Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity

Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity is subtitled studies in religious history from 330 B.C. to 330 A.D. This is volume II of two, by F. Legge, dated 1915. The contents list opens with Chapter VII, Post-Christian Gnostics, and the volume carries a detailed index whose entries touch on Gnosticism, Manichaeism, Mithraism and the Serapeum.

One passage says that in the second and third centuries several teachers built systems meant to let followers keep Hellenistic culture while taking up the religious and moral ideas the first Christians had begun to spread, that Alexandria was no doubt the scene of the first such attempt, and that the writings of Philo had shown how allegorical interpretation could serve. It also takes up the point that many founders of post-Christian Gnostic sects were Alexandrian Jews. Another passage quotes a letter opening with the words “Manes, an apostle of Jesus Christ”, addressed to Marcellus and imitated from the Epistles of St Paul.