urce of divine power--namely, 'the depth' of all being." Pagels, 44.
The name gnostic was applied to the sect by the gnostics themselves, Pagels, xviii-xix.
as a way of describing the content of their view of spiritual Christianity and what could be called a minority report of a world view that differed sharply from the evolving institutional and doctrinal character of orthodoxy. To discuss how Gnosticism evolved in the Christian era is inevitably to discuss the evolution of Christianity as well. It appears to have begun as a sectarian spiritual movement that was both parallel to and in an important sense competitive with the movement that was eventually to be defined as orthodox Roman Catholicism. Authorities assign the growth and challenge of Gnosticism as a type of religious alternative to orthodoxy mainly to the second century A.D./C.E. Ibid., passim; Green, 109.
Green's investigation of gnosticism as a sociological phenomenon concludes that Valentinian Gnosticism may have started as a sectarian movement but that its texts are evidence of a relatively coherent attempt to institutionalize the legitimacy of its doctrines by means of standard forms of worship, despite the lack of a formal organizational structure. Henry A. Green, "Ritual in Valentinian Gnosticism: a Sociological Interpretation," Journal of Religious History 12 (December 1982): 111-12.
Gnostics are identified chiefly by texts reflecting a religious point of view that differs from that of mainstream or majoritarian Christianity. Until the second century, when orthodox doctrine began to be institutionalized as such, gnostic thought appears to have been a rival line of thought that was taken seriously by various factions of the post-apostolic church. Pagels cites some commentaries that consider gnosticism as actually pre-Christian (not including Judaism). A number of contemporary commentators say that gnosticism has Jewish and Hellenistic intellectual roo...