Note 359 — Chapter III · THE ORIGIN OF GNOSTICISM

Among modern German archaeologists Winckler and Jeremias have pushed the effect of this “astral theory” of the universe beyond all limits. Their position is at once exposed and refuted by Rogers in The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, 1908, pp. 212 to end. Yet such a view of the universe as is given in the text was undoubtedly held by many during the six centuries here treated of, and can be seen as it were underlying most of the religions of the time. That it had its origin in Babylonia seems most probable. See Cumont, Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans, 1912, pp. 1-26, and authorities there quoted.