Published by A small peasant boy, Muhammad Ali in 1945, discovered twelve leather-bound papyrus codices sealed within a jar buried beneath the earth, when he tossed a stone into a cave near Nag Hammadi, Egypt. These twelve codices, now known as the Nag Hammadi texts were written in Coptic text and dated back to 390 AD and belong to the other forty codices also found sealed within several other jars located in the cave; of these fifty-two texts are the Gospel of Truth, Gospel of Thomas, the Apocryphon of James and the Gospel of Philip. The discovery of these texts was particularly important to scholars studying the origins of early Christianity traditions in late antiquity. The texts are of Gnostic decent and further provide scholars with answers to the questions of Christian traditions and refute many theories about Gnosticism and its relation to canonized Christian texts.
From what is known about Gnostics and their traditions today it is safe for one to say that the traditions and beliefs greatly differ from the canonized Christianity that is known in the modern world. Gnostic, from the Greek word gnosis meaning knowledge, is an early sect of Christianity that focused the sanctions of belief on knowledge as opposed to acceptance. Gnostic Christians believed that they “possessed a deeper knowledge and insight than that which was supplied by other Christian sects”(Encyclopedia of
Religions). The Gnostic traditions focused on the nature of the Absolute and the origin of Evil; it was essentially esoteric Christianity, which made it not for the masses, but for the few, the enlightened.
Gnosticism, as with modern Christianity, has several variations that all embody the same fundamental notions and system of beliefs that varied by location.
Matter, to Gnostics was a form of Evil, a creation by the God of the Old Testament. The Creator and Lawgiver of the Old Testament was not the true God according to the Gnostics. This God and His creations were of evil dissent and not in the control of the True God. The revelation of the True God, according to Gnostic tradition was through the savior Jesus Christ. Gnostics did not believe that the acceptance of Christ would lead you to redemption and salvation, but the knowledge of the True God could be gained through the teachings of Jesus Christ. Salvation was not for all, only for the few who gained the knowledge of the True God, the God of Jesus Christ through the secret teachings of knowledge. The True God is the “Supreme first cause of all being, thus it is through knowledge of the savior’s teachings one is able to shed the ignorance man-kind shared in and become enlightened and therefore saved by the True God. The True God, described as “Monad” in the Apocryphon of John, a Gnostic text, is the father of all being, the Supreme first cause, and he “exists in uncontaminated light, towards which no vision may gaze” in the non-visible world of the predestinate soul that lingers in humanity (Pagan Monotheism in Late antiquity).
Gnostics believed that “between the True God and creation is a complicated series of beings, divine in their origin”(Encyclopedia of Religions). This complicated
separation, according to traditions, was brought about by a catastrophic event that separated the spiritual world from the material world and thus humanity, created by the God of the Old Testament during an event of pure primal disorder, became separated from the True God and true salvation. Gnostics did not view the world and humanity as completely evil, there were according to Gnostic beliefs, some elements to humanity capable of redemption that came from the celestial world of the True God. The element in humanity capable of said redemption was the divine spark within the human soul.
Jesus Christ was there to save the predestined souls that strayed into humanity from the evils of the material and visible world by reigniting the divine spark with knowledge and thus liberating the soul from the material world. Gnostics refuted the idea of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ as real. They considered the soul to be predestinate and thus the resurrection of the body is not permitted by the future of the soul and is thus explained as a “moral and transitory story of the union between a divine aeon and the concrete personality of Jesus or again, by a simple semblance of humanity.”
Gnosticism was not always seen as a pagan-influenced, Hellenistic representation of Christianity, it was a strong second century Christian movement that had many influential and well-known leaders such as Basilides, Carpocrates, Valentinus, Marcion and Bardesanes. In fact, Gnostic traditions were not deemed heresy, an aberration against Christianity, until the late 100s by Irenaeus. Ironically, until the discovery of the Nag
Hummadi in 1945, Irenaeus’ writings were considered to be the best surviving of Gnosticism. Irenaeus is now considered to be the “Father of the Church” and was on of the architects of early church Orthodoxy. The writings of Irenaeus were manly propaganda against the esoteric views of Gnosticism and its “heretical” components. His most famous writings of and against Gnosticism, Aversus Harereses (“Against Heresies”), condemn Gnostics for slandering God.
“They (Gnostics) have apostatized in their opinions of Him who is God, and imagined that they themselves discovered more than the apostles by finding out another God; and maintained the apostles preach the gospels still somewhat under the influence of Jewish opinions, but that they themselves are purer in doctrine, and more intelligent, than the apostles…“ from Book 3 Chapter 3 Par 12: Aversus Harereses.
Gnosticism was seen as a threat to the development of Christianity because of its “allurement to esoteric, salvation knowledge and the cult and desire for the higher spiritual life” (Encyclopedic Dictionary of Religions). The ideas of Gnosticism refuted the Israeli God and placed a supreme being above Old Testament God, thus becoming polytheistic, which was abhorrently against Church doctrine (though the doctrine was still very much so in the early stages of development). Most importantly, Gnosticism was deemed heretical because of the traditions and views on the Passion and Resurrection of Christ as seen as a fictional, moral story of transcendence into salvation, not an actual event as the Orthodox Church expressed. Also, the Gnostic traditions expressed the value in the teachings of Christ for salvation, not the acceptance of Christ. Because Gnosticism
was not for the masses, but only for the few (esoteric), it did not survive time as what is now known as the Orthodox Church did. Gnosticism did not appeal to the whole thus making it intangible to the non-elect few that, according to Gnostic tradition were unable to transcend the celestial gap and become one with the True and Loving God without the provided secret teachings of Jesus Christ and the gained knowledge from those said teachings.
The notion of the Gnostic God is that “The Being the True God is forever communicating Its own essence” while the God of the Bible and of modern Christianity’s notion of God is that “The Eternal, not ourselves that makes for righteousness.” These fundamental differences are what separates Gnostic Christian ideals from that of Modern Orthodox Christian ideals thus creating a divide between two religious worlds, two opinions and perhaps, according to the Gnostics, two Gods.
