2.30 John's Gospel of Knowledge
History in the Bible
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Gnosticism and the Second Temple Judaism
One theory is that Gnosticism was the end stage of a series of intellectual crises in second temple Judaism. After a brief period of delirious joy under the Persians, the Jews found themselves under the yoke of the Hellens. The expectations so aroused by books like First Enoch and Jubilee's had come to naught. By the early imperial period, few Jews believed that the hopeful apocalypse was imminent. This was the second intellectual crisis. Don't look for deliverance in this world, the Gnostics said. A spire for deliverancing in the next.
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