world religion world religion maps world religion symbols |
Encyclopedia of Religion entry forCarpocratiansThe followers of Carpocrates of Alexandria. Carpocrates (born in the first half of the second century) was a Platonist and a kind of Gnostic. His son Epiphanes, who was only seventeen years old when he died, was worshipped as a god at Cephalonia, where a temple and museum stood in his honor. Carpocrates "believed in one God, from whom emanated a whole hierarchy of angels. The visible world is their work. The souls of men first moved around the Father-God; then they fell into the power of matter, from which they have to be released to go back to their original state. Jesus, the son of Joseph, naturally born like other men, and subject as they are to metempsychosis was able, by a remembrance of what he had known in his first existence, and by power sent from above, to obtain dominion over the rulers of this world, and to re-ascend to the Father. It is in the power of all men by following his example, and by the method he used, to despise the creators of this world and to escape from them. They can achieve this equally well, or even better, than he did. This scheme of deliverance is consistent with all conditions of life, and with every kind of act " (Duchesne). Jerome charges the Carpocratians with mutilating the Gospels; Irenaeus accuses them of dealing in magic. The Carpocratians paid reverence not only to images of Jesus Christ, but also to those of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and other sages. They believed that Jesus imparted secret teaching to his disciples. The Carpocratian heresy was introduced into Rome by Marcellina (see MARCELLINIANS). See J. H. Blunt; Louis Duchesne, Hist. citations: Encyc. of Rel., Canney
article created 2006-04-12 , last updated 2006-04-12 |
|
|
|
||