en the two powers, and make it
possible to assert the absoluteness of Christianity.--But the
significance of the Old Testament in the religious history of the world,
lies just in this, that, in order to be maintained at all, it required
the application of the allegoric method, that is, a definite proportion
of Greek ideas, and that, on the other hand, it opposed the strongest
barrier to the complete hellenising of Christianity. Neither the sayings
of Jesus, nor Christian hopes, were at first capable of forming such a
barrier. If, now, the majority of Gnostics could make the attempt to
disregard the Old Testament, that is a proof that, in wide circles of
Christendom, people were at first satisfied with an abbreviated form of
the Gospel, containing the preaching of the one God, of the resurrection
and of continence, a law and an ideal of practical life.[305] In this
form, as it was realised in life, the Christianity which dispensed with
"doctrines" seemed capable of union with every form of thoughtful and
earnest philosophy, because the Jewish foundation did not make its
appearance here at all. But the majority of Gnostic undertakings may
also be viewed as attempts to transform Christianity into a theosophy,
that is, into a revealed metaphysic and philosophy of history, with a
complete disregard of the Jewish Old Testament soil on which it
originated, through the use of Pauline ideas,[306] and under the
influence of the Platonic spirit. Moreover, comparison is possible
between writers such as Barnabas and Ignatius, and the so-called
Gnostics, to the effect of making the latter appear in possession of a
completed theory, to which fragmentary ideas in the former exhibit a
striking affinity.

We have hitherto tacitly presupposed that in Gnosticism the Hellenic
spirit desired to make itself master of Christianity, or more correctly
of the Christian communities. This conception may be, and really is
still contested. For according to the accounts of later opponents, and
on these we are almost exclusively dependent here, the main thing with
the Gnostics seems to have been the reproduction of Asiatic
Mythologoumena of all kinds, so that we should rather have to see in
Gnosticism a union of Christianity with the most remote Oriental cults
and their wisdom. But with regard to the most important Gnostic systems
the words hold true, "The hands are the hands of Esau, but the voice is
the voice of Jacob." There can be no doubt of the f