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Voegelin's Antignosticism and the Origins of Totalitarianism

In the last half of the 20th century, a great deal has been learned about the religious phenomenon of late antiquity known as Gnosticism.¹ Prior to the extraordinary discovery of the Nag Hammadi library—a collection of Gnostic writings found in Egypt in clay jars in 1945—it was possible to hold to a single view, a caricature of Gnosticism, along the lines proposed by Hans Jonas.² By late 20th century, that simplistic characterization of Gnosticism (derived from its opponents of late antiquity, like Irenaeus and Epiphanius) as dualistic, anti-cosmic, pessimistic, and the like was largely discarded. Yet one still finds anachronistic...