Having seen in history how the Catholic Church/Roman Empire systematically wiped the Gnostics from the face of the Earth and attempted to do the same with all of their writings, I find it appalling when LIES are told to this very day about what really happened in the first 300 years of "Christianity". Regardless of what you might believe about the Gnostics, they had a right to live and breathe on this earth just like anyone else. To defend the Church's position and say that it was the Gnostics that "corrupted Christianity" is not only woefully ignorant, but in my opinion, is like a nod of agreement that these people were a threat to the Church and deserved to die. I have no doubt that if some of today's wildly fanatical fundies were alive back then, they would have gleefully participated in the slaughter of these innocent people, fully believing they were doing a "service to God".
The truth is, the Gnostics, unlike the Christians, didn't go out trying to actively recruit or convert people. They lived in seclusion, practiced in secret, and kept to themselves. They were like a private club. They didn't go out looking for you, you had to find them. They didn't care about dogma and doctrine, they stressed that the Spirit of God was within you and taught you how to block out all the mind noise and chatter to find the Divine Intuition inside. "Beliefs" didn't matter to them, what mattered was putting ancient metaphysical knowledge into practice. Unfortunately, like anything that is Divine and pure in this world, the negative elements find a way to infiltrate and corrupt it. We ended up with good Gnostics and bad Gnostics. White Magicians and Black Magicians. They either serve humanity or they serve the self. They support systems that work for the benevolence of everyone or for the benefit of the elite at the expense of the goyim. Sheep and Goats. It's not that complicated.
That being said, I was compelled to write a rebuttal to PSac's unbelievably biased post about the Gnostic Gospels on the "Jesus must have had a wife at some point" thread.
In 1945 a discovery was made in Upper Egypt, near the town of Nag Hammadi. Fifty-two copies of ancient writings, called the Gnostic gospels were found in 13 leather-bound papyrus codices (handwritten books). They were written in Coptic and belonged to a library in a monastery.
A few Gnostic scholars have gone so far as to assert that these recently discovered writings are the authentic history of Jesus instead of the New Testament.
"A few Gnostic scholars" seem to be woefully ignorant of the fact that METAPHOR and ALLEGORY were the common writing styles before and during the Biblical Era. Spiritual thoughts were not conveyed via historical accounts, which are meaningless and empty, unless they are conveying what a previous person has done to attain enlightenment. Telling us that "God" came into the world and was born with a distinct advantage from the rest of us really doesn't help anybody. All it does is delude them into believing that they are hopeless, worthless sinners who have no hope of salvation and redemption without some outside entity taking care of all their problems for them. How clever of the Catholic Church to devise a scheme where everybody STFU and falls in line like good little serfs.
But does their faith in these documents square with the historical evidence?
Are we talking about the historical evidence for Jesus, outside the Bible, of which there is NONE?
Let’s take a deeper look to see if we can separate truth from fiction.
Yes, why don't we?
Secret "Knowers"
The Gnostic gospels are attributed to a group known as (big surprise here) the Gnostics. Their name comes from the Greek word gnosis, meaning “knowledge.” These people thought they had secret, special knowledge hidden from ordinary people.
Would that be similar, or different, from the Intuitive knowledge of "gifted" people that are apparently born with savant abilities? Interestingly, this sarcastically facetious statement is saying that ALL KNOWLEDGE must come from an outside source, and you better just pray that it's not a lie. Just believe what you are told and never, ever try to reach your own conclusions on a matter by thinking critically.
How about psychics? Remote viewers? Astrologists? Are they all working for the Devil? Are they getting all their information from "demons"? IF they are, why is it that "God" lets the bad guys use these powers that HE obviously built into the system, while for the "Faithful", it's off limits and you better just keep up your faith with absolutely no sign from "God" that he even exists, except for some vague "answer" to a "prayer" that you may have attracted simply with your own energy?
As Christianity spread, the Gnostics mixed some doctrines and elements of Christianity into their beliefs, morphing Gnosticism into a counterfeit Christianity. Perhaps they did it to keep recruitment numbers up and make Jesus a poster child for their cause. However, for their system of thought to fit with Christianity, Jesus needed to be reinvented, stripped of both his humanity and his absolute deity.
Marcion, along with the Gnostics, maintained that the idea of an incarnate God was a fallacy, and denied the corporeal reality of the living body of Christ. His entity was a mere illusion, not made of flesh and blood, nor born of a human mother. His divine nature would be polluted by any contact with sinful flesh. He accepted Paul as the only apostle preaching the pure gospel of truth, and accused the other disciples of "depraving the pure form of the gospel doctrines delivered to them by Jesus, mixing up matters of the Law and the words of the Saviour."
Early Critics
A mild strain of Gnostic philosophy was already growing in the first century just decades after the death of Jesus. The apostles, in their teaching and writings, went to great lengths to condemn these beliefs as being opposed to the truth of Jesus, to whom they were eyewitnesses.
This sounds more like a disease than a philosophy. I can just see it now. Anybody who believes the Gnostics are "mentally diseased"!
Check out, for example, what the apostle John wrote near the end of the first century some lying Church Father wrote probably closer to the end of the fourth century:
Who is the great liar? The one who says that Jesus is not the Christ. Such people are antichrists, for they have denied the Father and the Son. (1 John 2:22, NIV).
Following the apostles’ teaching, the early church leaders unanimously condemned the Gnostics as a cult. Church father Irenaeus, writing 140 years before the Council of Nicaea, confirmed that the Gnostics were condemned by the church as heretics. He also rejected their “gospels.” But, referring to the four New Testament Gospels, he said, “It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are.” 2
http://www.blavatsky.net/magazine/theosophy/ww/additional/christianity/OrientalKabala.html
So hopelessly entangled seems Irenæus in his fruitless endeavors to describe, to all outward appearance at least, the true doctrines of the many Gnostic sects of which he treats and to present them at the same time as abominable "heresies," that he either deliberately, or through ignorance, confounds all of them in such a way that few metaphysicians would be able to disentangle them, without the Kabala and the Codex as the true keys. Thus, for instance, he cannot even tell the difference between the Sethianites and the Ophites, and tells us that they called the "God of all," "Hominem," a MAN, and his mind the SECOND man, or the "Son of man." So does Theodoret, who lived more than two centuries after Irenæus, and who makes a sad mess of the chronological order in which the various sects succeed each other. Neither the Sethianites, (a branch of the Jewish Nazarenes) nor the Ophites, a purely Greek sect, have ever held anything of the kind. Irenæus contradicts his own words by describing in another place the doctrines of Cerinthus, the direct disciple of Simon Magus. He says that Cerinthus taught that the world was not created by the FIRST GOD, but by a virtue (virtus) or power, an Æon so distant from the First Cause that he was even ignorant of HIM who is above all things. This Æon subjected Jesus, he begot him physically through Joseph from one who was not a virgin, but simply the wife of that Joseph, and Jesus was born like all other men. Viewed from this physical aspect of his nature, Jesus was called the "son of man." It is only after his baptism, that Christos, the anointed, descended from the Princeliness of above, in the figure of a dove, and then announced the UNKNOWN Father through Jesus.
Christian theologian Origen wrote this in the early third century, more than a hundred years before Nicaea:
I know a certain gospel which is called “The Gospel according to Thomas” and a “Gospel according to Matthias,” and many others have we read—lest we should in any way be considered ignorant because of those who imagine they possess some knowledge if they are acquainted with these.
Nevertheless, among all these we have approved solely what the church has recognized, which is that only four gospels should be accepted. 3There ya go, "solely what the church has recognized". Might as well worship Ratzinger.
The Gnostic gospels are dated about 110 to 300 years after Christ, which would precede the Church Councils, wouldn't they? and no credible scholar believes any of them could have been written by their namesakes. That's exactly what the "credible scholars" say about the four canonical gospels!
New Testament scholar Norman Geisler writes, “The Gnostic writings were not written by the apostles, but by men in the second century (and later) pretending to use apostolic authority to advance their own teachings. Today we call this fraud and forgery.” 5
When the Gnostic Gospels are taken in their proper context, as ALLEGORY and not historical fact, it is not "fraud and forgery". It is like folklore being handed down. Nobody has a copyright on it. It is, on the other hand, quite clear that the canonical gospels are filled with fraud and forgery. ("Forged" by Bart Ehrman is an excellent read.)
Mystery Versus History
The Gnostic gospels are not historical accounts of Jesus’ life but instead are largely esoteric sayings, shrouded in mystery, leaving out historical details such as names, places, and events. This is in striking contrast to the New Testament Gospels, which contain innumerable historical facts about Jesus’ life, ministry, and words.
Exactly what I just said, no problem here. The Bible promotes the lie of historicity, and conceals the deeper hidden meaning of Jesus' ministry... the personal application of it. Can't have that if you're the Roman Empire. Who would you be more likely to believe—someone who says, “Hey, I’ve got some secret facts that were mysteriously revealed to me,”
like "Paul", who the Catholic Church used to completely change the direction of Christianity by changing, redacting, and interpolating his epistles to death, and even attributing books to him that he clearly didn't write?
or someone who says, “I’ve searched all the evidence and history and here it is for you to make up your mind on”?
As long as you present facts and not lies, that's fine.
Keeping that question in mind, consider the following two statements, the first from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas (c. 110-150 A.D.) and the second from the New Testament’s Gospel of Luke (c. 55-70 A.D.).
- These are the hidden sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Judas Thomas the Twin recorded. 6
- Many people have written accounts about the events that took place among us. They used as their source material the reports circulating among us from the early disciples and other eyewitnesses of what God has done in fulfillment of his promises. Having carefully investigated all of these accounts from the beginning, I have decided to write a careful summary for you, to reassure you of the truth of all you were taught. (Luke 1:1-4, NLT)
Do you find the open and aboveboard approach of Luke appealing? And do you find the fact that it was written closer to the original events to be in favor of its reliability? If so, that’s what the early church thought as well.
At least the Gospel itself was forthcoming with the fact that it was "hidden", which is a far cry from presenting long-standing myths as historical fact. Considering that Mithraism was the biggest religion at the time of Jesus, everyone would have laughed at him for impersonating Mithra. What really happened is borne out by the evidence: The largest "Christian" Cathedrals and Churches are built on top of the ruins of Mithraic Temples. "Christianity" is the literalized, watered-down version of ancient spiritual truth taught for thousands of years in the form of allegory.
And most scholars concur with the early church’s view that the New Testament is the authentic history of Jesus. New Testament scholar Raymond Brown has said of the Gnostic gospels, “We learn not a single verifiable new fact about the historical Jesus’ ministry, and only a few new sayings that might possibly have been his.” 7
"Most scholars", huh? That's really a joke, and it sounds like Watchtower-type bias-speak. On the contrary, "most scholars" are fully aware that outside of the Bible, there is absolutely no evidence for a historical Jesus. So when they say "most scholars", they must be leaving something out, like "most scholars who are Bible worshipers".
Thus, even though the Gnostic writings have impressed some scholars, their late dating and questionable authorship can’t compare with the New Testament. Such contrast between the New Testament and the Gnostic writings is devastating to those pushing conspiracy theories. New Testament historian F. F. Bruce wrote, “There is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament” 8
Then why did the Gnostic Gospels have to be hidden in an earthenware vessel and buried in the ground to keep them from being destroyed by the Roman Catholic Terror and Tyranny Machine?
In conclusion, I'll answer that with this:
