The Gnostics and Gnosticism

In December of 1945, near the town of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, a farmer discovered, digging around a boulder in search of fertilizer for his fields, a large jug containing thirteen volumes of a book of 52 texts. They were Coptic (1) writings made by Gnostics and hidden away approximately 1600 years ago, around 390 C.E, by monks from the nearby monastery of St. Pachomius, (2) to escape destruction under order of the emerging Orthodox Church in its violent obliteration of all unorthodoxy and heresy. Before 1945 Gnosticism was mainly understood through bias accounts of their persecutors, but now they had a voice again.

Gnosis is derived from Greek and means knowledge or the act of knowing. It is used in relation to the Divine, and point to the knowledge about the Divine. In the philosophical sense Gnosis is the knowledge of a God that exists outside creation and man, and of all the actions of God over time. In spirituality and mysticism Gnosis means experiencing the presence of the Divine within one’s soul and within the creation.

In essence the Divine experience is beyond our language and concepts. We can talk and think about it, but these actions will always remain outside the realm of what it really is, since no word or thought exist that can describe it fully.

To define exactly who the Gnostics were is difficult since there were many sects, communities and groups who all shared similar ideas but did not all call themselves Gnostics. Although it was not important that the many groups they consisted of had different opinions and teachings, as the Truth has many facets.

They encouraged each other to develop one’s own ideas. They considered their teachings, and also those of other religions, to only be approximations of the Truth. That is why the Gnostics were heavily influenced by other traditions like the Jewish, the Persian, the Babylonian, the Egyptian and the Greek

The Essenes in particular had special interests in the texts of other traditions, especially in those that dealt in the well being of soul and body employing herbal remedies and stones to treat illnesses. They taught the importance of knowing the names of the spirits that caused illness, and the healing essences in plants. In their scriptures we find that Jesus had many names and magic incantations, used to dispel demons, which were seen as an obstruction for the soul on its path to the Light. Jesus is said to belong to the Essenes.

The Gnostics considered Jesus as not only a spiritual teacher, someone who gives revelations, but also as an encourager, to seek gnosis for oneself. It’s ignorance, and not sin, that brings a person into painful situations. The quest is to explore ones own self, because within the psyche is the potential for liberation or destruction. Know thyself!

Theodotus (3) explains gnosis as “the knowledge of what we are, what we have been, the place from which we have come, the place into which we have fallen, the goal we are striving for and from which we have been pulled away, and the nature of our birth and of our rebirth.”

Generally, though, the Gnostics shared one belief and that was that they viewed the God of the Old Testament as an evil entity that dominated and suppressed man employing rewards and punishments. He is a God that does not know love, is cruel and tries to keep man in darkness. He is a lesser God, imperfect, because what he created failed in the sense that all his offspring became involved with violence and bloodshed and to set things right he was forced to destroy what he had created with a flood.

Robert A. Heinlein points out that “men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.” When the God of the Old Testament is concerned he is completely right, but these tendencies can also be clearly witnessed with most other mythologies such as the Greek and the Norse where Gods drink, cheat, lie, copulate and kill.

The God of the Old Testament is not, according to the Gnostics, the same God Jesus spoke of who is a higher God full of love and ever-forgiving, so they referred to the Creator of the Old Testament as Demiurge.

Another major difference is that instead of seeing God as a man, an idea that the Catholic Church, Judaism and Islam all by and large share, they viewed God’s essence as unknowable of a dual unity between the Primal Father (the Abyss, the Unpronounceable) and the Primal Mother (Mother of All, the Womb, Bliss, Silence). The Gnostics speak about the supreme divinity as the Father-Mother or the Mother-Father. (4)

The Gnostics were extremely heretical when they, not only hinted that the God in the Old Testament is a false god, but that he is also not a man. Bear in mind that Pope Paul VI, bishop of Rome, was still declaring that women cannot become priests ‘because the Lord is a man’ as late as 1977 and even in the early 21st century his views are still agreed on, although heavily disputed, across the world. How far have we come since the time of the Gnostics we should ask ourselves? Are we worthy of peace on Earth when there are still a vast majority of dogmatic individuals who cannot rise above their preconceived views in how things should be instead of embracing knowledge, gnosis, and reason.

This clearly demonstrates that the Gnostics were before their time, still to this day, since they had a system where hierarchy was impossible and gender had no importance.

The Gnostics considered themselves free of hate and evil and were at one with knowledge living in a society of beings who loved each other in wisdom with an atmosphere of a spiritual marriage. They did not create a dominating religious institution and favoured mystic experience.

Who should be priest, bishop and prophet during their gatherings was decided by drawing lots and both men and women were allowed to attend. (5) In this way the Divine would decide who should speak because human choice was not important. Imagine what would happen if a country, as an experiment, would arrange a lottery where all the various roles in society such as governmental posts, teachers and priests were handed out by chance. It can’t turn worse than how contemporary government is managed as it’s commonly known that whoever wants power is in no way fit to wield it.

When the Roman Empire officially chose Christianity as the state religion the Gnostic men, women and children were burned together with their books, sometimes by the hundreds. (6) There was no place for Gnosis in the new world and all religious people should ask themselves, especially those who belong to a Christian or Catholic faith, what you believe in and why?

If it is truly in the teachings of Jesus then perhaps you should turn to Gnosticism and find out what he really tried to say. The heavenly kingdom they preached of could only be reached by casting the Demiurge out, which in itself would mean to turn your back on the Holy Bible, especially the Old Testament, in order to fully embrace the true ideal that it contains, which is an interesting paradox that will, eventually, make a lot of sense.

To some Gnostic groups Jesus teachings meant everything and to others not much at all. The four gospels of the Orthodox Church were not the only ones in existence. There were many more gospels and other texts, but the Orthodox Church frantically destroyed all but four, including those who possessed these documents. This tendency to burn books can be found throughout their history making them no better or worse than the Nazi’s. It would be interesting to calculate, if ever possible, the amount of people who died at the hands of the Christian/Catholic Church in comparison to the fifty millions who lost their lives because of Hitler since the dawn of its founding. The figure could very well be much higher and just as unreasonable.

And it is for due to this frantic persecution of the Gnostics that the thirteen volumes of a book of 52 texts ended up in a large jug, where it had been lying for more than a thousand years, waiting to be re-discovered. One of these texts is called the Gospel of Thomas and in this Jesus clearly states:

“For nothing hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered.”

Footnotes:
(1) Coptic is the language of the Copts who were native Egyptian Christian of Jacobite sect of Monophysites.
(2) That it was hidden by these monks can’t be verified but it’s the probable conclusion.
(3) Lived 140-160 and was known as Theodotus of Byzantium and Theodotus the Shoemaker. Claimed Jesus was born a mortal man, adopted by God at his baptism and then became God after his resurrection. This doctrine is called Dynamic Monarchianism or Adoptionism. Not surprisingly Pope Victor I excommunicated him after declaring these ideas to be heresy.
(4) Usually they abbreviate it as the Father, but they still kept the idea of the duality in unity that goes with this word.
(5) Women could teach, take part in discussions, conduct exorcisms, practice healing, and baptize. In some Gnostics sects, though, they emphasized the connection of women to sexuality, and sexuality had to be avoided as much as possible because it belonged to the realm of the Demiurge, who hinders the evolution of man’s soul.
(6) Orthodox Christians began to persecute the Gnostics in the 2nd century C.E. because they were seen as a treat to the Church.

© deviadah