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Childhood has been mentioned in gnostic texts in different shapes and forms. A number of Gnostics have tried to revive the positive aspects of childhood in wayfarers and to set the childhood behavior as a role model for mystical doctrine. They have tried to show that the true wayfarer is the one who is reborn with a voluntary death, and who tries to revive the pure, creative, truth-finding, and self-motivated innate nature of childhood within him. This article has tried through adoption of a psychological approach and via application of the descriptive and analytical method to elaborate on the behavioral, viewpoint, and language similarities of Gnostics and children in order to clarify the reasons behind usage of childhood metaphor by Gnostics to set a mystical role model. The domination of objective cognition and realism is one of the most important viewpoint similarities between Gnostics and children; and the inclination to submission, self-motivation, dependence, and astonishment are some of the most important behavioral similarities between mystics and children. Also usage of pictorial and symbolic language are the language similarities between children and Gnostics, which are all elaborated upon in this article.

Keywords: Gnosticism and childhood, Childhood psychology, views and behavior of children and Gnostics, similarities between Gnostics and children

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