[Cronos]

A very interesting read on the first heresy

[SumProVita]

It is indeed an interesting read. Gnosticism is rampant among many today who reject aspects of Christianity that they do not like. What is that saying about there being “no new heresy?”

[Louis Foxwell]

Yes, excellent. The depth of research into ancient documents, only some of which are extant, is remarkable.

[don-o]

I love it. Very appropriate for this Sunday's Orthodox commeration of the Holy Fathers. If one goes to the sourced article, the links work to give more on, for example, the "Paulicians" whom I have seen represented recently on this forum. Sadly though, I predict this thread will receive little interest or comment from the sola believers. And, as a former one of those, I understand why that is.

[Uncle Chip]

Ah yes — Marcion, the founder of subsequent replacement theologies — erroneously believing that the New Testament Gospel replaced the Old Testament, rather than as Jesus said, fulfilling it.

[Larry Lucido]

Why is every third word a hyperlink? It makes reading it a pain in the @ss.

[bronx2]

What is a troubling aspect concerning the Gnostics is the lack of refutation to those who, in the last forty years, claimed that Catholicism/Orthodoxy hijacked Christianity in the first century at the expense of the Gnostics. In her famous work The Gnostic Gospels, which served as her PHD thesis at Harvard, Elaine Pagels ignored the the anti semitsm and misogyny of the Gnostics and attributes all blame for the problems of Chritainity on Catholicism.

One would think that the mega billions spent on Catholic colleges and universities in the last hundred years would have served as a platform to refute Pagels. Instead their was silence and non Catholic historians filled this void with refutation of her silly opinions. Finally in 2005 a Jesuit in Rome explained how Pagels had exercised academic fraud in the writing of her aforementioned seminal work. I can't understand how complicit the Church has been in allowing these attacks on Catholicism/Orthodoxy to go unanswered in the last forty years. Catholic educational institutions could produce Madonna, Lady GA GA and sexual misconduct but no refutation of those committed to destroy the word of God.

[Quix]

Thx for the ping.