Until the discovery some Fifty Years ago of a collection of ancient gnostic texts in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, most of what we knew of gnosticism came from orthodox Christian attacks against it.

With few exceptions, the Gnostic writings had been lost to the ravages of time--or rather, to be more precise, they'd been suppressed by the ancient Church as the work of Heretics.

With the recovery of the Nag Hammadi texts, we can now study the Gnostics in their own words. We can compare their teachings with orthodox accounts of those teachings, and the theological debate between orthodox and gnostic Christians can be considered anew, with something closer to equal footing given to each side.

Nothing of the sort had ever happened in the history of Western religion, and there's good reason to assert that the Nag Hammadi texts are a more significant, if less famous, discovery than the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Many of the Gnostics knew Jesus (Yeshua) not so much as the historical Messiah of the New Testament, who rose from the dead and ascended unto heaven, but rather as a Personal Spiritual Interlocutor, or even as a potential for transcendence in the Christian's own soul.

According to the Gnostic Gospel of Philip, whoever achieves Gnosis becomes

"No longer a Christian, but a Christ

You saw the Spirit (Self), you became Spirit (Self).

You saw Christ, you became Christ.

You saw the Father, you shall become Father...."

Another text found in Nag Hammadi, The Gospel of Thomas, has the following:

Jesus said, "I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become drunk from the bubbling stream which I have measured out.... He who will drink from my mouth will become as I am: I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him."

In writings such as these, the Gnostics undermined the singularity of Jesus.

In their scriptures, it was not so much that God had become man in the Christ, but rather that each Man could become a Christ through the Gnosis.

The Gnosis, a kind of innate knowledge of one's own true essence, of one's own divine origin as a spark fallen from the deity, could make of one a literal soulmate of Yeshua (Jesus).

Posted by Aakasha Essa on April 18, 2011 at 6:26 PM

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