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Page from the Gospel of Judas Mandaean Beth Manda in Nasiriyah, southern Iraq, in 2016, a contemporary-style mandi. Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek: γνωστικός, romanized: gnōstikós, Koine Greek: [ɣnostiˈkos], 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among early Christian sects.
The Brazen Serpent (illustration from a Bible card published 1907 by Providence Lithograph Company). Pseudo-Tertullian (probably the Latin translation of Hippolytus's lost Syntagma, written c. 220) is the earliest source to mention Ophites, and the first source to discuss the connection with serpents.
In Gnosticism the use becomes more technical, though its applications are still very variable. The Gnostic writers appeal to the use in the NT (evidenced in Irenaeus' account of their views and his corresponding refutation, Iren I. iii. 4), and the word retains from it the sense of totality in contrast to the constituent parts; but the chief associations of pleroma in their systems are with ...
The pleroma is the abode of the Æons. . . they are, or they comprise, the eternal ideas or archetypes of the Platonic philosophy. . . .Separated from this celestial region by Horos. . . or Boundary . . . lies the ‘kenoma’ or ‘void’—the kingdom of this world, the region of matter and material things, the land of shadow and darkness.
In many Gnostic systems, various emanations of God are known by such names as One, Monad, Aion teleos (αἰών τέλεος "The Broadest Aeon"), Bythos (βυθός, "depth" or "profundity"), Arkhe (ἀρχή, "the beginning"), Proarkhe (προαρχή, "before the beginning") and as Aeons (which are also often named and may be paired or grouped).
In some Gnostic systems, the supreme being is known as the Monad, the One, the Absolute, Aiōn Teleos (the Perfect Aeon, αἰών τέλεος), Bythos (Depth or Profundity, Βυθός), Proarchē (Before the Beginning, προαρχή), Hē Archē (The Beginning, ἡ ἀρχή), the Ineffable Parent, and/or the primal Father.
Gnostic Christian doctrines rely on a dualistic cosmology that implies the eternal conflict between good and evil, and a conception of the serpent as the liberating savior and bestower of knowledge to humankind opposed to the Demiurge or creator god, identified with the Hebrew God of the Old Testament.
A Gnostic cross is a cross symbol of Gnosticism, such as: Coptic cross, a Coptic symbol; Drabsha, a Mandaean symbol; Sun cross, a solar symbol; See also.