Why scholarship struggles to change people’s minds: an analysis and reflection on the history of the term “Gnostics” and “Gnosticism” in the Encyclopedia Britannica

Proviso and acknowledgments: Before beginning this paper, I would like to explain why I have delved on this topic and my indebtedness to other people on this project. I have had an interest for some time in how the popular perception of religion continues to affect scholarly discussion. My large working hypothesis is that while scholarship is separate from the general populace, when scholarship tries to “meet the public” they do so to their own demise. Further, not only do they challenge their own field, they do it needlessly. Scholars being overly affected by ideas of isolationism and irrelevance (probably from reading too many books such as Victor Davis Hanson’s Who Killed Homer?), then try to “meet the people half way.” These types of discussions are insulting to a mass audience who does not believe that they are incapable of understanding complex ideas. Further, it forces scholars to present poor scholarship (as it is only “halfway”). Scholars cannot expect real paradigm shifting in thinking to occur if they do not give the popular understanding the information for the shift. As long as the long held stereotypes are allowed to continue, no scholar should be surprised that their work in an academic setting that challenges those stereotypes are not followed. Secondly, I argue that scholars are not as detached from the popular view of things as they wish they were. Getting back to the “meeting half way” analogy implies that very thing – scholars are accepting many popular perceptions (some good and some bad) that affects their work. Therefore, scholarship finds itself still holding on to those same clichés and categories that they only begrudgingly allowed for the “mass audience” to be the sounding board for everything they are doing. The relationship between the two is dynamic and important for the history of ideas. As a sidebar, when I use the term “popular” here, I am not necessarily speaking of masses versus intellectuals. I merely mean when publishing books and articles that are geared toward a general audience rather than works where it is expected that the audience are specialists. All of that stated is a working hypothesis. I am not certain that the above is true or provable. However, the relationship between the “popular” and the “scholarly” is something that needs to be evaluated. I am working on a much larger project than this one on the way church history is presented in surveys of church history for university students (with the idea that this is where the two meet). This project is working on how the term Gnosticism has been written by scholars and understood by people in the popular encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Britannica. I consider this particular example because it is a well known authority written for the mass audience that has a decent history. I also consider it because Concordia librarian Judy Anderson was able to obtain photocopies of the term over the various editions of Britannica from its first edition in 1768 to the last one in 2012. Finally, as to the discussion below, I must thank my good friend Alex Kocar, Ph.D. Candidate (ABD) at Princeton University for continued discussion about the category “Gnosticism” and its persistent problems in the current milieu of scholarship of religion.

 For the past two decades (since the 1996 publication of Michael Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism:” An Argument for Dismantling a Problematic Category) scholars have challenged many of the old clichés attached to the term Gnosticism. Williams argued for the abandonment of the term altogether. Karen King, following Williams’s idea wrote to question most all of the traditional tenets of the category in her 2003 book What Is Gnosticism?. Many other scholars have not written such aggressive “calls to action” for the academy as a whole, but have quietly agreed that the category “Gnosticism” is not very helpful and instead studied texts from Nag Hammadi without its constraint.[1] Most scholars are happy to admit that any category that tried to encompass The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Truth, as well as the works of Marcion is sloppy at best. If there is any commonality among the three, it is not very obvious when looking at the actual texts. However, the category has persisted. Some, like David Brakke in his recent work The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity, have continued using the term while at the same time trying to be more careful with it. Others, like Ismo Dunderberg in Beyond Gnosticism: Myth, Lifestyle, and Society in the School of Valentinus, have maintained the category without realizing it. While they have put the quotation marks around Gnosticism, they have not done anything differently. For instance, Dunderberg compares Valentinian tradition with other Valentinian texts. He does not consider the relation to those which are not in the category and thereby allows himself to remain in the category without realizing it. The discussion has led to an interesting problem – it seems not to matter whether one supports or refutes the term Gnosticism, as long as it is studied as a type of phenomenon of its own little changes. This article argues that the reason for the persistence of this category (either in ideology or in action) is based upon the stubborn popular category of Gnosticism which is framed in a Linnaean monothetic taxonomy. So long as that popular category remains in the state that it does, scholars will never be able to move beyond it. This argument is exemplified through an analysis of one avenue of popular knowledge, The Encyclopedia Britannica, over the course of the last several centuries.

Popular categories cause scholarly categories to persist. To understand how popular terms and categories persist, take as a case study Tomoko Masuzawa’s interesting argument about the development of the term “world religions.”[2] The term is confusing and Masuzawa shows that the term was originally coined to contrast with “national religions” which were not “universal” in the way that Christianity was universal. Rather, they were localized to specific cultures and therefore were not important enough to compare with Christianity. This lead to originally four world religions: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Paganism. The idea was that all other religions were housed in Paganism for the sole reason that they were polytheistic and therefore could not truly be compared with Christianity. Throughout Masuzawa’s argument, she shows that the term has now come to encompass most all religions making the term effectively pointless. If “world religions” means simply the “religions that are in the world,” the word “world” is redundant – I would hope that we are not investigating religions from other planets. However, the term is something that is a necessity in the English language and thus it persists. Most adherents do not know what the term exactly means, but this is less important than the built in category in their thinking. Scholars might try to slightly shift the term to “World’s Religions” to make themselves feel better, but it only is acceptable because the layman will skip over the possessive and read “world religions.” I should make clear here that I am not speaking of some mob of angry townspeople ready to burn a scholar who challenges the term; rather, people demand it in the way that they demand that people use complete sentences in the newspaper. They have a term in their mind that they are expecting and it is very difficult to switch to something else without convincing them rationally that something needs to be done.

The term “Gnosticism” is suffering from the same fate as that of “world religions.” It is a prevalent term that culture rhetorically uses. The category might change – both in how it is characterized and what exactly it is called, but the term will stubbornly persist. This is best displayed in the 2012 Britannica where Michael Williams, the very scholar whose work Rethinking “Gnosticism” began the process to abandon the category, is forced to use the category simply to argue that it is not very helpful.

Karen King’s work, mapping the intellectual history of the term, fails to change anything except to make the academy aware of its roots. King shows that the term, first being used by Henry More (1614-1687), developed in a variety of formats with differing discussions, but a single motivation – to distinguish the movement from Christianity. However, her conclusion challenges scholars to look more carefully at the phenomena and challenge many of the ideas of Gnosticism. However, as long as the category persists and the scholar’s position is relegated to the “questioning elements of it,” the popular perception of the term will persist as it always has.

Popular history of the term

In order to show what the popular term is, here follows a description how the term has been treated in the Encyclopedia Britannica. In the first edition of Britannica in 1771, there was an entry on “Gnostics” which was written the following passage:

Gnostics, in church history, Christian heretics so called, it being a name which almost all the ancient heretics affected to take, to express that new knowledge and extraordinary light to which they made pretensions; the word Gnostic signifying a learned or enlightened state.[3]

The entry has at its core, the name “Gnostic” being the key description for a people. It is argued that the people chose the name in order to understand themselves as distinct from Christians. This very brief entry does not provide many other elements to it except that it provides a type of “extraordinary light” which could frankly mean quite a lot of things. The importance of this first entry is simply that it was defined to be other than Christianity. This is the sole distinction that King argues is the basis for the term. At this point, it seems as if her view is correct.

If one moves to the second edition, the entry was developed and expanded slightly in 1780. This second entry first has the paragraph from the first edition, but then adds a second paragraph where its source is cited – Epiphanius. It then has a brief description of the people. It describes a very brief description of some type of higher heaven and then moves to what matters for its own consideration:

All the Gnostics distinguished the creator of the universe from God who made himself known to men by his son, whom they acknowledged to be the Christ. The denied that Word was made flesh; and asserted that Jesus Christ was not born of the Virgin Mary; that he had a body only in appearance, and that he did not suffer in reality.[4]

The description of the pleroma (the term itself not being used) is rather brief. Instead of discussing this, it spends its time discussing the role of Christ and how it is different from Christianity. The interest, then, is similar to that of the first edition – to show how it is distinct from Christianity while being a distinct sect which was organized around the name Gnostic.

The third edition in 1797 expanded the entry significantly to try to give a far more full description of the group. First, it is seen still as a clear group:

The name is formed of the Latin gnosticus, and that of the Greek ginosko “I know” and was adopted by those of this sect, as if they were the only persons who had the true knowledge of Christianity. Accordingly, they looked on all other Christians as simple, ignorant, barbarous persons who explained and interpreted the sacred writings in a too low, literal, and unedifying figuration.[5]

Here, the description of the group, has changed though. The group is first and foremost assigned to making mistakes based on bad exegesis of texts. This is continued later on in the article: “…but [Valentinus] shows the general principles whereon all their mistaken opinions were founded, and the method they followed in explaining Scripture.”[6] This new emphasis on scripture is explained by a description of their borrowing so heavily from the Platonic world.

The entry in the third edition has a more complex view of them as heretics – they are considered far more closely to the fold of Christianity; however, bringing them in closer (discussion about scripture, the nature of Christ, the view of creator, and ethical standards) actually makes them farther away than some group who had a name that was alien to Christianity. It in fact seems that nearly every heresy possible was pushed on to this group. We have already seen the description of their interpretation of scripture. The next point to be discussed is the denial of the resurrection of the body: “Their persuasion that evil resided in matter, as its centre and source, made them treat the body with contempt, discourage marriage, and reject the doctrine of the resurrection of the body and its re-union with the immortal spirit.”[7] What is noteworthy in this passage is not that it depicts the group has thinking of the material world as evil – this was a relatively common trope until twenty years ago. What is striking is why this discussion is developed – so it could push them into a heresy that was well known from the fourth to the sixth century in the Origenist crisis – the issue of the resurrection of the body.

To further paint the group as one of arch-heretics, the entry argues that the group believed in both subordinationism and docetism. Consider the following passage:

The Gnostics considered Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and consequently inferior to the Father, who came into the world for the rescue and happiness of miserable mortals, oppressed by matter and evil beings; but they rejected our Lord’s humanity, on the principle that every thing corporeal is essentially and intrinsically evil; and therefore the greatest part of them denied the reality of his sufferings.

Here the entry shows its own bias most profoundly. Usually “docetism” is explained by trying to protect the divine from suffering. However, subordination is also trying to protect the same thing. It is therefore likely that the author provides both in order to simply paint the figures with as much negative imagery as possible. Following this discussion is a discussion of their ethics which are opposed to the norm (using the patristic author’s slander of libertine behavior along with ascetic denial). This entry, then is not as interested in them as a group as much as it is interested in them as every type of heresy that can be conceived in the first several centuries of the church.

This entry went unchanged until 1856 in the eighth edition. It is also the first time that the entry is under “Gnosticism” rather than simply “Gnostics.” It further is the first time that an author is listed – John Tulloch. Tulloch’s argument here is less that they are the arch heretics of the third edition. Rather, Tulloch argues that the group is above all syncretistic:

Gnosticism, in its different heretical forms, sprung out of the mixture of Oriental and Hellenic elements of culture with Christianity towards the close of the first, and throughout the second century. In one and all of these forms it may be said to represent the systematic attempts made by the prevailing religious philosophies to understand Christianity, and adapt themselves to it. Refusing to accept it in its simple historical character, in its simple majesty of divine truth, and having in it these respects no affinity, these philosophies could not yet help recognizing in Christianity a sublime spiritual power of which they must give an account. They sought, therefore, to find, from their own point of view, a theosophic meaning in it, and to bring it into alliance with their own wild and fantastic schemes of cosmogony.[8]

This entry is the first one to try and create a religious world – it discusses the key questions that were trying to be solved – the origin of life and the origin of evil. It considers the doctrines of matter, the Immortal father, the pleroma, Demiurge, Archons, Sophia, as well as considering key figures commonly housed in the movement  such as Basilides, Marcion, Valentinus, Saturninus, Tatian, and Bardaisan. There is even an aside about Mani and his similarity. However, the real development is the development of two “schools of thought” in Gnosticism – the Alexandrian and the Syrian. The idea of this is that given that the category (and at this point it is a category with a variety of groups in it) is syncretistic, the Syrian is the one which combined Christian and “oriental” philosophy whereas the Alexandrian combined Christianity with Greek philosophy.

In describing each of these doctrines as well as each one of these figures, Tulloch goes through painstakingly to prove how they have combined elements of the truth with those of foreign philosophy. This is the first time King’s essential hypothesis is challenged. Here it does not seem that the figures are primarily seen as other to the church as heretics in one way or another, they are instead characterized more as what might be considered the heterodox – those who understand the power of Christianity, just fail to understand it as unique.  The reader should note how this shift occurred and that the popular notion of the category shifted dramatically (in fact, question can arise whether it is precisely the same category as what was described above), but the category still persisted without question.

Tulloch edited his entry for the 9^th edition in 1875 and what is important to recognize is how he shifted it – he revised his thesis as well as providing examples of how the syncretism fully developed. First, Tulloch argues, “Gnosticism [is] a general name applied to various forms of speculation in the early history of the church.”[9] The concept of speculative theology as that which is introduced through the syncretistic means is his primary argument.

One dramatic change however, is how Tulloch considered the movement’s syncretism as not heretical. He argues,

The more advanced writers of the preset day refuse to recognize Gnosticism as a heresy, or to speak of the Gnostics as deserters from the Christian Church. And they are right so far. The Gnostic schools were always so far outside the church. They were not heretical, therefore, in the ordinary sense.[10]

However, to make this argument, he does have to show whence any of the ideas came as it was parallel at least with the church. To do so, he says that this was because second temple Judaism had brought this along on its own. Judaism was syncretistic and, in his mind, fully Gnostic. He uses the evidence of Kabala to show how Hellenistic philosophy and Zoroastrian religion made its way into Judaism and this led to the creation of the category Gnosticism with its wild speculations. He then goes through the same doctrines and figures as before and attempts to argue why they are merely a syncretism with the speculation of a pantheism and Hellenistic philosophy.

This 9^th edition of Britannica shows that the category has once again changed radically – so much so that it is worth questioning whether it would even be describing the same phenomenon. It has shifted from being a Christian heresy, to Christian heterodoxy, to now a Jewish/Zoroastrian/Hellenistic amalgam with Christianity being only the poor victim of bad circumstance. This is something that should have outraged the public, but likely this was not the case as the concept of speculation persists for the next 100 years of consideration.

In 1910 Wilhelm Bousset rewrote the entry to echo the argument of Tulloch that it is a syncretistic movement as mystical in nature. However, Bousset argues that it is ultimately a mystical religion which forced the church to create a hierarchy and organization. When one reads carefully through Bousset’s article, it is clear that his primary argument (behind some of the very good description he has – in many ways descriptions far closer to modern ones than we have seen thus far) is anti-Roman Catholic polemics.

To begin the entry Bousset puts it in perspective next to the Catholic church, “Gnosticism [is] the name generally applied that spiritual movement existing side by side with genuine Christianity, as it gradually crystallized into the old Catholic Church, which may roughly be defines as a distinct religious syncretism bearing the strong impress of Christian influences.”[11] The primary reason for this was his second key characteristic – that of mysticism and secret knowledge. As he felt Gnosticism emphasized revelation more than speculation, the movement led to secret knowledge:

These little Gnostic sects and groups all lived in the conviction that hey possessed a secret and mysterious knowledge, in no way accessible to those outside, which was not to be proved or propagated, but believed in by the initiated, and anxiously guarded as a secret…In short, Gnosticism, in all its various sections, its form and its character, falls under the great category of mystic religions, which were so characteristic of the religious life of decadent antiquity.”[12]

This is the first time the concept of mysticism has been included in the discussion of Gnosticism. It is in this sense that Bousset argues it is syncretistic. He argues that Zoroastrian, Persian, Hellenic, Oriental, Babylonian, and monistic tendencies are found in Gnosticism as they are all mystical.

What is striking is that this is the first time sacraments are mentioned as being an element of Gnosticism. This description is not a flattering one for Bousset as he sees sacraments as simply another type of mysticism that is to be avoided preserved in the Catholic Church:

The Gnostic religion also anticipated other tendencies. As we have seen, it is above all things a religion of sacraments and mysteries. Through its syncretistic origin Gnosticism introduced for the first time into Christianity a whole mass of sacramental, mystical ideas, which had hitherto existed only in its earliest phases. But in the long run even genuine Christianity has been unable to free itself from the magic of sacraments.[13]

As one can see, Bousset opposes anything mystical in the church and blames Gnosticism for developing it. He further criticizes the church by suggesting that it was only this Gnosticism which corrupted the church into an organization:

Finally, it was Gnosticism which gave the most decided impulse to the consolidation of the Christian Church as a church. Gnosticism itself is a free, naturally-growing religion, the religion of isolated minds, of separate little circles and minute sects…This freely growing Gnostic religiosity aroused in the Church an increasingly strong movement towards unity and a firm and inelastic organization, toward authority and tradition.[14]

The thesis of this entry then is that Gnosticism is primarily a mystical religion which forced the church into some corners it should not have entered. One should once again note the striking contrast with everything that was considered up to this point.

In 1963, Gilles Quispel rewrote the entry in order to reverse the thinking of Gnosticism. He argues that it is its own religion, developed from a type of Judaism, which then adopted some aspects of Christianity into it rather than the other way around. Quispel argues that the Dead Sea Scrolls show some affinity with the idea of Gnosticism. However, he argues that the key determining difference to Gnosticism is not syncretism or speculation but rather: “Though it is not always easy to distinguish Gnosticism from Greek philosophy and the Christian religion, it has certain characteristics of it s own which are alien to Greek or Christian tradition, such as the deprecation of the cosmos and the rejection of atonement.”[15]

Quispel argues that the key determining factors of Gnosticism is personal revelation based upon a pre-Christian Jewish matrix rather than syncretism from other places: “These conceptions are expressed in various myths, which have used material from many oriental and Greek religions, but serve to express a basic experience which is new, the discovery of the unconscious self or spirit in man which sleeps in him until awakened by the Savior.”[16] He then follows with the argument that the category is one that has three fundamental tenets: 1. No atonement is necessary in the system, 2. They denied the reality of the creation as God’s creation, 3. Annulled the unity of the human race by dividing it into classes.[17] This is a striking difference from what has come before in the discussion of the category.

Robert Grant, in 1974 presented a type of maximalized entry for the next edition of Britannica. He followed Bousset in arguing that it was the primary cause for the development of the church as organization (while editing out Bousset’s value judgements about this) combined with the syncretistic idea of the previous century while at the same time trying to uphold the mystical side of Gnosticism based on the “divine spark” within humanity. He even went as far back as the early ideas that these worked in the fold of Christianity, but did so based on allegorical exegesis that led to their expulsion. To see the confusion Grant is forced into, he has a brief conclusion that “concludes” very little:

The basic question, as Jonas pointed out, is “what is Gnosticism?” But it must be answered in modern times by asking “what was Gnosticism?” The subject under discussion, whether or not alive today, is a phenomenon of the past, and therefore the problems of origins, sources, and possible development need to be considered as well as the problem of definition. With Jung, Jonas, and others, one finds the goal in an understanding of what gnosis and Gnosticism were as differentiated from their sources and even their influences. It is not enough to call Gnosticism “the acute Hellinization of Christianity” (Adolf von Harnack) or to trace its ingredients to Greek or Oriental ideas without explaining how and why men found it meaningful. It arose in age of syncretism, but it was not merely syncretistic. It was not precisely Greek, Jewish, or Christian, though elements of all existed in it. To a greater degree it was an anti-Greek, anti-Jewish, anti-Christian movement; in the 2^nd century, and in Manchaean form still later, it captured for a time the imaginations of such theologians as Basilides, Valentinus, and Augustine.[18] 

Unlike the previous entries where they simply changed the category aggressively, Grant does not change the category as much as he is unwilling to do much with it at all. He essentially is fixed as saying “it is nothing easy, but don’t ask me what it is.” It should be noteworthy that this strange, in some ways non-entry was accepted as reasonable.

Finally, Michael Williams’s current article on Gnosticism shows how a category can persist and be used in ways no one thought possible. Williams’s article is an argument against the category itself, yet it has to use the category to do so. In interest of full disclosure, Mike Williams was my graduate advisor for my Master of Arts program at the University of Washington and I find myself agreeing with most all his views on these sorts of ideas (I’d love to pretend that I came to these conclusions independently from his having the authority to pass me or fail me, but as we are molded by the people we surround ourselves with, a more honest approach is to simply admit the influence).

Williams begins by giving a very brief description of what might be considered a definition of “Gnosticism.” He then moves forward to describe a general type of myth based upon the Apocryphon of John that might be considered “Sethian” and a general type of myth that might be considered “Valentinian.” Williams is careful to point out that these myths have differences among them and the myths do not fall into the old clichés as might have been expected. He further argues that many of the texts often ascribed to the category have nothing at all to do with the myth and do not fit (the classic example of this is the Gospel of Thomas which is merely a sayings collection of Jesus and has no narrative at all – much less advanced mythology).[19]

Aside from the argument whether Williams is correct or not, the more important element is how the category is used. Throughout the history of Britannica’s entries, the category went from a sect of people using a common name, to a syncretistic Christian heresy, to a speculative philosophy, to a mystic religion, to a pre-Christian Jewish religion, to eventually not being a category at all. What is striking is not only how aggressively this changed, but that a publication such as Britannica was fine with the change. Britannica bases itself on sales and therefore, if they are find changing the status of the term to this extent, then the readership must also be fine with it. A further striking element that the silence supports is the complete lack of recognizing earlier views. Williams’s article is an exception in that he has no choice but to recognize what came before in order to challenge it. All of the rest of the entries change things aggressively and say nothing to anyone that this is something very new and out of line with the previously held thought. It seems that nearly anything is permissible for the description of Gnosticism so long as there is one.

Consequences and argument for why this discussion is helpful

To understand why these changes have taken place (and eventually why the scholarly world struggles to make any type of significant change for a sloppy category such as this), it is necessary to understand categories. Jonathan Z. Smith has argued that the Linnaean system of categorization has put the field of religion in a crisis that cannot be satisfied if we continue to use the taxonomy that a monothetic Linnaean taxonomy creates.

Linnaean taxonomy is the common logic developed by Carl Linnaeus to classify biological organization. It is an inverse pyramid that works from the most general down to the most specific. There are domains, kingdoms, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. Each species is unique. It is considered monothetic in the sense that when it finally gets down to the level of species, there is only one single difference between different species in the same genus. For instance, one species of insect might be the same as another species with the only difference being the number of hairs on its legs. It becomes so specific that each biological entity must have every one of the characteristics of the category, or else it simply does not comply.[20]

Most people in the world have not studied Linnaeus or biological taxonomy. However, people tend to think in this matter (the same way people tend to think in terms of Baconian philosophy without realizing it). People can easily assume that a category is a definition – that all things in a category are “the same.” While most people are willing to accept that there is variation, the persistence of the category seems to suggest something about this Linnaean idea. While not everything has to be the “same,” the understanding is one the side that they are similar with differences rather than different with similarities.

The Encyclopedia Britannica is the paradigmatic example of the persistence of a category. Without categories, the encyclopedia cannot be organized. People are not encyclopedias, but they think in the same way – they need the general category. While it is easy enough to see how people can think in this way while being ignorant, it is more shocking to see how scholars have perceived the conclusion of Mike Williams’s book. They nearly always quote the one passage from the conclusion where he allows for comparison. In order to create comparison, he suggests there could be a very broad category that is not definitive of “biblical demiurgical myths.” Most, like Karen King have read that as suggesting that Williams does not want to do anything differently, he only wants to change the name of the category.[21] It seems that most people have missed Williams’s point and are still stuck in the idea of categories as Linnaean objects – which Williams has been historically opposed to saying.

The second problem with categories in a Linnaean taxonomy is that differences are emphasized among close partners. For instance, if there are two species that are very close to one another in proximity (supposing only one difference – therefore in the same genus), then what will be emphasized if one is only studying one of the species is that difference. However, I do not think many people would start by discussing an insect with the number of hairs it has. Instead, they would discuss the much more common elements. The same can be said of Gnosticism. If the category is based upon its relation to Christianity, all of the things it has in common with Christianity are likely going to be silenced in order to look at the differences.

Karen King’s argument that Gnosticism has been a category of the “other” in scholarship does not take seriously enough the place that popular understandings of the same has affected it. Looking at her analysis of the development of the term, history of religions school, the different styles of understanding the term after Nag Hammadi, and her conclusion suggesting future studies shows a type of surprising continuity rather than fluctuation in characterization. She rightly points out that the premises of the study have changed (for instance some are most interested in relation to church history, others in early sources, others in typology) but when it comes to actual characterization, they are relatively consistent in seeing Gnosticism as an “other.” This other then is a category in itself, insofar as all the diversity in the world, as long as they are considered from the angle of inside/outside will not be appreciated. This leads her to unfortunate conclusion that no matter what we call the thing, we will go about our business as usual doing things in a relatively similar manner. King’s argument, actually makes much more sense in the context of the popular view of taxonomy than in her intellectual history of the idea in the academy.

If there is one theme in the popular perception of Gnosticism is that it needs to be “the other.” The sketch that King presents of scholars on the same topic is not nearly as clear on that particular front (at least not as clear as she would seem to like it outside of the philosophy of hierarchy presented by Foucault). But in the popular Encyclopedia, until the year 2012, this is precisely what happened. It did not seem to matter as much what they called Gnosticism as long as they defined as different from something (in some cases Christianity, other cases Judaism, and in the one wild example of Bousset “true Christianity” in contrast to Catholicism). This is always what scholars present as “the very basics for the public” but in so doing, then make their entire field as suggesting “well, it’s not really like this” rather than educating the populace correctly in the first place. 

This leads to the final question for the scholarly world – is it really just for the sake of the popular conception that a category is maintained? There is an entire field of study that is Nag Hammadi and related texts. These scholars have their own meetings at national gatherings of religion rather than simply meeting in a 2^nd century Christianity group. The argument is that the challenge of these texts make it so that specialists want to work together. However, has not been the trend to challenge many of these ideas? Perhaps the best audience for a paper on the Apocalypse of Adam would be one which was quite familiar with The Shepherd of Hermas. So long as there is an isolation in the study, the category will continue – even though many scholars will belie its existence. The intense specialization might not be so difficult to get beyond and the absurdity of having to use a category to say it does not exist can finally be abandoned.

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[1] For a recent example, see Lance Jenott, The Gospel of Judas: Coptic Text, Translation, and Historical Interpretation of the ‘Betrayer’s Gospel’ (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011).

[2] Tomoka Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

[3] “Gnostics” Encyclopedia Britannica; Or, A Dictionary of Arts and Sciences Compiled Upon a New Plan in which the different sciences and Arts are digested into distinct treatises or systems, vol. II (Edinburgh: Society of Gentlemen in Scotland, 1771), 724.

[4] “Gnostics” Encyclopedia Britannica 2^nd Edition vol. 5 (Edinburgh, 1780), 3336.

[5] “Gnostics” Encyclopedia Britannica 3^rd edition, vol. 7 (Edinburgh: A. Bell and C. MacFarquahr, 1797), 798.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] John Tulloch, “Gnosticism” Encyclopedia Britannica 8^th Edition, vol. X (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1856), 686.

[9] John Tulloch, “Gnosticism” Encyclopedia Britannica 9^th Edition, vol. X (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1875), 700.

[10] Ibid., 701.

[11] William Bousset, “Gnosticism” Encyclopedia Britannica, 11^th Ed., vol. XII (Cambridge: Unversity Press, 1910), 152. 

[12] Ibid., 153.

[13] Ibid., 157.

[14] Ibid., 158.

[15] Gilles Quispel, “Gnosticism” Encyclopedia Britannica 14^th Edition, vol. 10 (Chicago, London, Toronto, Geneva: William Benton, 1963), 453.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid., 454.

[18] Robert Grant, “Gnosticism” The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 15^th Edition, vol. 8 (Chicago: William Benton, 1973), 219

[19] Michael Williams, “Gnosticism,” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/236343/Gnosticism> .

[20] Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), introduction.

[21] King, What is Gnosticism?, 168 and 214.