. The older synthesis of Bousset, with its somewhat over-schematized picture of gnostic thought, and the severely critical analysis of de Faye, with its emphasis on our ignorance of gnostic beginnings, have failed to retain general approval. The newer methods have stressed an existentialist or psychological understanding of the gnostics, and questions of source-analysis and chronology have faded into the background. Often the problem of development within gnostic thought is not seriously considered.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 1953 , pp. 81 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1953

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References

1. Bousset, W., Hauptprobleme der Gnosis (Göttingen, 1907)Google Scholar; article in (Pauly-Wissowa) RE VII 1503–47.

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40. Cf., Nock, A. D. as quoted in my first article (n. 38), 376.Google Scholar

41. op. cit., 34–35.

42. Ibid., 162 and 196.

43. Ibid., 98.

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47. , Bartsch, op. cit., 156–57.Google Scholar

48. Eph. 17, 1—Exc. 3, 2; Eph. 19—Exc.74; Smyrn. 3, 2—Exc. 14, 1.

49. The archon of this world is also found in John 12, 31; 14, 30; 16, 11; cf. 1 Cor 2, 8 (plural).