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| | Gnosticism [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-31) |
 | | The error of Sophia, which is usually identified as a reckless desire to know the transcendent God, leads to the hypostatization of her desire in the form of a semi-divine and essentially ignorant creature known as the Demiurge (Greek: dêmiourgos, "craftsman"), or Ialdabaoth, who is responsible for the formation of the material cosmos. |
 | | The Gnostics, in their reading of Scripture, acknowledged no such debt; for they believed that the Hebrew Bible was the written revelation of an inferior creator god (dêmiourgos), filled with lies intended to cloud the minds and judgment of the spiritual human beings (pneumatikoi) whom this Demiurge was intent on enslaving in his material cosmos. |
 | | The Gnostic Idea or Notion was not informed by a philosophical world-view or procedure; rather, the Gnostic vision of the world was based upon the intuition of a radical and seemingly irreparable rupture between the realm of experience (pathos) and the realm of true Being, i.e., existence in its positive, creative, or authentic aspect. |
| www.utm.edu /research/iep/g/gnostic.htm (8278 words) |
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