The oldest piece of my own writing on this blog is from a letter I wrote my sister where I talk about Elaine Pagels’s “The Gnostic Gospels”. Here I rewrite it to see how much my writing has changed (maybe I should do this once a year):
Then: Elaine Pagels: The Gnostic Gospels
Now:
I am reading “The Gnostic Gospels” by Elaine Pagels, a professor at Princeton. We think there are only four gospels – but that is because once the Church got the backing of the Empire in the late 300s, it burned the other gospels, the ones it did not approve of, like those of the Gnostics. As it turns out, it did not burn them all: some were hidden in a jar in a cave in Egypt. There they sat for 1600 years until they were discovered in 1945.
The Gnostic gospels have a much different view of Christianity:
- God is male and female.
- God is in each person.
- In the Garden of Eden the snake was telling the truth while “God” was not God at all but some lesser being lying about being God.
- Life is not a battle against sin but against the lies of this world.
- Jesus did not rise from the dead.
- Jesus favoured Mary Magdalene over Peter.
It was more like Buddhism than what we are used to. In fact, it was in the time of Jesus that regular trade with India was opening up.
The Church won not because it had the Truth but because its beliefs led to martyrdom and a chain of command (popes, bishops, priest) that kept it from being destroyed by hundreds of years of persecution and heresy.
The Gnostics had none of that: their Jesus did not suffer on the cross – in fact he laughed! – so they had no martyrs. Each believer discovers the Truth inside himself and so to be saved there is no need for priests or bishops – which left the Gnostics without strong leadership or a single set of clear teachings to keep them together.
In the 100s the Church and the Gnostics had about the same number of followers. But the Church, being better led and more fanatical, got the upper hand and by the 300s was able to wipe out the remaining Gnostics and burn their gospels.
So there has been a sort of Darwinian natural selection of religious truth. In the end the only Christianity that could make it through the first 400 years was one that believed:
- Jesus was human and suffered on the cross – thus martyrs.
- Jesus rose physically from the dead – thus a church of middlemen (priests) offering the the Body and Blood of Christ as the only way to heaven.
- There is only one true God – thus only one true Church.
Get rid of any one of these beliefs and the Church would have fallen apart or would have been wiped out – just like the Gnostics.
See also:
- Elaine Pagels: The Gnostic Gospels – the original post
- Gnosticism
- Nag Hammadi Library – the books in that jar
If this is the same book I remember, it read like a dissertation. I got bogged down in the citations.
Actually I like your original style of this review.
What I do remember about this book, is that I thought one of the main reasons the Gnostics didn’t survive because women were too prominent. Patriarchy ruled in the culture and I also thought that some of the apostle were very sexist, Peter, Paul and Timothy. The “Garden of Eden” story became the supporting foundation for patriarchy.
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It’s an entertaining way to see how it was then.
I’m no specialist, but if it was truely a matter of shall we say “spiritual evolution” or “competition”, the church would have ended with only one gospel.
I’m not saying they were not tempted, tho.
There were no bad guys and good guys
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Sorry, I’ve got to dissent on this one. The notion that the gnostic writings are just as authentic or “sacred” is faddish, marginal scholarship. Chronologically, none of the gnostic writings that supposedly should have been in the biblical canon are contemporaneous with the gospels. When these dubious works were written, the gospels, not to mention the New Testament epistles (which precede the four gospels chronologically) were already quite old. Gnostic works
came along later, pretend to have historical integrity by authorship, and clearly teach a very different notion of Christian theology than is associated with the gospel traditions.
Quite to the contrary, historically speaking, gnostic works were never taken seriously by the church because they had no credibility. The decision to rule out gnostic books was based upon a recognition of their lack of foundation, and they knew the difference between authentic and fake “apostolic” writings. Indeed, the only people who took the gnostic writings seriously were gnostics, and the only people who take them serious today are (1) sincere people who lack the breadth of exposure to canonical history; and (2) people like Pagels who remain marginal in their bent toward challenging historical facts, even if they have to force their ideas on the record. The fact that neither Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, nor Protestant scholars (theologians or historians) take gnostic writings seriously today is not some conspiracy. These writings just don’t have credibility, even from a historical-literary standpoint, to be placed on the same level as the four gospels. Even liberal scholars who engage in “higher criticism” and would question aspects of the four gospels, still would not be persuaded by the “political” argument posed by Pagels and a few others. It’s just not so.
Believe it or not, the history of the Christian canon is very credible, and even though there are many points of debate and various positions on the New Testament text in whole or part, it should not be treated as if it were something from a Dan Brown novel. I would challenge anyone to explore this further and they will find that that despite being perhaps the best attested ancient document collection (in manuscript terms), there is a level of ignorant skepticism against the NT that prevails without solid basis. What W.E.B. DuBois said of skewed U.S. history could also be said about church history as skewed by people like Pagels:
“Somebody in each era must make clear the facts with utter disregard to his own wish and desire and belief. What we have got to know, so far as possible, are the things that actually happened in the world.”
The gnostic movement was a fuzzy, popular, and marginal movement. It contributed nothing to the history of the ancient church except the need to clarify for the future what was well known to them and their predecessors–which books belonged in the canon of the New Testament. Despite being a nuisance, then, gnostics inadvertently did the church a favor by obligating them to establish criteria for canonicity–reasonable criteria that such shabby works could not meet.
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Louis DeCaro Jr,
Give some citations. How do you know that there couldn’t have been a sect that was as influential? I saw a documentary by chance on the Cathars today. There were enough of them, that the Roman Catholics thought their beliefs were a threat to Christianity.
You seem to know just enough, but I’d like a little more substance. To say the books are shabby works isn’t enough. However, your argument is irrelevant to this book review. As I remember, she had many citations which she based her interpretations. I assumed that you looked those up to verify the historical references or did you just read that her references were wrong. I didn’t see this book as an appeal to conspiracy seekers and mass entertainment as the Da Vinci Code, but as an academic work.
Have you read the gospels including the gnostic ones in Greek or Aramaic? Because I feel the flair of the writing comes from the translation. That is why many people much prefer the King James version of the Bible than the much newer translation from Greek.
I do say you are wrong in that you imply that there wasn’t a selection process in determining which gospels would be included in the New Testament. There were other accounts of Christ life other than the Gnostics. that were waded through, before that decision was made. I don’t think any total resolution came until the 6th century. I ran across this account of how the books of the New Testament were chosen.
I remember when I went to Catholic school in the fifties, the Apocrypha was not considered part of the Catholic Bible.
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Abagond,
I read the 1979 hard cover edition.
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Hathor:
I read it in paperback.
Since I said “I am reading…” when I first wrote this I was still somewhere in the middle of the book. So it does not present the whole book – just what I had read so far that I thought my sister would find interesting – partly because our father had told us years before that the Catholic Church had burned the gospels it did not like, that there was not just Matthew, Mark, Luke and John but Thomas and Mary and others too.
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Louis DeCaro Jr:
The Gnostics were hardly marginal. In fact, when Plotinus wrote about Christianity it is the Gnostics he was writing about. In his day back in the 200s Pauline Christianity, the kind you take seriously, was still mostly a religion of the poor – the very kind that most people of education do NOT take seriously.
Suppose history had taken a different turn and the Gnostics won and the Catholics were wiped out as a heresy. Whose gospels would get burned? Whose gospels would have tons of scholarship and religious belief behind them? Whose gospels would be the oldest and best attested? Whose gospels would just be in bits and pieces and seem half-mad because they are incomplete and because there is no living religion to make sense of them? Whose gospels would liberal scholars take more seriously?
You sound like a serious Christian so I am sure you have had the experience of someone dismissing Christianity based on misreading the Bible in bits and pieces. Well, that is just the position Gnosticism finds itself in in our time.
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Christianity is not to be taken as literal fact.
The sun god cults of Afrasia hold the key to its origins.
You should reas Suns of God by S. Acarya?
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I believe the oldest parts of the NT are some of the Pauline epistles which were written in the 60s AD. If I’m not mistaken, the oldest known Gnostic texts date from the 3rd century. That would seem to to give the NT a stronger authority.
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Wikipedia says that the Gospel of Thomas was the first gnostic gospel and that it was written in the early or the middle of the second century AD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnostic_Gospels
On the other hand, the earliest NT book, First Thessalonians, seems to have been written in 51 AD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_testament#Dates_of_composition
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Some scholars say the Gospel of Thomas may have been written as early as 60:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas
Pagels herself argues that it was written before the gospel of John.
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I worked with Dr. Pagels in NYC. She was rather cold and dismissive.
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I have soooo much to say I’ll have to write tomorrow though but…hey. I love Bible based topics!
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So there has been a sort of Darwinian natural selection of religious truth.
Let me get this straight? you think that the human fanaticism which wiped out the Gnostics was some sort of process of “natural selection” which, furthermorre, proves that the Churches’ view of Jesus and the gospels is fundamentally “more evolved” than the Gnostics’?
That’s a real interesting position coming from a black writer who, at least once every month, puts out a piece complaining about how the “winners” (i.e. whites or Europeans) got to rewrite history the way they chose.
The same argument you make above could so easily be turned around into a defence of the Texas Board of Education’s view of history, don’t you think? I mean, what you`re essentially saying is that fanatics who kill off the opposition get to write history and that this is some sort of natural evolutionary process which results in more “well-adjusted” history.
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Dear Abagondites (of which I am one),
I appreciate your rejoinders/comments/challenges regarding my strong response to the Elaine Pagels approach. I may not be able to satisfy your own views, but I will at least try to state my view and hope that you will forgive me if anything I formerly wrote came off smug[ly?]. I will not offer extensive citations and footnotes in defense of my argument mainly because I’m in the thick of grading summer term papers and trying to get another project done. However I will offer the following and let you be the final judges in consideration:
Let me reiterate that people who uplift the gnostic “gospels” have a chronology and authenticity problem. The four gospels of the Bible, or the apostolic traditions that they represent, really do pre-date the gnostic “gospels” in a significant manner. While the oldest New Testament documents are Pauline epistles, the big 4 Gospels are undeniably rooted in the early Christian community and three of them, Matthew, Mark, and Luke (referred to as synoptic) share so much in common that most scholars believe that Mark (which one church father says was based on Peter’s testimony) or the source of Mark is the core narrative from which the writer of Matthew and Luke drew. John’s gospel, though apart in many respects, has deep roots in the church’s history, and although opinions vary between liberal and conservative church historians and textual scholars, the strongest view places these gospels well within the first century.
As interesting and colorful as they are, the gnostic “gospels” simply do not have this historical integrity. They are often referred to as “Apocryphal” (at least until the faddish claims of Pagels and others arose in the later 20th century) because they claim authorship without real historical integrity (e.g., Peter, Thomas, Judas Iscariot). These works date from the 2nd century and afterward, when the Christian-like gnostic movement was in full swing.
Another way we know that gnostic “gospels” are not canon-worthy is that they are not “kosher” in their theological assumptions (if I may borrow that word). I am a history teacher, so please bear with me.
Gnosticism was a broad-range movement, sort of like saying “New Age” in our modern world. We all know “what it means,” but “New Age” could mean anything from listening to Oprah’s religious ideas to the teachings of a far eastern guru. There was no single Gnosticism, and Gnosticism blended itself with Judaism, Christianity, and other religions. However there are certain theological “genes” (if you will) that distinguish Gnosticism from both Judaism and Christianity. I should add, in the 1st century of Christianity, which was overwhelmingly a Jewish messianic movement, the gnostic influence was not as expansive. Some scholars call gnosticism in the 1st century, “pre-gnosticism,” because it was not as full blown as it was in the 2nd century, particularly after Christianity became predominately gentile.
As I said, the Christian movement was a Jewish movement, and as such it utilized the Hebrew Scriptures (or what christians call the Old Testament), both in the Hebrew original and in the Greek or Septuagint translation (which was the version for the Jewish diaspora). One of the big distinctions between so-called Gnostic Christianity and so-called orthodox Christianity in the 1st century, was that the theological and anthropological (views of God and views of humanity) for the early (Jewish) Christians were based on Mosaic-Torah conceptions. For instance, Hebrews believe in basic goodness of the material world and the human body because it is all created by God and good, and humanity is made “in the image of God.”
In contrast, one of the common themes across the board in the Gnostic “movement” (for lack of a better term) was a negative view of the body and the material world. Like Greek philosophy (which infused a lot of so-called “Christian” gnosticism, these gnostics (1) tended to hate the Hebrew Scriptures and the God of the Hebrew Scriptures; (2) disdained the material world as inferior and evil; and (3) saw the human body as a burdensome and inferior vessel that inhibited and imprisoned the soul. These basic gnostic ideas were pervasive, particularly in the brand that tried to infiltrate the Jewish (but rapidly gentilized) Christian movement.
When you apply this gnostic grid to the teachings of the apostles, it doesn’t work. For instance, one of the core beliefs of Christians from the earliest days of the movement was the Virgin birth. Gnostic “Christians” were offended by the notion because they could not accept that the God of Jesus would manifest himself in lowly, inferior flesh. If you have a chance to read the 3 epistle of John (whether or not you believe it was written by original John as I do, it’s not as important to this point), you’ll see the backdrop of this issue in this letter. For instance, John writes: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God” (4:2).
Before you can even get to those later “gospels” that Pagels and her fringe allies would like to elevate, you have to deal with Marcion, who was the first and most influential “Christian gnostic,” appearing early in the 2nd century in Rome with a movement that truly challenged the church. Marcion’s brand of Gnosticism was very similar to catholic Christianity.(PLEASE note: “catholic” does not mean “Roman Catholic.” Catholic means “universal,” a term that was coined in the 2nd century to emphasis what it meant to be a true Christian church–that one held to what is universally held by all Christians; and this excluded the gnostics.)
It is important for us to realize that Gnostics, especially Marcion, emphasized authentic biblical texts. Being anti-semitic and hostile toward Hebraic religion, Marcion denied that the God of the Torah was the Father of Jesus, whom he claimed to represent. Marcion claimed that the Hebrew’s God was an inferior, evil deity, but that the God proclaimed by Jesus was the true God. (This is still a gnostic notion that often surfaces in contemporary thinking, even though it is antithetical to the teaching of Jesus himself.)
Marcion didn’t write a fake gospel. What he did was compile and edit the available Christian documents commonly believed to be authentic and inspired. Interestingly, he cut out Matthew, Mark, and John because the authorship was Jewish. He jettisoned the complete Tanach (Old Testament), and took Paul’s letters because they were written to a primarily gentile church. Marcion did this because he was offended by the entirety of the Christian apostolic writings for reasons that appealed to his gnostic views.
Of course the catholic church responded. Christian leaders naturally did not appreciate this outsider “editing” the very texts that Jesus and the apostles had used. They effectively “took back” their text. But in a way, Marcion did the church a favor by acting as the catalyst to gather up apostolic letters, establish apostolic integrity, and establish a “canon” or “rule” that separated Scripture from (1) worthy Christian writings like The Shepherd of Hermes, which was like the Pilgrim’s Progress of the early church; and (2) fake and pseudo-gospels that were theologically reflective of a different set of theological “options.”
It is a kind of litmus test that when it came to authentic, apostolic New Testament writing, that gnostics either “edited” or imitated the historic writings. “Editing” came first, then came the kind of “gospels” that Pagels and a few others try to inflate to monumental proportions.
Of course there were political and historical aspects to this process; when is that not the case? Nor was the ancient church a monolith, particularly after its adherents were predominantly Gentile. In the 2nd century, Christians themselves began to incorporate Greek philosophy as an apologetic/philosophical tool, and this gave rise to debates between the Eastern church and the Western Church, with intricate and often boring theological constructs that are the dread of most seminary students to this day. Nevertheless, despite expansive differences and classic arguments, the catholic (universal) church has core beliefs surrounding a canon that really do distinguish the gnostics of the 2nd – 4th centuries.
I don’t mean to be offensive, but even today there are good examples of core or “orthodox” religions and their spin-off forms, call them “cults” or “new religions” as you please. Protestants and Roman Catholics disagree a lot, but neither group believes the Jehovah’s Witnesses are “orthodox” because their teachings are “heterodox,” and they also manipulate the text of the Bible like Marcion and Arius did in their times. Sun Myung Moon has gnostic aspects in his teaching too, and he quite skillfully interweaves himself and his teachings into biblical history and theology. But if one has a historical sense of textual origins and can at least respect these historical-theological developments, one has to admit these movements do not represent core Christian beliefs.
By the way, when I say that gnosticism was “marginal,” I do not mean it was ineffective, unimportant, or even totally worthless. I mean that gnosticism, even at its most influential, was always outside the pale of the church’s beliefs, and always trying to convince the church that its truth was the same as the truth of Jesus. Gnostics may have had some positive social impact; certainly they made an impact on Muhammad and his community because some apocryphal “Christian” (gnostic) stories about Jesus ended up in the Qur’an–stories that Christians outrightly identified as foreign to the apostolic tradition. It is likely that Muhammad never actually interacted with catholic Christians, but rather with marginal “Christians” with gnostic and arian ideas. If the prophet of Islam referred to Christians at times warmly (“people of the book”), it may be due to these gnostic folks.
If you’ve read this far, you may qualify as a saint. I teach church history but am primarily an American religious historian and a John Brown scholar, so if you want annotations, I too will have to “get back to you.” I do recommend that you read some standard Christian history texts because reading Pagels without giving other church historians a fair review is not going to benefit you. Likewise, beware of the History Channel and network documentaries (which appear around Christmas and Easter), because media people go for ratings and controversy, and tend to give a greater amount of attention to iconoclasts in the church.
In my opinion (and please see it as such), lots of people don’t want the Bible to be true and so they embrace the most controversial and unconventional theories rather than considering the real possibility that the Christian religion has a substantial history that should be respected. There is a real bias against Christianity in the western world, often well-deserved considering the widespread destruction brought about by white racist empires in the name of Jesus. But if one can get to the roots, historically and theologically, of the “Jesus movement,” one will find a substantial core that deserves respect–and is distinguishable from later “Johnny-come-lately” movements and pretenders to orthodoxy.
Of all the ancient texts, the Christian New Testament alone is the most well documented and attested. One of the reasons there are so many manuscript “witnesses” extant dating back from the 2nd century onward is because the four gospels and the epistles had an integrity and historicity that was well known, even by outsiders. The gnostic gospels were never sought after, widely copied, nor widely embraced. They are clever literary works reflective of a segment of heterodox people, but they taught a “gospel” that was inconsistent with the apostolic community, they presented the teachings of Jesus in some “mystery” format, some secret teaching notion, and did not present Jesus as the apostles had presented him. To put it in the words of church historian, Justo Gonzalez: “The Gnostic claim that there is a secret tradition, and that they have been entrusted with it, is false.” (The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1, p. 66).
I hope you will check out some worthy church histories, beginning with Gonzalez, who writes with a rich understanding of the church without having a colonized mentality. But read an array of church histories, liberal and conservative, and I’ll bet that you end up reading Dr. Pagels with a bit more caution.
Best wishes,
Lou
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Louis, a very informative discussion. Thanks.
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@Louis
Marcion was such a threat for the Church that one could say he has an important and indirect role in the elaboration of the New Testament.
It’s kinda unfair to put him in the gnostic band wagon.
That said, i’m amazed by your great comment, Louis.
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Cool!
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Thad:
I do believe the winners write history. I do see it as a bad thing – because what we grow up believing is not necessarily the truth, but what the powers that be want us to believe. The Texas School Board is an excellent example – an amazing example since the process is rarely so naked and public.
What I wrote here to my sister is very much in the same vein, where the Texas School Board is played by the Catholic/Orthodox Church.
Catholic doctrine is “evolved” not in the sense of being truer or deeper and therefore better but in the sense of being better suited to endure persecution and heresy.
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[…] Elaine Pagels: The Gnostic Gospels: a post rewrite. I have a lot of following up to do, undergoing more spiritual transformation, amidst personal upheaval. I do strongly believe that if my Mother knew of this, she would consider herself Gnostic Christian. So much of what I feel about religion I take from her views, I love the idea that a Church cannot hold the Spirit, that Jesus is not preaching one way over another, but offering Light in dark times. […]
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Those who are giving any credence whatsoever to Louis DeCaro’s posts as being based on a study of history would do well to pay careful attention to his language which in his very second sentence reveals his true motivations (following asterisks are mine) – “the notion that the gnostic writings are just as *authentic* or *sacred* is faddish”
This is not how someone who wants to understand history writes. This is the writing of a believer whose faith would be threatened by giving the gnostic gospels credence and must defend his faith, ergo the gnostic gospels were not “authentic”, they were not “sacred”, i.e. “they are the false religion and the ones I follow is the one true way.”
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