Not surprising, a couple hundred years after the death of Christ there were different interpretations on what his life meant and what his essential message was. Christianity was becoming a hierarchical institution that understood itself as the guardian of the true faith. Beliefs and practices outside of the canon was consider heresy and had to be destroyed. A number of documents were buried at that time and not discovered until 1947. These alternative gospels show some of the different interpretations that were in existence at that time. One example, some, especially Gnostics, interpreted the resurrection as symbolic – Christ reappeared as in a spiritual vision. The essential difference between Gnostics and orthodox Christians was that Gnostics believed the test of true Christians was their level of spiritual understanding or enlightenment or knowledge (gnosis). The orthodox authorities believed that approach was too elite as well as too difficult to monitor, and instead required simple adherence to doctrine, ritual, and political structural – which proved to be an amazingly effective system of organization.Gnostics have been called ‘religious solipsists’ since they were more concerned with their own spiritual development. They sometimes have considered those in the Church ignorant, arrogant or self-interested. Gnostics were seekers; orthodox Christians are non-seekers in that they were willing to accept the canon provided to them. (Yet you may recall even in the accepted Church cannon – in the Gospel of Luke, Christ is quoted as saying his followers must give up everything – family, home, children, work, wealth. . .if they are to follow him).The texts discovered at Nag Hammadi (the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Phillip, Apocalypse of Peter, Gospel of Truth and others) containing passages supporting the Gnostic belief in the importance of self-knowledge. Jesus is quoted as saying the Kingdom is inside you. . .When you come to know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will realize that you are the sons of the living Father. Pagels suggests that He is implying that the Kingdom of God symbolizes a state of transformed consciousness, not a place in the sky or in another world. Obviously the religious perspectives and methods of Gnosticism did not lend for a mass religion and were no match for the highly effective organization of the new Catholic Church (modeled after the Roman political and military system) and based on a unified canon requiring the initiate only the essentials of faith and rituals – and it has survived twenty centuries.However, others, such as William Blake (in his Everlasting Gospel) and Dostoevsky (most notably through Ivan in Brothers Karamazov) have identified with the vision of the Christ, rejected by the church, who desired man freely choosing the truth of his own conscience over religious certainty.Another interesting side issue is that apparently women participated in early Christian churches even in leadership positions. But by the end of the 2nd Century, the orthodox Christian Church segregated women from men in church and no longer allowed women into leadership positions. This coincided with a market movement of the orthodox Church from the lower classes into the more conservative middle class.
A very intriguing and insightful read on the similarities and differences between gnostic and orthodox Christians of the early Christian movement. The book presented a very different view of the origins of Christianity from what I used to know.What made the most impact on me was the documentation that showed some parallels between the Gnostic movement and Buddhism. To begin with, the word Gnostic comes from the Greek word “gnosis” meaning “knowledge”, which is more or less equated to “enlightenment” in Greek philosophy. The author had also equated the word to “insight” (the intuitive process of knowing oneself). In addition, the Jesus of the Gnostic texts speaks of illusion and enlightenment, not of sin and repentence as found in the New Testament. Other ideas like “multi-storied heaven” and the belief that ignorance, not sin, is what involves a person in suffering, are very much Buddhist concepts!Like some reviewers of this book, I agree that the Gnostic movement would not stand the test of time. All through the ages, politics have played an important role in the development of every religion. With a religion so disorganized and different from the Orthodox Christians, the Gnostics could not survive. Then again, I found myself wondering many times while reading how Christianity would have turned out if both doctrines had evolved peacefully side by side or merged partially or even totally.Credit to Elaine Pagels for cramming so much information into an interesting and readable historical book. It was a little dry at times, so for those who have neither time nor patience to plough through the whole book, just read the introduction and the conclusion and you will have a broad idea what it is all about.
What do You think about The Gnostic Gospels (1989)?
I found the book fascinating. The description of the discovery and coming to light of the Nag Hammadi library, a collection of Gnostic writings including gospels, apocalypses, and other early Christian/Gnostic books called apocryphal that did not make it into the New Testament because of the heretical views expressed. The narrative shows the extreme division among early Christian groups and the struggle between ecclesiastical authority (orthodoxy) and individual conscience (the various heterodox groups called Gnostics). Some pieces of Gnostic philosophy were passed to me in my Mormon Sunday School classes.
—Dave
This book is a classic. It describes, catalogues, quotes, and interprets portions of the secret gnostic gospels which were ordered destroyed in the 4th century after Christ. How, then, did we gain access to them? Some crafty monk shoved bits and pieces of papyrus into a clay jar and buried it, like a time capsule, for 20th century archeologists to discover and historians to argue about for another 16 centuries.What do the gnostic gospels disclose? Well, read if you want the full story, but let's just say most mainstream Christians won't like the ambiguity of finding out that there are many versions of the life of Christ and what he actually said and, thus, the implications for his followers, and that the version (aka, the New Testament) we ended up with is the result of censorship by the government of the time, who wanted to use Christianity (previously a radical sect) to control them (hmmmmm, sound familiar?).
—Eva
This book is about how, after JC's death, there was a struggle between heretic believers- those who believed in personal enlightenment and shunned a church hierarchy- and the disciple of John's beievers- patriarchal, hierarchal, congregational- and why John's side won. GG is based on the gnostic gospels which were discovered in urns buried in a cave in Egypt 1950. They had likely been suppressed by the dominant faction. It does a good job describing how present-day Christianity evolved and, in a sense, how many other religions evolve, for good or for ill. The pattern is as such: leader dies; followers dispute what his teachings meant and diverge into different paths; one branch gains dominance and spends a lot of it's time exterminating the others. This is the same in Islam, probably also in Judaeism, etc.cg
—Christine Giraud
