after you get zapped with holy ghost powers like the evangelists on TV... who say "Hoo WA bah jag oho door woo mew shah." they obviously have something going for them. Lil. have you ever seen them do that on television? Lil. right before they offer the miracle water for purchase and screaming black women claim they got 20,000 dollar check in the mail after they bought their miracle water. Lil.
Edit: Now that I've had three seconds to look this up... you can find some information on <gasp> Wikipedia, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Gnosticism
Gnosticism taught that the world of matter is evil: its creator is not, therefore, a high, good god, but an inferior being. Man, to be saved must be free from this bondage to the visible world, and its spiritual rulers. The means of his freedom is knowledge (nosies), a mystical spiritual enlightenment.
Gnosticism found much in Christianity that it could use. Christ was accepted as the reveal er of the hitherto unknown high and all-perfect God, the higher saving knowledge. But, since the material world is evil, Christ would not have had a real incarnation?he was merely an apparition, an apparent birth from a virgin mother, Paul?s writings were twisted so that he taught Gnosticism?he was accepted as the chief apostle of their doctrine. Tradition points to Simon Magas (Acts 8:9-24) as the founder of ?Christian-Gnosticism.?
Gnosticism was an immense peril to the church as its god was not the god of the Old Testament, and (in their view) Christ has no real incarnation, death or resurrection. The peril was the greater because Gnosticism was represented by some of the keenest minds in the church of the second century.
(It was against the teachings of Gnosticism that the early Post-Apostolic Church defended itself; there was, as yet, no Trinitarian Doctrine. The first and early second century Christians were believers in one God who was one Person manifested as the Father; as Jesus, the Son of God; and as the Holy Spirit.).
I'm not sure that it is really documented anywhere. After all, the epistles of John were written largely to counter the growing "cult" of gnosticism. I'm not sure you'll be able to trace this to a specific list of names, however, if you can pick up a bible study on the epistles of John and/or a good commentary on them, it will probably give you some leads to run down.
"Whereas Gnosticism was considered by some scholars to originate as a heretical branch of Christianity, alternate theories have proposed traces of Gnostic systems existed some centuries before the Christian Era.[11][unreliable source?] Gnostic sects may have existed earlier than the First Century BC, thus predating the birth of Jesus.[12] The movement spread in areas controlled by the Roman Empire and Arian Goths[citation needed], and the Persian Empire; it continued to develop in the Mediterranean and Middle East before and during the second and third centuries."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism
~
There was no one founder of Gnosticism as a movement.
Gnosticism is a term created by scholars to describe a variety of cults with an obsession with gaining mystical knowledge. There was never a formal gnostic church despite the misleading impression some pro gnostic scholars have created with their "gnostic bibles".
Each sect and cult had a different founder.
Frankly from what I've read most of these Gnostic cults and their members seem to have been the Roman Empire version of New Age fluffy bunnies into self empowerment.
Christian gnosticism did not have a single founder. Its ideas were borrowed from a number of similar "mystery" cults such as Mithraism, the cult of Tammuz and the Eleusinian Mysteries, then combined with mystical interpretations of Jewish and Christian ideas. No one person stands out as the "founder". Early Christians considered Simon Magus (Acts 8) the founder, but this is likely legend. Valentinus was instrumental in its development, but again, not the founder.
Gnosis is a "natural sequence of mental evolution" as shown below. The founders as such may never be identified.
"the tenets of the Gnostic sects also become clear. Each of these sects was founded by an Initiate, while their tenets were based on the correct knowledge of the symbolism of every nation. Thus it becomes comprehensible why Ilda-Baoth was regarded by most of them as the god of Moses, and was held as a proud, ambitious, and impure spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of the highest God, though he was no better, and in some respects far worse than his brethren Elohim; the latter representing the all-embracing, manifested deity only in their collectivity, since they were the fashioners of the first differentiations of the primary Cosmic substance for the creation of the phenomenal Universe......... "
"The Alexandrian Gnostics have sufficiently divulged the secret of initiations, and their records are full of ?the sliding down of AEons? in their double qualification of Angelic Beings and Periods: the one the natural evolution of the other. On the other hand, Oriental traditions on both sides of the ?black water? ? the oceans that separate the two Easts ? are as full of allegories about the downfall of Pleroma, of that of the gods and Devas. One and all, they allegories and explained the Fall as the
Vol. 1, Page 417 THE ANGELS SLANDERED.
desire to learn and acquire knowledge ? to know. This is the natural sequence of mental evolution, the spiritual becoming transmuted into the material or physical. The same law of descent into materiality and re-ascent into spirituality asserted itself during the Christian era, the reaction having stopped only just now, in our own special sub-race......."
"But if the able and learned author of the ?Gnostics and their Remains? has not sufficiently allowed for the Spirit of allegory and mysticism in the fragments translated and quoted by him, in the above named work, from Pistis Sophia ? other Orientalists have done far worse. Having neither his intuitions perception of the Indian origin of the Gnostic Wisdom still more than of their ?gems,? most of them, beginning with Wilson and ending with the dogmatic Weber, have made most extraordinary blunders with regard to almost every symbol."
Who founded Gnosticism?
