The Analysis about “Gnosis”、“Gnostics” and “Gnosticism” on A Discrete Perspective

Abstract

Due to the limited retention of ancient documents, scholars at home and abroad have not defined the concepts of "gnosis", "gnostics" and "gnosticism", but have stirred up many controversies. The idea of "gnosis" was born in the Jewish groups at the beginning of the 1st century AD. Its appearance is the result under the combined effect by a variety of factors of the Jewish nation, and is a special product of that discrete age. "Gnostics" contain both the knower and believers about gnosis, but hadn’t contain unified doctrine and institutionalized church, so there is no so-called "Gnostic Religion". "Gnosticism" is a philosophical term which has obvious speculative features, such as ambiguous and revolutionary , and has a far-reaching influence on the western spiritual world from the philosophical level.