It is only after their return from exile in Babylon in 538 BC that we can speak of Judaism for the Jews of Judea. The temple was rebuilt, which allowed the return of sacrifices offered, hymns or psalms sung, and the celebration of the main pilgrimage festivals. But there were also prayer meetings, devotional readings, meditations and instructions, known as synagogues, which later came to designate this building where people met. From the proclamation of the Law by Ezra (Neh 8:1 - 9:37) around 400 BC, Judaism took on a particular color, for obedience to the Law of Moses (the Torah) became a primary obligation for the Jew, a corollary of acceptance of the one God. But it was during the Maccabean struggle under Jonathan (around 145 BC), according to the Jewish historian Josephus, that different schools of thought concerning the Law appeared: the first group was called Pharisees, the second group was called Sadducees, and the third group was called Essenes. Our knowledge of these groups depends very much on Josephus, and we must therefore be careful in our interpretation of his words which simplify a more complex reality. First, we can be sure that the differences between these three groups were of no importance to many Jews. Second, their differences were on a broader scale than those we might consider purely religious.

1. Religious groups and their relationships
   1. Sadducees

      The Sadducees probably had their roots in the Sadducean Temple priesthood. They seem to have emerged as a distinct group in the Maccabean period, remaining identified with the Jerusalem Temple priesthood while others turned away from it. The Sadducees were increasingly part of the ruling Hellenized aristocracy, supposedly having little in common with the people. We know little about them and later rabbinic writings portray them polemically.

   2. Essenes

      The Essenes probably arose out of opposition to the evolution of the Temple after 152 BC. They would have been Hasidic or pious people who had joined the Maccabean revolt (1 Mac 2:42), partly because of the Syrian practice of replacing the Sadducean high priests, and who felt betrayed by Jonathan and Simon, the brothers of Judas Maccabeus, who had accepted this honor from the Syrian kings. What we know of the Essenes has been greatly enlarged by the discovery, from 1947 onwards, of scrolls or fragments of some 800 manuscripts near Qumran, on the shores of the Dead Sea, since, according to the majority, these documents come from an Essene settlement at this site which stretches from 150 BC to 70 AD. According to the Essenes all things are determined by fate and all human beings are guided either by the Spirit of Truth or the Spirit of Perversity. The "Master of Justice" could have been a Sadducean priest who led these Hasidim into the desert where the ancient Israelites were purified at the time of Moses. Despising the Temple now presided over by those who, in their view, were evil priests, the Qumranians formed the New Covenant community, seeking to become perfect through an extraordinarily strict practice of the Law (interpreted for them by the Master), and awaiting an imminent messianic coming by which God would destroy all iniquity and punish their enemies.

   3. Pharisees

      The Pharisees are a secular group, and their name means: the separated ones. Although they were not priests, they also came to criticize the Hasmonean descendants of the Maccabees as did the Essenes, for they had become increasingly secularized rulers, and so separated themselves from them. The Pharisees' approach to the written Law of Moses was marked by a theory of a second oral Law (also supposedly from Moses); their interpretations were less severe than those of the Essenes and more innovative than those of the Sadducees, who remained conservative and limited to the written Law. For example, to differentiate themselves from the Sadducees, the Pharisees professed a belief in the resurrection of the body and of angels, beliefs that became established in the post-exilic period.

   4. The relationships between these groups

      The relationship between these groups was sometimes vicious. The high priests who aligned themselves with the Sadducees were responsible for many acts of violence.

      • Attempted assassination of the Master of Justice of Qumran
      • John Hyrcan destroys the sanctuary of the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim
      • Alexander Jannaeus slaughters 6,000 Jews at the Feast of Tabernacles because of a challenge (by Pharisees?) to his legal qualifications to hold the office of priest, then crucifies 800 (including apparently Pharisees) while their wives and children are slaughtered before their eyes

      For their part, the Pharisees incited the masses to hatred against the high priests John Hyrcanus and Alexander Jannaeus between 135 and 67 BC, and when they received the support of Queen Salome Alexandra (76-69), they executed and exiled their religious/political opponents

      As for the Essenes, they raged against the Sadducean hierarchy in Jerusalem, condemning them as wicked priests who broke the commandments, while denigrating the Pharisees. For example, they criticized "the furious young lion [high priest Alexander Jannaeus] ... who takes revenge on the seekers of soft things [the Pharisees] and hangs people alive." (4QpNah 3-4.1.6-7).

      All of these incidents took place before the time of Herod the Great and the Roman prefecture in Judea (and thus before the life of Jesus), perhaps because strong rulers like Herod and the Romans would not have tolerated such internal religious behavior.

2. Questions about these religious groups
   1. Which religious group was the most important at the time of Jesus

      The Jewish historian Josephus considers the Pharisees to be the most influential group among the city's inhabitants. This may explain why Jesus is remembered as having confronted them more often than any other group. On the other hand, when Josephus states that all prayers and sacred rites were performed according to the interpretation of the Pharisees and the Sadducees had to submit to what the Pharisees said, one gets the impression that he wants to support the growing influence of the rabbis around the year 90, and thus seeks to convince his Roman sponsors that the Pharisee ancestors of the rabbis were also important.

   2. Who were Pharisees and what views did they hold?

      The Gospels often portray the Pharisees as hypocrites and heartless legalists. Few doubt that this image is hostilely exaggerated, reflecting later polemics between Christians and Jews. Moreover, one cannot use the Mishna (codified around 200 AD) to try to extract the ideas of the Pharisees before the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. There are certainly lines of development between the Pharisees of the early 1st century AD and the rabbis of the 2nd century, and there is no doubt that Pharisees were teaching an ethic with great sensitivity during Jesus' lifetime. A particular complication in the gospel picture is the relationship of the scribes to the Pharisees. Historically, the Sadducees and Essenes surely had scribes attracted to their way of thinking; but it may well be that the majority of officials trained in law and procedure were Pharisees.

   3. How was Jesus related to these groups?

      There is no serious reason to think that Jesus was a Sadducee; he was neither a priest nor an aristocrat, and his beliefs were contrary to those of the Sadducees. His belief in angels and the resurrection of the body, as well as the eschatological expectations attributed to him in the gospels, bring him much closer to Essene and Pharisaic theology. Some biblical scholars have sought to portray Jesus as an Essene because of his extraordinary piety, his disdain for material possessions, his appreciation of celibacy, and so on. However, there is no memory in the NT of Jesus being part of such a distinct community; he is remembered for visiting the Temple in Jerusalem at the times when other Jews came to Jerusalem for the festivals (and not according to the special calendar of the Essenes of Qumran); his somewhat free attitude to the Law is hardly in keeping with the fundamentalism of the Essenes. Also, Jesus has most often been identified as a Pharisee on the assumption that we know the views of the Pharisees during Jesus' lifetime and that they were similar to those set forth later in the Mishna. The fact that the gospels do not attach Jesus to a specific group probably represents a more accurate picture of the historical situation; he was simply a pious Jewish layman.

   4. What was the influence of Qumran on the early Christians?

      Many publications on the subject are either absurd or totally fanciful. On the other hand, it is possible that the structures of the early church may have been influenced by structures existing among Jewish groups. In addition to asking whether the Christian presbyters/elders were modeled on the synagogue elders, one should ask whether the overseers/bishops (episkopoi) Christianity was modeled on the overseers described in the Qumran scrolls. Is the designation of the Christian movement as "the Way" and the emphasis on "community" (koinōnia) reflecting the ideology of the Qumran Essenes, who went into the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord, and as well the designation of their communal guidelines as "the Rule of the Oneness"? Theologically, some would find traces of Qumran influence in the dualism of John's Gospel, couched in terms of light and darkness, truth and falsehood; in the struggle between the light of the world (Jesus) and the power of darkness (Lk 22:53); and in the struggle between the Spirit of Truth and the Prince of this world (Jn 16:11).

3. The fate of these religious groups in the aftermath

   The Jewish revolt of 66-70 AD and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem changed the dynamics of religious groupings. Revolutionaries such as the Sicarii, Zealots and the Fourth Philosophy of Judas the Galilean were exterminated; the Essene colony of Qumran was destroyed in 68; the cessation of sacrifices in the Temple weakened the power base of the Sadducees insofar as their leadership consisted of the priestly families. We do not know exactly how the Pharisees fed the rabbinic movement. Nevertheless, in the period after 70, the rabbinic teachers, the wise men of Israel, were gradually recognized as the guides of the people; and those who gathered at Jamnia (Yavneh) on the Palestinian coast were treated by the Roman authorities as the spokesmen of the Jews. From about 90 to 110 Gamaliel II, son and grandson of famous interpreters of the Law, held the presidency at Jamnia. Christian writings of the period after 70, when they spoke of Judaism, increasingly thought of this nascent rabbinic Judaism. In some areas, the conflict between those who believed in Jesus and the leaders of the Jewish synagogues was sharp, as evidenced by the strong anti-Pharisee portrayal (Mt 23), the reference to the alien reality of synagogues ("their synagogues") becoming places where Jesus' disciples would be scourged (Mt 10:17), and the description of the expulsion of "a disciple of that fellow" from a synagogue (Jn 9:28, 34). At first, the expulsion of Jews who had become Christians was a decision of the local synagogues. Gradually (beginning of the second century?), a formula of "blessing" denouncing heretics or deviants of various kinds was understood to include Christians and, much later, to be specifically directed at them. Everywhere, at the end of the second century, the lines of demarcation and division between Jews who did not believe in Jesus and Christians were clearly drawn.

4. Postbiblical Jewish Literature

   Here is a list of these writings, most of which date from a period after all the NT documents were written.

   1. Targums

      These are Aramaic translations - some literal, others very free - of the biblical books, made for Jews who no longer spoke Hebrew. Targums of Job prior to the year 70 have been discovered at Qumran. Later Targums of the Pentateuch and the Prophets, from both Palestine and Babylon, have been preserved; the roots of the earliest of these may date from the second century CE.

   2. Midrash

      Written from the 3rd century AD, they are free commentaries on the books of the Pentateuch.

   3. Mishna

      The Mishna is a written codification in Hebrew of the Jewish oral law, written under the direction of Rabbi Judah the Prince around 200 AD. The term means "second", indicating that the Mishna was placed alongside the (first) law preserved in the Pentateuch. Although it attributes its materials to about 150 masters living between 50 BC and AD 200, dealing with issues crucial to Jewish life, it is a literary response to the influence of the Roman occupation on the situation of the Jews.

   4. Tosepta

      This is another collection of laws and commentaries, usually dated to the third or fourth century CE. In a sense, it is a supplement to the Mishna, organized in the same way; however, some of the traditions vary and may be older.

   5. Palestinian Talmud (5th century) and Babylonian Talmud (6th century).

      These are two long Aramaic commentaries on the Mishna, extraordinarily rich compilations of meticulous legal discussions, traditions, interpretations of Scripture, and stories.

   The use of this Jewish material in the NT work poses a major problem. Since almost all of this material was written down after the main books of the NT, to what extent can it be used to inform the accounts of Jesus' life and reflections on the early church? It must therefore be used with extreme caution in seeking to validate that what is quoted was written before the year 70.

To what extent might Greco-Roman culture, education, economics and religion have influenced Jesus, Paul and the early Christians in their thinking about God, worship, morality, etc.? If we start with Jesus himself, the answer is that we do not know. In the memory of the synoptic gospels, he had little contact with the Gentiles and forbade his disciples to approach them (Mt 10:5) or to imitate their ways (Mt 6:32), reproduced Jewish prejudices against them ("dogs" in Mark 7:27-28; "even Gentiles" in Mt 5:47). The fact that he judges them to be verbose in their prayers (Mt 6:7) does not necessarily imply that he has experienced this personally. Nor do we know to what extent the early Galilean Christian preachers were influenced by the pagan religious and philosophical world.

A non-Jewish influence on Paul is plausible: he came from Tarsus; he wrote and spoke Greek, and he used certain Greek oratory devices in his letters. The speech that Acts attributes to Paul at the Areopagus in Athens is addressed to Epicurean and Stoic philosophers (17:17-31) and is couched in terms that reflect a popular knowledge of pagan religion and philosophy. Of course, the description in Acts comes from the pen of Luke, but it is possible that he is echoing Paul's attitude. As for his letters, there is little trace of pagan religious ideas, he who calls himself "Hebrew of the Hebrews".

Why, then, should we want to become familiar with the pagan religious (and philosophical) world? The mentality of the audience that received the NT message must be taken into account. For example, listeners from a polytheistic background may have understood the preaching about the "son of God" in the light of a Greek god having been fathered by another. Syncretism was fashionable and it would be surprising if the Christian gospel was not mixed by some of the evangelized with their own preconceptions, as in the case of Simon the magician in Acts 8:9-24. Others, who heard the Christian preaching, may have integrated the message of Jesus or Paul into one of the philosophies with which they were familiar, whether the preachers thought of it or not. Still others may have considered the message preached ridiculous in comparison to their own more sophisticated philosophical views. Paul certainly never considered himself a preacher of philosophy (1 Cor. 1:22-25; 2:1-2), although he was influenced by the rhetorical techniques of the philosophers; but to some who heard him and observed his way of life, he may have appeared to be a cynic. To get an idea of all these possibilities, let us look first at the non-Jewish religions and then at the Greco-Roman philosophies.

1. The Gods And Goddesses Of Classical Mythology

   By the time of the NT, the worship of Greek and Roman deities had been amalgamated, and the resulting hybrid blurred the different axes of the two religions that had existed in antiquity. The Greek Zeus, Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, Hermes and Artemis were now identified with the Roman Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Venus, Mercury, and Diana. There were temples, priests, and festivals dedicated to the patron god or goddess of a city or region; statues of the deities dotted the forums of cities; and popular mythology centered on their intervention. Augustus encouraged traditional ceremonies in honor of the gods. Acts 19:23-40 (where Paul offends the Artemis/Diana followers of the Ephesians) shows how dangerous an exaggerated fervor in defense of the official cult could be. Nevertheless, there is an effort at demythologization among the philosophers (e.g., the Stoic identification of Zeus with the logos or reason that permeates the universe), as well as the attraction of the new religions of the East and/or mystery religions, and the prevalence of divination, consultation of oracles, magic (amulets, charms, formulas) and astrology.

2. Emperor Worship

   In the East, there was a tendency to consider the emperor as divine and to place him in the pantheon. Augustus, who was so acclaimed and yet refused deification during his lifetime, was deified after his death. Caligula wanted divine statues erected in his honor, and Nero considered himself divine. Domitian insisted on divine honors, and his self-proclaimed "Lord and God" probably explains the book of Revelation's hatred of Roman power usurping what belongs to God. Pliny the Younger (circa 110) made the willingness to offer a sacrifice in the image of the emperor a test to determine who was a Christian and who was not.

3. The Mystery Religions

   These religions involved religious dramas and secret ceremonies by which the initiates could be led to share in the immortal life of the gods. The initiates, who came from all social classes, were bound by an enduring brotherhood. Christian preachers who preached a victory over death through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus had to compete with these cults and myths (varying from country to country) that offered salvation without insisting on social or personal morality.

   The most famous of the Greek mystery cults, the Eleusinian Mysteries, honored Demeter (Ceres), the protector of agriculture. When her daughter Persephone was taken to the underworld by Hades, Demeter, in her anger, did not allow the earth to produce fruit. As a compromise, Persephone stayed in the underworld four months of the year (the time when the seeds are in the ground), but the other eight months (when the crops are growing) she was with her mother. At Eleusis, just west of Athens, an annual ceremony and secret religious rites were celebrated, assuring the life of the initiates.

   Another cult was centered on the god of wine Dionysus (Bacchus), son of Zeus and Semele, who, according to various forms of the legend, was saved from destruction. Through ceremonies and drinking, the participants (among whom women played an important role) became frenzied and, in this ecstatic state, came into contact with the god who offered them the gift of life. Euripides (5th century BC) presents a vivid account of an orgiastic frenzy in The Bacchae. In 186 BC, due to the scandal of the Bacchanalia, the Roman Senate took corrective measures.

4. The Eastern Religions

   The cult of Isis, originating in Egypt, was popular in the empire, especially among women. The myth is associated with the annual flood of the Nile which brought fertility. Authoritarian actions were taken against the cult of Isis in Rome before it was officially recognized under Caligula. The 2nd century Latin author Apuleius, in his Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass), describes the mysterious rite by which an initiate re-enacted Osiris's journey to death and was thus assured of life after death. In other developments, Isis was honored as mistress of the universe and omniscient - a figure of wisdom.

   A somewhat similar motif, in the form of a dying and a resurrecting god, appears in the story of Adonis, Aphrodite's beloved: he died of a wound inflicted by a boar and the anemone, which blooms in spring, sprang from his blood. The grief of the goddess moved the gods of the lower world, who allowed Adonis to spend six months a year with Aphrodite on earth. This myth, based on the death of nature in winter and its rebirth in spring, was of Phoenician origin and was the subject of annual festivals. Attis, associated with the mother goddess Cybele, was another vegetable god, but his death implied self-castration and the rites of this myth had an orgiastic character. In the same way, the cult of the Cabires, originally Phrygian deities, included phallic rites; it ended up being mixed with certain aspects of the cult of Dionysus and even that of the emperor.

   The cult of Mithra, reserved for men, was carried far by Persian and Roman soldiers. With its roots in the Persian Zoroastrian pantheon, Mithraism involved a mediator between human beings and the god of light. The place of worship was usually a cave-sanctuary, in the center of which was a statue of Mithras killing a bull. From the wounds of the bull, cereal stalks escaped. The general symbolism is that of victory over evil and the bringing of life to the initiates who underwent a bloodbath.

The word "philosophy" appears only once in the NT (Col 2:8). The interest in philosophies stems from the fact that they consider the origin, place and destiny of human beings in relation to the cosmos, and the role of a universal guiding force. Sometimes they are closer to monotheism than all the pagan religions, and often they defend a demanding code of behavior, again much more than most religions. Note their interest in the population is often eclectic since people chose the most attractive elements in the different systems.

1. Platonism

   The philosophy of Plato (427-347 BC) has had an influence through its impact on other philosophies (and will have an enormous influence on the Church Fathers). The most important doctrine is that in this world people see only insubstantial shadows cast by another world of realities where perfect truth and beauty exist. To fulfill their destiny, men must escape the material world and reach their true home in that other world. Some will find a Platonic influence in John's contrast between the world below and the world above, and in his description of Jesus coming from above to offer the true realities (see John 3:31; 1:9; 4:23). In the context of the pagan polemic against Christianity, Socrates' serene and joyful acceptance of a death imposed on him was contrasted with the way Jesus faced death. Scorn and mockery were directed at the image of Jesus prostrate on the ground, his soul aching to the point of death, begging the Father to remove the cup (Mark 14:33-36).

2. Cynics

   It is a philosophy that originated with the Athenian Antisthenes, a disciple of Socrates, but at odds with him, and who in turn was overshadowed by his most famous disciple, Diogenes of Sinope (c. 412-323 BC). Behavior rather than abstract thought characterized the Cynic view, particularly frugality and a return to nature, rejecting artificial conventions. On the whole, Cynics showed no interest in talking about the gods. The wandering cynics took up the Socratic method of asking questions, but instead of addressing them to colleagues or students, they took to the streets to question ordinary people. In particular, they engaged in the "diatribe," which is not a delusional attack but a pedagogical discourse characterized by conversational style, rhetorical questions, paradoxes, apostrophes, etc. Patterns of diatribe appear in Seneca, Epictetus and Plutarch and have also been detected in Paul, e.g. the series of questions in Rom 3:1-9.27-31, and the sequence "Do you not know?" with slogans in 1 Cor 6.

3. Epicureans

   Another philosophical tradition stems from Epicurus (342-270 BC). Today, an Epicurean is a person who devotes himself to sensual pleasure, but Epicurus himself was a virtuous and honest man. He devalued myths and abstractions and addressed ordinary people by making the senses the criterion of truth - feelings and sense perceptions are trustworthy. His philosophy was designed to free people from fears and superstitions: there is no need for religion since events are determined by the movement of atoms; the gods have nothing to do with human existence; death is final and there is no resurrection. The Epicurean conventicles were bound by friendship and mutual aid. This thought was popular among the educated classes, for example the Roman poets Lucretius (95-51 BC) and Horace (65-8 BC). It is therefore not surprising that Acts 17, 18.32 include Epicureans among the onlookers who laughed when Paul spoke of the demands of God and the resurrection of the dead. Epicurean thinking might explain why Paul can say that the preaching of the crucified Christ is foolishness to the Greeks (1 Cor 1:23).

4. Stoicism

   This philosophy originated with a contemporary of Epicurus, the Cypriot Zeno (333-264 BC), who lectured in a colonnaded porch (stoa) in Athens and had been trained by a Cynic from whom he derived the principle that virtue is the only good. Stoicism viewed the universe as a single organism animated by the soul of the world, the logos or divine reason that guides all things. There is no separate world of ideas as in Plato's philosophy. As part of the universe, if people live by the guiding reason or natural law, they can remain calm in the face of adversity. Affections and passions are seen as pathological states from which people can be delivered. It is therefore a system of thought that develops moral values and self-conquest. Yet the emphasis on divine reason, almost monotheistic in tone, was accommodated by various mythologies, with the gods becoming symbols of the government of nature. The Stoics had a deterministic view of what would happen, with astrology and natural science as tools to detect the already established plan that would culminate in a great purifying conflagration, before a new cycle of ages began. By the Christian era, late Stoicism had become the dominant philosophy, exemplified by Seneca (a contemporary of Paul), Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. In Acts 17:25 and 28, Paul echoes Stoic formulas; and in Phil 4:11, "I have learned to be content in whatever state I am," Stoic thought is found (see also 1 Cor 4:11-13).

5. Sophists

   Although there were sophist philosophers, there was no sophist philosophy. Sophists were teachers who went from city to city to teach for a fee. The earliest and most famous were Protagoras (480-411 BC), who taught virtue or the efficient conduct of life, and Gorgias (483-376 BC), who taught effective and artistic speech, even though he despaired of attaining positive knowledge. Sophists emphasized material success and were able to argue for any point of view, true or not (hence the pejorative tone of "sophistic"). In the early Roman Empire, sophists focused on the practice of rhetoric, an important part of higher education.

6. Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20 BC - AD 50)

   Philo came from a wealthy Hellenized Jewish family in Alexandria; his education gave him an excellent command of the Greek language, philosophy, poetry, and drama; and he was a leader in the city's large Jewish community. He knew the Septuagint and was well equipped to translate its religious tradition in a way that was understandable to a Hellenized world. Above all, he attempted to integrate philosophy with biblical principles, both directly and through an allegorical interpretation of the Bible. His dominant approach reflected Platonism and Stoicism. The descent of the soul into the body was explained in Platonic terms; and although Philo linked the Law of Moses to the Stoic idea of a rational order in nature, he rejected Stoic determinism in favor of freedom. The Middle Platonic ideas detected in the Epistle to the Hebrews resemble those of Philo, but independently they may reflect a Hellenistic Jewish milieu common to Alexandria.

7. Gnosticism

   Gnosticism (from gnōsis, "knowledge") is a term used to describe a model of religious thought, often with Jewish and Christian elements, advocated by groups in the eastern part of the Roman Empire (Syria, Babylonia, Egypt). The Fathers of the Church wrote about these groups, explaining the Gnostic systems during their polemics against them. Then, in 1945, at Nag Hammadi, 480 km south of Cairo in Egypt, 13 Coptic codices (containing 50 separate treatises) were discovered, buried around 400 AD and apparently coming from a monastery (Chenoboskion?, see the map of Egypt) infiltrated by Gnostics. Gnostic elements can also be found in the literature of the Manicheans (from the 4th to the 10th century) and the Mandaeans (who still exist in Iraq).

   The appeal of Gnosticism was that it offered answers to important questions: where do we come from; where do we go; how do we get there? Despite the many differences among the Gnostics, the relatively common theses were that human souls or spiritual principles do not belong to this material world (which is often described as evil and ignorant), and that they can only be saved by receiving the revelation that they belong to a heavenly realm of light (the plēroma or "fullness), where there is a hierarchy of emanations of the true God. The ascent to this realm is sometimes by baptism, sometimes by elaborate cultic rituals (often involving anointing), sometimes more by philosophical reflection. Some Gnostic groups had their own hierarchy and were practically a counter-church.

   The origins of Gnosticism are disputed: Hellenization of Christianity, Hellenization of Judaism and its wisdom traditions, derivation from Iranian myth, combination of Greek philosophy and Near Eastern mythology, radical novelty arising from the experience of the world as a foreign place. Because of its themes such as the opposition between the world above and the world below and the fact that the believer is not of this world, Gnostic thought has made much use of the Gospel of John. It may well be that the "antichrists" who left the Johannine community (1 John 2:18-19) became Gnostics and introduced the Gospel into this atmosphere.