ABSTRACT
Until the early 1950s, the prevailing understanding of Gnosticism was largely a legacy of the polemics against the various Gnostic groups by the early Christian Church’s heresiologists, such as Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Epiphanius. In the light of the revelations of the Nag Hammadi Library, it was in 1966 that leading scholars on the subject attended a conference in Messina, Italy on the origins of Gnosticism. The notion of Gnosticism as a distinct religious movement has been challenged and N. D. Lewis cites two prominent scholars in the field who have called for the term Gnosticism to be abandoned altogether. Rather than regard Gnosticism as a Christian heresy, Birger A. Pearson believes that it was more likely that Gnosticism “arose out of a Jewish milieu”, and only later took on Christian influences. D. Brakke’s middle position supports the notion that the designation Gnosticism has lost its utility as a scholarly category and should be either abandoned or reformed.
