Nag Hammadi and the Gnostic Gospels

Article by Helen Lambert. Edited by Liam Geoghegan. Additional Research by Liz Goodwin.

From 313CE and the conversion of the triumphant conqueror Constantine, Christianity went from being a minority and persecuted religion in Rome, to the dominant and powerful religion it is today. Though a prevailing view would have many believe that before the European Reformation, Christianity had been a singular, unified religion, this was simply not the case.

Christianity originally emerged as a motley collection of different practices and beliefs centred on Jesus Christ and it was not until moves to unify the Christian beliefs and communities began that the term “orthodox Christianity” appeared.

Early parallel Christian movements such as the Arianists, Donatists and Marcionists all felt their freedoms constrained as orthodox Christianity, gaining ever more power, moved towards forming a unified and stable doctrine during the fourth and fifth centuries. Unfortunately, as we see frequently throughout history, that which posed a threat to such stability was outcast, labelled as such and silenced. For this reason it can sometimes be hard to assess the true state of the Christian Church upon its ascension to imperial power in the fourth-century Roman Empire.

However, every so often, discoveries are made which open long-sealed doors to times that once shaped civilisations. The famous discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library in Egypt in 1945, containing 52 Gnostic “Gospels”, allowed historians to gain a newly developed insight into the Gnostic movement and discover why they had been labelled a heretical sect. Such Gnostic texts provide alternative gospel narratives to those of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John in the Bible and include The Gospel of Philip, The Gospel of Thomas and The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

“Gnosticism” (a word literally translated as “knowledge”) is a belief system based on the idea that knowledge, not faith, will bring salvation. Gnosticism, however, was not a unified group, nor was it even an existing category in Antiquity like Christianity was. Gnosticism is a modern concept whereby a number of differing practices and beliefs have been labelled under the same banner by connecting them to a single origin. As such multiple “schools” of Gnosticism existed in Antiquity. However, there were shared fundamental beliefs that ran the length of the Gnostic movement and posed individual and striking threats to the emerging Orthodox institution.

One such belief revolved around the Gnostic preoccupation with evil. They could not reconcile the view of a kind and benevolent God to His actions in the Old Testament and so rejected the Creator God of Genesis. Gnostics preached that this Creator God was a ‘lesser demiurge’, which had formed in some fashion from the ‘true’ God who is truly transcendent and inconceivable.

Not only did Gnostics deny that the Creator God was the one true God, they also questioned His divine goodness, and the goodness of His creation. Summed up simply: the Creator God had produced evil and therefore could not be truly good Himself; in His creation (the universe and life) there are numerous imperfections, which could only result from being imitations of the imperfections of God; and, due to the sin of the first humans, this lesser demiurge could not possess foreknowledge or he would have known the consequences of creating the universe.

Such doctrine ruffled feathers in the emerging Orthodox camp of Christianity; it questioned the fundamental belief in the one God and His omniscience, omnipresence and benevolence.

Despite demoting the Creator God to a cantankerous and lesser demiurge, Gnostics did truly view themselves as Christians and Christ as the son of God, sent from the true, transcendent God to release humans from their ignorance and subordination. Putting further stress on relations, the Orthodox viewed Christ as physically human, whilst Gnostics believed that Christ was a spiritual being, freeing him from the pollution of the flesh. When this is viewed in terms of the crucifixion, the Orthodox viewed the pain and suffering experienced by Christ on the cross as real, whereas Gnostics viewed Christ as spiritual and therefore able to transcend the pain and suffering and die only in appearance, not in reality. By denying the physical nature and death of Christ they were also denying his physical resurrection. By doing so, Gnostics were denying the physical resurrection of all humans in heaven at the Last Judgement, breaking from Orthodox doctrine. The doctrine of the resurrection serves to validate apostolic succession, which is the basis of papal authority. To question it was to question the Church as an institution, therefore Orthodox Christianity itself.

Perhaps one of the most controversial ideas, certainly the most challenging to the institutional Church and the most Dan Brownesque came from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and was the implication that Christ trusted Mary Magdalene more than the Apostles. 

‘“Peter you have always been a wrathful person...I see you contending against the woman like the Adversaries...the Saviour’s knowledge of her is completely reliable. That is why he loved her more than us.”’

The Church is built on a patriarchal hierarchy of priests and bishops, based on the notion of apostolic succession. Apostolic succession is legitimised by showing the Church hierarchy of the Pope and bishops as a parallel to the relationship between Jesus and the Apostles. As the Apostles were all male it was thought to show that Christ believed the Church could only be trusted in the hands of men. Gnosticism questioned this patriarchal authority, instead using The Gospel of Mary Magdalene to advocate that women had an equal place in religious governance. Therein, seemingly, was a stark friction of convictions.

Ultimately, the main importance of Gnosticism lies in the light it sheds on relations in the Christian community during Antiquity. The discovery of the Gnostic library at Nag Hammadi shows that antique Christianity was just as fragmented and fraught with internal disputes as modern Christianity. Alternatives to the Orthodox Church existed and were conceived to be a threat, therefore they were either driven underground or into extinction. It also shows the process of formation of Orthodox Christianity from the scattered milieu of local practices and beliefs centred on Jesus Christ; a process as much about self-definition and internalisation as refutation, denouncement and rejection.

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The Gnostic Gospels are a collection of 13 ancient codices featuring over 50 texts, discovered in Egypt in 1945

They were originally thought to have been destroyed in the struggle to define the orthodoxy of Christianity around 350 AD

The Gospels date to over 1,600 years old

Around 1,200 pages are currently conserved at the Coptic Museum in Cairo

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