Forgive me in advance if I sound really stupid about all this kind of stuff, because believe me, I am.
Also sorry if this is a really old-hat discussion; I did do a cursory search and didn’t find much.
Anyway. Someone on another message board posted about the Vatican’s secret archives. They said that apparently there are (or there have been) loads of old texts that have been suppressed because they go against received Christian dogma – even though these texts are closer to the time of Jesus than some of the Gospels.
Can anyone give me the Straight Dope on this? Are these texts significant? If so, should we hear more about them (assuming they’re now available)? Are they really more historically accurate than the Gospels? Were they really hidden, or were Protestants always able to access them? In short, is or was the Vatican really evil and nasty in hiding the ‘truth’ or is it a big lot of nothing?
I’m also a bit confused about Gnosticism, because apparently these old texts back up a lot of that sect’s teaching. Is Gnosticism older than the established religion we have now? Should we re-introduce it? Was there any reason it was deemed heretic? Was it the Vatican being eeevvill again?
Ah, so many questions, so little time. I beg your indulgence.
If you want to know more about the Gnostics and their Gospels, you don’t need to break into the “secret archives” of the Vatican. There are a host of books on the subject and numerous trnaslations of the Gnostic Gospels. One of the leading authorities on the subject is Professor Elaine Pagels. Go to Barnes and Noble or to Amazon.com, enter her name, and you’ll be able to read all you ever wanted to know about the Gnostics.
I don’t endorse Gnosticism, mind you, nor do I think the Gnostic gosepls are really worth reading. I simply pass this along to disabuse you of the notion that there’s some kind of conspiracy preventing you from reading about them. I mean, come on! How “secret” can anything be, if you can pick up a dozen books on the subject at Barnes & Noble?
And if you want access to the secret archives of the Vatican, you don’t have to break in. Just show up in the Vatican library between 8:30-10:30 AM with a letter of introduction from a University and apply for a yearly pass. You can see how to apply here:
This is presumably a garbled reference to the discovery in 1923 of a manuscript of the Essene Gospel of Peace in the Vatican’s Archivo Segreto, except that, far from showing that the Vatican is busy suppressing secret Gnostic manuscripts, it is the perfect example of how they are only too happy to allow such documents to be published as widely as possible. This is one of numerous online versions.
I disagree with astorian – I think the Gnostic gospels are worth reading. But I do agree that Elaine Pagels is a great source of information, as is this site, which contains texts of the Gnostic writings found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt.
Gnosticism pre-dates Christianity. There were pagan, Jewish, and Christian forms of Gnosticism, and there was no central church or canon of scripture.
The basic tenet of Gnosticism is that Knowledge (gnosis) brings salvation / enlightenment / paradise / transcendence. Knowledge is the understanding that the physical/fleshly world is corrupt and the spiritual world is good and perfect.
One of the Gnostic creation myths (called “The Reality of the Rulers” or “The Hypostasis of the Archons,” depending on the translation) is a very interesting twist on the familiar story of Adam and Eve. In it, the god of the Old Testament, Jehovah (called Ialdabaoth or Sammael here), is not the true god but is evil and blind. He created the world, which is also evil. He tells Adam and Eve not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge in the garden of Eden because he does not want them to gain true Knowledge. The serpent is actually an agent of the true god (or gods, or spirits) and is a benevolent creature who wants mankind to acquire Knowledge and enlightenment. You can find the full text of this book here.
The Gospel of Thomas is Christian (sees Christ as the bringer of Gnosis) and actually shares a source with the synoptic Gospel of Luke (and so shares parables). You can find the full text of Thomas’ gospel here.
A full list of the Gnostic scripture found at Nag Hammadi is found here. The texts range in date from centuries before Christ to the early period of the new Christian Church. That website also contains commentary on the texts and other background information that will help you understand what you’re reading.
I’ve have a read of that Nag Hammadi link in a sec, gallows fodder – but can I ask now, if those are mostly Gnostic texts, and if Gnosticism came before Xianity, are they basically replaying the Jesus story to fit in with existing beliefs? Or is there a suggestion that the texts are as ‘true’ as the Gospels?
As for the Vatican story… am I still right in thinking that all these texts were kept ‘secret’ (or only accessible to Catholic scholars) until fairly recently? What was the Vatican’s reasoning behind this?
As far as my recollection goes, I don’t believe there are any Gnostic Christian texts that contain the “story” of Jesus as we see in the New Testament. The Gospel of Thomas, for example, is simply a collection of parables – there is no narrative. Other texts (like the Gospel of Philip) are long essays explaining who Christ is, what his teachings were, what the spirit world is – again, no narrative that contains the birth of Christ, his crucifixion, etc.
(The thing to remember is that Gnostics believed Knowledge itself saved you. Christ’s actions – his crucifixion and resurrection – were not important; it was his message that brought salvation.)
I’m not quite sure what you mean by the texts being as “true” as the synoptic Gospels – can you clarify?
This might answer your question, at least in part… Some of the sayings of Jesus found in the Gnostic texts are also found in the synoptic gospels of the New Testament. For example, verse 9 of the Gospel of Thomas is translated as,
That is very similar to the parable found in the Gospel of Luke, 8:5-15.
Gnostic texts from secret Vatican archives, and some people are excited.
Why this excitement with texts from two thousand years back?
Are they going to tell us things about life we don’t know about today, by keeping our eyes and mind open and functional?
Are they going to tell us things from God which He has decided not talk about anymore after that production of those texts?
Or are they going to tell us how things were really like in the times of their redaction?
I would be excited if they tell us about elixirs for eternal youth, which are really efficacious instead of a lot of ancient urban myths.
I would be excited if they tell us where to look for hidden treasures nowadays worth millions of dollars and can be employed for the study of peace and non-violence.
Well, Gnosticism did not really come “before” Christianity. Rather, there were various inchoate expressions of personal philosophy and belief being expressed in the late first century B.C.E. and early first century C.E. that borrowed from the dualist beliefs of the Persians, the Platonic ideals, and other widely scattered belief systems. There was no formal or organized set of teachings or beliefs that could actually be called Gnostic prior to the rise of Christianity.
Christianity actually provided a focal point for those thoughts to be gathered to coalesce into a set of systematic teachings or beliefs. There were non-Christian writers whose works laid a base upon which Gnostic teaching could build. (Simon Magus, a Jewish teacher mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, appears to have been one.) However, it was the rapid expansion of Christianity, as it began to formalize its own system of belief, that provided an organization in which the ideas of Gnosticism could be tried out and a venue to disseminate them. Rather than “replaying” the Jesus story, it would probably be more accuarate to say that they were one group who was taking the (as yet unfinished) Jesus story and using it to explain their beliefs.
Some Christians will say that Gnosticism tried to hijack Christianity. Some champions of Gnosticism will claim that the early church stamped out the “true” Christian message carried by Gnosticism. Rather than an organized battle, I suspect that two groups with related, but quite distinct, views of the world happened to find themselves drawn together and simultaneously repelled by those similarities and differences. The reaction against Gnosticism began quite early in the church and the level and type of anti-Gnostic content is used to date several of the sections of the New Testament for which we have no other reliable testimony.
For a humourous take on the whole matter, you might enjoy Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins. (Don’t read the spoiler if you don’t want to know how the book ends.)Jesus’s body turns out to be in the catacombs under the Vatican!
What about the Cathars of medieval southern France? I’ve seen them described as “Gnostic.” Were they descended from the first-century Gnostics? And did any surive? I’ve found several websites of “Cathar” churches but I don’t know if these are just modern re-creations. Are the Gnostics still with us, in any sense?
The Cathars (or Albigensians, along with the earlier Paulicians and Bogomilists) were not “descended” from the Gnostics in the sense that some secret group of Gnostics kept the “truth” going for hundreds of years (a la Jack Chick’s imaginary “true” Christians).
Rather, dualism, particularly as expressed as the physical in conflict with the material, is a constant refrain through many religions. Given that the Gnostics were very much into the spirit=good, flesh=bad dichotomy, any subsequent group that picked up the same theme would tend to look like Gnostics to the casual observer. Christianity tended to keep that flame alive by basing much of their expression of faith in Platonic terms (although filtered through the later philosopher, Plotinus). By describing good and evil in terms of spirit and flesh, they kept alive a trend of thought that gave rise to the Manichaean and Cathar heresies, among others.
The actual second century Gnostic tradition survived for a couple hundred years, blossoming into the Manichaeans*, particularly in the East (although Augustine of Hippo spent some time as a Manichaean and some of their dualism makes it into his theology). Some Gnostic (or, more accurately, Gnostic-like) beliefs continued to surface for centuries afterward.
The Manichaeans were a separate religion that was not really a Christian off-shoot. However, it was a proselytizing religion in the tradion of Christianity and, later, Islam, so it recruited Christians, who were then viewed as heretics. As an actual opponent of Christianity, Manichaeanism found itself in physical conflict with both the church and the state that both attempted to suppress it. By then end of the sixth century, with scholarship at a low ebb in the West, the scholarly appeal that its Gnostic side offered to some people found few adherents there, and under active opposition in the Eastern Empire, it eventually died out completely, although it was more successful retreating into Persia beyond the reach of Christianity, surviving various Muslim and other persecutions of one form or another until the 14th century.
The entire contents of the Vatican Archives were not generally open to scholars until the end of the 19th century: see this entry in the old Catholic Encyclopedia for the details.
That entry mentions that there was “strong opposition” from some quarters to the Archives being opened, but doesn’t go into details. Still, given the tensions in the Catholic Church in the period over modernising tendencies, it’d be no great surprise to me if much of this was just uneasiness with such a relatively new-fangled idea as national archives open to all researchers.
There would also have been practical problems with opening them. Another entry gives some idea of the scale of their holdings and how little was known about the contents.
Given all this, there’s no reason to suppose that the likes of the Essene Gospel of Peace was being actively suppressed by the Vatican. It was just one badly catalogued document amongst many, many others. For all practical purposes, they didn’t even know they had it, never mind what it was.
Has anyone heard of the ALL WE ALL (THEM OF) community?
A friend of mine recently showed me a little pamphlet he had from them and I went to their website (https://allweall.info) which had was a lot to get into. It’s not exactly a traditional gnostic text but does seem to use gnostic themes throughout.
How about you do a little to show that it isn’t spam? I am not going to click on your link - did you have any other reason to resurrect a 17 year old zombie thread?
Hey, sorry if it does feel like I’m spamming this message board. I am not a usual member of TSD. I’ve just been on a lot of different forums recently searching for conversations about Gnosticism in hopes that someone has some information on this or some insight on whether it is even actually a modern gnostic text. Again sorry, I didn’t mean to disrupt any normal flow of messaging.
But I do agree that Elaine Pagels is a great source of information, as is