In the world of biblical studies, at least among some critical scholars, Gnosticism has been the darling for sometime now. Especially since the discovery of the so-called “Gnostic Gospels” at Nag Hammadi in 1945, scholars have sung the praises of this alternative version of Christianity.
Gnosticism was a heretical version of Christianity that burst on the scene primarily in the second century and gave the orthodox Christians a run for their money. And it seems that some scholars look back and wish that the Gnostics had prevailed.
When the apostle John wrote his first epistle near the end of the first century, the Gnostic philosophy had swept through the Roman world and had already made serious inroads into the church. Paul fights it in some of his letters, particularly I Corinthians, Galatians, and Colossians. John attempts to counter it in all of his writings. The Gnostic Gospels are ancient religious writings which falsely claim to be written by famous biblical figures such as Peter, Thomas, and Mary. Most of the Gnostic Gospels that have survived were found in a collection of 13 books from the third and fourth century AD. The books contain a total of 52 Gnostic texts,. Lastly, as far as most scholars know, Gnostics considered themselves Christians and saw Jesus as a heavenly messenger. However, they rejected the idea of God becoming incarnate (God becoming a man), dying and rising bodily. 'These beliefs were considered unspiritual and against true wisdom because they entangled spirit with matter.' His collection of scriptures includes tractates that are not in Nag Hammadi such as the Hermetic text 'Poimandres.' Furthermore, each text is introduced with a summary of it's contents, the literary background, a breakdown of it's mythic ch Bentley Layton's translation of gnostic scriptures provides a great supplement to Robinson's Nag Hammadi.
After all, it is argued, traditional Christianity was narrow, dogmatic, intolerant, elitist, and mean-spirited, whereas Gnosticism was open-minded, all-welcoming, tolerant and loving. Given this choice, which would you choose?
While this narrative about free-spirited Gnosticism being sorely oppressed by those mean and uptight orthodox Christians might sound rhetorically compelling, it simply isn’t borne out by the facts. So, here are five claims often made about Gnosticism that prove to be more myth than reality:
Myth #1: Gnosticism was more popular than traditional Christianity.
Time and again we are told that Gnostics were just as widespread as orthodox Christians, and that their books were just as popular too (if not more so). The reason they did not prevail in the end is because they were oppressed and forcibly stamped out by the orthodox party who had gained power through Constantine.
But, this is simply not the case. All the evidence suggests that it was “the Great Church” (in the language of the pagan critic Celsus) that dominated the earliest Christian centuries, long before Constantine. Moreover, Gnostic writings were not nearly as popular as those which became canonical, as can be seen by the number of manuscripts they left behind. For example, we have more copies of just the Gospel of John from the first few centuries than we have of all apocryphal works combined.
Myth #2: Gnosticism was more inclusive and open-minded than traditional Christianity.
A popular perception of Gnostics is that they lacked the elitist mentality of traditional Christianity. They were the accepting ones, we are told.
But, again, it seems that reality might have actually been the opposite. Most people don’t realize that Gnostics were not interested in salvation for everybody. On the contrary, they regarded salvation as something only for the “spiritually elite.”
As Hultgren affirms, “The attitude of these Gnostics was elitist to the extreme, since they held that only one in a thousand or two in ten thousand are capable of knowing the secrets [of salvation]” (Normative Christianity, 99).
Myth #3: Gnosticism more accurately reflects the teachings of the historical Jesus than traditional Christianity.
Some have argued that if you want to know the real Jesus, the historical Jesus, then Gnostic writings (like the Gospel of Thomas) give you a more reliable picture.
The problems with such a claim are manifold, but I will just mention one: Gnostics were not that interested in the historical Jesus. For Gnostics, what mattered was not the apostolic tradition handed down but rather their current religious experience with the risen Jesus (Jonathan Cahana, “None of Them Knew Me or My Brothers: Gnostic Anti-Traditionalism and Gnosticism as a Cultural Phenomenon,” Journal of Religion, 94 [2014]: 49-73).
In other words, Gnostics were concerned much less about the past and much more about the present.
This sort of “existential” approach to religion may be popular in our modern culture where experience rules the day and religion is viewed as entirely private. But it doesn’t help you recover what really happened in history. If you want to know what happened in history, the canonical Gospels have always been the best sources.
Myth #4: Gnosticism was more favorable towards women than traditional Christianity.
This is a big one. Popular perceptions are that the orthodox Christians oppressed women, but the Gnostics liberated them. But, again, the truth is not so simple.
On the contrary, the historical evidence suggests that women flocked to traditional Christianity in droves. Indeed, they may have outnumbered the men almost two to one. Rodney Stark in his book The Triumph of Christianity argues that this is because Christianity proved to be a very welcoming, healthy, and positive environment for women.
It is also worth noting that some of the Gnostic leaders’ supposedly pro-woman stance is not all it is cracked up to be. The Valentinian Gnostic Marcus was actually known for bringing women into the movement so that he could sexually seduce them (Irenaeus, Haer. 1.13.5).
Moreover, the Gnostic view of women seemed particularly negative if one considers the final verse in the Gospel of Thomas: “For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven” (logion 114). It is hard to see this as an endorsement of women!
Myth #5: Gnosticism was more positive towards human sexuality than traditional Christianity.
A final myth about Gnosticism is that it was pro-sex and that traditional Christianity was anti-sex. In other words, Gnostics celebrated sexuality and traditional Christians were puritanical prudes.
Again, the reality is very different. While some Gnostics were quite sexually licentious (as noted above with Marcus), a large strain of the movement was utterly against sex. Indeed, much of the movement advocated a harsh asceticism and celibacy.
For example, the Book of Thomas states, “Woe unto you who love the sexual intercourse that belongs to femininity and its foul cohabitation. And woe unto you who are gripped by the authorities of your bodies; for they will afflict you.”
While many orthodox Christians certainly viewed celibacy positively, it was always regarded as voluntary. Marriage, and sex within marriage, was celebrated and viewed as a gift from God.
In sum, popular perceptions about Gnosticism are just that, popular perceptions. And thus they do not necessarily have a basis in history. As we have seen here, the real Gnosticism was very different. And it reminds us that perhaps Gnosticism failed not because it was politically oppressed by those crafty orthodox folks, but because it simply proved to be less attractive to those in the earliest centuries who were seeking to follow Christ.
Or, as F.F. Bruce famously quipped, “The Gnostic schools lost because they deserved to lose” (Canon of Scripture, 277).
The Gnostic Gospels are ancient religious writings which falsely claim to be written by famous biblical figures such as Peter, Thomas, and Mary.
Most of the Gnostic Gospels that have survived were found in a collection of 13 books from the third and fourth century AD. The books contain a total of 52 Gnostic texts, not all of which are “gospels” or even claim to be Christian.
These were found buried in a jar near an Egyptian town called Nag Hammadi in 1945. (This is why the collection is also known as the Nag Hammadi Library.) These are the only surviving copies of many important Gnostic writings.
Scholars call these gospels “pseudepigrapha,” meaning that the claimed author is not the real author. Clues within the text—such as significant deviations in writing style and theology or references to events—point instead to the Gnostics (a catch-all term for ambiguous religious sects that sought divine knowledge). Gnosticism was a diverse spiritual movement with many branches, some of which had roots in Christianity.
Some people have referred to these books as “lost books of the Bible,” as if they were once included in the Christian canon. Some of them, including a book of sayings known as The Gospel of Thomas, even appear to contain original quotes from Jesus found nowhere else.
While they are all referred to as Gnostic texts, some of these writings (like The Gospel of Thomas) barely dip into Gnosticism and don’t connect to a specific Gnostic group. They’ve been dubbed “Gnostic” simply by association: they were found with blatantly Gnostic texts.
Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Protestants all consider the Gnostic Gospels apocryphal writings that aren’t divinely inspired, and shouldn’t be included in the canon.
Scholars debate about what exactly we can learn from the Gnostic Gospels. Are they simply useful for learning about the ancient world? Are they a sort of “spiritual backdrop” for early Christianity? Or do they reveal that early Christian beliefs were more complex and diverse than orthodox writers would have us believe?
To explore the significance of the Gnostic Gospels, let’s start by taking a look at Gnosticism.
What is Gnosticism?
Gnosticism is an umbrella term for a diverse movement of more than 50 ancient spiritual sects that sprang up around the same time as early Christianity (though some sects predated Christianity). Gnosticism peaked in the first and second century, but continued to influence Western thought for centuries—and still survives in some spiritual belief systems today.
The term comes from the Greek word gnosis, meaning “knowledge.” Broadly speaking, Gnosticism was about attaining salvation through knowledge. All material things were considered bad, and all spiritual things were considered good. Humans were spiritual beings trapped in material bodies. And knowledge was the key to freeing our spiritual nature from the chains of the material world.
From the way ancient Christians referred to the writers we now know as the Gnostics, it has been notoriously difficult to categorize Gnosticism. The early church didn’t even use the term Gnosticism. They referred to some writers as gnostikos (meaning “learned” or “intellectual”), and it only evolved into a label for heretical beliefs much later.
The term Gnosticism first appeared in the seventeenth century, when a philosopher named Henry More used it to describe a heretical belief from Thyatira in the Book of Revelation. Later writers then began using Gnosticism to refer to other heretical beliefs from early Christianity. So until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, most of what we knew about Gnosticism came from critics of Gnosticism and a handful of Gnostic writings that survived.
Modern scholars couldn’t tell whether Gnosticism was an interreligious movement, a separate religion, or a specific sect of Judaism or Christianity. As a result, there was very little consensus about what fell under “Gnosticism” until after the Nag Hammadi Library was discovered.
(And even now, it’s a bit of a touchy subject among scholars.)
Were the Gnostics Christians?
Sometimes you’ll hear Gnosticism referred to as Christian Gnosticism or Jewish Gnosticism. This is because forms of Gnosticism emerged from Judeo-Christian teachings (among other things), and split off from accepted Christian beliefs. For example, some Gnostic arguments may have been riffs off of Paul’s writings on the separation of the flesh and the spirit (like we find in Galatians 5:17–19).
And as you could probably tell from the names of the Gnostic Gospels, some Gnostic groups claimed to be Christian, even though they rejected foundational Christian beliefs.
It’s hard to make generalizations about all Gnostics since there were so many sects, and they varied in the degree to which they deviated from orthodox Christianity. But many central Gnostic beliefs were not rooted in the Bible or Christian tradition, and conformed elements of Christianity to fit other philosophical and spiritual belief systems.
At best, the Gnostics were quasi-Christian, professing a form of Christianity that had been so contaminated by Greek philosophy and other belief systems that it had little in common with the larger Christian church.
Adolf von Harnack, a nineteenth century German theologian, called Gnosticism “the acute Hellenization of Christianity.”
Still, since Gnosticism was such a diverse movement, there are many different approaches to categorizing it, and while the early church rejected “Gnostic Christian” writings as heretical, some scholars still call them Christian.
Why did they write about Jesus, using the names of biblical figures?
Ancient writers sometimes used pseudepigraphal writings to lend credibility to their ideas within particular groups. (As we see with the Letter of Aristeas and the origin of the Septuagint.)
But not all pseudepigrapha was ill-intended or blatant forgery.
Sometimes it was simply an error: the original author was unknown, and someone attributed it to the wrong person later. Pseudepigrapha could also be a tribute to a well-respected person who recently died. And if a church leader permitted someone to write on their behalf while they were alive, that person would sometimes continue to do this for years after their death.
However it happened, these writings presented a problem: would people know the difference later? Sometimes the church caught on and called these writings out, like Eusebius of Caesarea did when “new writings” from Clement of Rome seemed to appear out of thin air:
“And now some have only the other day brought forward other wordy and lengthy compositions as being Clement’s, containing dialogues of Peter and Appion, of which there is absolutely no mention in the ancients.” —Ecclesiastical History
But less discerning readers sometimes let pseudepigraphal writings slip through, and nobody caught the mistakes until much later. After discovering blatant forgeries, the early church generally rejected pseudepigrapha as inauthentic and unauthoritative (with some exceptions).
Since some forms of Gnosticism splintered off from orthodox Christian beliefs, they likely considered themselves Christians, and they would’ve had good reason for wanting their beliefs to be accepted within the church.
Fun fact: The Nag Hammadi Library also contained a copy of Plato’s Republic that was thoroughly edited to align with Gnostic ideas.
Who really wrote the Gnostic texts?
Most sects of Gnosticism were named after the leaders who first championed their ideas. The majority of these Gnostic writings didn’t survive, leaving us with scattered quotes, references, and descriptions from their critics.
But while some of the texts we know as the Gnostic Gospels survived, we will likely never know who actually wrote them. The only bylines are fake. And even though clues within the texts can tell us what strains of Gnosticism they may have been influenced by, they can’t tell us who wrote them.
The complete list of Gnostic texts
While the vast majority of the Gnostic writings we have today come from the Nag Hammadi Library, a smattering of texts came from other sources, and we had access to them before 1945.
Gnostic texts
Scholars had access to 11 Gnostic texts before the Nag Hammadi Library, and they weren’t all complete (one is only a summary). Some were also “reconstructed” from writers who criticized Gnosticism.
Here they are, grouped by the codex (book) they came in or the manner in which they were preserved.
Saved by the church
- The Acts of Thomas
- The Acts of John
The Bruce Codex
- The Gnosis of the Invisible God or The Books of Jeu
- The Untitled Apocalypse or The Gnosis of the Light
The Askew Codex
- Pistis Sophia: Books of the Savior
The Berlin Codex (also known as The Akhmim Codex)
- The Gospel of Mary
- Apocryphon of John
- A summary of The Acts of Peter
- The Wisdom of Jesus Christ
Other
- The Secret Gospel of Mark
- The Hermetica
Fortunately, the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library exposed scholars to a much broader picture of Gnosticism—one that hadn’t first been filtered through the eyes of its critics.
The Nag Hammadi Library
Each book from the Nag Hammadi Library contains several texts, which were likely written in Greek (possibly as early as the first century) and later translated into Coptic—an Egyptian language related to Greek and ancient Egyptian.
Scholars believe they were translated from Greek because while the texts themselves are in Coptic, the titles are Greek. Some texts, like The Secret Book of James, may have originally been written in Hebrew, translated into Greek, and then translated into Coptic. (The author claims to have written in Hebrew—but then again, they also claim to be the Apostle James.)
Not all these texts were explicitly Gnostic. Three were Egyptian wisdom texts from the Corpus Hermeticum, and one was a heavily edited (in other words, Gnosticized) version of Plato’s Republic.
Here are all the Gnostic texts from the Nag Hammadi Library, organized by the codex they were found in. Some are repeats. For example, copies of The Apocryphon of John appear in Codex II, Codex III, and Codex IV.
Codex I
- The Prayer of the Apostle Paul
- The Apocrypha of James (also known as The Secret Book of James)
- The Gospel of Truth
- The Treatise on the Resurrection
- The Tripartite Tractate
Codex II
- The Apocryphon of James
- The Gospel of Thomas
- The Gospel of Philip
- The Hypostasis of the Archons
- On the Origin of the World
- The Exegesis on the Soul
- The Book of Thomas the Contender
Codex III
- The Apocryphon of John
- The Gospel of the Egyptians
- Eugnostos the Blessed
- The Sophia of Jesus Christ
- The Dialogue of the Savior
Codex IV
- The Apocryphon of John
- The Gospel of the Egyptians
Codex V
- Eugnostos the Blessed
- The Apocalypse of Paul
- The First Apocalypse of James
- The Second Apocalypse of James
- The Apocalypse of Adam
Codex VI
- The Acts of Peter and the Apostles
- The Thunder, Perfect Mind
- Authoritative Teaching
- The Concept of Our Great Power
- Republic (written by Plato, translated and edited by Gnostics)
- The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth
- The Prayer of Thanksgiving
- Asclepius 21-29
Codex VII
- The Paraphrase of Shem
- The Second Treatise of the Great Seth
- Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter
- The Teachings of Silvanus
- The Three Steles of Seth
Gnostic Scripturesrejected Scriptures Study
Codex VIII
- Zostrianos
- The Letter of Peter to Philip
Codex IX
- Melchizedek
- The Thought of Norea
- The Testimony of Truth
Codex X
- Marsanes
Codex XI
- The Interpretation of Knowledge
- A Valentinian Exposition, On the Anointing, On Baptism, and On the Eucharist
- Allogenes
- Hypsisphrone
Codex XII
- The Sentence of Sextus
- The Gospel of Truth
- Fragments
Codex XIII
- Trimorphic Protennoia
- On the Origin of the World
Scholars had never seen many of these works before—they’d only heard of them from other ancient writers, or read quotes in other texts.
Fun fact: “Codex XIII” isn’t technically a separate book. It’s only eight pages, and only contains the first few lines of On the Origin of the World at the bottom of the eighth page. At some point before the codices were stuffed in a jar and buried in the ground, someone took these pages from another book and put them in the cover of the sixth book. Since it was clearly not connected to the material in the sixth book, it’s been treated as the remains of a separate codex.
How was the Nag Hammadi Library discovered?
The story of the Nag Hammadi Library’s discovery has a lot of parallels to the Dead Sea Scrolls, complete with an accidental encounter, disputes over who “owned” the books, backchannel sales of the texts, mishandling of the manuscripts, and controversy over what the discovery meant for the Bible.
Here are the nuts and bolts.
A farmer named Muhammad Ali al-Samman and his brother found the jar full of books while digging for fertilizer near some caves. They stumbled onto more than 1,000 pages that were well over 1,000 years old. They planned to gradually sell the books individually, so they didn’t report it, and it took a long time for anyone to realize the significance of their discovery.
In the meantime, their mom was worried the texts might have “dangerous effects,” so she burned some of them.
A year after their discovery, the brothers got caught up in a feud, so they didn’t have time for silly old books anymore, and they gave them to a priest. Over the next few years, the priest sold them to an antique dealer in Cairo. Before the Department of Antiquities could snatch them all up and permanently claim them for Egypt, a codex slipped away to Belgium.
The Carl Gustav Jung Institute purchased it in 1951. When Carl Jung died ten years later, there was a kerfuffle about who owned the codex, and it took another decade for the book to make it back to Cairo.
Much like the Dead Sea Scrolls, there were a lot of politics involved, and scholars around the world had to wait an excruciatingly long time to get access to the documents.
The first translation wasn’t published until 1977, more than 30 years after the initial discovery.
What do we do with the Gnostic Gospels?
The Gnostic Gospels claimed to be written by important biblical figures. But they weren’t. And even as various Gnostic movements gained traction, the early church almost immediately rejected them as heretical. Before the end of the twentieth century, most of what we knew about these gospels came from early church fathers who specifically wrote about them to condemn them.
Reading these gospels today can teach us plenty about the belief systems early Christianity interacted with, but scholars still debate what—if anything—we can trust about these texts.
You can read them online through The Gnostic Society Library. Or not. It’s up to you. But nobody is putting these in your Bible anytime soon.
Explore the Bible with us!
Gnostic Scriptures Book
We create research-based articles and handy infographics to help people understand the Bible.
Gnostic Scripturesrejected Scriptures Faith
Join our email list, and we’ll send you some of our best free resources—plus we’ll tell you whenever we make something new.
Gnostic Scripturesrejected Scriptures Meaning
You have Successfully Subscribed!