Gnosticism - fairy tales or Truth?

If truth - please give facts authors, dates and places bearing in mind the time the nosies gospels were written, I believe some considerable time after death of Christ and the completion of the New Testament. Why is this?

Gnosticism was around long before Christianity, and some speculate that it may have been a heresy of Judaism. The gnostic gospels were written after the canonical gospels because it took a while for the Gnostic's to hear of Christianity, to read the canonical gospels, and to counterfeit their own.

Well, there are many different kinds of Gnostic's. Which ones were you interested in?

Basically most gnostic sects were corruptions of Christianity. The Arians, the Cathars, the Manicheans, just to name a few.

Gnostic gospels were written over many many centuries. They all have some truth. But their basis is keeping the truth hidden. Spiritual enlightenment through hidden knowledge - or nosies.

The man, if I recall correctly, considered to be the first "gnostic" (long before the term ever came to be) is Simon the Magus (sorcerer) - found in the Book of Acts. He was a magician and he wanted the power the Apostles had. So he pretended to convert. I believe his defeat comes in the umbilical Acts of Peter.

OK, i found it. See the link below.

The Essenes were gnostic Jews that believed in personal revelation. The teacher that the New testament Jesus is based on was the Essene Teacher of Righteousness mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Many gnostic teachings were purged from Christian teachings by Saul of Tarsus when he developed his Mystery School version of Christianity. The final blow was at the Council of Nicaea, when the state sectioned, newly empowered Romanized, "Universal" or "Catholic" Church was able to declare gnostic teachings as heresy purging as many gnostic teachings as they could.

Mr. Mato is on target on this and I confirm his comment. Christian Gnosticism began in Essene Judaism. The Essenes were 1 of 4 branch of Judaism that existed in the first century BCE (Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots, and Essenes). The Essenes were mystics and ascetics. John the Baptist is portrayed as an Essene in the Bible. The Essenes had prophetic scripture about a spiritual messiah. The Biblical Jesus seems to be a legendary prototype of a person who may have been an Essene teacher who was executed by the Roman govt. in the first century BCE. What came to be known as Gnosticism was very varied. The Dead Sea Scrolls exemplify *some* of their literature and were probably copies of earlier written texts that were hidden (like a time capsule) in the desert to keep them from being destroyed by persecutors of Gnostics. Some may be older than the standard Gospels and many have presumably been destroyed and lost, in fact. Some Gnostic texts appear to be Christianized versions of Hermetic texts (the Corpus Hermeticum and NeoPlatonism emerged at the about the same time in history as Gnosticism and Christianity). Ophites and Valentinians were active Gnostic sects among others existing in the 1st century CE. Valentinus almost became the Bishop of the Church but was excommunicated instead. The Orthodox Christian Church ultimately took over as mainstream Christianity and Gnosticism, which wanted to be a mystical sect of Christianity in the way Essenism was a mystical sect of Judaism, was vilified--along with every other religion or philosophy.