Gnosis covers everything from knowing a fact to knowing a person, without English's usual line between the two.
Gnosis is the ordinary Greek word for knowing, and it stretches across the whole territory that word covers. It can mean information you possess, a skill you've mastered, insight into a situation, or the kind of knowing that comes from being personally acquainted with someone. Paul can use it for knowing that idols are nothing, and in the same letter warn that this knowledge, unaccompanied by love, does damage.
English tends to sort these into separate words: knowledge for facts, acquaintance for people, wisdom for practical insight. Greek doesn't force that sort. So when Paul writes of "knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" using gnosis, he's not describing data about Jesus. He's describing something closer to a relationship, but the word itself doesn't specify which kind of knowing is meant. Context has to do that work.
to give to His people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins,
Zechariah's song promises God's people knowledge of salvation, gnosis as something given, not achieved.
Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.
Paul's famous line that knowledge puffs up but love builds up, aimed at Corinthians proud of their theology.
More than that, I count all things as loss compared to the surpassing excellence of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ
Paul calls knowing Christ Jesus surpassingly valuable, using gnosis for something closer to relationship than data.
O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid irreverent, empty chatter and the opposing arguments of so-called “knowledge,”
Warns against what is falsely called gnosis, a phrase later linked to the Gnostic movements it may be resisting.
Most English versions simply write "knowledge", which is accurate but flat. Some translations reach for "understanding" or "insight" where the context is more about discernment than information, particularly in 2 Peter. The cost shows up in passages like Philippians 3:8, where "the knowledge of Christ Jesus" can sound like theological content mastered, when Paul's Greek leans toward something more like knowing a person he loves.
A well-worn word study claims gnosis means shallow, head-level knowledge while a related word, epignosis, means deep, experiential knowledge, and that Paul switches between them deliberately. The distinction is overstated; the two words overlap heavily in actual use and the theory doesn't hold up under scrutiny. The safer reading is that gnosis means knowing, full stop, and its depth or shallowness comes from context, not from the word's shape.
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