Pregnosticism in St. Paul: the Archontes

The author reviews the most important theses about the origin of Gnostic systems, but does not incline himself towards one or another. He clarifies nevertheless that those systems go far either from Judaism or from Christianity. He afirms that, even if the debate is centered in Johanine corpus, the Pauline epistles merit priority because of their antiquity. The author analyzes in these epistles what is said about archonts and demiurge, centering the study in the use the words: thrones, sovereinties, authorities, principalities and powers, later relating them to myths spoken of in pastoral letters. His conclusion is that Paul is not completely coherent or uniform, and that demonstrates precisely that he didn't oppose a definite system and, thereafter, is not possible to speak about Protognosticism in his time, even if there are Pregnostic elements, in other words, elements that evolved in second century Gnostic systems.