"In this book, Nicola Denzey Lewis dismisses Hans Jonas' mischaracterization of second-century Gnosticism as a philosophically-oriented religious movement built on the perception of the cosmos as negative or enslaving. A focused study on the concept of astrological fate in 'Gnostic' writings including the Apocryphon of John, the recently-discovered Gospel of Judas, Trimorphic Protennoia, and the Pistis Sophia, this book reexamines their language of 'enslavement to fate' from its origins in Greek Stoicism, its deployment by the Apostle Paul, to its later use by a variety of second-century intellectuals (both Christian and non-Christian)."--Publisher description.