¿SAN PABLO CONTRA LOS GNÓSTICOS?

Abstract

The term Gnosticism was adopted
by Irenaeus to refer to certain teachings
that took shape throughout the
2nd century. Until recently, it was believed
that Gnosticism had emerged from Christianity,
however, recent evidence suggests
that there were Gnostic groups alien to
Christianity. So, it is relevant to question
the origin of these teachings. In order to
find it, it is necessary to start in the 1st century
looking for the precursors, for this we
will use Pablo's letters to define if there
are pregnostic elements in them that
could have helped the rise of gnosticism
during the 2nd century.
Within Gnosticism we can find a variety
of teachings inherited from other cultures
such as Iranian, Greek and Jewish,
although the major representatives come
from Christianity. The present article tries
to explain some of the main tendencies ofGnosticism to later analyze some pregnostic
elements that can be found in the first
two letters of Paul, as well as in the Paul´s
Gospel, likewise, it will be studied the way
that the Gnostics interpreted and used the
writings of Pablo.
In Paul’s letters we can find various elements
that can be interpreted as Gnostic
and anti-Gnostic and although it is supposed
that Paul initially intended to prevent
these teachings from continuing they were
later used by some Gnostics who used it to
say that he defended his teachings
by misrepresenting
his claims, it is also possible,
however, that Paul was not sure about some
of his own ideas about Gnosticism, because
it didn’t exist until the second century.