The desert monks were 1) not gnostics and 2) were imitating some of the Hebrew prophets, the Essenes, and John the Baptist—and, yes, Our Lord. He was a gnostic? He certainly lived a celibate life, living to early middle-age unmarried.
Yeah, right, the Gnostics used the same justification for their celibacy you use, the Hebrew prophets and Jesus. Apples and oranges. Peter had a wife, the Apostles weren’t forbiden to have wives. The RCC is loaded to the water line with pagan and Gnostic notions.
You won’t accept this of course, since it is a Baptist scholar who said it, but here goes:
“Because gnosticism ultimately spread throughout the ancient world to become one of the most compelling philosophies of the first several centuries AD, it is natural that it exert a subtle influence upon orthodox Christianity. There can be little doubt that the contempt for the flesh which resulted in the asceticism, celibacy, and monasticism of the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD can be laid squarely at the feet of Gnostic influence.”