Most of us are aware of the story of Jesus around which the world’s largest religion is shaped. Over the almost two millennia since the death of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christian version of his story has coalesced into the form that most of us are familiar with today. As popular and nearly ubiquitous as it is, it is far from the only one. There are many philosophies that place Jesus as the possessor and teacher of the secret knowledge of the cosmos that exists inside of the each human. While this may be part of many modern mystic belief systems, it is far from a new invention. These sorts of Christian mystic beliefs are nearly as old as the orthodox religion itself.

Gnosticism (from the Greek word for “having knowledge” – γνωστικος) is a blanket term for a wide variety of belief systems. Many of them believe in a divine presence as well as an evil material god. In Gnostic Christian beliefs, they believe that the god of the Old Testament, יהוה – Yahweh, creator of the earth and material world, is evil. Jesus is seen as a divine character sent to re-acquaint mankind to the divinity that exists inside every person. This movement (or rather collection of movements) developed in parallel to the church Paul was establishing reaching its high-point in the second century. At that point, they attracted the attention of the forefathers of orthodox Christianity which started writing treatises denouncing the Gnostics as heretical. The writings of said church fathers on Gnosticism ended up being a terrific source for modern day historians as much of the Gnostic materials were eradicated in numerous anti-heretical literature purges. They were great at their job did a great job and destroyed the vast majority of their books. Sadly for them (and fortunate for us), they didn’t get them all.

There is no denying that the general gnostic world view is very different from what we recognize in modern Abrahamic religions. The God / YHWY of the Old Testament / Torah of said religions is demoted by the gnostics to a devious, spiteful, angry, vengeful character called the Demiurge. He created our universe, our world using stolen powers all in order to glorify himself. Man was created not in the Demiurge’s image but that of the true God; the loving fatherly God of the New Testament. Jesus came representing the true Divine Being and gave mankind the secret knowledge that would allow them to find salvation within themselves. Jesus taught them that we all are parts of one “Oneness”, one being and that is the spark of the divine inside of us. Upon finding this and truly getting to know yourself as part of “God”, you would be equal to Jesus. The Jews and Muslims worship the Demiurge and confuse him with the actual True god their prophet / messiah taught upon. Yes, it is quite a bit different.

Our knowledge of these groups is ever expanding. Prior to 1945, the majority of what we knew about gnostics and their texts /beliefs came from early church scholars citing their texts in the process of denouncing them as heretics. The early orthodoxy of the church was VERY serious about stamping out any beliefs that didn’t generally reflect their own and wrote many thousands of pages describing said heresies and why they were wrong. Granted, we weren’t always getting a very balanced or academic synopsis of said beliefs and texts but it was all we had thanks to their other favorite hobby of book burning. That was until 1945 when a great bomb of manuscript goodness exploded into the scene.

Said goodness was a find of a lifetime, a find of many lifetimes located in Nag Hammadi, Egypt. For our purposes today, just know that 52 coptic parchment manuscripts were found. The story of the find sounds like an outrageous Indiana Jones movie. It involves Murderer, cannibalism, clandestine black market sales, factional warfare and all manner of intrigue. Maybe one day we will explore it in its own.

The parchments themselves were written in ancient Coptic, an Egyptian language which, like Latin, used to be the lingua franca of the area but is now relegated solely to liturgical use in the Coptic Church. The writings themselves were largely Gnostic in nature, most of which had previously either not been known or believed lost to time.

Many Gnostic gospels bear names that modern Christians would recognize. The most popular of the two (in pop culture anyway) are the Gospel of Phillip and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Movie buffs would remember Teeving in The DaVinci Code reading aloud passages from said texts. Most of the texts have otherwise never been heard of in the Christian world.

Codex I (The “Jung Codex”):
1. The Prayer of the Apostle Paul
2. The Secret Book of James
3. The Gospel of Truth
4. The Treatise on the Resurrection
5. The Tripartite Tractate

Codex II:
1. The Secret Book of John
2. The Gospel of Thomas
3. The Gospel of Philip
4. The Reality of the Rulers
5. On the Origin of the World
6. The Exegesis on the Soul
7. The Book of Thomas (The Contender Writing to the Perfect)

Codex III:
1. The Secret Book of John
2. The Gospel of the Egyptians
3. Eugnostos the Blessed
4. The Wisdom of Jesus Christ
5. The Dialogue of the Savior

Codex IV:
1. The Secret Book of John
2. The Gospel of the Egyptians

Codex V:
1. Eugnostos the Blessed
2. The Revelation of Paul
3. The First Revelation of James
4. The Second Revelation of James
5. The Revelation of Adam

Codex VI:
1. The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles
2. Thunder: Perfect Mind
3. The Authoritative Teaching
4. The Concept of Our Great Power
5. The Republic by Plato (588a-589b)
6. The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth
7. The Prayer of Thanksgiving
7a. Scribal note
8. Asclepius 21-29

Codex VII:
1. The Paraphrase of Shem
2. The Second Treatise of the Great Seth
3. The Revelation of Peter
4. The Teachings of Silvanus
5. The Three Steles of Seth

Codex VIII:
1. Zostrianos
2. The Letter of Peter to Philip

Codex IX:
1. Melchizedek
2. The Thought of Norea
3. The Testimony of Truth

Codex X:
1. Marsanes

Codex XI:
1. The Interpretation of Knowledge
2. A Valentinian Exposition
2a. On the Anointing
2b. On Baptism A
2c. On Baptism B
2d. On the Eucharist A
2e. On the Eucharist B
3. Allogenes
4. Hypsiphrone

Codex XII (mostly destroyed):
1. The Sentences of Sextus
2. The Gospel of Truth
3. Fragments

Codex XIII:
1. Three Forms of First Thought
2. On the Origin of the World

Of all the gnostic groups found in the first couple of centuries, only one seems to remain intact. Found in mainly Syria, Jordan and Iran, the Mandaeans are the only remaining extant traditional gnostic group. Mandaeans revere John the Baptizer as the divine and final prophet while accusing Jesus of Nazareth as perverting the message to fulfill his own agenda. During the John-the-Baptist episode of “The Naked Archaeologist” , Simcha Jacobovici interviews a Mandaean couple. Pretty cool!

In closing and in preparation for another Gnosticism post, let us list some of the broad-strokes of the various Gnostic faiths. 1) The material world / creation is bad (as is the one who created it) and is not to be enjoyed. Demiurge / God of the Old Testament is not the true God and his creation is sinful. Avoid it……all. 2) Salvation is brought not through grace or repentance but through the knowledge of one’s true spiritual constitution. We are all “pieces” of the true god, all part of the whole. We all have said piece as our divine spark, our soul that exists in everyone. What separates Jesus from the masses is the knowledge of this fact. Learn who / what you are, you and Jesus are “brothers”; equals. 3) Find your “spark” to transcend the world of the demiurge and obtain eternal life. Nothing wildly different here other that you already have it within you rather than having to obtain it through faith. 4) This knowledge is the secret Jesus et al came to creation to share and is available only to those who seek it. Hmmm this sounds suspiciously like the Jesus of the gospel of Mark, right?

Of course, this is the broadest of broad overviews of Gnosticism. There are MANY different gnostic belief sets, each containing far more concepts and tenets than I’ve outlined here. Like most religions, they had volumes of theologies, cosmologies, apologetics etc that people earn PhDs studying. Why am I focusing so much on it here? It is making a come- back in a very odd way!

Stay tuned!