A welcome antidote to some of the misrepresentative nonsense of recent weeks:

If you've strained your eyes from rolling skyward after the recent torrent of blather and complete fabrication of the positions of scholarship – something akin to declaring that NASA's lead scientists affirm that the moon landing was faked – here is a considered, rational presentation of Gnosticism and Gnostic themes from one of the foremost scholars (a real, paid, professional academic, not just a paying-audience-member like me) in the field.  Dr. Birger Pearson was recently the guest speaker at the conclave of the Apostolic Johannite Church.  (You know.  One of those "neo-" Gnostic churches that's all new agey and stuff and doesn't read books.  Pay no attention to the PhDs and professional academic researchers and editors in the audience.  They must have wandered into the wrong meeting.)

Here are some salient and fortifying highlights.  Dr. Pearson states:

• "Gnosticism" is a legitimate term, as "Gnostic" is a self-descriptor that existed in the classical period, and both "gnosis" and "-ismos" are universally accepted phrases of that time.  "Gnosticism" therefore is the most logical name for what we're doing, and what we're talking about.

(Basically, if you're being told that "scholars agree that Gnosticism never existed", you're being lied to.  Gnosticism as genre, as aesthetic, as movement and above all as message, is extremely threatening to the world-view of some, and they'll throw any nonsense at you when threatened.)

• Gnosticism and Christianity are distinct movements and entities.
• Gnosticism arose from Judaism, and only later came into contact with Christianity.
• Apocryphon of John is a pre-Christian myth that was later Christianized via a frame-story.

(This latter point was the hypothesis of a paper of mine submitted for my doctoral studies in 2006, and Dr. Bruce Chilton didn't bat an eye.  However I received a great deal of "you don't know what you're talking about, all scholars dismiss this" hatemail when I  posted the paper online.)

His summary of the Gnostic world-view is succinct:

• Gnosis is a pre-requisite for salvation. 
• Gnosis is knowledge of the true nature of both humanity and divinity - two sides of the same coin.
• The human self is of divine origin, and to the divine it shall return

His use of the term "dualism" is highly qualified – used liberally rather than technically – citing the two characters of the transcendent God and the creator god; and the rift / fall resulting in the creation of the kosmos.  Pearson's dualism – Plato's dualism of idea and ideal –  is biased towards distinction, rather than the "irreconcilability" charge of neoheresiologists.

And that's just from the first half-hour.  It's good for what ails you.

From the Chick-tract rantings and misrepresentation of scholarship by literalists, fundamentalists, and anti-Gnostic propagandists, O Lord, deliver us.