I'm reading a couple of books on Gnosticism by a scholar named Nicola Denzey Lewis right now, and in them she seems to frequently emphasize recent attempts by some of her colleagues to question previous definitions of "Gnosticism". She says that she bases a lot of her perspective here on a 2003 book titled "What Is Gnosticism?" by Karen L. King.

She takes particular issue with Hans Jonas' influential work on Gnosticism, especially in the way that the Gnostics are often characterized as treating the cosmos as negative or oppressive. She seems to reject a lot of Jonas' work on Gnosticism based on the fact that he wrote prior to the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library, so that he was forced to primarily rely on hostile sources for his understanding of Gnosticism, whereas she feels that our understanding of the subject is better now that we have access to primary source texts.

I almost get the sense that she goes too sometimes far in rejecting many of the things that scholars commonly associate with Gnosticism though, to the extent that I'm left wondering what Gnosticism even is in her view, if anything.

I'm also not sure if what she is putting forward as a more accurate recent re-visioning of Gnosticism is a genuine phenomenon where most scholars are in agreement that previous definitions of the subject are inappropriate now, or if perhaps this is something that only a small group of scholars think, and everyone else is continuing to use the previous definitions because they think that they are still valid.

Is anyone familiar with the controversy I'm referring to, or could you shed any light on this issue as someone who is more familiar with the filed? I'm still very new to it, and I find it a bit confusing.