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1. Definition and typology. Gnosis designates both an essentially non-Christian religion of redemption in late antiquity, represented in various associations, and the central concept of that religion, which appeared more or less at the same time as primitive Christianity and spread over Samaria, Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, Italy, North Africa, etc.. Gnosis soon came in contact with Christianity, and made use of its doctrines in strange exaggerations and distortions. This form of Gnosis, beside which …

Gnosticism, a category which is often applied very inconsistently, mostly designates the Gnosis rejected by the early Church (sometimes called “Christian Gnosticism” and often summed up by the misleading term of “Christian Gnosis”). Gnosticism is sometimes used for early forms of Gnostic thinking, including then very often the pagan Hellenistic Gnosis which had remained apart from Christianity. The term is even used at times to designate the whole phenomenon of the Gnosis of late antiquity. Stru…

1. Introduction. Mandaeism is the religion of the Mandaeans, a Gnostic baptist sect which still survives in Southern Iraq and South-western Iran (Chusistan) with perhaps 5000 members. The name which they use of themselves, mandāiā, from mandā, “knowledge”, means “Gnostics”, while the older term by which they described themselves, nasorāiā (Nasoraeans) means “Observants”. The ambiguous term Sabeans (baptists) which is found in Moslem literature from the Koran on ( Sura, 2, 59; 5, 73; 22, 17) may possibly refer to the Mandaeans (among others), who are known at the present day as subba (b…

1. Introduction. Manichaeism is the religion founded by Mani (Manes, Manichaeus; Μάνης, Μανιχαῖος; Syriac, Persian and Arabic: Mani). Mani was of the higher Parthian nobility, born in A. D. 216 in Babylon, where his father, Patik, joined a baptist sect (called in Syriac the menaqqedē, in Arabic al muġtasilah, "the washers", possibly akin to the Mandaeans). Mani also adhered to the sect in his early youth. Inspired by divine revelation, which he received according to the legend at the ages of twelve and twenty-four, he began to preach in 240 a…