THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

This was accomplished at ground level, by an assault upon the very preconditions for
phenomenological certainty. This tradition, clearly manifest and maintained in
Alexandria, found its way into the very pith of Hellenistic Gnosis which was as
contemptuous of the Stoic world-view as were the earlier Skeptics in Alexandria. 82
Again, for proof of this we turn to a patristic account of Carpocrates of Alexandria:
They (Carpocrates and his followers) say that conduct is good and evil only in
the opinion of men... through faith and love are (men) saved. All other things
are indifferent, being accounted now good, now evil, according to the opinion of
men.
Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. I,25.4-5 83
A little further, Irenaeus affirms the philosophical link we are positing:
They call themselves gnostics. They have also images, some painted, some too
made of other material, and say they are the form of Christ made by Pilate in
that time when Jesus was with men. These they crown, and they set them forth
with the images of the philosophers of the world, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle,
and the rest.
Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. I,25.6 84
It was not my intent to burden the text with an extended discussion of this affinity,
however the relativism of Carpocrates is highly reminiscent of the Sophists Gorgias
and Protagoras as Jonas has remarked. 85
The implicit relativity of both developments
on this trajectory is acute, with the difference being that the Gnostic philosopher has
developed a metaphysic to explain this relativity. Whether this philosophical aspect of
Gnostic thought owes its inception entirely to the earlier advent of the Greek
82
Both movements were to suffer persecution for their stand. The persecution of the Gnostics
is well-known; by the fourth century their works were being burned in Egypt, mere
possession made a criminal offense under Roman law. There is a strong similarity here in
the earlier Greek resistance to the Sophistic movement. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement,
164-65: “This tradition [Sophistic atheism] was coupled with another according to which a
whole series of prosecutions for impiety (asebeia) were brought against the exponents of
such views – Protagoras, Socrates, Phidias, Anaxagoras, Euripides and Theodorus are all
mentioned, and in a number of cases prosecution was said to have resulted in exile or even
death. In the case of Protagoras tradition declared that the book in which he wrote
concerning the gods was ordered to be burnt in public. It is probable that there is some
exaggeration and even some degree of fiction in all this. But the evidence can hardly be
dismissed as a whole.”
83
Foerster, Gnosis: A Selection of Gnostic Texts, vol.1, 37-38.
84
Ibid., 38.
85
Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion (1958; reprint, Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), 272, on the
above passage from Carpocrates: “While this reminds one of nothing more than the
reasoning of certain classical Sophists, a deeper Gnostic reflection upon the source of such
“human opinions” transforms the argument from a skeptical to a metaphysical one, and turns
indifference into opposition: the ultimate source is found to be not human but demiurgical,
and thus common with that of the order of nature.”