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There is an intriguing connection between magic and Gnosticism. Both Christian Gnostics and other heirs to Hellenistic Jewish Gnosis were committed to the study of astrology and what were known as magic arts and doctrines. Heretical Jews in Egypt envisaged the creator god as a snake producing the Nile flood and destroying the giants; in the second and first centuries BCE the Jews of the Leontopolite temple believed in the manifestation of God as a divine lion-headed man, a young god, a Son of God, whose name was Jaldabaoth. In the second century CE the Christians condemned these two heretical figures and developed new forms of Gnosis, which were described and again condemned by orthodox Christian heresiologists. The orthodox Christian Church came to identify the religion of the Gnostics with magic, and even now our concept of magic is strongly influenced by ancient Christian ideology concerning Gnosis.
Bibliography
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| Friedländer 1898 | Friedländer, Moriz. Der vorchristliche jüdische Gnosticismus. Patristische und Talmudische Studien. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1898. |
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| Neusner 1965-1970 | Neusner, Jacob. A history of the Jews in Babylonia. 5 Vols. Studia Post-Biblica 9.11-12, 9.14-15. Leiden: Brill 1965-1970. |
| Parpola 1993 | Parpola, Simo. “The Assyrian Tree of Life: Tracing the Origins of Jewish Monotheism and Greek Philosophy.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 52 (1993) 161-207. [JSTOR (requires subscription)] |
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Attilio Mastrocinque
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