The Gnostic Gospels

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Dear All, The following is from the The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels. Gnostic Gospels helps us to understand that what Jesus preached was more in tune with the ancient eastern Tantric teachings than with the modern christian blind belief and conversion mechanism. Love and Regards,Sreenadh=========================================THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS BY ELAINE PAGELS In December 1945 an Arab peasant made an astonishing archeologicaldiscovery in Upper Egypt. Rumors obscured the circumstances of thisfind--perhaps because the discovery was accidental, and its sale onthe black market illegal. For years even the identity of thediscoverer remained unknown. One rumor held that he was a bloodavenger; another, that he had made the find near the town ofNaj 'Hammádì at the Jabal al-Tárif, a mountain honeycombed with morethan 150 caves. Originally natural, some of these caves were cut andpainted and used as grave sites as early as the sixth dynasty, some4,300 years ago. Thirty years later the discoverer himself, Muhammad 'Alí al-Sammán;told what happened. Shortly before he and his brothers avenged theirfather's murder in a blood feud, they had saddled their camels andgone out to the Jabal to dig for sabakh, a soft soil they used tofertilize their crops. Digging around a massive boulder, they hit ared earthenware jar, almost a meter high. Muhammad 'Alí hesitated tobreak the jar, considering that a jinn, or spirit, might live inside.But realizing that it might also contain gold, he raised his mattock,smashed the jar, and discovered inside thirteen papyrus books, boundin leather. Returning to his home in al-Qasr, Muhammad 'All dumpedthe books and loose papyrus leaves on the straw piled on the groundnext to the oven. Muhammad's mother, 'Umm-Ahmad, admits that sheburned much of the papyrus in the oven along with the straw she usedto kindle the fire. A few weeks later, as Muhammad 'Alí tells it, he and his brothersavenged their father's death by murdering Ahmed Isma'il. Their motherhad warned her sons to keep their mattocks sharp: when they learnedthat their father's enemy was nearby, the brothers seized theopportunity, "hacked off his limbs . . . ripped out his heart, anddevoured it among them, as the ultimate act of blood revenge." Fearing that the police investigating the murder would search hishouse and discover the books, Muhammad 'Alí asked the priest, al-Qummus Basiliyus Abd al-Masih, to keep one or more for him. Duringthe time that Muhammad 'Alí and his brothers were being interrogatedfor murder, Raghib, a local history teacher, had seen one of thebooks, and suspected that it had value. Having received one from al-Qummus Basiliyus, Raghib sent it to a friend in Cairo to find out itsworth. Sold on the black market through antiquities dealers in Cairo, themanuscripts soon attracted the attention of officials of the Egyptiangovernment. Through circumstances of high drama, as we shall see,they bought one and confiscated ten and a half of the thirteenleather-bound books, called codices, and deposited them in the CopticMuseum in Cairo. But a large part of the thirteenth codex, containingfive extraordinary texts, was smuggled out of Egypt and offered forsale in America. Word of this codex soon reached Professor GillesQuispel, distinguished historian of religion at Utrecht, in theNetherlands. Excited by the discovery, Quispel urged the JungFoundation in Zurich to buy the codex. But discovering, when hesucceeded, that some pages were missing, he flew to Egypt in thespring of 1955 to try to find them in the Coptic Museum. Arriving inCairo, he went at once to the Coptic Museum, borrowed photographs ofsome of the texts, and hurried back to his hotel to decipher them.Tracing out the first line, Quispel was startled, then incredulous,to read: "These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke,and which the twin, Judas Thomas, wrote down." Quispel knew that hiscolleague H.C. Puech, using notes from another French scholar, JeanDoresse, had identified the opening lines with fragments of a GreekGospel of Thomas discovered in the 1890's. But the discovery of thewhole text raised new questions: Did Jesus have a twin brother, asthis text implies? Could the text be an authentic record of Jesus'sayings? According to its title, it contained the Gospel According toThomas; yet, unlike the gospels of the New Testament, this textidentified itself as a secret gospel. Quispel also discovered that itcontained many sayings known from the New Testament; but thesesayings, placed in unfamiliar contexts, suggested other dimensions ofmeaning. Other passages, Quispel found, differed entirely from anyknown Christian tradition: the "living Jesus," for example, speaks insayings as cryptic and compelling as Zen koans: Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bringforth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you,what you do not bring forth will destroy you." What Quispel held in his hand, the Gospel of Thomas, was only one ofthe fifty-two texts discovered at Nag Hammadi (the usual Englishtransliteration of the town's name). Bound into the same volume withit is the Gospel of Philip, which attributes to Jesus acts andsayings quite different from those in the New Testament: . . . the companion of the [savior is] Mary Magdalene. [but Christloved] her more than [all] the disciples, and used to kiss her[often] on her [mouth]. The rest of [the disciples wereoffended] . . . They said to him, "Why do you love her more than allof us?" The Savior answered and said to them, "Why do I not love youas (I love) her?" Other sayings in this collection criticize common Christian beliefs,such as the virgin birth or the bodily resurrection, as naïvemisunderstandings. Bound together with these gospels is theApocryphon (literally, "secret book") of John, which opens with anoffer to reveal "the mysteries [and the] things hidden in silence"which Jesus taught to his disciple John. Muhammad 'Alí later admitted that some of the texts were lost--burnedup or thrown away. But what remains is astonishing: some fifty-twotexts from the early centuries of the Christian era--including acollection of early Christian gospels, previously unknown. Besidesthe Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip, the find included theGospel of Truth and the Gospel to the Egyptians, which identifiesitself as "the [sacred book] of the Great Invisible [spirit]."Another group of texts consists of writings attributed to Jesus'followers, such as the Secret Book of James, the Apocalypse of Paul,the Letter of Peter to Philip, and the Apocalypse of Peter. What Muhammad 'Alí discovered at Nag Hammadi, it soon became clear,were Coptic translations, made about 1,500 years ago, of still moreancient manuscripts. The originals themselves had been written inGreek, the language of the New Testament: as Doresse, Puech, andQuispel had recognized, part of one of them had been discovered byarcheologists about fifty years earlier, when they found a fewfragments of the original Greek version of the Gospel of Thomas. About the dating of the manuscripts themselves there is littledebate. Examination of the datable papyrus used to thicken theleather bindings, and of the Coptic script, place them c. A.D. 350-400. But scholars sharply disagree about the dating of the originaltexts. Some of them can hardly be later than c. A.D. 120-150, sinceIrenaeus, the orthodox Bishop of Lyons, writing C. 180, declares thatheretics "boast that they possess more gospels than there reallyare,'' and complains that in his time such writings already have wonwide circulation--from Gaul through Rome, Greece, and Asia Minor. Quispel and his collaborators, who first published the Gospel ofThomas, suggested the date of c. A.D. 140 for the original. Somereasoned that since these gospels were heretical, they must have beenwritten later than the gospels of the New Testament, which are datedc. 60-l l0. But recently Professor Helmut Koester of HarvardUniversity has suggested that the collection of sayings in the Gospelof Thomas, although compiled c. 140, may include some traditions evenolder than the gospels of the New Testament, "possibly as early asthe second half of the first century" (50-100)--as early as, orearlier, than Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. Scholars investigating the Nag Hammadi find discovered that some ofthe texts tell the origin of the human race in terms very differentfrom the usual reading of Genesis: the Testimony of Truth, forexample, tells the story of the Garden of Eden from the viewpoint ofthe serpent! Here the serpent, long known to appear in Gnosticliterature as the principle of divine wisdom, convinces Adam and Eveto partake of knowledge while "the Lord" threatens them with death,trying jealously to prevent them from attaining knowledge, andexpelling them from Paradise when they achieve it. Another text,mysteriously entitled The Thunder, Perfect Mind, offers anextraordinary poem spoken in the voice of a feminine divine power: For I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scornedone.I am the whore and the holy one.I am the wife and the virgin....I am the barren one, and many are her sons....I am the silence that is incomprehensible....I am the utterance of my name.These diverse texts range, then, from secret gospels, poems, andquasi-philosophic descriptions of the origin of the universe, tomyths, magic, and instructions for mystical practice. Why were these texts buried-and why have they remained virtuallyunknown for nearly 2,000 years? Their suppression as banneddocuments, and their burial on the cliff at Nag Hammadi, it turnsout, were both part of a struggle critical for the formation of earlyChristianity. The Nag Hammadi texts, and others like them, whichcirculated at the beginning of the Christian era, were denounced asheresy by orthodox Christians in the middle of the second century. Wehave long known that many early followers of Christ were condemned byother Christians as heretics, but nearly all we knew about them camefrom what their opponents wrote attacking them. Bishop Irenaeus, whosupervised the church in Lyons, c. 180, wrote five volumes, entitledThe Destruction and Overthrow of Falsely So-called Knowledge, whichbegin with his promise to set forth the views of those who are nowteaching heresy . . . to show how absurd and inconsistent with thetruth are their statements . . . I do this so that . . . you may urgeall those with whom you are connected to avoid such an abyss ofmadness and of blasphemy against Christ. He denounces as especially "full of blasphemy" a famous gospel calledthe Gospel of Truth. Is Irenaeus referring to the same Gospel ofTruth discovered at Nag Hammadi' Quispel and his collaborators, whofirst published the Gospel of Truth, argued that he is; one of theircritics maintains that the opening line (which begins "The gospel oftruth") is not a title. But Irenaeus does use the same source as atleast one of the texts discovered at Nag Hammadi--the Apocryphon(Secret Book) of John--as ammunition for his own attack onsuch "heresy." Fifty years later Hippolytus, a teacher in Rome, wroteanother massive Refutation of All Heresies to "expose and refute thewicked blasphemy of the heretics." This campaign against heresy involved an involuntary admission of itspersuasive power; yet the bishops prevailed. By the time of theEmperor Constantine's conversion, when Christianity became anofficially approved religion in the fourth century, Christianbishops, previously victimized by the police, now commanded them.Possession of books denounced as heretical was made a criminaloffense. Copies of such books were burned and destroyed. But in UpperEgypt, someone; possibly a monk from a nearby monastery of St.Pachomius, took the banned books and hid them from destruction--inthe jar where they remained buried for almost 1,600 years. But those who wrote and circulated these texts did not regardthemselves as "heretics. Most of the writings use Christianterminology, unmistakable related to a Jewish heritage. Many claim tooffer traditions about Jesus that are secret, hidden from "the many"who constitute what, in the second century, came to be calledthe "catholic church." These Christians are now called gnostics, fromthe Greek word gnosis, usually translated as "knowledge." For asthose who claim to know nothing about ultimate reality are calledagnostic (literally, "not knowing"), the person who does claim toknow such things is called gnostic ("knowing"). But gnosis is notprimarily rational knowledge. The Greek language distinguishesbetween scientific or reflective knowledge ("He knows mathematics")and knowing through observation or experience ("He knows me"), whichis gnosis. As the gnostics use the term, we could translate itas "insight," for gnosis involves an intuitive process of knowingoneself. And to know oneself, they claimed, is to know human natureand human destiny. According to the gnostic teacher Theodotus,writing in Asia Minor (c. 140-160), the gnostic is one has come tounderstand who we were, and what we have become; where we were...whither we are hastening; from what we are being released; what birthis, and what is rebirth. Yet to know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to knowGod; this is the secret of gnosis. Another gnostic teacher, Monoimus,says: Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of asimilar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point.Learn who it is within you who makes everything his own and says, "MyGod, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body." Learn the sources ofsorrow:, joy, love, hate . . . If you carefully investigate thesematters you will find him in yourself. What Muhammad 'All discovered at Nag Hammadi is, apparently, alibrary of writings, almost all of them gnostic. Although they claimto offer secret teaching, many of these texts refer to the Scripturesof the Old Testament, and others to the letters of Paul and the NewTestament gospels. Many of them include the same dramatic personae asthe New Testament--Jesus and his disciples. Yet the differences arestriking. Orthodox Jews and Christians insist that a chasm separates humanityfrom Its creator: God is wholly other. But some of the gnostics whowrote these gospels contradict this: self-knowledge is knowledge ofGod; the self and the divine are identical. Second, the "living Jesus" of these texts speaks of illusion andenlightenment, not of sin and repentance, like the Jesus of the NewTestament. Instead of coming to save us from sin, he comes as a guidewho opens access to spiritual understanding. But when the discipleattains enlightenment, Jesus no longer serves as his spiritualmaster: the two have become equal--even identical. Third, orthodox Christians believe that Jesus is Lord and Son of Godin a unique way: he remains forever distinct from the rest ofhumanity whom he came to save. Yet the gnostic Gospel of Thomasrelates that as soon as Thomas recognizes him, Jesus says to Thomasthat they have both received their being from the same source: Jesus said, "I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you havebecome drunk from the bubbling stream which I have measured out....He who will drink from my mouth will become as I am: I myself shallbecome he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him." Does not such teaching--the identity of the divine and human. theconcern with illusion and enlightenment, the founder who is presentednot as Lord, but as spiritual guide sound more Eastern than Western?Some scholars have suggested that if the names were changed,the "living Buddha" appropriately could say what the Gospel of Thomasattributes to the living Jesus. Could Hindu or Buddhist traditionhave influenced gnosticism? The British scholar of Buddhism, Edward Conze, suggests that it had.He points out that "Buddhists were in contact with the ThomasChristians (that is, Christians who knew and used such writings asthe Gospel of Thomas) in South India." Trade routes between the Greco-Roman world and the Far East were opening up at the time whengnosticism flourished (A.D. 80-200); for generations, Buddhistmissionaries had been proselytizing in Alexandria. We note, too, thatHippolytus, who was a Greek speaking Christian in Rome (c. 225),knows of the Indian Brahmins--and includes their tradition among thesources of heresy: There is . . . among the Indians a heresy of those who philosophizeamong the Brahmins, who live a self-sufficient life, abstaining from(eating) living creatures and all cooked food . . . They say that Godis light, not like the light one sees, nor like the sun nor fire, butto them God is discourse, not that which finds expression inarticulate sounds, but that of knowledge (gnosis) through which thesecret mysteries of nature are perceived by the wise. Could the title of the Gospel of Thomas--named for the disciple who,tradition tells us, went to India--suggest the influence of Indiantradition? These hints indicate the possibility, yet our evidence is notconclusive. Since parallel traditions may emerge in differentcultures at different times, such ideas could have developed in bothplaces independently. What we call Eastern and Western religions, andtend to regard as separate streams, were not clearly differentiated2,000 years ago. Research on the Nag Hammadi texts is only beginning:we look forward to the work of scholars who can study thesetraditions comparatively to discover whether they can, in fact, betraced to Indian sources. Even so, ideas that we associate with Eastern religions emerged inthe first century through the gnostic movement in the West, but theywere suppressed and condemned by polemicists like Irenaeus. Yet thosewho called gnosticism heresy were adopting--consciously or not--theviewpoint of that group of Christians who called themselves orthodoxChristians. A heretic may be anyone whose outlook someone elsedislikes or denounces. According to tradition, a heretic is one whodeviates from the true faith. But what defines that "true faith"? Whocalls it that, and for what reasons? We find this problem familiar in our own experience. Theterm "Christianity," especially since the Reformation, has covered anastonishing range of groups. Those claiming to represent "trueChristianity" in the twentieth century can range from a Catholiccardinal in the Vatican to an African Methodist Episcopal preacherinitiating revival in Detroit, a Mormon missionary in Thailand, orthe member of a village church on the coast of Greece. Yet Catholics,Protestants, and Orthodox agree that such diversity is a recent--anddeplorable--development. According to Christian legend, the earlychurch was different. Christians of every persuasion look back to theprimitive church to find a simpler, purer form of Christian faith. Inthe apostles' time, all members of the Christian community sharedtheir money and property; all believed the same teaching, andworshipped together; all revered the authority of the apostles. Itwas only after that golden age that conflict, then heresy emerged: sosays the author of the Acts of the Apostles, who identifies himselfas the first historian of Christianity. But the discoveries at Nag Hammadi have upset this picture. If weadmit that some of these fifty-two texts represents early forms ofChristian teaching, we may have to recognize that early Christianityis far more diverse than nearly anyone expected before the NagHammadi discoveries. Contemporary Christianity, diverse and complex as we find it,actually may show more unanimity than the Christian churches of thefirst and second centuries. For nearly all Christians since thattime, Catholics, Protestants, or Orthodox, have shared three basicpremises. First, they accept the canon of the New Testament; second,they confess the apostolic creed; and third, they affirm specificforms of church institution. But every one of these-the canon ofScripture, the creed, and the institutional structure--emerged in itspresent form only toward the end of the second century. Before thattime, as Irenaeus and others attest, numerous gospels circulatedamong various Christian groups, ranging from those of the NewTestament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, to such writings as theGospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Truth, aswell as many other secret teachings, myths, and poems attributed toJesus or his disciples. Some of these, apparently, were discovered atNag Hammadi; many others are lost to us. Those who identifiedthemselves as Christians entertained many--and radically differing-religious beliefs and practices. And the communities scatteredthroughout the known world organized themselves in ways that differedwidely from one group to another. Yet by A. D. 200, the situation had changed. Christianity had becomean institution headed by a three-rank hierarchy of bishops, priests,and deacons, who understood themselves to be the guardians of theonly "true faith." The majority of churches, among which the churchof Rome took a leading role, rejected all other viewpoints as heresy.Deploring the diversity of the earlier movement, Bishop Irenaeus andhis followers insisted that there could be only one church, andoutside of that church, he declared, "there is no salvation." Membersof this church alone are orthodox (literally, "straight-thinking")Christians. And, he claimed, this church must be catholic-- that is,universal. Whoever challenged that consensus, arguing instead forother forms of Christian teaching, was declared to be a heretic, andexpelled. When the orthodox gained military support, sometime afterthe Emperor Constantine became Christian in the fourth century, thepenalty for heresy escalated. From The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels. Published by VintageBooks. Reprinted by permission of the author. All rights reserved. ==============================================