solitary gnostics in the early church

[EverChanging]

Is there any good evidence that some gnostic practitioners in the early church worked on a solitary basis rather than in a communal setting like the orthodox church? This is a common claim online, but I haven't seen any sources. I'd be interested to know.

 

[wizanda]

How would you get records from individual Gnostics, unless they documented their own understanding.... Which would then most likely be grouped in with all the other Gnostic religious texts.

 

[jeager106]

How would you get records from individual Gnostics, unless they documented their own understanding.... Which would then most likely be grouped in with all the other Gnostic religious texts.

I should say that one could not get individual records unless written
and preserved in some manner like the Dead Sea Scrolls.

 

[Politesse]

Is there any good evidence that some gnostic practitioners in the early church worked on a solitary basis rather than in a communal setting like the orthodox church? This is a common claim online, but I haven't seen any sources. I'd be interested to know.

"Gnosticism" was just orthodoxy to a lot of people in those days, so I would be surprised if some Gnostics didn't find themselves isolated from time to time, as happens in any minority religion. But given the strong emphasis on apprenticeship in spiritual matters that we find in Gnostic texts, I'd wager their bishops didn't like it much. I have Rudolph's Gnosis on my shelf here (which is based almost wholly on the Nag Hammadi texts) and the general thrust here seems to be that aside from a willingness to ordain women, the social structure of a Gnostic church prior to Christianization was probably not much different from that of an "orthodox" house church. They had leaders, elders, catechumens, etc. But given how patchy our knowledge of early Christianity is, at all, it is not hard to imagine that any record of solo practitioners might have fallen through the cracks. Heresiologists complained that gnostics were too quick to assign priestly roles to laymen, so either that's just polemic or leadership was a bit more dynamic and adaptable in Gnostic circles.

 

[EverChanging]

I wonder why this claim is all over the Internet and even in books then, that some gnostics were probably solitary practitioners?

 

[Politesse]

I suspect because it fits with the modern narrative of antistructuralism; much that is described as "Gnostic" these days seems to be more a reaction against modern orthodoxy than the proto-orthodoxy of the ancients, such as it existed at all. The mystic character of much of the corpus makes it all the easier to read a modern progressivist narrative into it. As an anthropologist, I find such recolonization of the past unsurprising and unalarming. Those facing the seemingly all-powerful inertia of a state-sponsored civil religion often find solace in seeking the company of their ancient kindred, however they understand them, and looked at from the vantage of the persecution years, it's even fair. Modern Gnosticism may not be a carbon copy of 2nd c. Gnosticism. But I suspect the beleaguered Gnostics of the 4th century onward could have much sympathetic conversation about the perils of minority faith.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Is there any good evidence that some gnostic practitioners in the early church worked on a solitary basis rather than in a communal setting like the orthodox church?

This partly depends on your definition of Gnosticism.

 

[EverChanging]

This partly depends on your definition of Gnosticism.

Can you elaborate? I have not heard of any solitary religious practitioners in ancient religions except perhaps for hermits and some monks, but they were still part of communal religions. It seems to me solitary eclectic religions are a totally modern phenomena.