Why were women depicted so positively in early gnostic texts, and how did contemporaneous non-gnostic christians react to these views?

by SeiShonagon

Depictions of women in the nag hammadi texts seem to be relatively positive: divine wisdom is female, eve frees humanity from the garden rather than ruining everything, norea outsmarts noah, and Mary Magdalene gets a lot of attention. Were there non-christian roots of these attitudes? Were they accepted by non-gnostics? If so, when did this rhetoric leave mainstream christianity?

arquebus_x

It's not universal. Gospel of Thomas in particular has some rather brutal (read: humorous) things to say about women.