Gnostic Gospels

As I have mentioned before, I began a subscription to The Atlantic a few months ago. In addition to the emails I receive daily with incredibly interesting articles by talented writers, I have received three monthly magazines to date. 

In the May edition, I was introduced to Elaine Pagels through a book review; The Atlantic has a few book reviews in each issue.

Pagels is an American historian of religion. She has conducted extensive research into the origins and history of Christianity, as well as Gnosticism, and so has written many books concerning these topics.

Gnostic Gospels is one such book, and the one which I recently read.

First, anyone who has read my posts, knows that I am a lapsed Catholic. While I admire and attempt to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ (see my literary effort called An Atheist For Christ), I do not believe in the two most basic tenets of Catholicism, that Jesus was the son of God, and that he died and rose from the dead to enable us sinners to gain eternity in heaven.

While it is possible that I had encountered Gnostic teachings at some point in my life, I never identified as a Gnostic, per se, although I have, at times, associated with being an agnostic, which, as I have now come to realize, is not the same as Gnosticism.

In December, 1945, an astonishing archeological discovery was made in Upper Egypt at a place called Nag Hammadi. Within an earthen jar buried some 1500 years earlier, were Coptic translations of even earlier manuscripts written in Greek. As research into this discovery continued, it became clear that the Nag Hammadi scrolls revealed gospels written in the first few hundred years after the life and death of Jesus. Further, these gospels were suppressed by the Church, as control of the direction of Christianity eventually favored an interpretation of Christ's life that these gospels did not support. 

In essence, these gospels represented a strain of Christianity that was popular in the first few centuries after Christ's death. They detail the main differences in the Gnostic version as compared to what we now know as the core tenants of Catholicism. 

To me, while it may seem obvious that any organization or belief system had to evolve from something, and that such evolution would have included cast aside beliefs, it is revealing to learn of some of those differences. I imagine it is part of Pagel's desire to research such debates as they reveal the arguments and disagreements of those early Christians, especially those people who dictated the direction of the Church, and the real meaning and lessons of Christ's life.

Again, to be clear, Pagels is a historian, someone who has spent much of her life teaching about and researching the origins of Christianity. She does not place value judgements on the competing interpretations of the meaning of the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth, but instead presents those disparate explanations in the light of how those who believed them, who preached them, advocated for the advancement and fundamental tenets of Catholicism.

Her book Gnostic Gospels, portrays those clashes as the literal battle for the direction and structure of the future Church, as well as the foundational beliefs that would be passed along concerning the life and lessons of Jesus.

Of course, as a Catholic indoctrinated into the "winning" side of that battle, Gnostic beliefs were never communicated, or if mentioned, were done so as heretical beliefs to avoid, and condemn.

As I mentioned above, the requirement that humanity needs to be saved as a result of original sin has often bothered me. Here is the post I wrote on that subject subject in late 2023.

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2023/11/original-sin.html 

So, again, in 1945 these scrolls are found that reveal multiple gospels, such as The Gospel of  Thomas, The Gospel of Philip, The Gospel of Truth, the Gospel to The Egyptians, The Secret Book of James, the Apocalypse of Paul, the Apocalypse of Peter, and many more, upwards of fifty two texts. All from the early centuries of the Christian era.

The book is very detailed, comparing quotes and details of events from one of these "discovered" gospels as compared to the four more recognized gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Like the witness statements that often occur among multiple people in the aftermath of an historic event, these Gnostic Gospels discuss the same or similar events as those in the New Testament, but with differing interpretations and/or translations of the languages of the time. 

Remember, anything written about the life of Jesus was written in long dead languages that have been translated, a few times, as language has evolved in the past 2,000 years.

The book can be hard to get through, not due to esoteric discussions, but because Pagels knows her subject so well, and provides umpteen instances where the current, accepted version and interpretation of the life of Jesus, is not the accepted interpretation of the Gnostic gospels. 

Additionally, Pagels names names, literally those people who drove the discussions, and who made the choices that placed the Gnostic gospels outside the accepted dogma of the Church.

Pagels also elaborates on just why it was inevitable that the gnostics would lose the battle, as they emphasized the ability for knowledge, attained through individual searching, over the necessity of a structure with a hierarchy of authority, pope, bishops, pastors, etc, from whom the lessons of Christ's teachings needed to be learned and explained.

Again, for me, someone with a fairly strong anti-authority streak, the Gnostic interpretation seems more relevant, and attractive.

Whether that tendency touches on pride, and the danger of automatic rejection of anything that emanates from an authority figure, sort of like an advanced two year old who says No without thinking, well that is a different issue.

The discoveries at Nag Hammadi.

I assume I have never heard of these texts before because I did not spend my due diligence in researching my Catholic heritage in those days when I began to question its tenets, and/or because my source of such information would have been the hierarchy which suppressed those texts to begin with. Regardless, I am glad to have had this Aha moment, and grateful that Pagels has spent so much of her time in trying to understand, and communicate the origins of the religion to which I was born.   

I've written under the topic of religion many times. Two posts, link provided below, were the result of letters to the editor which were published in our local newspaper, back in 2010.

 https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2010/04/our-christian-founders.html

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2010/06/following-letter-was-published-in-my.html 

Finally, I reread a post from 2018 that was recently accessed by someone. It was not labeled under the "religion" banner, but it certainly reflects a morality, a social morality, that we seem to be getting further and further away from. 

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2018/05/individual-vs-group-success.html