Gnostics

[caro_]

Is the word Agnostic derived from Gnostic and if so was the reason due to Gnostics being pre-Christian or related to Mary Magdalene?

[Clanad]

Somewhere around 1860, Thomas Huxley coined the term a-gnostic to mean those claiming to have no knowledge of spirtitual matters. As opposed, if you will, to Gnosticism... (source Wikipedia) from the Greek gnosis ("knowledge"); a belief system that flousrished in Hellenistic culture. It had a profound influence on Christianity, particularly in the Johannine tradition (ie, the gospel of John, the letters of John, the gospel of Thomas). Gnostics held that the physical world of matter was corrupt and evil, and that salvation could be attained only through the embracing of the eternal goodness of the spiritual. ...
At any rate, Gnosticism seems to have been Jewish in origin, although some spurious writings attribut it to earlier pagan roots. However the evidence is pretty skinny and rests more on philosphical intrepretations that honest historical scholarship... in my opinion...
There exist no evidence to imply Mary of Magdala as having been influenced by anyone other than the Jewish traditions and Scriptures of the times... since the only reliable historical reference to her is in the New Testament...

[jake-the-peg]

Agnostic doesn't mean one who has no knowlege of spiritual matters but actually one who believes they are unknown by all and probably unknowable

This from the OED:

A. n. One who holds that the existence of anything beyond and behind material phenomena is unknown and (so far as can be judged) unknowable, and especially that a First Cause and an unseen world are subjects of which we know nothing.

They agree with the Huxley derivation though.

PS The New Testament as a reliable historical source? - Now I've heard everything! :c)

[Clanad]

Jake, we've been around that mulberry bush beating a dead horse many times... let's not go there this time, OK?