Marcion was a Church leader from Sinope (present-day Turkey), who preached in Rome around 150 CE,[158] but was expelled and started his own congregation, which spread throughout the Mediterranean. He rejected the Old Testament, and followed a limited Christian canon, which included only a redacted version of Luke, and ten edited letters of Paul.[159] Some scholars do not consider him to be a gnostic,[160][note 27] but his teachings clearly resemble some Gnostic teachings.[158] He preached a radical difference between the God of the Old Testament, the Demiurge, the "evil creator of the material universe", and the highest God, the "loving, spiritual God who is the father of Jesus", who had sent Jesus to the earth to free mankind from the tyranny of the Jewish Law.[158][10] Like the Gnostics, Marcion argued that Jesus was essentially a divine spirit appearing to men in the shape of a human form, and not someone in a true physical body.[161] Marcion held that the heavenly Father (the father of Jesus Christ) was an utterly alien god; he had no part in making the world, nor any connection with it.[161]
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Islam also integrated traces of an entity given authority over the lower world in some early writings: Iblis is regarded by some Sufis as the owner of this world, and humans must avoid the treasures of this world, since they would belong to him.[173] In the Isma'ili Shia work Umm al Kitab, Azazil's role resembles whose of the Gnostic demiurge.[174] Like the demiurge, he is endowed with the ability to create his own world and seeks to imprison humans in the material world, but here, his power is limited and depends on the higher God.[175] Such Gnostic anthropogenic[clarification needed] can be found frequently among Isma'ili traditions.[176] In fact, Ismailism has been often criticised as non-Islamic.[citation needed] Ghazali characterized them as a group who are outwardly Shias but were actually adherence of a dualistic and philosophical religion. Further traces of Gnostic ideas can be found in Sufi anthropogenic[clarification needed].[177] Like the gnostic conception of human beings imprisoned in matter, Sufi traditions acknowledge that the human soul is an accomplice of the material world and subject to bodily desires similar to the way archontic spheres envelop the pneuma.[178] The pneuma (spirit) must therefore gain victory over the lower and material-bound psyche (soul or anima), to overcome its animal nature. A human being captured by its animal desires, mistakenly claims autonomy and independence from the "higher God", thus resembling the lower deity in classical gnostic traditions. However, since the goal is not to abandon the created world, but just to free oneself from ones own lower desires, it can be disputed whether this can still be Gnostic, but rather a completion of the message of Muhammad.[171] It seems that Gnostic ideas were an influential part of early Islamic development but later lost its influence. However the Gnostic light metaphorics and the idea of unity of existence still prevailed in later Islamic thought.[169] 2ff7e9595c
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