International Standard Serial Number
An International Standard Serial Number is an eight-digit serial number used to uniquely identify a serial publication, such as a magazine. The ISSN is helpful in distinguishing between serials with the same title. ISSN are used in ordering, interlibrary loans, other practices in connection with serial literature; the ISSN system was first drafted as an International Organization for Standardization international standard in 1971 and published as ISO 3297 in 1975. ISO subcommittee TC 46/SC 9 is responsible for maintaining the standard; when a serial with the same content is published in more than one media type, a different ISSN is assigned to each media type. For example, many serials are published both in electronic media; the ISSN system refers to these types as electronic ISSN, respectively. Conversely, as defined in ISO 3297:2007, every serial in the ISSN system is assigned a linking ISSN the same as the ISSN assigned to the serial in its first published medium, which links together all ISSNs assigned to the serial in every medium.
The format of the ISSN is an eight digit code, divided by a hyphen into two four-digit numbers. As an integer number, it can be represented by the first seven digits; the last code digit, which may be 0-9 or an X, is a check digit. Formally, the general form of the ISSN code can be expressed as follows: NNNN-NNNC where N is in the set, a digit character, C is in; the ISSN of the journal Hearing Research, for example, is 0378-5955, where the final 5 is the check digit, C=5. To calculate the check digit, the following algorithm may be used: Calculate the sum of the first seven digits of the ISSN multiplied by its position in the number, counting from the right—that is, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, respectively: 0 ⋅ 8 + 3 ⋅ 7 + 7 ⋅ 6 + 8 ⋅ 5 + 5 ⋅ 4 + 9 ⋅ 3 + 5 ⋅ 2 = 0 + 21 + 42 + 40 + 20 + 27 + 10 = 160 The modulus 11 of this sum is calculated. For calculations, an upper case X in the check digit position indicates a check digit of 10. To confirm the check digit, calculate the sum of all eight digits of the ISSN multiplied by its position in the number, counting from the right.
The modulus 11 of the sum must be 0. There is an online ISSN checker. ISSN codes are assigned by a network of ISSN National Centres located at national libraries and coordinated by the ISSN International Centre based in Paris; the International Centre is an intergovernmental organization created in 1974 through an agreement between UNESCO and the French government. The International Centre maintains a database of all ISSNs assigned worldwide, the ISDS Register otherwise known as the ISSN Register. At the end of 2016, the ISSN Register contained records for 1,943,572 items. ISSN and ISBN codes are similar in concept. An ISBN might be assigned for particular issues of a serial, in addition to the ISSN code for the serial as a whole. An ISSN, unlike the ISBN code, is an anonymous identifier associated with a serial title, containing no information as to the publisher or its location. For this reason a new ISSN is assigned to a serial each time it undergoes a major title change. Since the ISSN applies to an entire serial a new identifier, the Serial Item and Contribution Identifier, was built on top of it to allow references to specific volumes, articles, or other identifiable components.
Separate ISSNs are needed for serials in different media. Thus, the print and electronic media versions of a serial need separate ISSNs. A CD-ROM version and a web version of a serial require different ISSNs since two different media are involved. However, the same ISSN can be used for different file formats of the same online serial; this "media-oriented identification" of serials made sense in the 1970s. In the 1990s and onward, with personal computers, better screens, the Web, it makes sense to consider only content, independent of media; this "content-oriented identification" of serials was a repressed demand during a decade, but no ISSN update or initiative occurred. A natural extension for ISSN, the unique-identification of the articles in the serials, was the main demand application. An alternative serials' contents model arrived with the indecs Content Model and its application, the digital object identifier, as ISSN-independent initiative, consolidated in the 2000s. Only in 2007, ISSN-L was defined in the
Scientology
Scientology is a body of religious beliefs and practices launched in May 1952 by American author L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard developed a program of ideas called Dianetics, distributed through the Dianetics Foundation; the foundation soon entered bankruptcy, Hubbard lost the rights to his seminal publication Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health in 1952. He recharacterized the subject as a religion and renamed it Scientology, retaining the terminology, the E-meter, the practice of auditing. Within a year, he regained the rights to Dianetics and retained both subjects under the umbrella of the Church of Scientology. Hubbard describes the etymology of the word "Scientology" as coming from the Latin word scio, meaning know or distinguish, the Greek word logos, meaning "the word or outward form by which the inward thought is expressed and made known". Hubbard writes, "thus, Scientology means knowing about knowing, or science of knowledge". Hubbard's groups have encountered considerable controversy.
In January 1951, the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners brought proceedings against Dianetics Foundation on the charge of teaching medicine without a license. Hubbard's followers engaged in a program of criminal infiltration of the U. S. government. Hubbard-inspired organizations and their classification are a point of contention. Germany classifies Scientology groups as an "anti-constitutional sect". In France, they have been classified as a dangerous cult by some parliamentary reports. L. Ron Hubbard was the only child of Harry Ross Hubbard, a United States Navy officer, his wife, Ledora Waterbury. Hubbard spent three semesters at George Washington University but was placed on probation in September 1931, he failed to return for the fall 1932 semester. In July 1941, Hubbard was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the U. S. Naval Reserve. On May 18, 1943, his subchaser left Portland; that night, Hubbard ordered his crew to fire 35 depth charges and a number of gun rounds at what he believed were Japanese submarines.
His ship sustained three crew were injured. Having run out of depth charges and with the presence of a submarine still unconfirmed by other ships, Hubbard's ship was ordered back to port. A navy report concluded that "there was no submarine in the area." A decade Hubbard claimed in his Scientology lectures that he had sunk a Japanese submarine. On June 28, 1943, Hubbard ordered his crew to fire on the Coronado Islands. Hubbard did not realize that the islands belonged to US-allied Mexico, nor that he had taken his vessel into Mexican territorial waters, he was reprimanded and removed from command on July 7. After reassignment to a naval facility in Monterey, Hubbard became depressed and fell ill. Reporting stomach pains in April 1945, he spent the remainder of the war as a patient in Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. According to his teachings, during this time Hubbard made scientific "breakthroughs" by use of "endocrine experiments". On October 15, 1947, Hubbard wrote a letter to the Veterans Administration formally requesting psychiatric treatment, but admitted that he was unable to afford it.
Within a few years, Hubbard would condemn psychiatry as evil, which would grow into a major theme in Scientology. In April 1938, Hubbard reacted to a drug used in a dental procedure. According to his account, this triggered a revelatory near-death experience. Inspired by this experience, Hubbard composed a manuscript, never published, with the working titles of "The One Command" or Excalibur; the contents of Excalibur formed the basis for some of his publications. Arthur J. Burks, who read the work in 1938 recalled it discussed the "one command": to survive; this theme would be revisited in Dianetics, the set of ideas and practices regarding the metaphysical relationship between the mind and body which became the central philosophy of Scientology. Hubbard cited Excalibur as an early version of Dianetics. In August 1945, Hubbard moved into the Pasadena mansion of John "Jack" Whiteside Parsons, an avid occultist and Thelemite, follower of the English ceremonial magician Aleister Crowley and leader of a lodge of Crowley's magical order, Ordo Templi Orientis.
Parsons and Hubbard collaborated on the "Babalon Working", a sex magic ritual intended to summon an incarnation of Babalon, the supreme Thelemite Goddess. The Church of Scientology admits to Hubbard's involvement with Parsons while claiming that it was for the purpose of naval intelligence. In the late 1940s, Hubbard practiced as a hypnotist and he worked in Hollywood posing as a swami; the Church says. In May 1950, Hubbard's Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science was published by pulp magazine Astounding Science Fiction. In the same year, he published the book-length Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, considered the seminal event of the century by Scientologists. Scientologists sometimes use a dating system based on the book's publication. D. 25" does not stand for Anno Domini, but "After Dianetics". Dianetics uses a counseling technique known as auditing in which an auditor assists a subject in conscious recall of traumatic events in the individual's past, it was intended to be a new psychotherapy and was not expected to become the foundation for a new religion.
Hubbard variously defined Dianetics as a spiritual healing technology and an organized science of thought. The stated intent is to free individuals of the influence of past traumas by systematic exposure and removal of the engrams these events have left behind, a process called clearing. Rutgers scholar Beryl Satter says that "there was
Scientology and the Internet
There are a number of disputes concerning the Church of Scientology's attempts to suppress material critical of Scientology on the Internet, utilizing various methods – lawsuits and legal threats, as well as front organizations. In late 1994, the Church of Scientology began using various legal tactics to stop distribution of unpublished documents written by L. Ron Hubbard; the Church of Scientology is accused of barratry through the filing of SLAPP suits. The official church response is that its litigious nature is to protect its copyrighted works and the unpublished status of certain documents. Various critics of the Church of Scientology have characterized the organization as a confidence scam and claim that these secretive writings are proof, or allege that they contain evidence that the Church of Scientology's medical practices are illegal and fraudulent. Scientology has been convicted of fraud in the courts of several nations, although not those of the United States. Others have claimed that the Church of Scientology is abusing copyright law by launching lawsuits against outspoken critics.
Scott Goehring set up the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology in 1991 as a joke for the purpose of informing the public about Scientology. Debate over the pros and cons of Scientology waxed and waned on the newsgroup through the first three years of its existence, flame wars flared up as they did on some other newsgroups; the online battle is regarded as having begun with the arrival of Dennis Erlich to alt.religion.scientology in late July 1994. A former high-ranking official in the Scientology organization, affiliated with L. Ron Hubbard, he caused a number of regular participants in the newsgroup to sit up and take notice. On December 24, 1994, the first of a large number of anonymous messages was posted to alt.religion.scientology, containing the text of the "secret" writings of Scientology known as the OT Levels. Included among these postings was OT III, which gave L. Ron Hubbard's description of the "Xenu story"; the Xenu story had been published in the Robert Kaufman book Inside Scientology: How I Joined Scientology and Became Superhuman in 1972, the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1977, several times in the 1980s in the Los Angeles Times.
The lawyers described the documents as "copyrighted, unpublished trade secrets", the distribution of the materials as a violation of copyright law and trademark law. The first postings of the OT documents were done through an anonymous remailer, the identity of the person who made them available on the newsgroup was never discovered. However, Dennis Erlich posted replies to these messages on the newsgroup, his replies contained the entire text of the original messages. Scientology's lawyers therefore approached him, declaring that Erlich had re-published the copyrighted works in his newsgroup messages. Erlich's reply to this was to deny their requests to remove his postings from the newsgroup. On January 11, 1995, Scientology lawyer Helena Kobrin attempted to shut down the Usenet discussion group alt.religion.scientology by sending a control message instructing Usenet servers to delete the group on the grounds that: It was started with a forged message. In practice, this rmgroup message had little effect, since most Usenet servers are configured to disregard such messages when applied to groups that receive substantial traffic, newgroup messages were issued for those servers that did not do so.
However, the issuance of the message resulted in increased public criticism of Scientology by free-speech advocates. Shortly after the initial legal announcements and rmgroup attempt, representatives of Scientology followed through with a series of lawsuits against various participants on the newsgroup, including Dennis Erlich, in Religious Technology Center v. Netcom; the first raid took place on February 13, 1995. Accompanied by Scientology lawyers, federal marshals made several raids on the homes of individuals who were accused of posting Scientology's copyrighted materials to the newsgroup. Raids took place against Arnaldo Lerma, Lawrence A. Wollersheim and Robert Penny of FACTNet, Dennis Erlich. Internationally, raids took place against Zenon Panoussis. In addition to filing lawsuits against individuals, Scientology sued the Washington Post for reprinting one paragraph of the OT writings in a newspaper article, as well as several Internet service providers, including Netcom, Tom Klemesrud, XS4ALL.
It regularly demanded the deletion of material from the Deja News archive. Participants in alt.religion.scientology began using quotes from OT III in particular to publicize the online battle over the secret documents. The story of Xenu was subsequently quoted in many publications, including news reports on CNN and 60 Minutes, it became the most famous reference to the OT levels, to the point where many Internet users who were not intimately familiar with Scientology had heard the story of Xenu, associated the name with Scientology. The initial strikes against Scientolo
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper, published in Los Angeles, since 1881. It has the fourth-largest circulation among United States newspapers, is the largest U. S. newspaper not headquartered on the East Coast. The paper is known for its coverage of issues salient to the U. S. West Coast, such as immigration trends and natural disasters, it has won more than 40 Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage of other issues. As of June 18, 2018, ownership of the paper is controlled by Patrick Soon-Shiong, the executive editor is Norman Pearlstine. In the nineteenth century, the paper was known for its civic boosterism and opposition to unions, the latter of which led to the bombing of its headquarters in 1910; the paper's profile grew in the 1960s under publisher Otis Chandler, who adopted a more national focus. In recent decades, the paper's readership has declined and it has been beset by a series of ownership changes, staff reductions, other controversies. In January 2018, the paper's staff voted to unionize, in July 2018 the paper moved out of its historic downtown headquarters to a facility near Los Angeles International Airport.
The Times was first published on December 4, 1881, as the Los Angeles Daily Times under the direction of Nathan Cole Jr. and Thomas Gardiner. It was first printed at the Mirror printing plant, owned by Jesse Yarnell and T. J. Caystile. Unable to pay the printing bill and Gardiner turned the paper over to the Mirror Company. In the meantime, S. J. Mathes had joined the firm, it was at his insistence that the Times continued publication. In July 1882, Harrison Gray Otis moved from Santa Barbara to become the paper's editor. Otis made the Times a financial success. Historian Kevin Starr wrote that Otis was a businessman "capable of manipulating the entire apparatus of politics and public opinion for his own enrichment". Otis's editorial policy was based on civic boosterism, extolling the virtues of Los Angeles and promoting its growth. Toward those ends, the paper supported efforts to expand the city's water supply by acquiring the rights to the water supply of the distant Owens Valley; the efforts of the Times to fight local unions led to the October 1, 1910 bombing of its headquarters, killing twenty-one people.
Two union leaders and Joseph McNamara, were charged. The American Federation of Labor hired noted trial attorney Clarence Darrow to represent the brothers, who pleaded guilty. Otis fastened a bronze eagle on top of a high frieze of the new Times headquarters building designed by Gordon Kaufmann, proclaiming anew the credo written by his wife, Eliza: "Stand Fast, Stand Firm, Stand Sure, Stand True." Upon Otis's death in 1917, his son-in-law, Harry Chandler, took control as publisher of the Times. Harry Chandler was succeeded in 1944 by his son, Norman Chandler, who ran the paper during the rapid growth of post-war Los Angeles. Norman's wife, Dorothy Buffum Chandler, became active in civic affairs and led the effort to build the Los Angeles Music Center, whose main concert hall was named the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in her honor. Family members are buried at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery near Paramount Studios; the site includes a memorial to the Times Building bombing victims. The fourth generation of family publishers, Otis Chandler, held that position from 1960 to 1980.
Otis Chandler sought legitimacy and recognition for his family's paper forgotten in the power centers of the Northeastern United States due to its geographic and cultural distance. He sought to remake the paper in the model of the nation's most respected newspapers, notably The New York Times and The Washington Post. Believing that the newsroom was "the heartbeat of the business", Otis Chandler increased the size and pay of the reporting staff and expanded its national and international reporting. In 1962, the paper joined with The Washington Post to form the Los Angeles Times–Washington Post News Service to syndicate articles from both papers for other news organizations, he toned down the unyielding conservatism that had characterized the paper over the years, adopting a much more centrist editorial stance. During the 1960s, the paper won four Pulitzer Prizes, more than its previous nine decades combined. Writing in 2013 about the pattern of newspaper ownership by founding families, Times reporter Michael Hiltzik said that: The first generations bought or founded their local paper for profits and social and political influence.
Their children enjoyed both profits and influence, but as the families grew larger, the generations found that only one or two branches got the power, everyone else got a share of the money. The coupon-clipping branches realized that they could make more money investing in something other than newspapers. Under their pressure the companies split apart, or disappeared. That's the pattern followed over more than a century by the Los Angeles Times under the Chandler family; the paper's early history and subsequent transformation was chronicled in an unauthorized history Thinking Big, was one of four organizations profiled by David Halberstam in The Powers That Be. It has been the whole or partial subject of nearly thirty dissertations in communications or social science in the past four decades; the Los Angeles Times began a decline with Los Angeles itself with the decline in military production at the end of the Cold War. It faced hiring freezes in 1991-1992. Another major decision at the same time was to cut the range of circulation.
They cut circulation in California's Central Valley, Nevada and the San Diego ed
Flag Building
The Flag Building referred to as the Super Power Building, is the largest building in Clearwater, Florida. It is owned by the Church of Scientology and was built principally to deliver the Super Power Rundown, a high-level Scientology training course intended to train Scientologists to use all of their 57 "perceptics" or senses; the interior of the building contains training suites, course rooms and various devices intended to test "perceptics," including a "time machine", an anti-gravity simulator, an "infinite" pit, a pain station. The complex occupies a city block at 215 South Fort Harrison Avenue, it includes a 15-story tower topped by a bronze. Construction began in 1998, was halted in 2003, was resumed to reach substantial completion during 2011; the long delay in construction led to substantial fines being levied by the city authorities. The building is valued at $80 million and at least $145 million was raised by Church fundraising towards the project; the church denies accusations that the Flag Building's completion was deliberately delayed so that it could serve as a cash cow.
The Church of Scientology announced in August 2013 that the building would be opened to the public on October 6, 2013, with a dedication ceremony that the church estimated would attract 10,000 Scientologists. However, a month it emerged that the Church had canceled the ceremony and postponed the opening of the building; the building opened on November 17, 2013. The Church states the Super Power Building provides a dedicated center for delivering the Super Power Rundown, a high-level Scientology training course that has not yet been released; the Super Power Rundown was described by Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, as "A super fantastic, but confidential series of rundowns that can be done on anybody whether Dn Clear or not that puts the person into fantastic shape unleashing Super Power of a thetan; this means. It puts world Clearing within reach of the future; this is a parallel rundown to Power in Saint Hill, taken by the Dn Clear. It consists of 12 separate high power rundowns which are brand new and enter realms of the tech never before approached.
Power is still much in use on the Grade Chart but is for those who didn't go Clear on Dn." Hubbard wrote that "Super Power is the answer to a sick, a dying and dead society. With it, we revive the dead." A Church of Scientology statement says that "Super Power is a series of spiritual counseling processes designed to give a person back his own viewpoint, increase his perception, exercise his power of choice, enhance other spiritual abilities." The St. Petersburg Times reports that Scientologist Matt Feshbach, a multimillion-dollar donor, one of the few who has done Super Power, now feels that he "senses danger faster than most people, he appreciates beauty more than he used to. He says he outperforms his peers in the money management industry." Feshbach says. I'm not dependent on my physical body to perceive things." The Church of Scientology's in-house magazine Source has promoted the program as being aimed "to shift the creation of a new civilization into overdrive". According to Source, "this is the powerful series of rundowns that will move every Scientologist, at any level of The Bridge, into an new realm of ability.
It's here one. And when it comes to the future, here's the likes of which has never been conceived of on this planet." The 57 "perceptics" covered by the rundown are: Sight. According to the Church of Scientology, the building will contain specially developed equipment which "expand on technology developed by NASA to train astronauts" designed to exercise and enhance an individual's "perceptics"; these machines will include such things as an antigravity simulator, a gyroscope-like apparatus that spins a person around while blindfolded to improve perception of compass direction, a video screen that moves forward and backward while flashing images to hone a viewer's ability to identify subliminal messages. According to Marc Headley, who worked on developing the "perceptics", Scientologists will have to undergo testing on each of them. For Smell, for example, there are "hundreds and hundreds of vials of distinct smells that did not evaporate. You name i
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes physical entities that have biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased, or because they never had such functions and are classified as inanimate. Various forms of life exist, such as plants, fungi, protists and bacteria; the criteria can at times be ambiguous and may or may not define viruses, viroids, or potential synthetic life as "living". Biology is the science concerned with the study of life. There is no consensus regarding the definition of life. One popular definition is that organisms are open systems that maintain homeostasis, are composed of cells, have a life cycle, undergo metabolism, can grow, adapt to their environment, respond to stimuli and evolve. However, several other definitions have been proposed, there are some borderline cases of life, such as viruses or viroids. Abiogenesis attempts to describe the natural process of life arising from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds.
The prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities was not a single event, but a gradual process of increasing complexity. Life on Earth first appeared as early as 4.28 billion years ago, soon after ocean formation 4.41 billion years ago, not long after the formation of the Earth 4.54 billion years ago. The earliest known life forms are microfossils of bacteria. Earth's current life may have descended from an RNA world, although RNA-based life may not have been the first; the mechanism by which life began on Earth is unknown, though many hypotheses have been formulated and are based on the Miller–Urey experiment. Since its primordial beginnings, life on Earth has changed its environment on a geologic time scale, but it has adapted to survive in most ecosystems and conditions; some microorganisms, called extremophiles, thrive in physically or geochemically extreme environments that are detrimental to most other life on Earth. The cell is considered the functional unit of life.
There are two kinds of cells and eukaryotic, both of which consist of cytoplasm enclosed within a membrane and contain many biomolecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. Cells reproduce through a process of cell division, in which the parent cell divides into two or more daughter cells. In the past, there have been many attempts to define what is meant by "life" through obsolete concepts such as odic force, spontaneous generation and vitalism, that have now been disproved by biological discoveries. Aristotle was the first person to classify organisms. Carl Linnaeus introduced his system of binomial nomenclature for the classification of species. New groups and categories of life were discovered, such as cells and microorganisms, forcing dramatic revisions of the structure of relationships between living organisms. Though only known on Earth, life need not be restricted to it, many scientists speculate in the existence of extraterrestrial life. Artificial life is a computer simulation or man-made reconstruction of any aspect of life, used to examine systems related to natural life.
Death is the permanent termination of all biological functions which sustain an organism, as such, is the end of its life. Extinction is the term describing the dying out of a group or taxon a species. Fossils are the preserved traces of organisms; the definition of life has long been a challenge for scientists and philosophers, with many varied definitions put forward. This is because life is a process, not a substance; this is complicated by a lack of knowledge of the characteristics of living entities, if any, that may have developed outside of Earth. Philosophical definitions of life have been put forward, with similar difficulties on how to distinguish living things from the non-living. Legal definitions of life have been described and debated, though these focus on the decision to declare a human dead, the legal ramifications of this decision. Since there is no unequivocal definition of life, most current definitions in biology are descriptive. Life is considered a characteristic of something that preserves, furthers or reinforces its existence in the given environment.
This characteristic exhibits all or most of the following traits: Homeostasis: regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state. Living things require energy to maintain internal organization and to produce the other phenomena associated with life. Growth: maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than accumulating matter. Adaptation: the ability to change over time in response to the environment; this ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity and external factors. Response to stimuli: a response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is expressed by motion. Reproduction: the ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism or sexually from two parent organisms; these complex processes, called physiological functions, have under
Gnosticism
Gnosticism is a modern name for a variety of ancient religious ideas and systems, originating in Jewish-Christian milieux in the first and second century AD. These systems believed that the material world is created by an emanation or'works' of a lower god, trapping the divine spark within the human body; this divine spark could be liberated by gnosis, spiritual knowledge acquired through direct experience. Some of the core teachings include the following: All matter is evil, the non-material, spirit-realm is good. There is an unknowable God; the creator of the universe is not an inferior spirit. Gnosticism does not deal with "sin," only ignorance. To achieve salvation, one needs gnosis; the Gnostic ideas and systems flourished in the Mediterranean world in the second century AD, in conjunction with and influenced by the early Christian movements and Middle Platonism. After the second century, a decline set in. In the Persian Empire, Gnosticism in the form of Manicheism spread as far as China, while Mandaeism is still alive in Iraq.
A major question in scholarly research is the qualification of Gnosticism, based on the study of its texts, as either an interreligious phenomenon or as an independent religion. Gnosis refers to knowledge based on personal perception. In a religious context, gnosis is mystical or esoteric knowledge based on direct participation with the divine. In most Gnostic systems, the sufficient cause of salvation is this "knowledge of" the divine, it is an inward "knowing", comparable to that encouraged by Plotinus, differs from proto-orthodox Christian views. Gnostics are "those who are oriented toward knowledge and understanding – or perception and learning – as a particular modality for living"; the usual meaning of gnostikos in Classical Greek texts is "learned" or "intellectual", such as used by Plato in the comparison of "practical" and "intellectual". Plato's use of "learned" is typical of Classical texts. By the Hellenistic period, it began to be associated with Greco-Roman mysteries, becoming synonymous with the Greek term musterion.
The adjective is not used in the New Testament, but Clement of Alexandria speaks of the "learned" Christian in complimentary terms. The use of gnostikos in relation to heresy originates with interpreters of Irenaeus; some scholars consider that Irenaeus sometimes uses gnostikos to mean "intellectual", whereas his mention of "the intellectual sect" is a specific designation. The term "Gnosticism" does not appear in ancient sources, was first coined in the 17th century by Henry More in a commentary on the seven letters of the Book of Revelation, where More used the term "Gnosticisme" to describe the heresy in Thyatira; the term Gnosticism was derived from the use of the Greek adjective gnostikos by St. Irenaeus to describe the school of Valentinus as he legomene gnostike haeresis "the heresy called Learned." The earliest origins of Gnosticism are still disputed. The proto-orthodox Christian groups called Gnostics a heresy of Christianity, but according to the modern scholars the theology's origin is related to Jewish sectarian milieus and early Christian sects.
Scholars debate Gnosticism's origins as having roots in Neoplatonism and Buddhism, due to similarities in beliefs, but its origins are unknown. As Christianity developed and became more popular, so did Gnosticism, with both proto-orthodox Christian and Gnostic Christian groups existing in the same places; the Gnostic belief was widespread within Christianity until the proto-orthodox Christian communities expelled the group in the second and third centuries. Gnosticism became the first group to be declared heresy; some scholars prefer to speak of "gnosis" when referring to first-century ideas that developed into gnosticism, to reserve the term "gnosticism" for the synthesis of these ideas into a coherent movement in the second century. No gnostic texts have been discovered that pre-date Christianity, "pre-Christian Gnosticism as such is hardly attested in a way to settle the debate once and for all." Contemporary scholarship agrees that Gnosticism has Jewish or Judeo-Christian origins, originating in the late first century AD in nonrabbinical Jewish sects and early Christian sects.
Many heads of gnostic schools were identified as Jewish Christians by Church Fathers, Hebrew words and names of God were applied in some gnostic systems. The cosmogonic speculations among Christian Gnostics had partial origins in Ma`aseh Bereshit and Ma`aseh Merkabah; this thesis is most notably put forward by Gilles Quispel. Scholem detected Jewish gnosis in the imagery of the merkavah, which can be found in "Christian" Gnostic documents, for example the being "caught away" to the third heaven mentioned by Paul the Apostle. Quispel sees Gnosticism as an independent Jewish development, tracing its origins to Alexandrian Jews, to which group Valentinus was connected. Many of the Nag Hammadi texts make reference to Judaism, in some cases with a violent rejection of the Jewish God. Gershom Scholem once described Gnosticism as "the Greatest case of metaphysical anti-Semitism". Professor Steven Bayme said. Recent research into the origins of Gnosticism shows a strong Jewish influence from Hekhalot literature.
Within early Christianity, the teachings of Paul and John may have been a starting point for Gnostic idea
