When most people hear the word “Gnosticism,” they think of Christianity. They think of heresy. They think of the Da Vinci Code and conspiracy theories about the real Jesus.
What they are not told is this: Gnosticism started as a Jewish movement. Not Christian. Jewish.
In this episode, I explore the scholarly consensus that early Gnosticism emerged from Jewish communities in the 1st and 2nd centuries — triggered by the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. Out of that trauma, Gnostic speculation was born. These were Jews asking Jewish questions, using Jewish texts, and coming up with answers that mainstream Judaism found unacceptable.
We’ll look at how the God of the Old Testament became the villain in their story, the parallels between Gnosticism and early Kabbalah, and why this means the Talmud and the Gnostic texts are cousins — both reacting to the same problem: the rise of Christianity.
One warning: This episode gets uncomfortable. That’s probably why you haven’t heard it in Sunday School.
“Behold, the man has become like one of us.” — Genesis 3:22
