Pistis Sophia

Pistis Sophia — G. R. S. Mead — Section 18

a frown of disapproval from the world of science and letters. The present Introduction, however, is only concerned with the purely historical and critical side of the subject, and even this is restricted to the consideration of one document. Though it would be highly presumptuous to endeavour to define Gnosticism without a previous analysis Tj^e and classification of the various schools, sects method of and offshoots which have been grouped under Gnostic this vague heading, we may nevertheless venture doctors, to suggest the probable point of view which led the best of the Gnostic doctors, pre-eminently Valentinus, to compile their various treatises. Let us then consider the movement about the year 150 a.d. By that time the original Logia or the Urevangelium of Christianity had disappeared, and the Synoptic Gospels were all set in the framewoi'k of the traditional life of the great Master of the Faith. The popular tidal-wave of the new religion had come exclusively from the ocean of Jewish tradition, and was engulfing a more universal view of Christianity in the same Hood of intolerance and exclusiveness which had characterised the Hebrew nation throughout the whole of its previous history. This startling phenomenon was now attracting the attention of minds which were not only skilled in the philosophy of the schools, but also imbued with the eclectic spirit of a universal theosophy and a knowledge of the inner doctrines of the ancient religions. Such men thought that they saw in the Christian Gospel a similarity of doctrine and a universalism which was consanguineous with these inner teachings of the ancient faiths, and set to work to endeavour to check the exclusive and narrowing tendencies which they saw so rapidly developing among the less instructed, who made faith superior to knowledge, even to such an extent as to openly condemn every other form of religion and scoff at all philosophy and education. XXIV INTRODUCTION.