DeConick A.D

5
INTRODUCTION
and sacrifice. Humans were freed from slavery to the gods. They were
liberated from the tyranny of the gods and their human ambassadors, the
kings. The true God of worship is a transcendent god of love who desires
nothing more than reunion and integration with us.
This new countercultural orientation toward a transcendent God and
the divine power of the human altered religion’s traditional purpose and
challenged religious convention in dangerous ways. Since the individual
person is no longer viewed as a mere mortal created by a powerful god
to do his bidding, to offer obedience and submission, the traditional postures
of worship are turned upside down by the Gnostics.
Since ancient people believed that offending the gods and neglecting
their laws would result in divine retribution, natural disaster, and civil
unrest, the Gnostic message was forbidding to most people in antiquity.
It was transgressive. It was countercultural. It threatened the very fabric
of their society and the maintenance of civil order. What I realized as I
studied the Gnostic literature is that the Gnostic scriptures didn’t become
forbidden scriptures. They were forbidden scriptures.
The Dirty Word Gnosticism
In the forty years since the publication of The Gnostic Gospels many new
developments have taken place in the field of early Christianity (Rudolph
1983; Layton 1987; Couliano 1992; Williams 1996; King 2003; Markschies
2003; Logan 2006; Pearson 2007; Brankaer 2010; Brakke 2011;
Denzey Lewis 2013; Broek 2013). Since the publication of books by
Michael Williams (1996) and Karen King (2003), many scholars of early
Christianity have come to view the terms Gnosticism and Gnostic with
suspicion. Many scholars have become reluctant to use the terms at all,
arguing that they were pejorative terms then and remain so now and
that it does us no good to continue to use them. Gnosticism was not an
ancient religion, and we should stop using the term because it limits our
ability to see the full constellation of ancient Christian movements without
prejudging them or prejudicing our analyses of them. The Gnostics,
they say, were Christians, and we should discuss them under this rubric,
not the Gnostic one.
This disenchantment with the Gnostic label is trendy right now in academic
circles. It got its momentum from the rise of postmodern critical