No Longer Jews: The Search for Gnostic Origins (review)

No Longer Jews is a densely written scholarly work with a compelling title. In the book, Carl Smith seeks to show that Gnosticism, a school of thought known primarily as a heresy of the early Christian church, had its origins in the Jewish community of Egypt shortly following the tragic events of the revolt under Trajan, 115–117 c.e. While Smith presents some interesting evidence for his conclusion, he ultimately fails to present a cogent picture of the origins of Gnosticism.

What defines Gnosticism, according to Smith, is an “anti-cosmic dualism,” which presents the God of the Hebrew Bible (i.e., the Creator of the World) as an evil demiurge who acted in opposition to the Highest God or Redeemer. In the Gnostic view, the Hebrew Bible represents the teachings of this evil creator whose goal is to lead humans astray rather than lead them to salvation. While many texts of this period have been deemed “Gnostic,” Smith believes the term properly applies only to those teachings that have anti-cosmic dualism as a central feature.

Smith places himself among those scholars who believe Gnosticism developed from within Jewish communities. He concludes that Gnosticism relies heavily not only on Jewish sources (mainly the Hebrew Bible) and motifs (with parallels in apocalyptic literature of the Second Temple period and thinkers such as Philo), but also on interpretive methods current among Jews of that time and place (Alexandria). Smith cites the critique that has been raised against those arguing for a Jewish origin of Gnosticism: “The key objection . . . is that there are no Jewish precedents for the deliberate inversion of Jewish values, that the Jewish material is so often used in such a radically anti-Jewish way that the notion of its arising within Judaism is neither provable nor credible” (p. 43). Smith believes it is possible to understand this inversion when we examine the revolt under Trajan and its aftermath for the Jewish (and Christian) communities in Egypt. Smith argues that the revolt provided the impetus for such a radical break with Jewish tradition.

Chapter 3, a historical reconstruction of the revolt under Trajan, will likely be of great interest for Jewish readers. Smith tries to bring together all of the evidence available regarding the causes, the course, and the effects of the revolt on the Romans, the native Egyptians, and the Jews and Christians living in Egypt. Smith asserts, “The Jewish revolt under Trajan is relatively well documented in ancient history” (p. 73). This may be true regarding other historical events of the period, yet there is a significant lack of Jewish sources related to these events—especially when compared with those available concerning the other two Jewish revolts.

According to Smith, Judaism and Christianity were not easily distinguishable in Egypt in the late first and early second centuries. “By the second half of the first century, it is highly likely that Christianity had a significant presence in Egypt, albeit of a strong Jewish flavor” (p. 240). Gnosticism, in Smith’s final analysis, may have come from alienated Jewish intellectuals or from Jewish-Christians, two groups that were likely similarly affected by the devastating events of the revolt under Trajan.

Smith (in chapter 4) sets out to examine Gnosticism from the works of Christian heresiologists. He believes that these are more significant for historical reconstruction than the Nag Hammadi codices, primary sources of Gnosticism that date from a later period. The choice of Christian heresiologists presents its own challenges, of which Smith is aware. One problem he does not cite is the problem of using sources critical of Gnosticism to investigate Gnosticism itself. It is not clear to me to what extent these Christian writers correctly present the teachings they criticize in their works. Nobody knows what sources the heresiologists had available—writings of most of the teachers they cite are not extant. Smith does help by showing the connections (“rare and fortunate instances”) when such exist between the works of...