Explain gnosticism, Veeky Forums

Also this is the proper definition of Gnosticism. Not just my hypothesis.

First of all, the people who translated the bible from koine greek were not trained in koine greek themselves

second (this is a point you've refused to address), the bible was molested by monarchs for political purposes and priests as well

Third, if you truly respected your book we wouldn't see the quadrillion versions

Fourth, i never said that muslims think the same about jesus, i said that jews view you the same you view muslims, learn to reading comprehension

Fifth, yes they do have their shit together even better than you
At least these religions i've mentioned did not have to make a bunch of councils and meetings (council of nicea) just to determine what the fuck is wrong or right (this is what happens if you neglect your book)
And they also don't have a million sects or a million versions of their respective books

I mentioned that i am not an atheist, brainlet christards in action

>no way
Gnostics don't understand religion. Of course not, they were yesterday's atheists.
Yes child, you are an atheist. Gnostics are atheists high on psychobabble. Jung belongs hung.

>i say i am not an atheist
>that means i am not
Delusion.

Only protestants hold the Bible to such acclaim. The World of God is Christ, the Bible is the Written Word.
Back to /r/eddit
>second (this is a point you've refused to address), the bible was molested by monarchs for political purposes and priests as well
Marxists actually believe this.

neither i am a gnostic

Wordplay with no substance

Now hold up let's go back in time for a bit, i earlier asked the question
>nd let me ask you a rather important question, what makes you so goddamn sure that your religion and particular is the 'right' one and all other sects and religions are false?

why did you dodge it?

You are gnostic because you are a Platonist.
Ignored substance is not the same as the lack of substance.
Your question is irrelevant. No faithful asks this question. It is the ignorant that ask it. Your sort of shallow skepticism is invalid. It is too axiomatic.

In that case fuck off, dodger, you're worse than a nigger

I am not dodging anything. There is nothing to dodge. You functionally do not exist. You are a nonentity.

To ask 'why are you right?' is to misunderstand the totality of epistemology. You are dredged in an ideology that your child's skepticism cannot see. One does not ask 'am I right?', they affirm that they are. Platonists belong in their cave.

Who the fuck gives a shit about my beliefs? you're supposed to address my arguments not whatever i believe in

>To ask 'why are you right?' is to misunderstand the totality of epistemology. You are dredged in an ideology that your child's skepticism cannot see. One does not ask 'am I right?', they affirm that they are. Platonists belong in their cave.
No it's not, if you're so arrogant and snobby and confident about religion while calling all others 'heresies' then you'll have to explain why, or else you'll be declared a biased retard

We've already fucking explained gnosticism!!!!

Warning: avoid all Gnosticism threads. Sadly, because they could be interesting if it wasn't for shitposting.

Gnosticism threads sadly all end the same. You get that one guy who calls everybody else who isn't Christian a platonist, atheist, spouter of psychobabble, etc. Then dismisses any arguments, especially how can you prove your beliefs are right, because apparently proving is platonist. See below, this shitposter is in all these threads.

I'm rather sure this guy just control +f 's for Gnostic everyday

>get out of here you platonist atheist devil worshipping pagan eastern orthodox shill!

The belief that the obtainment of super spooky knowledge will benefit you in the afterlife is an absolute falsehood.

Gnosticism stems from atheism and usually heads right into hedonism; the belief that nothing done in the flesh matters spiritually, so indulge your flesh with all the wine, women and drugs you want.

Gnosticism, or "mankind's wisdom", is foolishness to God, and is an outright deception from Lucifer "light bringer" who promises knowledge but delivers only death, and then hell.

Play stupid games with the devil, win stupid prizes with the devil.

And much like the false "enlightenment" that many eastern religions tout, nobody has ever been enlightened by gnosticism either.

There's nothing interesting in gnosticism, sorry. And nothing Veeky Forums related either. It's a fringe cult formed and populated with autistic atheists who absolutely refuse to prove any single one of their tenets is true.

>There's nothing interesting in gnosticism, sorry.
To you. Others find it interesting

>And nothing Veeky Forums related either.
Any religion is his related

>It's a fringe cult formed and populated with autistic atheists
Factually incorrect. They are by definition not atheists.

>who absolutely refuse to prove any single one of their tenets is true.
Still waiting for any religion to do this

A mesh of heretical Christianity and Neoplatonism. Really interesting and cool stuff desu.

>nothing Veeky Forums related
>all the gnostic sects are defunct
>Protestantism is extant

What did he mean by this?

Mithraism wasn't necessarily a gnostic christian sect, it was a contemporary and later salvation cult, sorta like the Cult of Isis

What is considered "Gnosticism" in the modern world came out of Renaissance through late 19th cent guys rediscovering apocryphal christian texts (normally in greek or aramaic or coptic) and attempting to amalgamate them into some coherent mystical teachings.

As for Manichaeism, that was a religious offshoot from Christianity led by Mani and was pretty popular in the middle east and central asia for quite a while. Many in the west, when discussing heresy in the high medieval world, used the label "Manichaean" to describe any dualist form of Christianity that popped up in their parish, and tried to artificially draw larger continuity where there wasn't any.

There is little evidence that actual people practiced "gnosticism" in the modern sense, at least until things like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn came around. It was mostly (up until then) people trying to make sense of apocrypha in a world of the little truth of the bible.

Also don't be an idiot, I say "heresy" because that is what people at the time used to describe what they observed and wrote about and it is then a useful historical term

Thank you for the information on the origins of the term. Am I understanding this correctly:

Irenaeus called them Gnostics, meaning something like "intellectual sect." This specific word was used by him because it derives from Plato, whose own 'sect,' neoplatonism, influenced the christian mystics Augustine, the pseudo-Dionysus, etc.

I understand what you're saying, it's misleading to think of these christians as "Gnostics," because they thought they were the real christians, not some other sect.

I was absolutely floored by the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. The notion that one of the most fascinating texts about religious experience was deemed a heresy is fucked

wasn't Isaac Newton a gnostic?

>gnostic gospel of thomas
>fantastic
you mean like
"batshit insane" and "outright retarded" i'll agree

> 114. Simon Peter said to them, "Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life."

Didn't we already have a (pretty good) thread on this?

Gnosticism is the new meme. Its lazy shitters not thinking to check the catalog.

Wow yeah, I forgot about that the negative feminine representation in gnostic texts. I'm not any less interested in their insights and history, obviously. Weren't they hyper-ascetic? Seems like an interesting parallel with India's religions

>Assuming that statement is false

God this thread turned to shit quickly.
Not OP, but can someone like say what Gnosticism is without staining it with biased bait.

Guy who actually knows Gnostism here. I'll do an AMA because it's a big subject. Do you want the theology? Do you want it explained in relationship to Christianity? Etc.

Summarise it please.

Why should I? You are terribly upset.
>i-i-i-if u dn taek m srsly ill cal u rtard!
Back to the cave!
Gnosticism cannot be interesting. It's the meme religion of the time on Veeky Forums and Veeky Forums. You atheists were frogposters just a few months ago.

Challenging epistemology is not 'shitposting'.

The godless are atheists. You are godless.

>its interesting so its le right
Atheists, everyone.

So theology?

Basically reality is divided between the spirtual and the material. There's multiple planes of existence all stacked on top of each other. The higher you up you go the less material they become. We are here at the lowest plane where everything is material. It was created as a sort of accident by deity that was either insane, incompetent, defective, or evil (sometimes all 4). This deity is often identified as the god of the old testament (who the Gnostics say is not the God Jesus taught about).

Another deity, who is a good deity, named Sophia fell out of the metaphysical realm and into this one. When this happened she was shattered into pieces. Each piece is what you would call a soul or mind. This has a distinct reality from your body which is a carcass rotting away.

You've got two possible outcomes on this plane. Either you will achieve enlightnement, realize your divine nature, and than when you die achieve unity with the god-head. Or you will fail at this and die for real (or in some cases become reincarnated so you can try again).

This enlightenment is possible via secret Gnosis or knowledge about the nature of your divine self, the metaphysical realm, and how to get back to it.

Excessive interest in material pleasures and urges is bad. Because it makes you focus on matter rather than spirit.

As for the history of how the religion founded that's rather complex because it's an intersection between Greek philosophy, Mystery cults, Paul of Taursus and a few 2nd centuary Christians.

To answer something directly: it is unlikely Gnostism was the origenal religion taught by Jesus. But neither are any forms of modern Christianity all of them trace back to Paul.

Nice Wkkipedia article skimming.
>But neither are any forms of modern Christianity all of them trace back to Paul.
This is what atheists actually believe. Stop attention-whoring, tripshit.

I'm pretty knowledge about the subject. It's an interest of mine, as is early Christianity. I'm not an atheist though.

As for the subject on Paul. Here's the deal. Paul's stuff is the earliest writings we have on the religion, he beats everyone else by at least 30, in some cases as much as 50. All sources say he was the first guy to take the religion to the Gentiles, before him they were not interested in the religion. Now here's the kicker, every Christian document that is not made by Paul, from Gnostic to Orthodox is written by a Gentile, often one using the name of a disciple (ie John, Mathew) to add authenticity. And since Paul was point 0 for Gentile writing on Christianity, everything gets traced back to him.

Christians like to think Paul received all his messages from the ghost of Jesus. In this way they argue his writings are faithful to the origenal. However if you don't beleive in ghosts this is not plausible. Since Paul never knew the Jesus and did not make contact with his origenal disciples until AFTER he developed his theology: this effectivily makes there be no link between him and Jesus (in other words he made up all the dogma himself, rather than getting his dogma from a ghost).

You see this is the way you filthy marxists faggots try to win debates against us. You build ideological structures on foundations of clay and then try to bait us into arguing against said structure. You confuse your adversaries by stating prepositions so obviously false that makes them mad and then you declare that you've won because you've hit a criteria that has been conveniently enstablished by some zionist communist. what you are doing right now is trying to produce a red herring to avoid confronting the main topics of /pol/ head on. Why are you so scared of opening you ears and listen to us? If it is true that your ideology wasn't the product of century long marxist propaganda you wouldn't be so inclined to defend would you? What's the matter, did I hurt your feelings? Well get used to it, because the world isn't a magical land of ponies and rainbow. This reminds me of another thing that I despise immensely about Veeky Forums. it's subverted gayness. You can read in between the lines of the threads here that there is a systematic brainwashing that has rendered the modern man more feminine and prone to irrational thoughts. The way people pretend to be so devoted to reading some cuck-tier novels because they want to "feel" more just fucking disgusts me. Are you really so immature that you cannot have an objective point of view? Fuck off.

>im pretty nowledgabable xDD
Sure you are kid

Stop reciting Wikipedia articles. You aren't saying anything original.
Why do you take offense with a gentile writing? Sorry! Unlike your Platonist cult, Christianity largely does not claim that any person has a greater 'bond' to God than another. Meaning, there are no Chosen People.
>However if you don't beleive in ghosts this is not plausible
This is the worst argument I've ever seen. I've been here since the beginning and you've taken the fucking prize.

Listen brothers.

The earth is not a ball to which we are glued by the mystical force of "gravity", no.

The earth is flat, just as the ancient peoples believed. Heaven is above you, hell is below you.

The devil first spread the idea of a ball earth revolving around a ball sun in the ancient Babylonian and Egyptian mystery schools. These teachings were passed down to Pythagoras. They were handed down the ages to the occult mystery schools of the European Renaissance, who adopted them as their own. Then the occultists Copernicus, Kepler, Bruno, Newton, published the idea and started the "Copernican revolution".

The ancient Hermetic principle is "As Above, So Below". This has many applications. One of them is this: what people believe about the heavens above them, well determine what they believe about the earth below them. In other words, how they interpret the sky will correspond with how they interpret their own lives. Our materialist society would be impossible without a materialist cosmology to justify it. A mechanistic Newtonian cosmology justifies a mechanistic view of human life, a mechanistic politics, sociology, and economics. It sounds like a joke, but the idea that the stars are giant balls of gas reflects the modern obsession with fossil fuels / material goods in general. Copernicus wasn't going for a mechanistic religion, by the way; he was a Pythagorean and Heliolator, and hoped that the belief that the sun was at the center of the universe would usher in a return to a sun-worshipping priesthood like those of ancient societies.

The reason why the Devil spreads the idea of the ball earth is that it totally overturns mans relationship to the world. Instead of man being a spiritual being with heaven above him and hell below him; instead he stands on a ball where there are infinitely many ups and downs, where heaven isn't "above" but only "outside" the earth - moral and epistemological relativism, infinitely many points of view.

Thanks! , actually kind of interesting.

>Islam
>gnostic

Explaining Gnosticism is pretty hard because there were shitloads of sects that could be considered gnostic. I'll just focus on some of the overall trends.

The first is that the God of the Old and New Testaments are not the same. The New Testament God, or Yahweh, is the all-powerful and loving God we all know, who may or may not have been incarnate in Jesus (depends on the sect).
Old Testament God is the Demiurge, Satan, Yaldabaoth, or some lesser deity. He's the one who created the world and mankind; therefore, the world and humanity is inherently sinful. Some sects have more hierarchies of lesser deities (like Sophia, the personification of wisdom), or considered the angels to be minor deities.
Some sects rejected the notion of Jesus as being the Son of God. One of the larger ones, the Sethians, believed that Jesus was the return of Seth (one of the later sons of Adam & Eve).
The truly unifying believe is that there is some hidden knowledge or teaching only available to true believers that can be used to achieve enlightenment/guarantee entrance to heaven/etc. Mainstream Christian denominations say that there's nothing hidden, and that the entirety of the Word of God is known and available to all. This is where the term Gnosticism comes from, from the Greek word for knowledge (gnosis).

This. You'd have trouble coming up with a more dogmatic and less mystical religion if you tried.

>As for the subject on Paul. Here's the deal. Paul's stuff is the earliest writings we have on the religion, he beats everyone else by at least 30, in some cases as much as 50. All sources say he was the first guy to take the religion to the Gentiles, before him they were not interested in the religion. Now here's the kicker, every Christian document that is not made by Paul, from Gnostic to Orthodox is written by a Gentile, often one using the name of a disciple (ie John, Mathew) to add authenticity. And since Paul was point 0 for Gentile writing on Christianity, everything gets traced back to him.

What are your thoughts on the Epistle of James? Plenty of people trace the letter back to James, brother of Jesus, with some believing he wrote it before Paul.

My opinion of James is that he was probably the leader after Jesus died. I remember reading Jewish ministries past their lineage down from brother to brother. So he would be someone with a direct link to Jesus.

Paul's theology must have been radically different than Jame's otherwise they wouldn't have been a dispute and Paul wouldn't need to pretend to be a Pharisee.

Here's the thing about attributing any writing to the original apostles: given their income level and class they were almost certainly illiterate. That's part of the reason the Gentile's interpretation were able to so easily win out.

So does the Epistle of James have any connection at all with James? It seems like either James (or someone in close contact to James) wrote it or somebody was trying to pass themselves off as James.

I only know the general gist of New Testament history. Specifics of individual books are not something I can answer with any real confidence.

If any of the original disciples were to learn to writing or to get someone to write on their behalf James would be the most likely one as he was the most respected and seemed to have leadership.

you know those pictures that compare the pope's fish hat with gnostic priests or whatever? someone should make that into a bait image for when you ""contribute""

>Ad hominem
I don't post frogs, but hey keep throwing non-argument in
>And things I don't like can't be interesting

Gnosticism beliefs include the belief in gods. So by definition is not atheism.

>Explain gnosticism
An umbrella(ish) term for different forms of Christianity, they were seen heretical by the Christians who would later on become the dominant doctrine. You should not say `gnostics believed this and that` and remember it is a grouping, just as you cant give an exact answer to `what do abrahamic religions believe` beside few minor points (monotheism etc) Marcians beleived very differently tha Sethians.

>you claim other religions as heresies when you can't even get your shit together, so many sects and churches that make your head spin
Not even christian but do you actually think that Islam is in any way uinified? Lol

Apart from Shi'ism (which is obvious retardation because it was created by a zoroastrian kike and it's followers worship saints and time bending 12 imams and shit which is pretty unislamic to the core) Islam is pretty unified, the only 'differences' are the maddhabs (schools of thought) which have extremely minor differences in what's haram or halal ect.

>This is what atheists actually believe. Stop attention-whoring, tripshit.
This is actually taught in Theological schools though.

>Islam is pretty unified
Not even close.

Fuck
Disregard that post.
Islam has many different schools and "schisms", user. It isn't as pronounced like in Christianity I will give you that, but it is not unified by any means.
And those insignificant differences you say are actually very big deals for the religious types.

>putting retarded shi'ism and it's million retarded sects into account
>considering druze muslim
>implying those differences are a big deal when they're just miniscule rulings about bathing or everyday life trivialities

Unrestrained platonism.