Prolegomena to the Study

of Ancient Gnosticism

Bentley Layton

Investigative Procedure

1. The aim of these prolegomena is to propose a means of identifying the

data that can be used to write a history of the Gnostics, and thus to define
the term Gnosticism (23). The subject of Gnosticism will be treated here as
part of the social history of ancient Mediterranean antiquity, because the
data make it clear that the word Gnostic" primarily denoted a member of a
distinct social group or professional school of thought (9), not a kind of
doctrine. It was people who were called Gnostics. The artifacts of these
people, especially their literary and intellectual artifacts, can be called
Gnostic only in a secondary way, by reference to the name of the ancient
group whose members produced them. The grounds for such a conclusion
are presented below.

2 Any account of the Gnostics can only be tentative. As will be seen

below, the data regarding the ancient Gnostics are sparse and survive out of
context; are unrepresentative and come from tendentious sources; or else
are pseudepigraphic mythography and completely disguise their real author,
audience, and place, date, and reason of composition. No historical interpre-

Earlier versions of this text were read as public lectures at the cole biblique et
archologique franaise de Jrusalem, the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (in
honor of Gershom Scholem). the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Uni
versity of Illinois classics department (in honor of Miroslav Marcovich), the University of
Pennsylvania, the Oriental Club of New Haven, and the graduate philosophy faculty of the
New School for Social Research (in honor of Hans Jonas). I am grateful to various colleagues
for critical discussion of the paper, and most recently to Zlatko PleJe. Thomas Jenkins, and
Stephen Eromd for comments on the final draft
Layton: Prolegomena to the Study of Ancient Gnosticism 335

tation of inadequate data is likely to produce clear and certain results, even
if the best procedure of investigation is followed Yet this accident of the
data does not diminish the historical importance of the subject, nor lessen
the urgency with which the results are needed for historical understanding.

3. The word "Gnosticism" is a modem word, created by the Cambridge

Platonist Henry More in the seventeenth century through application of a
productive modern desinence -ism to the scholarly loanword Gnostick
(which itself had been taken directly from ancient Greek texts); see Appen
dix below. There is no equivalent of the word "Gnosticism" in ancient
Greek, Latin, or Coptic The history of the word "Gnosticism" from the sev
enteenth century to 1995 is fundamentally irrelevant to the historical study
of antiquity (though it might be an appropriate topic in modem intellectual
history).

4. However, the word gnstikos () occurs in Classical and Post-

classical Greek (from there, borrowed into Latin), and so this is the term, as
describing members of an ancient group called the Gnostics (see 9), that
historians will have to interpret before they can draw any inductive conclu
sion about a characteristic category or ism of the ancient Gnostics, the
ancient Gnostic ism, or Gnosticism (23).

5. The historical investigator of a social group will pay considerable

attention to how its members characteristically constituted, constructed,
defined, and designated themselves as a specific group. If they had a dis
tinctive proper name (nomen proprium, personal name) for themselves, obvi
ously this is the appropriate label for the modem historian to use when
referring to them. Furthermore, the modem historian must avoid using that
word in any other sense, because ambivalent usage would introduce disor-
derliness into the historical discourse.

6. In general, proper names and epithets of ancient groups vary among

themselves linguistically in formation, syntax, translatability, jargon charac
ter, range of reference, and so on. Some have one set of characteristics,
while others have another. For example, some proper names of social
groups are translatablethat is, allow a possible translation into another
language as a common-noun substantive (e.g., oi , a first-century
medical bairesis []; cf. , -, "systematic"), while oth
ers are not (e.g., oi denoting adherents of the school of Plato);
some epithets were relatively distinctive group jargon ("the seed of Seth"),
while others were less distinctive ("the saved"); and so on. Bearing in mind
the existence of a scale of naming words that ranges in gradation from
extreme propemess to extreme commonness with many points along the
336 The Social World of the First Christians

way, the historical analyst should look carefully for the privileged, most dis
tinctive (most "proper*) name by which the members of any distinct group
designated themselves as a group.

7. The common-noun meaning of any translatable proper name of a social

group requires special consideration: (a) whether the common noun already
existed before the word's appearance as a proper name; and, if so, the mean
ing, usage, and connotation of the common noun at the very moment it was
adopted as the proper name of a group, that is. the intention of the leader
who coined the proper-name usage; (b) whether the common-noun mean
ing was, or continued to be, vivid to members of the group beyond the
moment of its coinage or the moment of their adhesion or rather, faded
from consciousness; that is, whether the common-noun meaning tells us
anything about typical attitudes or practices of group members. As will be
seen below, two more issues arise in the study of "Gnostic" as a proper
name in antiquity: (c) possible restoration of the vividness of the common-
noun meaning by hostile opponents for the purpose of vilification; (d) pos
sible adoption of the name (including but not necessarily limited to ad hoc
borrowing), with possible restoration of the vividness of the common-noun
meaning, by a person who did not count as a member of the group. Various
ancient social group names presumably differed from one another as to
these four points.

Illustration of the four points: (a) The adoption of the common-noun substantive
as a proper name is discussed below, 9-10. (b) Do members of the
modem Christian Protestant denomination named Methodists think or talk about
themselves as being methodical and do they act methodically? (c) Irenaeus mock
ingly suggests that the Gnostics do not really supply gnsis when he speaks of "that
which is falsely called gnosis' in the full title of his work Advenus Haereses. (d)
Clement of Alexandria's description of 'the gnostikos' (typically in the singular) is of
a spiritual type, not a member of a haeresis (see 12).

8. The original meaning of Greek gnostikos was a common-noun meaning.

Its history began in the fourth century B.CE., not as a word of everyday
speech but rather as a technical term that belonged to philosophy, as philo
sophical diction, the language of intellectuals. This flavor clung to the word
throughout its entire ancient history. The word made its first appearance in
a dialogue of Plato (the Statesman) and was invented by him through the
process of combining the very productive adjectival desinence -(t)ikos
(-()) with the stemgn- (-) plus (-s- [--]), which is found in
("know"), ("know"), ("knowledge"), and so on (gnostikos
would have been perceived as deriving from the stem gn- [-] and not
from any specific word.) Plato invented several hundred new Greek terms
with the ending -ic (in Greek -[]), and in this case, as often, he
Layton: Prolegomena to the Study of Ancient Gnosticism 337

explained what the new word was supposed to mean. The literary context is
a dialogue about the qualities of an ideal ruler. First, the discussants distin
guish two possible kinds of science (): one kind is termed praktikos.
"practical" ( scil. ), for example, the skill of a carpenter. For
the opposite kind of science, Plato invents the new word gnstikos (
scil. ). This made-up word, he explains, describes the pure sciences
such as mathematics, which merely lead to knowledge, not to practical
activity, , they merely furnish the act of
knowing" (Statesman 258e), ,
providing knowledge, not manual skill" (259e). Since the science that char
acterizes a ruler has to do with the intelligence and strength of his soul," it
is more akin to the gnstikos type of science than to the praktikos: it supplies
knowledge instead of showing how to practice a craft; it is more like mathe
matics than like carpentry. The science of an ideal ruler must be ; it
must supply the ruler with knowledge. This passage from the Statesman
with its explicit definition of gnstikos sets the usage of the word for the
next five centuries. Like many of the new words formed with -(t)ikos,
gnstikos was never very widely used and never entered ordinary Greek; it
remained the more or less exclusive property of Plato's subsequent admir
ers, such as Aristotle, Philo Judaeus, Plutarch, Albinus, Iamblichus, and
Ioannes Philoponus. Most important of all, in its normative philosophical
usage gnstikos was never applied to the human person as a whole, but only
to mental endeavors, faculties, or components of personality.

The productive adjectival desinence -(t)ikos (-[]) basically conveys no more

than "(somehow) related to .. .* (rather like the Greek genitive) and is thus ambigu
ous. Its ambiguity made it widely useful for the creation of new technical vocabu
lary in Greek; according to Adolf Ammanns count, from the classical period down
to the end of late classical antiquity about five thousand new technical terms with
the desinence -(t)ikos were coined. Because of this inherent ambiguity, when Plato
coins a new word in -(t)ikos he usually stops to explain exactly what he wants it to
mean: word and technical definition are created at the same moment Such is the
case with gnstikos: both the new technical word and its technical definition (
, "furnishing the act of knowing," "knowledge-supplying") are
launched in the same passage of text. For the rest of its rarefied lexical history, the
word was only used as a Platonist technical term. Its adoption in Platonizing (29)
Christian circles as a proper name belongs precisely to this philosophical history.

9. The application of gnstikos to persons as social entities was therefore

a significant deviation from established usage of this technical term. The
personal application of gnstikos first occurs in the second century CE., in
reference to Christians whom Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, attacks (180 CE.)
in his work Adversus Haereses (he may be using a now lost composition by
Justin Martyr, written about 150 CE., that had been directed against various
338 The Social World of the First Christians

schools of thought or baireseis []). These persons are collectively

called by the plural of gnstikos (oi scil. , Adv. Haer.
1.29.1; etc.) and are said to constitute the so-called Knowledge-Supplying
school of thought* ( , Adv. Haer. 1.11.1). A
century later a pagan Neoplatonist observer. Porphyry, also speaks of
Gnstikoi as members of a bairesis (. Vita Plodni 16). In one passage
Irenaeus (1.25.6) refers explicitly to those who "call themselves" Gnstikoi; a
contemporaneous non-Christian Middle Platonist Celsus also knows of
people who profess to be" Gnstikoi (apud Origen, Contra Celsum 5.61).
About the same time Clement of Alexandria speaks of the leader (
) of a certain bairesis who "calls himself" a Gnstikos (Strom. 2.117.5);
elsewhere, of followers of Prodicus who "call themselves" Gnstikoi Pas
sages such as these indicate that Gnstikos was a self-designating proper
name referring to a haeresis. This is the only proper-name usage of the word
gnstikos in classical or late classical antiquity, and we may conclude that it
was the Gnostics own professional school name for themselves, rather
than a descriptive epithet formulated by their enemies. This conclusion is
suggested not only by outright statements of the kind cited above. It is sug
gested also by the history, meaning, and connotations of the common-noun
usage of gnstikos at the time that the proper name was coined, since the
quality expressed by the common noun gnstikos was clearly a desirable
one: Plato had first illustrated its meaning with the example of an ideal
ruler, and subsequent users of the common noun never strayed too far from
Plato's passage. Thus, in the second century CE. the effect of its neologistic
application to persons must have been admirative, not pejorative, and so it
was presumably a self-applauding designation. Applied to persons, "Gnos
tic" meant "belonging to the Knowledge-Supplying school of thought," the
.

10. The specific reason why the creator of this bairesis chose the name
Gnstik ("Knowledge-Supplying") is not clear. Actually, the claim to pos
sess and teach gnsis ("knowledge") was certainly common enough in Chris
tian (and Hellenistic Jewish) circles, including nonphilosophical ones, as
was the insistence that one's religious opponents did not have it. Thus any
implied claim to supply or to have gnsis ("knowledge") was not at all a dis
tinctive claim. The only innovative element in the proper name Gnstikoi
was a matter of word usage: its application for the first time in the history
of the word to a school of thought, and (by extension) to members of that
school This application to persons as social entities was a neologism; it
must have sounded strange and thus (because of the words philosophical
connotations) very much like professional jargon. The professional or tech
nical sound of the term was also conveyed by the desinence -(t)ikos (8,
end). These factors made Gnstik eminently suitable as a distinctive pro-
Layton: Prolegomena to the Study of Ancient Gnosticism 339

fessional self-designation, despite the absolute banality of the idea of sup

plying or having gnosis (* knowledge").
11. The only people called by the proper name 'Gnostics' in late antiquity
are members of this bairesis. Provisionally, all these references will be con
sidered to attest in some sense to a single Gnostic bairesis developing over
time in many places and also using or getting additional names.
Critical evaluation of the Adversus Haereses literature is made difficult by the
polemical strategy of Irenaeus (following Justin Martyr or Hegesippus?), which
strings together and homogenizes a largely fictitious successio baereticorum from the
first-century mythical figure of Simon Magus down to the second generation of
Valentinians. sometimes under the extended rubric of Gndstikoi. But references by
Irenaeus and Celsus (both using Justin Martyrs lost SyntagmaF) to a contemporane
ous group that called themselves "the Gnostic bairesis' or Gnostics' can be taken as
the starting point for social historical investigatioa
12. Clement of Alexandria's description (ca. 200 C.E) of an ideal type
called 'the gnstikos" (usually in the singular, sometimes qualified as
, 'our [kind of] gnostic") does not refer to membership in a social
group and is not a proper name (see 7[d]); Clement does not, for example,
call his own contemporary church hoi Gnstikoi. His use of 'gnostic' is
comparable to general descriptions of the behavior of bo sopbos ( ),
the ideal "wise person,' in Stoic ethical writings.
In Clement's works, five categories will clearly account for most uses of
-, of which the first three express Clement's own neologistic meaning.
Much of his largest work, the Stromateis. is devoted to explaining this neologism,
(a) Substantive in Clement's special sense-, defined as
(Strom. 1382); opposed to
(Strom 537.1-2). He once contrasts (Christians who might
conform to his ideal type) with (Strom 7.943). More than 150 instances,
mostly singular, (b) Modifying adjective, - -. with reference to (a).
Modifies a wide variety of substantives. More than fifty instances, (c) Adverb -
, with reference to (a). About two dozen instances, (d) Neuter substantive to
, opposed to to , somewhat like Plato's usage (8) (Strom 6.912).
(e) Substantive -oi. Members of a school that calls itself the Gnstikoi
(Strom 21173; 3302-, 4.1142; 4.116.1; 7.413; ct Paedagogus 1322). Among these axe
the followers of Prodicus oi (Strom 330.1).
In Greek literature down to the seventh century, there seems to be no other
record oi gnstikos applied to specific people. Two apparent exceptions to this state
ment turn out to be irrelevant or nonexistent upon closer inspection. First, in the
manuscripts of Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Pbilosopborum 1.114 (second century CE.),
Epimenides the Presocratic shaman and seer is called . However, edi
tors following J. J. Reiske (apud H. Diels, Hermes 24 [1889] 307), have been unani
mous in emending the transmitted text to <>. This conjecture is
supported by the fact that in Roman Greek literature at least two other figures of
remote antiquity, namely. Anaxagoras and Democritus, are called .
340 The Social World of the First Christians

The second passage is in the Greek Alexander Romance, which comes down to us
in several distinct ancient recensions, whose interrelationships have been investi
gated by textual scholars. Recension , book (ed F. Parthe, p. 452,20) contains an
episode in which Bucephalus avenges Alexander's death in the manner of 'those
people who are and . Whatever the correct text of this
passage may be, recension has been shown by its modem editors to be an expan
sion of the somewhat earlier recension (ed. J. Trumpf. p. 177.6). which has this
same passage verbatim but without the phrase containing . Since the
author of recension has been dated to the seventh century CE. (because of details
that are mentioned in describing a chariot race), the phrase containing the word
must be regarded as a seventh-century Byzantine revision. In any
case the word as used in recension designates an ideal type and not a social group.
A third passage has been adduced by Morton Smith, from Ps.-Ecphantus, ed. H.
Delatte, but in fact this passage does not contain the word in question, nor does
Delatte defend it as a conjecture (pace Smith).
13. Where does the social historian find data describing the Gnostics
(see 4)? The most certain place to start is the ancient references that men
tion them explicitly by their own professional name (9), hoi Gnstikoi.
These can be called the direct testimonia. Despite the tendentious sources in
which they are preserved, the direct testimonia are the fundamental and
most certain core of information about the Gnostics, but they are very mea
ger and give an extremely inadequate (and partly contradictory) historical
picture. It is therefore desirable to use a compensatory procedure of investi
gation that will increase the amount of available data that can be associated
with the social group called Gnostics and so thicken the ultimate descrip
tion of the Gnostics (even at the cost of introducing greater uncertainty
into the results).
14. All the direct testimonia occur in works by the enemies of the Gnos
tics, especially Irenaeus, Celsus, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, Ploti
nus, Porphyry, and Epiphanius, and they report, in a very reduced and ironic
way: doctrines (mostly isolated) of the Gnostics, liturgical and sexual prac
tices of the Gnostics, and cosmological myth read by the Gnostics. Of these
three, the reports of Gnostic cosmological myth have the greatest chance of
being distinctive, because myth is an orderly system with characters, plot,
an elaborated structure, a functional narrative dynamics, and a philosophi
cal point of view; because reports of a cosmological myth are, at least in the
second century, liable to be based on written works of a philosophical char
acter; and because a myth of origins often functions as part of the apparatus
of group maintenance, in a way that abstract philosophical doctrines do
notwhereas isolated doctrines are hard to interpret without their full con
text, and stories about sexual customs and liturgical practices are not likely
to be based on very accurate or firsthand information. A priori then, the
summarized reports about Gnostic myth have a special likelihood of being
Layton Prolegomena to the Study of Ancient Gnosticism 341

a touchstone by which other, undenominated textual material can be recog

nized as being Gnostic and thus added to the Gnostic data base.

15. Also present in the direct testimonia are some lists of titles of Gnos
tic literary works (18), and also lists of other names by which the Gnostics
were called (either by themselves or by their enemies).

16. The compensatory procedure consists of five steps, in which various

textual features are assumed to be a distinctive sign that a work emanates
from, or that a testimonium refers to, the Gnostic bairesis even though the
proper name 'Gnostic' does not appear. Using these features, the entire
body of surviving ancient Christian literature is surveyed, and those items
which show a distinctive feature are added to the corpus of Gnostic data.
The uncertainty of this procedure relates to the difficulty of proving that
the indicative textual features are distinctive indicators of Gnostic author
ship.

The procedure is like the method of field archaeologists, who use purely formal
archaeological means when they establish which artifacts belong to one and the
same stratigraphic level, and only afterwards interpret and describe the culture that
these artifacts represent. In the present case the aim is to establish, by formal philo
logical means, which data can be linked with the direct testimonia explicitly naming
the Gnostics, and only after these have all been collected, to draw conclusions
about the Gnostic bairesis.

17. Step 1. The first step is collection and critical use of the direct testi
monia, to which reference has already been made (13-15). These convey
five kinds of information: doctrines; liturgical and sexual practices; a sum
mary of Gnostic philosophical myth; lists of some Gnostic books by title;
and other names by which the Gnostics also were known.

18. Step 2. Here two comparisons are made. First, summaries of Gnostic
myth that were registered in step 1 are compared to all the vast corpus of
surviving Christian literature (including the manuscript hoard from the Nag
Hammadi region), to see if any correspondences can be found, and one such
correspondence is easily identified. In his direct testimonium about the
Gnostic bairesis, Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 1.29) summarizes part of a work
(unnamed) which, he says, belongs to the Gnostics; comparison shows that
the unabridged version of this work survives elsewhere in no fewer than
four manuscript witnesses: in the manuscripts it is entitled Secret Book
According to John, and it contains an elaborate philosophical creation myth.
Irenaeus notes (130-31) that several versions of Gnostic myth were circu
lating about 180 CE.
Second, the direct testimonia refer to several Gnostic works by title only.
A number of these occur in a testimonium by Porphyry in his life of the
342 The Social World of the First Christians

Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus. The circumstances that he describes are

those of Plotinus's seminar in Rome, between 262 and 270; In [Plotinuss]
time there were among the Christians many others, members of a school of
thought (), who were followers of Adelphius and Aquilinus and
had started out from classical philosophy. They possessed many works by
Alexander of Libya, Philocomus, Demostratus, and Lydus; and they brought
out revelations of Zoroaster, of Zostrianus, of Nicotheus, of the Foreigner,
of Messus, and of other such figures. They deceived many people, and
themselves as well, in supposing that Plato had not drawn near to the depth
of intelligible essence* (Vita Plodni 16). Three of the works whose titles are
mentioned in this testimonium are preserved or excerpted in the Nag Ham-
madi hoard. They are the Oracles of Truth of Zostrianos; The Foreigner, and the
Book of Zoroaster. Formally this identification is made only by title; however,
the contents of all three have significant points of contact with the Secret
Book According to John, tending to confirm their identification as Gnostic.
Thus, in step 2, four surviving Gnostic works have been added to the mea
ger direct testimonial The Secret Book According to John. Zostrianos. The For
eigner, and the Book of Zoroaster (the latter known only in excerpted form).
19. Step 3. In step 3, attention shifts to the content of these four Gnostic
works, and here a common, distinctive system of mythographic features is
registered. Hans-Martin Schenke was the first to describe this distinct com
mon system (which he variously called the Sethian Gnostic system or the
Gnostic Sethian system). It expresses with more or less variation a distinct
type of cosmography and philosophical creation myth, and it has its own
general structure, imagery, and cast of characters. It can be considered
Gnostic because of Irenaeus's statement that a myth which he summarizes,
from the Secret Book According to fobn, belongs to the Gnostics (18). The dis
tinctive Gnostic mythographic system is now compared with all works of
ancient Christian literature in search of correspondences of content, espe
cially similarities of mythical structure (for the reasons stated in 14). This
comparison yields an expanded corpus of works; the exact membership of
this corpus is to some degree debatable, but the type of myth that it dis
plays seems to stand distinct within ancient Christian literature. Provision
ally, ten additional works are added to the corpus in this step; nine are
known from the Nag Hammadi hoard and a tenth can be recognized in an
Oxford manuscript, and they can be properly described as literary artifacts
of the Gnostics. Adding these ten works to the four registered in step 2 of
the procedure, a corpus of some fourteen works of Gnostic scripture is
accumulated. The method elaborated by Schenke needs further evaluation
and refinement, and at present its results (including the exact composition
of the corpus) are merely provisional
Provisionally the fourteen works are the following; The Secret Book According to
fobn {Apocrypbon of John), The Book of Zoroaster (excerpted in the longer version of
Layton: Prolegomena to the Study of Ancient Gnosticism 343

the Secret Book According to John), The Revelation of Adam (Apocalypse of Adam), The
Reality of the Rulers (Hypostasis of the Arcbons), First Thought in Three Forms (Trimor
Protennoia), Thunder: Perfect Mind (Thunder, Perfect Intellect), The Egyptian Gospel
(Gospel of the Egyptians), Zostrianus, The Foreigner (Allognes), The Three Tablets of S
(Three Steles of Setb), Marsanes, Melcbizedek, The Thought of Norea, and the untitled
text in the Bruce Codex.

The structure of the Gnostic type of myth also has striking parallels in Valentin-
ian mythography, just as Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 1.11.1) states that the Valentinian
bairesis derived historically from the Gnostic bairesis. But many aspects of Valentin
ian mythography are also significantly different from Schenke's Gnostic type of
myth, so that Valentinus and his followers can best be kept apart as a distinct muta
tion, or reformed offshoot, of the original Gnostics.

20. Step 4. Now this enlarged corpus of fourteen works is compared with
all ancient testimonia or summaries of esoteric Christian mythmakers, no
matter what sectarian name they bear in the sources. This time the goal is to
look for two things: first, distinctive parallels to the Gnostic type of myth
and cosmography; second, any references to the titles of the corpus of four
teen surviving Gnostic works that were not already registered in step 1. At
this point, several more testimonia are added, including Irenaeus's summary
of Satominus of Antioch, Epiphanius's so-called Sethians, his Archontics,
and the group called Audians by Theodore bar Konai. These can be called
the oblique testimonia, since they are not transmitted under the name of the
Gnostics, but nevertheless seem to refer to the Gnostics under other names.

21. Step 5. In the last step of the procedure, the "other names" registered
in step 4 (20) are assembled with the "other names' registered in step 1
(17), and compared with all surviving information about early Christian
sects called by these names, in order to collect additional testimonia, even if
this information does not agree with the distinctive Gnostic type of myth,
as represented in steps 3 and 4. The inclusion of information under names
other than Gnstikoi may mean that the result of the survey is a species
containing several varieties. It may, of course, also mean that the survey
contains some irrelevant data.

22. In the center of the Gnostic corpus is the Secret Book According to
John, which Irenaeus's summary explicitly assigns to the Gnostics. Around
the periphery are works, titles, testimonia, and names whose pertinence
will remain a matter of greater uncertainty. Each step of the procedure leads
to more comprehensiveness and less certainty.

23. If the proposed procedure is correct, then only data identified by these
five steps should be assumed to describe the Gnostics. Xjnosticism thus means an
inductive category based on these data alone (cf. 3-4). (Other data, and indue-
344 The Social World of tbe First Christians

tive categories based on different data bases, would have to be called by

some other name.)
24. The question is sometimes raised of why the self-designation "Gnos
tic* does not occur in the corpus of Gnostic writings (as opposed to the tes
timonial The answer lies in the fact that the name Gnostic was the name
par excellence of the members of the bairesis, their most proper name (6).
As such, its function was not to convey information about what they were
like, but rather to express their distinctiveness as a group; not to say what
they were, but who they were. The claim to supply (or have) gnosis was
absolutely banal, but the use of Gnstikos as a proper name was distinctive
(10, end). Now, the works in the Gnostic mythographic corpus are pseude-
pigraphic and mythic in literary character, disguising their real author, audi
ence, and place, date, and reason of composition. They do not speak of
second- and third-century school controversies (as do the testimonia of Ire-
naeus. Porphyry, or Epiphanius), but rather of primordial, eschatological,
and metaphysical events and relationships. In such compositions, there is
no context in which a second-century school name such as Gnstikos
might naturally occur. Thus, the absence of the proper name "Gnstikos" in
the mythographic corpus is not a significant absence.
In Gnostic mythography the enlightened religious person as a type is described
by other terms, which occur there as epithets (Le., as "less proper nouns than the
term Gnostic, 6): "the offspring of Seth," "the immoveable race," etc
On the basis of the Gnostic mythographic corpus, it is therefore impossible to
comment on whether or not the common-noun meaning of Gnstikos was vivid to
members of the Gnostic bairesis (cl 7[b]). Within some non-Gnostic circles, the
polemics of Irenaeus and the other heresiologists (7[c]), as well as Clement of
Alexandria's ad hoc adoption of the term gnstikos for his ideal spiritual type (7[d]),
must have heightened awareness that a claim to bestow knowledge ignsis) could be
implied in the common-noun meaning of the name Yet this says nothing about the
Gnostics' own conscious evaluation of their name.

Social History
25. Because of its pseudepigraphic character (24). the Gnostics mytho
graphic corpus cannot provide data for a social history of the Gnostics, that
is, a thick description of the bairesis over time. The historian has to depend
entirely on the meager direct (13) and oblique (20) testimonia, supple
mented by any information known about the textual transmission of the
mythographic corpus (region and language of transmission, scribal names,
etc). The testimonia include a great deal of information about Gnostics said
to be known (at least by hostile observers) under other names. To some
degree these names appear to be pejorative labels used by the enemies of
the Gnostics (e.g., Borborites, "filthies"); others may be self-appellations
Layton: Prolegomena to the Study of Ancient Gnosticism 345

used by offshoots or subgroups within the Gnostic movement; still others

may be the names of groups mistakenly included within the survey. In sum,
the term "Gnostic" may turn out to name a species containing several vari
eties. Ancient names for the Gnostics may have included Archontics, Bar-
belites. Borborians, Borborites, Coddians, Levites, Naasenes, Ophians,
Ophites, Phibionites, Satomilians, Secundians, Sethians, Socratites, Strati-
otics, and Zacchaei (Valentinians are purposely omitted from this list, cf.
19, end). At least some of these names, especially Borborites, were polemi
cal tags devised by enemies of the Gnostics.

26. A social history of the Gnostics has not yet been written. Provision
ally, the information of the testimonia may be summarized as follows. This
summary is not such a history, but it may serve to demonstrate the kind of
data that are collected by application of the procedure. Three points should
be noted. First, this data base is only provisional, subject to possible refine
ment and reapplication of the procedure that is described above. Second,
the rich data on the Valentinian bairesis. which developed out of the Gnos
tics ca. 150 CE., are not included here (testimonia on the later history of the
Valentinians have been collected by Koschorke). Third, Gnostics under all
their "other names known from the direct and oblique testimonia (25) are
simply called "Gnostic" in the following summary. This simplification prob
ably conceals important distinctions felt and observed at some level by the
ancient persons themselves.

(a) The Pre-Constantinian Period, before 325 CjE.

Before 325, Gnostics are noted in Antioch, Alexandria (?). Rome, and
probably Coptic-speaking Egypt The first to be mentioned are Satominus
(Satomilus) of Antioch (sometime before 155). and the Gnostics who influ
enced Valentinus, either in Alexandria or Rome. The Valentinian reforma
tion of the Gnostic bairesis occurs about 150, in Rome. The ascetic ethics of
Gnostic piety is noticed by Irenaeus: vegetarianism, celibacy, and (presum
ably) sexual continence: "[Satominus] says that marriage and the engender
ing of offspring are from Satan. And most of his followers abstain from (the
flesh of) living things" (Adv. Haer. 1.24.2). The mythography, Christology, and
soteriology of Gnostics (including the so-called "Satomilians") are attacked
in a flood of anti-sectarian publications. The translation of Gnostic litera
ture from Greek into the Egyptian language, Coptic, almost certainly
occurs before Constantines final victory.

(b) The Post-Constarainian Period, after 325 C_E.

The post-Constantinian evidence portrays a situation that has changed.
Now Gnostics are noted not only in the Greek-speaking East but also in
346 The Social World of the First Christians

Aramaic and Armenian linguistic areas. They are an element lodged within
non-Gnostic Christianity, both parochial and monastic. As such, they suffer
more and more violent forms of ecclesiastical persecution, which is now
backed up by the power of imperial Christian Orthodoxy and the Zoroas-
trian court of Persia. Gnostics are noted in Egypt (335 CE.), Palestine (350),
Arabia (among the Ebionites, 340), various parts of Syria (later fourth cen
tury to 578), Cilicia (340), Galatia (350), Constantinople (422), Lesser or
Byzantine Armenia (350), Osrhone (370 to 436), and Greater or Persian
Armenia (360 to 578). In Egypt, Epiphanius finds them "hidden within the
church." Peter the Archontic Gnostic is an ordained priest in the Orthodox
church, and later he lives undetected as an ascetic in Judean desert monasti-
cism. Fourth-century Gnostics use the canonical Old and New Testaments
allegorically to justify or disguise their views. Theodore of Mopsuestia (400
C.E.) considers them difficult to distinguish from non-Gnostics; while
Nestorius (422) is said to have found Gnostics freely attending Orthodox
services in Constantinople and even to have detected crypto-Gnostics
among the clergy of that city. The ascetic or monastic associations of Gnos
tics, already noted in the case of second-century Satornilian" Gnostics, are
attested from Epiphaniuss sojourn in Egypt about 335 down to the flight of
Persian Gnostic monks into Syria, about 570. The later phase of the ascetic
Audian movement uses the Gnostic Secret Book According to John and The
Foreigner, and teaches a creation myth based on these. Attacks on Gnostic
myth and scripture continue strong in the antisectarian literature. A public
debate is reported between a Gnostic and a non-Gnostic opponent in Cili
cia, about 340. In fourth- to sixth-century Orthodox sources, innuendo is
added to substance, and the Gnostics are mainly called Borborites or Bor-
borians, from Greek borboros, "filth," "muck"clearly a satire on the name of
Barbel or Barbr. the primary hypostatic aeon in Gnostic myth (the term
also evokes barbaros, "barbarian"). Together with this innuendo goes a slan
derous tradition alleging the existence of sexually promiscuous worship
services, which has its origins in the pre-Constantinian period. However,
the tenor of such stories is at odds with the asceticism of Gnostic piety and
with the participation of Gnostics in Orthodox Christian worship. The only
detailed report of Gnostic sexual rituals is given by Epiphanius; its veracity
is indeed a matter of dispute. And, of course, sexual innuendo about Chris
tian worship services of all denominations is centuries older than Epi
phanius.
With the gradual establishment of an imperial Christian Orthodoxy the
established religious party could more and more effectively take legal
measures against the Gnostics. Gnostics are "detected" within Orthodox
parishes and monasteries and are excommunicated, starting about 335 C.E.; a
priest is defrocked as being a Gnostic in 340; scripture manuscripts are now
in danger of destruction, as the burial of the Nag Hammadi hoard may sug
gest; Gnostics are forbidden by imperial law to build churches or conduct
Layton; Prolegomena to Poe Study of Ancient Gnosticism 347

services; their baptism is nullified (Syria, late fifth century); and their legal
testimony is declared universally invalid. The most violent persecutions
occur in Byzantine Armenia, where with imperial backing Bishop Mesrop
imprisons, tortures, physically mutilates, and exiles Gnostics (about 400). In
Osrhone, about the same time, Bishop Rabbula also exiles them, while in
northwestern Sassanid Persia at royal instigation they are persecuted and
forced to flee abroad (563-578).
Thus, the activity of the Gnostics, in parts of the Roman, Byzantine, and
Persian empires, is attested from the early second to the late sixth centuries
CE. Although their mythography is best known from apocrypha transmit
ted in the Coptic language (among those discovered near Nag Hammadi),
the original language of the bairesis was clearly Greek, and its scope, inter
national

27. Accidentally, only a few Gnostic teachers are known by name: Satum-
inus of Antioch (before 155 CE.); Adelphius, Alexander of Libya, Aquilinus,
Demostratus, Lydus, Philocomus (all before 251); Eutactus of Satala, Peter
the Archontic (both about 350); and possibly one Gnostic scribe, an Egyp
tian named Concessus Eugnostus (the copyist of Codex from the Nag
Hammadi hoard).

28. All ancient opponents of the Gnostics in both these periods, whether
Christian or pagan, treat them as a species of Christiana bairesis ('),
"sect,' "school of thought." However, the exact social relationship of Gnos
tics to non-Gnostic Christians is unclear. The surviving Gnostic mythogra
phyall of which predates Constantine's victoryshows certain features
that look in some sense to be exclusionary, a complex and distinctive myth
of origins; a strong expression of group identity; a special jargon or in-group
language; and talk about a Gnostic initiatory sacrament of baptism.
Pre-Constantinian testimonia do not necessarily tell us whether the Gnos
tics had separate parishes, or, rather, like the Valentinians of that period,
tried to exist undetected as a component of mixed congregations. Certainly
the post-Constantinian sources depict them as an unwanted element within
the established Orthodox church at large, though fourth-century Gnostic
missionary efforts are also recorded. Thus, although the Gnostics may con
veniently be called a 'bairesis, no precise sociological limitation of that
term is immediately obvious from the testimonia. Designations and
self-designations of medical and philosophical schools would provide very
pertinent comparative data for the further study of this question.

Intellectual History

29. An intellectual history approach to Gnosticism would have as its

main data the evidence of the Gnostics' mythography rather than the testi-
348 Tbe Social World of the First Christians

monia, because the mythic data provide extensive firsthand, completely

narrated structures, as opposed to very brief, secondhand, tendentious tes-
timonia recorded without context (14). The Gnostics mythography con
sists of multiple versions of a cosmogonic myth of origins, which is
reminiscent of Plato's Timaeus. Therefore this approach would situate the
various versions of the myth within the history of Hellenistic and late
antique Greek philosophy, including its orientalizing representatives such
as Philo Judaeus, Plutarch, and Numenius. The most obvious comparanda
are the interpretations and retellings of the Timaeus in the period from
Xenocrates to Plotinus. The obviously Platonist context of the Gnostics
mythography on the plane of intellectual history, goes hand in hand with
the Platonist context of the common noun gnstikos and the proper name
'Gnostic* (8-9) on the plane of lexicography. This helps us to understand,
at least in terms of school politics, how the Platonic technical term gnstikos
might have seemed appropriate as a distinctive proper name when it was
coined strange as it may have sounded-by the founder of the Gnostic
school of thought

substantial supplement, if used thoughtfully and critically, to the Gnostics

own mythography would be the works of Plotinus (especially Emtcads 3.8; 5.8; 5.5;
and 29 [nos. 30-33 in chronological order]) that were written in response to Gnos
tic myth The detailed assimilation of this Plotinian evidence has hardly yet begun.

Furthermore, because all ancient observers, whether Christian or pagan,

treat the Gnostics as a Christian bairesis (28). the intellectual history
approach would also situate the Gnostics' mythography within the develop
ment of Christian doctrines, Christian interpretations of the Bible (espe
cially Genesis), and, more generally, the Christian uses of myth. On the
functions of myth in ancient Christianity, see recently Wayne A. Meeks,
Inventing Christian Morality, passim.

APPENDIX; HENRY MORE'S COINAGE

of the Word GNosriasM' (3)

Henry More (1614-1687), the author of An Exposition of tbe Seven Epistles (1669),
stood in a learned tradition that exegeted the New Testament book of Revelation,
especially the seven letters to the churches of Asia (Rev 21-322). partly by refer
ence to Epiphaniuss lurid description of the Nicolaitans and Gnstikoi, two groups
that Epiphanius (Panarion 25-26) had equated. Among Mores sources was Henry
Hammond (1605-1660) (A Paraphrase and Annotation upon All tbe Books of tbe New
Testament [2nd ed. 1659]), whose work shows acquaintance with ancient Christian
heresiological literature and takes a broad view of Gnosticks* as a generic name for
all the Heresies then abroad* in ancient Christianity, emphasizing the moral deprav
ity of the 'Gnostick-heresie* (p. 878). More, writing English Protestant polemic.
Layton Prolegomena to the Study of Ancient Gnosticism 349

interprets the seven letters allegorically as signifying seven periods of church his
tory. In interpreting the church at Thyatira (Rev 2:18-29) he coins the term Gnosti
cism' with roughly the same generic meaning as Hammond's Gnostick-heresie:
This Woman of Thyatira [Rev 220], (whether the wife of the Bishop of Thy
atira. or some other Person of quality, for Interpreters of the letter vary in that)
according to the Literal sense, is described from her acts, as onely guilty of
pretending her self to be a Prophetesse, and that thereby she seduced the ser
vants of Christ to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed to Idols,
which is a chief point of that which was called Gnosticisme. (Exposition, 99)
He repeats the new ism word (with a slightly different spelling) in a polemical tract
against Roman Catholicism entitled Antidote Against Idolatry, which is printed with
the Exposition as an appendix (unpaginated):
[fo. Ol verso] 8. The truth is, most men are loath to be , to be
messengers of [fo. 02 recto] ill news to the greatest, that is to say, to the cor-
ruptest, part of Christendome; but rather affect the glory and security of being
accounted so humane, of so sweet and ingratiating a temper, as that they can
surmize well of all mens Religions; and so think to conciliate to themselves the
fame of either civil and good Natures, or of highly-raised and released Wits,
(though it be indeed but a spice of the old abhorred Gnosticism.) that can com
ply with any Religion, and make a fair tolerable sense of all. 9. But these are
such high strains of pretense to Wit or Knowledge and Gentility as 1 must con
fess I could never yet arrive to, nor I hope ever shall though I am not in the
mean time so stupid in my way, as to think I can write thus freely without
offence. And yet on the contrary, 1 can deem my self no more uncivil then [rie]
1 do him that wrings his friend by the nose to fetch him out of a Swound. 10.1
am not insensible how harsh this charge of Idolatry against the Church of
Rome will sound in some ears, especially it being seconded with that other [fo.
02 verso] of Murther. and that the most cruel and barbarous imaginable, and
finally so severely rewarded with an impossibility of Salvation to any now, so
long as they continue in Communion with that Church.
On More's life and works, see Encyclopedia Brittanica. 11th ed. (1911), s.n.

Annotated Bibliography

Ammann, Adolf. - bei Platon Ableitung und Bedeutung mit Matcrialsammlung.

Freiburg: Paulusdruckerei, 1953. Reliable account of derivation and meaning of
Greek adjectives in -(t)ikos.
Chantraine, Pierre. La formation des noms en grec ancien. Socit de linguistique de
Paris, Collection linguistique 38. Paris: Honor Champion, 1933. Pp. 384-96
(Drivs thmatiques en -). Best history of Greek adjectives in -(t)ikos.
-------. Etudes sur le vocabulaire grec. Paris: Klincksieck, 1956. Pp. 97-171 (Le suffixe
grec -).
Gero, Stephen. "With Walter Bauer on the Tigris: Encratite Orthodoxy and Libertine
Heresy in Syro-Mesopotamian Christianity.* In Gnosticism and Early Christianity.
350 The Social World of ibe First Christians

edited by Charles Hedrick and Robert Hodgson, 287-307. Peabody, Mass.: Hen
drickson, 1986. Oblique testimonia concerning "Borborite" Gnostics; many of the
data summarized above in 26 were collected by Gero.
Koschorke, Klaus. "Patristische Materialien zur Spitgeschichte der valentini-
anischen Gnosis." In Gnosis and Gnosticism: Papers Read at the Eighth International
Conference on Patristic Studies (Oxford. September 3rd-8th, 1979), edited by Martin
Krause. 120-39. Nag Hammadi Studies 17. Leiden: Brill, 1981.
Layton, Bentley. The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation with Annotations and Intro
ductions. Garden City. N.Y- Doubleday, 1987. Part I "Classic Gnostic Scripture*
(pp. 3-214). Annotated translations of some, but not all, of the Gnostic mytho-
graphic works; and some, but not all of the direct and oblique testimonia to the
Gnostics.
Meeks, Wayne A. The Origins of Christian Morality: The First Two Centuries. New
Haven; Yale University Press, 1993. Ancient Christian uses of myth.
More, Henry. An Exposition of The Seven Epistles To The Seven Churches; Together with
A Brief Discourse of Idolatry, wb Application to the Church of Rome. London; James
Flesher, 1669. Copy in the McAlpin Collection of Union Theological Seminary,
New York, New York. First appearance of the term "Gnosticism."
Schenke, Hans-Martin. 'Das sethianische System nach Nag-Hammadi-Hand-
schriften." In Studio Coptica. edited by Peter Nagel, 165-73. Berliner byzantini-
stische Arbeiten 45. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1974. Pioneering attempt to describe
a set of distinctive features defining a corpus of Gnostic mythography, which
Schenke calls the Sethian system"; cL step 3 of the procedure described above.
-------. "The Phenomenon and Significance of Gnostic Sethianism." In The Rediscov
ery of Gnosticism: Proceedings of the International Conference on Gnosticism at Yale,
New Haven, Connecticut, March 28-31, 1978. edited by Bentley Layton. Vol 2,
Sethian Gnosticism, 588-616 (and discussion, pp. 634-40, 683-85). Studies in the
History of Religions 41, voL 2. Leiden: Brill, 1981. Further elaboration of his "Das
sethianische System."
Smith, Morton. "The History of the Term Gnostikos." In The Rediscovery of Gnosti
cism: Proceedings of the International Conference on Gnosticism at Yale, New Haven,
Connecticut, March 28-31, 1978. edited by Bentley Layton, VoL 2, Sethian Gnosti
cism 796-807. Studies in the History of Religions 41, voL 2 Leiden: Brill, 1981.
Fundamental history of the common noun gnostikos
Von Staden, Heinrich. "Hairesis and Heresy; The Case of the baireseis iatrikai' In
Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, edited by Ben F. Meyer and E. P. Sanders. VoL
3, Self-Definition in the Greco-Roman World. 76-100. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982
Extremely pertinent information on various uses of the term hairesis in medical
school polemics.