Gnosticism?

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I'll admit - back around 2000 when I was really exploring spiritual philosophies and trying to figure out the world around me there were a lot of things I started looking into. At that time I'd come across a book by Howard C Cutler and The Dalai Lama called the Art of Happiness - that had given me a heavy stear toward Buddhism. However, the one thing that I still really didn't understand was even if the soul was going through multiple lifetimes of refinement just for the sake of bringing itself to perfection and ultimately Nirvana I still kind of wanted to know why - that and for right or for wrong I still had my Roman Catholic routes kind of kicking at me as well as friends and their relatives who were, while Christian, more spiritual about it, less into the organized religion aspect of it, but gave me a lot of verification on things they'd seen that I just couldn't really refute (and they themselves aren't easily just given into things - they're skeptics and if there was any other rational explanation as to why something worked the way it did other than miracles they'd go on that and rule out the supernatural).

Well, also during 2000 or so I ended up ordering a book from Amazon.com called 'The Nag Hammadi Library' by James M. Robinson which is pretty much all the 13 or 14 codices of what are the basis for Gnostic Christianity. For those who don't know, for those who do please correct me if I'm wrong, in the early church around 180 AD there was a leader named Irenaeus who was the one who was responsible for coellating the bible and there had actually been something like 35 or 36 gospels (including the 'Gospel of Judas' which either TLC or the History Channel had a special on). Supposedly Irenaeus had actually ruled out all but 4 of the gospels for a very specific reason - he wanted something that was straight-forward, something the common people could understand or at least embodied what he felt the common people needed to know, and the rest that he threw aside were things that were much more cerebral and tended to be to much in terms of high and abstract studies of the holy mystery. This of course at the time made sense in that the Romans were putting Christians to death in public displays, particularly in the Colosseum, and he realized that for the people who were followers of the church to really be martyrs and die for their causes they had to have a firm understanding of exactly what it was they stood for.

I hadn't gotten the urge to really get that deep into it and particularly the Apocryphon of James and Gospel of Thomas seemed just like bleh.... how is this any different from the modern bible? Well, the Nag Hammadi is actually a grouping of many different ideas and gnostic writings to where it consisted of many sects. So far the book itself is 550 pages I'm about 100 and some in and there are a few things that really caught my interest. One of the reasons I got away from present Christianity are a lot of the same reasons you did - certain things seem illogical, mostly because its loaded with "well, you just have to believe it - we aren't explaining why".

However, one of the prominent Gnostic teachers was Valentinus - whose school of thought has been considered the Valentinian school of Gnosticism. I've read a couple of the books related to Valentinian philosophy thus far in the book and particularly the Gospel of Truth and the Tripartite Tractate struck my interest and I mean intensely. They do something that the bible doesn't - where the bible just reflects on earthly history for the most part, what people have said and done, prophecies given by people on earth, and explaining Jesus and the Father sheerly in terms of how they related to earth this really gives a good insight into things that I'd never heard about - ie. the structure of hierarchy outside this earth and likely this universe, a very satisfactory explanation of the father the unknowable, how his name is literally the son (ie. his name is the deity himself), it explained how the aeons (something much more powerful, higher up, and preexistent to what we think of as the than the angels per se) were brought into being, how they had to find him themselves just because if he had revealed himself all at once the sheer intensity would have killed them all, and when they talk about the Logos creating our universe and how he had wanted to attain perfect knowledge of God he'd set out to make his own creation but without the agreement of the Totality (ie. all the other aeons) and when he made his creation he had a moment of self-doubt (don't know the full details of what that implies on his own actions) but how he created our universe. At that point also because of that doubt he divided into two and all his replicas (aeons begot themselves asexually and there were and are probably in the context of the book hundreds of billions) they were without the light and knowledge, didn't know where they came from and fell into confusion - some still felt the inner light (those of thought) whereas others just felt the lust for power (called the likenesses). From this point they start talking about the Savior showing himself to them and you end up thinking this is about us and Jesus but no - we're still talking about something completely before us and before our world and pretty much how those who embraced him became the angels and those who feared and doubted became something of the fallen. It also speaks of 3 levels of those who were replicas. When it talks about the creation of the repentance of the Logos's better half and his return to the pleroma (the area of the heavens still in grace rather than in defect or deficiency, or possibly just a name for specific celestial provinces) later on the other half that had become entrapped in our region got help from the other aeons to set things straight and part of that was to create the earth. The earth of course we occupied with three groups of people - the people who were more spiritual (like those of thought), the people who are purely material (hylics), and those who were considered the psychics - not psychic in the sense of mind-reading just 50/50, something like secular believers. The way it supposedly worked was those who were strongly spiritually inclined and who feel a lightning-rod core that for some odd reason just inherently avoids and despises evil and craves purity are most likely going to heaven, those who are psychics its really dependent on them, and those who are hylics can but it would be very difficult since its a sharp bend against their nature. What I still didn't fully follow though - the dialog kinda lost me, wasn't sure if the souls set on earth were just representations of the angels, fallen, and 50/50 creations or if it is literally the angels, fallen, and those where inbetween on things coming here to experience strife, imprefection, blindness, and what the Gnostic texts prefer to call 'error' rather than sin which means its purely confusion and the thicker that confusion gets or the further a person goes off course the more likely they'll never have any hope of finding the truth because the fog between them and the clear vision just gets thicker.

Lol, I know, this stuff sounds like they're bending Christianity with Greek mythology in a lot of ways. Still though, for me I find myself entertaining it and even if I may never end up taking it full on literally I find myself definitely wanting to read this from cover to cover at least a few times to see what kind of meaning I can pick out of it. Why? It flows in line with a lot of emotions I've experienced all my life - whether it's been that certain internal innocence and moral compass that at times I've seriously just wanted to beat out of myself and which had me feeling like a freak, which had me naturally wanting to be around certain types of people and avoid others for reasons I couldn't even consciously grasp, for that desire to where I really have wished for a long time and even dreamed of casting aside this earthy body in all its imperfections and wanting to be in a place of resting that's pure good, pure happiness. Also, back in 2000 or so, I ended up rolling a couple times and that feeling reminded me so much of that emotional perfection that's talked about in these books or sometimes in the bible when your lucky enough to talk about the emotional state of heaven (after all, there's no way anyone could have eternal inner peace and happiness unless they were locked into a specific emotional mindset and the wiring for strife or the needs that begot strife had just melted away because they were no longer relevant). Also, this adds so much more relevance to the idea of Christianity than just 'do this, do that, do these acts', it adds bredth, depth, and actually I think puts it in perspective to where if your an intellectual who realizes he lives in a very three-dimensional world and feels like the bible seems to really try to smash it all down into just two - this book I think resolves a lot of that issue.

As for me I really doubt I'd jump on the full-on extreme train with this stuff but still, if your one of those people who has an internal sense that they just can't explain and has wanted answers that they just can't find anywhere around them - I won't sit there and tell you that these are it but I will tell you that I'm thinking the Nag Hammadi is a very good body of philosophy just to add to your reservoir of knowledge if your like me and find yourself unhappy without having the full truth and feel an intense desire to chase it. I'd still, again, have to read it a few more times and get into studies of other religions again to understand how I fully feel about it but for right now its like adding martial arts knowledge to martial arts knowledge - it can't hurt and if anything will help me either understand other things better or even find what I think to be the common threads between many religions (or its possible that yeah, I might really end up considering myself a Valentinean Gnostic one of these days but I won't jump to that conclusion just yet).

Actually, here's a much better description of it:

http://www.webcom.com/gnosis/library/va ... Monism.htm

That's the crazy thing about it though, when I mentioned that the 'aeons' were spoken of as if they were literal beings its not in a 3 dimensional sense but something a good ways past that and this article explains that (they're literally forms of reality but spoken of in a very personified manner, possibly both simultaneously but I'm not really sure). Evidently the guys who threw this article together have read the stuff pretty intensely and formulated their thoughts with a good deal more experience than I had in reading it on first try.

gnostics ? i would rather deal with KKK christians. both crazy both evil.

Lol, hard for me to imagine most Gnostics who believe any of that actually giving a damn about pushing their ways on other people or being ardent racists. I guess in that sense I really have no idea what your talking about.

nazis or kkk are less insulting to talk to. even though i see a skinhead and my skin crawls.

Whatever. If you know some supposed gnostics who are supreme pieces of work and who are cocky and condescending about their beliefs that's not the texts - thats them. Its just like any religion, when you get it into an organized level and get lots of people together you get a lot of people who really aren't mature enough to sort through it and take it for what it really is. IMO if people need to look upon people of other religious beliefs like they're somehow better than them it doesn't say much for their perspective, maturity, or adulthood. I used to be catholic but people like that were the reason I all together stopped going to church. If people are of that attitude and gnosis works the way it supposedly does in the Nag Hammadi, I doubt those particular people have much of a chance of ever really gaining it.

i will not talk about religion offline at all. i do not believe in conversion it is not a orthodox policy to prostilize or activly convery people. if you wanna become orthdox come to a church but i will not try to get you go join if you ask i will help you but conversion typically involves insults threats and lies and it bad policy. i may vent on here but i am not so hardcore offline. i am a timid f*****s. i actually will avoid religous converstaions. it is against my religon to even talk about religion with non-christians or hetrodox christian faiths. it is a sin technically. i am most likely sinning even talking about it on this forum. for the record orthodox are not typically as bad as me i am a bigot piece of shite and a sinner hypocrite. in fact i should actually shut up about religion on the forum..

i acknolage that i am dick. i think almost all of you that have read my posts are f*****g cool. i mean really cool. i am amazed how cool you guys are... i hope that it stays that way. i sound racist but i am not racist i am a ethnic bigot opinionated f****r but at least i am honest, but i do not hate people, i hate the world and the sins of the world. hate the sin not the sinner....

Gnosticisim is perhaps the most sane version of christianity in thet it does'nt rely on a heirarchy of priests (the Papacy) to practice faith.

gnostic is sane ? cute...

Krist, its abstract concepts - very abstract. Then again that's probably why my mind takes to it better than something that's just shoved at you on 'well, just take it in faith'. Some people are fine with a history lessons and embracing shoulds because they're fine with living like that, other people are truth seekers and need to know why they're supposed to do something or why it makes sense - Gnosticism gives you that and gives you a dizzying amount of information in equally dizzying complexity. Not at all saying that more complexity makes it true, just that what I read and the analysis I linked to this pages says on it makes a lot of intuitive sense, a lot more than a bunch of yuppies with a faith band playing guitar and singing hymnals.

IMO you can't be afraid of unknown or radical ideas - its one thing of course if its like The Crystal Stair where they talk about Jesus and the angels circling the earth in cloaked UFOs, I'd imagine people like that or believers in the indigo or crystal children bit probably know how to whip up a heck of a tasty arsenic & Koolaid cocktail. As for if you can't trust your own intuitive sense of things I guess there's not much to say, just stay on the safest rock you can find and do what many NTs and even aspies do - just live the rest of your life there, don't change and don't dare to grow.

There is a whole wealth of extra-biblical literature that was excluded from the Christian bible. The two terms for this body of works are intertestimental (if christian) and Jewish-Hellinistic (if jewish). Nag Hammadi is pretty interesting, and Gnosticism is pretty interesting as well, but I prefer the early wisdom literature personally. Very pre-gnostic.

In my barely educated view, it's the intermixing of Jewish/Abrahamic scholars being influenced by the Greeks. The Stoics have a very large influence on both Gnosticism and the Jewish wisdom literature.

Check out the apocrypha and the pseudepigrapha translations by RH Charles. They are good for entry level biblical scholars. No offense meant by entry level, a lot of the footnotes of Charles only make sense if you understand latin, greek and hebrew. The next version up for those really crazy is Charlesworth, very serious scholarship there.

Either way the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha are very interesting to read. The apocrypha, or part of it, is considered deutrocannonitical by the Roman Catholics, and some of the classically considered apocryphal texts are cannonotical according to Eastern Orthodoxy. Check out Wisdom of Solomon, it's a counterpoint to ecclesiates but with a lot of Stoic logical progression and less fatalism, very poetic. The wisdom literature talks about the Sophia of the greeks and Gnostics, but pre-Christ, so it might be of interest to you.

There are supposeably a few surviving Gnostic churches, including one in Seattle of all places. Telling this to a Fundie christian friend of mine got a response very similar to Krist, talking about heretics and such. Which is funny, because without apostolic succession Gnosticism has much evidence or support as her version of Christianity. (If you're keeping track that's a point towards and against Krist, no need to be mad at me please)

shoot i don't get mad typically. but then i just got back from standing in church littterly 4 hours. the issue i have with all you amature theologens is i highly doubt that any one you have ever talked to a real priest, and i am not talking about a pederast priest of the romans. a orthodox priest can destroy any arguments when it come to christianity. for the faithless, pagans and satanists yall are not worth the time to dissagree with as i am sure you feel about xians.

i am lucky enough to not have to have faith. i do not need faith see too much to find it nessary. i have seen enough already. but i am sure the wittless can become forensic techs and figure out why icons and statues produce myrrh and with the saints bodies do not decay like NTs. athiests and other faiths can not produce one single explanation for miricles like myhrr and saints that look still alive after physical death or never get rigor mortis or rigidity.

you will not be able to... i feel sorry for you guys that can not believe.

oh you points system is silly. becasue i do not have to win an argument that you will not take up. you doubt xianity because nothing but god can explain these mericles. nothing! your science is a wash your science is pointless in the face of these things..

i laugh at your poor souls because you can not see anything. you look at blue and call it red your vision in negative and inverted. your logic is the logic of a toilet bowl it is washed away by common scense. flush..............................

No, entry-level is entry-level, I know I'm that and definitely don't make a pride issue of it. Sounds like fascinating stuff though, I may have to take a look at it.



I really don't see a point to or against anyone. The gnostic texts were written in 2nd century AD. The church culled books such as this because Irenaeus felt that he needed to really dumb down the bible and make it as easy to read as possible for the general populace to get it and for the early christians martyring themselves to have strong enough faith to know what it is they're dying for. As for people who've been devout catholics or protestants all their lives, they're like most people in general - if they weren't raised with it it terrifies them. I got my room mate to start reading the Gospel of Truth and Tripartite, he's like me so he does well with abstract concepts and found a lot of things he felt were really good points that took whats already in the bible but just expanded much more deeply on whats there. He told his mom and she of course had the reaction most people would - shock, and "But its not the bible!", she also told him to be wary of me, that she feels that while I'm a good person I could easily be mislead since my 'walk with Christ' is a new thing (don't know if she realizes I was raised and confirmed catholic, did my fair share of reading in the bible long ago). He was kind of laughing about it just because - he and I both realize we aren't like most people. Most people, while we have respect for them in their own range of things they do well and respect their integrity, they're very child-like about these sorts of things and they really do just accept whatever is thrown at them. A good case in point as well, there was a special on TLC I think about the gospel of Judas and a rather famous TV preacher was on momentarily "Hyelk hyuk, I'z wuz raized with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - that's all ah need hyuk" - its sad that people's quests for truth are completely obscured by their comfort zones or by what they are raised with at times but whatever, in my 27 years I've gotten to learn that yeah - as messed up as human nature is it's not any kind of real surprise to me. Me and my room mate need deeper explanation because we're thinkers and when we don't have enough information provided by whats in front of us it really makes our brains itch and you could say that the dumbing down of the bible is what drives a wedge between us and god because, we need to feel and know it on a level that matches our emotional and analytical depth.

krist, again, I hope your not sticking to that just because its what you were raised with. No disrespect if that's the case just that its not a good basis for trying to continuously debate someone.

That and if your going to keep replying in this thread, can I ask one thing of you? Can you at least tone down the sheer-emotional ish and be a bit more objective with what your saying? I'm an analytical person and I have a natural tendency to ignore or just disregard people's posts or opinions when I see belligerence in em.

i generalize alot too so keep that in mind.

this comment about dumbing down is not accuate or true, the orthodox church has good records about theses events. they were not dumbing down anything at all. they give exact reasons why they did not includ these book, the catholics and protestants did the dumbing down. the KJV is a misgynogist text and king james was a notorious homosexual, the hebrew text as a text that is dumb down and missinfomation text and ment to be so, catholics nad protestants have a sh***y version of the bible and any bible in english is used to actually misinform people is it done for a reason. the writers were vile men that knew what they were doing and did it to destroy the faith.
The Septuagint vs. The Masoretic Text , have presented undeniable proof that the Greek Septuagint was the Scripture used by Jesus Christ and His Apostles and conversely that the so-called Hebrew Masoretic Text did not come into existence until around 1000 AD, and that this Hebrew had been edited, changed, and in some cases rewritten entirely by Talmudic, atheistic, Jews [/quote]

[/quote] As for people who've been devout catholics or protestants all their lives, they're like most people in general - if they weren't raised with it it terrifies them. [/quote] perhaps for some.