Gnosticism in BotNS

David Stockhoff · 09 Apr 2009, 17:46 · from 2009-April.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:46:32 -0400
Subject: (urth) Gnosticism in BotNS
In-Reply-To: <mailman.10625.1239291967.12296.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
References: <mailman.10625.1239291967.12296.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
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The clarification is not inappropriate. Although I'm not sure where the idea comes from that people think Zoroastrianism is dualistic. Most people have never heard of it. "Manichaean," however, is a synonym for "dualistic."

Manichaeism (Manichean Zoroastrianism) was at least as common as traditional Zoroastrianism by Roman times and was famously dualistic, and was a strong influence on early Christianity and the Christian gnostics, just as non-gnostic and non-dualistic Zoroastrianism was earlier an influence on Judaism. 

That was my point. Traditional Zoroastrianism itself has nothing to do with the topic. 

Lane's clarification is even more apropos. I had no idea I had stumbled into a hotbed of non-Christian religionologists. I won't dumb it down nest time. But I have used "gnosticism" in the very general layman's sense reflected in Lane's comment that Wolfe pirated a number of obscure beliefs. A number of beliefs may be described as "gnostic." 

It is impossible to characterize gnosticism as a uniform belief system, and I don't intend to try. (Nor am I only interested in Christian gnosticism.) I think it's more useful to refer to a set of beliefs, motifs, images, and symbols as "gnostic" and leave it at that.

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Message: 2
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 19:08:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: brunians at brunians.org
Subject: Re: (urth) Gnosticism in BotNS
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <10678.67.142.130.16.1239232090.squirrel at brunians.org>
Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1

> > Gnosticism was influenced by Zoroastrianism, which is Manichaean, so it's
> > certainly dualistic.
>   

This is a popular idea, but not a true one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism

Zoroastrianism is, in fact, the oldest of what are called the monotheistic
religions.

Wolfe is aware of this. Latro is a sworn follower of the Great King who is
(not coincidentally) a follower of the One True God.

This, of course, has nothing to do at all with the discussion of
gnosticism in the BotNS.

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