What is Gnosticism? [Hardcover]

King has done historians of philosophy and religion an immense service with this study. A thorough, comprehensive and closely analysed investigation of the historiography of "Gnosticism", this book will keep students and scholars engaged for some time. Although the title isn't answered in a strict, straightforward manner, the content of the book demonstrates why this is nearly impossible. In fact, King even offers the views of those who would dispense with the term altogether. In the end, the author shows that a tight definition of the term is of less importance than gaining an understanding of what Gnosticism is about.

The author starts from a firm position. "Gnosticism" in the West has long been labelled a "heresy" among the Christian churches. Most of the Christian churches, at least, since there are those who have adopted some tenets of Gnosticism into their creeds. The early Christian movements, striving for survival in the "pagan" Roman Empire, all sought some form of unity and discipline as a foundation. They sought an "orthodoxy" under which to operate. Others, nearly as many in number, granted the individual the primary role. The former group, typified by the bishop of Lyons, Irenaeus, laid the beginnings of what would become "orthodox" Christianity. They decreed the "outsiders" as "heretics". King brings Irenaeus and other critics of non-conformity together under the rubric of the "polemicists". For centuries, what we knew of the Gnostics was contained in the writings of those who condemned them.

The era of "Higher Criticism" of biblical texts may have helped foster modern examination of Gnostic writings. Among the leaders of this "wave" of research was Adolf von Harnack. Von Harnack viewed Gnosticism as an offshoot of Greek - or Hellenic - culture and philosophy. If anybody can be named as detaching Gnosticism from being a branch of Christianity, it is this scholar. Casting Christianity against a Hellenic background, von Harnack sought to find elements that would give the movement unique status and explain its expansion.

Following von Harnack, more [mostly] German scholars in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries formed the Religious History School. King examines the work of such figures as Richard Reitzenstein, Wilhelm Bousset, Rudolf Bultmann. Detaching Jesus from traditional Christianity, these scholars developed what has come to be known as the "Gnostic Redeemer" myth. Revising the roots of the Jesus myth, they pushed the story back in time and place to the Persian [Iran] region. It migrated westward to be absorbed by peoples along the Levant, thence into western Europe. The essence of this version of Christianity centres on Jesus lacking a human body, and providing a more direct link to the Deity. King notes how strong a challenge this proved to orthodoxy, since it transformed how followers of this idea viewed their relation to the deity.

For King, two books published in the mid-1930s, set a new course for Gnostic scholarship. Walter Bauer and Hans Jonas reset the definitions [each had his own] of Gnosticism, while at the same time increasing awareness of its impact. Bauer granted Gnosticism a more substantial role than the early Christian condemning writers had done. Jonas wanted a clear identity to define a "movement" within Eastern Mediterranean concepts, but set apart from Hellenist philosophies.

It was the Nag Hammadi finds in 1945 that led to the greatest crisis in definition for Gnosticism. The forty-six books unearthed from an Egyptian hillside has sparked a new wave of scholarship, but little more in clarifying meaning. The Nag Hammadi texts, King notes, vary in definition and relationship to both Jesus and the deity. Although the role of Mary Magdalene has been raised from the licentious woman depicted in the Synoptic gospels, little else is cleansed of confusion. Reflecting on the Nag Hammadi scripts, modern scholarship has attempted new definitions. Although Michael Williams has gone so far to suggest scrubbing the term altogether, King sees his proposed substitute as too cumbersome. Besides, she notes, a new term doesn't make its definition more specific.

There are those who carp that King doesn't answer the question posed in the title. Her answer to that charge lies in the text itself. The vast literature on "Gnosticism" can't answer that question, why should she bear the onus of defining the undefinable? What she has accomplished is an articulate call for either a better term, clearly expressing meaning, or wiser analysis of the writings. Since Gnosticism has been applied to frameworks running from an "Oriental philosophy" to a "competitive Christianity", easy definitions will remain elusive.

A further question, only lightly touched on here, is whether "Christian Gnosticism" is a true challenge to "orthodox" Christianity. Given that the works King cites, from Ireneaus through the Nag Hammadi texts, display a wide variation in how Jesus is to be considered and how humans relate to their deities, it's clear that there is room for yet more scholarship. King proposes finding a pragmatic solution that will shed the ancient duality the polemicists began centuries ago. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Here's a chance to experience a gifted scholar struggling to come to terms with a challenging subject without compromising any of its difficulties.

At the very conclusion of the book, King explicitly states what this book was about: "This book by no means offers a complete analysis of the twentieth-century study of Gnosticism. Its aim was more limited - to locate some of the incrongruities in the construction of Gnosticism in order to aid in 'thinking hard and speaking differently' about religious identity formation." The book is basically an examination of how the study of Gnosticism has gotten in the way of the study of Gnosticism. Speculations have piled up upon each other, hardened in apparent facts, and made discerning what may have been happening in early Christianity difficult.

"What is Gnosticism?" is essentially "What is Scholarship?" when scholarship has gone awry and clouded our way of evaluating the facts. It's to her credit that King highlights this problem, which is not unique to the study of Gnosticism. A particular problem with Gnosticism is that the term was coined relatively recently and implies a unity. Another problem is that so little has been known about the early Christians held to be heretics by those who "won", even with the finding of Nag Hammadi texts, themselves hard to assess due to previous scholary speculations. The orthodox Church knew what they were doing when they destroyed such texts or discouraged their being copied. But what may be a barrier for scholars focused on the past needn't stop seekers today whose heartfelt longings carry them beyond the blinders of orthodoxy. When Elaine Pagels suggested in her "The Gnostic Gospels" that orthodoxy needed to win in order to insure the survival of Christianity, she didn't reflect on whether a survival of that kind was really positive. It's good news that nowadays Gnosticism, however defined or even if undefined, lives. In what forms Christianity survives remains open. Perhaps orthodoxy was indeed needed back then so that Gnostic Christianity would be alive today.

"What is Gnosticism?" is a clearing of the way in preparation to studying what was going on in early Christianity that led to charges of heresy at a time when "What is Christianity?" was also at best hard to answer and hard to find a unity within. Even today, in a world of Roman Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and Baptists, capturing a single sense for "Christian" may not be that easy or even possible. Whatever the names or how well they apply, there has been something going on in ancient AND MODERN times that can be addressed as gnostic and that will always go beyond the efforts of scholars to grasp. Whether intentionally or not, King has thankfully revealed that.

P.S. I just read King's thrilling "The Gospel of Mary of Magdala". She also addresses there the problems she has with the term "Gnosticism". The two books go together well, with "The Gospel of Mary of Magdala" providing a concrete and compelling example of King's argument that term "Gnosticism" gets in the way. More importantly, it also relates that issue not just to scholarly concerns about early Christianity but also to current issues that any Christian might have. Reading both these books has been a treat and an eyeopener: these books provide a real teaching.

Having recently read King's The Secret Revelation of John, I was impressed to, just for once, read a scholar who didn't find it necessary to analyse Gnosticism purely in terms of rubbishing Irenaeus and the other heresiologists and say that Gnosticism is everything that the heresiologists say it isn't. So I was eager to read her analysis of wider Gnosticism as opposed to that of a single work.

It wouldn't be at all facetious however to say that King's answer to the question posited in the title is "I don't know". So what does she give us instead?

Firstly she begins with a different question, "What is heresy?". Then most of the rest of the book is taken up with the history of study of Gnosticism, from Harnack and his definition of Gnosticism as "acute Hellenisation of Christianity", through to the present day. Nag Hammadi has not cleared anything up at all, if anything it has just made the matter worse.

In the final chapter King argues that the current methods of study are not able to help us arrive at our destination of defining Gnosticism. Even supposedly radical works such as Williams' Rethinking Gnosticism are still attempting to view Gnosticism through the framework of categories derived from the ancient heresiologists, and not getting us anywhere. So we need new methods, and we are still no closer to the answer.

A valuable contribution to Gnostic studies indeed, but you won't find Gnosticism defined. If you really want to get closer to an answer to the question from King's viewpoint, I recommend going to her somewhat more readable later work, the aforementioned Secret Revelation of John.