Note (return) — Chapter IV

It is uncertain whether we should think of the spread of these doctrines in Syria in the form of a school, or of a cultus; probably it was both. From the great Gnostic systems as formed by Basilides and Valentinus they are distinguished by the fact, that they lack the peculiar philosophic, that is Hellenic element, the speculative conversion of angels and Æons into real ideas, etc. We have almost no knowledge of their effect. This Gnosticism has never directly been a historical factor of striking importance, and the great question is whether it was so indirectly.339 That is to say, we do not know whether this Syrian Gnosticism was, in the strict sense, the preparatory stage of the great Gnostic schools, so that these schools should be regarded as an actual reconstruction of it. But there can be no doubt that the appearance of the great Gnostic schools in the Empire, from Egypt to Gaul, is contemporaneous with the vigorous projection of Syrian cults westwards, and therefore the assumption is suggested, that the Syrian Christian syncretism was also spread in connection with that projection, and underwent a change corresponding to the new conditions. We know definitely that the Syrian Gnostic, Cerdo, came to Rome, wrought there, and exercised an influence on Marcion. But no less probable is the assumption that the great Hellenic Gnostic schools arose spontaneously, in the sense of having been independently developed out of the elements to which undoubtedly the Asiatic cults also belonged, without being influenced in any way by Syrian syncretistic efforts. The conditions for the growth of such formations were nearly the same in all parts of the Empire. The great advance lies in the fact that the religious material as contained in the Gospel, the Old Testament, and the wisdom connected with the old cults, was philosophically, that is, scientifically, manipulated by means of allegory, and the aggregate of mythological powers translated into an aggregate of ideas. The Pythagorean and Platonic, more rarely the Stoic philosophy, were compelled to do service here. Great Gnostic schools, which were at the same time unions for worship, first enter into the clear light of history in this form, (see previous section), and on the conflict with these, surrounded as they were by a multitude of dissimilar and related formations, depends the progress of the development.340