Drove to Ohio today. It was a nice enough drive interspersed with
four thin fingers of thunderstorms – heavy, torrential rain on I65
and I71 that only lasted for a few miles, but reduced visibility to
20 yards or so.
Judy read from the Gnostic Gospels. Fascinating read. Gnosticism’s
Christian form grew to prominence in the 2nd century A.D. Ultimately
denounced as heretical by the early church, Gnosticism proposed a
revealed knowledge of God (gnosis
meaning knowledge
in
Greek), held as a secret tradition of the apostles.
This book talks about a recent (well, circa 1945 or so ago, but recent
based on the scale of events) find at Nag Hamadi of a bunch of gospels
(Thomas’, Mary Magdalene’s) which was declared heretical and virtually
stamped out by the orthodox church by the start of the second century
after Christ when the orthodox churches were combined into a
“catholic” church and the gospels that did not meet the party line
were excised and destroyed.
I learned a lot about the politics of the church in the early years
(including how having witnessed the resurrection was a keystone in
acquiring legitimacy in the church). The revelations about Mary
Magdalene were very interesting as well.
Gnostics focused on the self rather than the community. They were
utterly non-judgmental, to the point that they would not confer
superior status to any one individual, as the Catholics did with their
bishops, but rather they would share the duties of worship leader,
hymn leader, deacon etc., and take turns alternating different people
through the positions. Women participated in the worship service on an
equal basis with men, rather more like modern Protestants than the
seemingly misogynist Catholics of that era. The gnostics believed that
those who received gnosis, or hidden knowledge, transcended
the authority of the church.
It struck me that the forbidden Gnostic gospels were very similar to
the teachings of Hinduism (Gnosticism celebrates God as both Mother
and Father, shows a very human Jesus’s relationship to Mary Magdalene,
suggests the Resurrection is better understood symbolically, and
speaks to self-knowledge as the route to union with God, the deity
being in all of us, the material world merely Vishnu’s maya, etc).
Too bad that this version of Jesus’ teaching lost out politically, I
find it more palatable than the conventional teachings.
It was a very fun drive.
