The movement reached a high development in the century II. A. D. in schools Roman and Alexandria founded by C.1999. Scholars have attributed the origins of Gnosticism to various sources: Greek mystery cults, Zoroastrianism, Kabbalah of Judaism, and Egyptian religion. The primitive Christians regarded Simon Mago (acts 8: 9-24) as founder of Gnosticism. Its doctrine, as the other Gnostic teachers, had nothing in common with the knowledge of the mysteries of God that Paul called wisdom (1 Cor. 2: 7).

Christian leaders considered a subtle and dangerous threat to Christianity during the 2nd century, era marked by religious aspirations and philosophical concerns about the origins of life, the source of evil in the world and the nature of a deity to Gnosticism transcendent. Gnosticism was perceived as an attempt to transform Christianity into a religious philosophy and replace faith in the mysteries of the revelation, for philosophical explanations Agnes Cunningham, adds us, that Gnostic sects put his teachings into complex systems of thought. Characteristic of his position was the doctrine that all material reality is evil. One of their central beliefs was that salvation is achieved by releasing the spirit from its material prison. There were elaborate explanations of how that entrapment occurred and how should achieve the liberation of the soul. The transcendent God was taken from all of the matter by a succession of intermediaries eternal beings called eons.

These emanated in pairs (male and female); the complete series (usually 30) constitute the Pleroma, or fullness of the deity. Beyond the Pleroma were the material universe and human beings who will be saved. In Gnostic thought, there is a divine germ imprisoned in each person. The purpose of Salvation was to liberate this divine germ of matter that was lost. The Gnostics were classified people into three categories: (1) Gnostic, or insurance of salvation, because they were under influence of the spirit (pneumatikoi); (2) not fully Gnostic, but susceptible to salvation through knowledge (psychikoi); and (3) those so dominated by matter, which could not be saved (hylikoi). The Gnostics often practiced an excessive asceticism, because they believed that thus they were freed by the spirit. In its Christian version, Gnosticism has basic principles: to) the spirit of the man, consubstantial with the divine being, is a prisoner of matter and longs for his release. (b) it has need of a Redeemer who will give true knowledge (gnosis) of your origin and your destination. (c) that knowledge is the true salvation. (d) a cosmogony based on broadcasts by couples from being perfect and through a complicated terminology containing elements as varied as pythagoreanism, Hermeticism and astrology source. (e) a theology based on the allegorical exegesis of the New Testament. (f) all within a context of elected or initiates who have already got the knowledge, while others remain mired in ignorance. Original author and source of the article.