ИСТИНА

Studies in Jewish-Gnostic relations mostly deal with cases of borrowing and influence from one side to another and vice versa. What lacks is a more general and paradigmatic view on the historical parallelism between the two religious movements, since both of them are, in fact, characteristic cases of West-Roman religious rhethorics and should be studied within the general phaenomenon of Greek and Oriental sophisticism in the first centuries of Christian era. A comparative study of historical parallelism between Talmudic and Gnostic discourse could be used for generating a clearer understanding of what the Gnostics did actually mean when creating their 'myths'. In the present paper I shall try to to use this methodological scope to point out at a parrallel Jewish and Gnostic trend, namely a kind of concious stylistic 'travesty' of Platonizing Hellenistic discourse. The analysis of this trend in Jewish-Gnostic comparison will permit to make some new remarks on the possible anthropological and theological message underlying both religious rhetorics.