Is There Such a Thing as Gnosticism?
A 1966 international conference tried and largely failed to fix the term by committee. Thirty years later, two separate scholars independently argued the category should be dismantled entirely — a field disputing, in print, whether its own central subject actually exists as a single thing.
The Messina Colloquium (1966); Michael Williams (1996) and Karen King (2003)
A genuine, ongoing scholarly dispute over whether 'Gnosticism' names a real coherent religion or a modern category imposed on unrelated ancient texts.