Of course, we might be looking at this the wrong way around. It might be that the ‘foreign’ religion of Gnosis (from Persia) was the foundation of the original Christianity, and that once ‘purged’ of its more obvious ‘Persian’ elements, it eventually developed into the Christianity we know today. People like Irenaeus might have comprised a very small group of ‘modified’ Christians who rejected the ‘foreign’ religion of Gnosticism – whilst retaining its fundamental method of ‘looking within’ to gain ‘gnosis’. The Jewish roots of Jesus and all Persian influences were rejected by the emerging (gentile) Christian movement, which instead moved toward the inner work of Greek thinkers such as Plotinus. In the Acts of Peter, we see Peter feeling sorry for a tied-up dog and ‘releasing’ it from its binding chain. The grateful dog then develops the power of speech and assists Peter in finding Simon Magus – the false prophet (but by all accounts, a very good magician)!
