Marcions' argument echoes many of the ideas of Gnosticism. Gnosticism, already established in Jewish communities outside of Judaea, placed the true God outside the world, and argued that Man was spirit trapped in flesh and the world. Only by developing spiritual awareness of his true nature couldn man escape the world and come to God. Many of these strands also held the OT God to be a lesser Demiurge, the Rex Mundi of the Cathars.