Gnostic Gospels. What are they and are they accurate?

  • Thread starter Thread starter theCardinalbird
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
T

theCardinalbird

Guest
Is there any accuracy to the Gnostic Gospels? Why do they exist? Who wrote them?
 
Last edited:
The Gnostic gospels are mired with fiction, heresy and lies but its done using the assistance of the truth… so using truth a false version of it is created and the actual truth is undermined or contorted. This only confuses the faithful and that is the reason many gnostic gospels that were known in the past were never included in the bible so as to safeguard the truth about Our Lord and His church.

For example Dan Brown has quoted the gnostic gospels in his Da Vinci Code and we know what was the end result.

Although most gnostic gospels have the name as Gospel of Thomas, Mary Magdalene etc they were never written by them.
 
Last edited:
There’s a collection or two out there if you want to read them. I’ve read a lot of them and they really don’t offer anything to add to the NT. And the Gnostics who were around then had a lot of different ideas, it’s hard to make an accurate overall statement about their beliefs. A lot of it is stuff that was written well after the fact and if you’re familiar with the Gospels you’ll see most of it doesn’t jive with the style or narrative of the NT. It’s well-worth reading the Father’s who argued against them, especially because Gnosticism is not dead.
 
is there a list of them?

how are they distinguished from say an early church writer that is approved?
 
Last edited:
I have a book in front of me that kind of splains it better than I can in a post. If you’re interested.

“The Missing Gospels” by Darrell L. Bock.
Catholic perspective.

Blessings,
Stephie
 
They are completely different. Somehow esotherical…for me… And incomprehensible.
Not that I read them all,just parts years ago.
And it was enough…
 
There is, among the more infamous would be the gospel of Thomas, the gospel of Judas and the gospel of Mary. Many are not chronological contemporaries of the writings of the Apostles and very early Church, and their content and character is what would give them away as being Gnostic. We also know (and this could be circular reasoning) that those writings were not included in the NT because they did not scan with the faith and tradition handed down from the Apostles. We know this because 1) the gnostic writings are not included in our canon and 2) we have the writings of the Fathers who fought against this specific heresy.
 
“Weird” is the word I’d use for them, especially when compared next to the beauty of the Synoptics and the Gospel of St. John.
 
Last edited:
There’s two kinds of New Testament Apocrypha. Orthodox Apocrypha…writings which may hold many truths and we find many of our traditions in. However they were pseudiographical and written to late to be authentic. Such as the Protoevangelium of James which we get the traditions of Mary.

Gnostic writings are much different . They held a completely different view of Christ and resemble Islam more times than not. Actually many of the beliefs of Jesus in Islam were stolen from Gnostic texts.

So did the winner prevail? No. Gnosticism was very different than Christianity. It’s a morph of Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, and Pagan beliefs which itself had many schools. The largest and greatest threat to Christianity were probably the teachings of Mani which was a very successful religion for a few centuries.
 
You make an important point- Gnosticism is not a “Christians heresy”, it was a hodgepodge of often garbled pseudo theology, without central leadership or texts. It appropriated a little of this and that and Christianity, with its talk of God’s Wisdom personified and St. Paul’s apparent allusion to “secret knowledge”, fit the bill well for its adherents.
 
From what I remember hearing from a religious about gnostic writings is that the writers and the writings bring Jesus and all the supernatural associated with God to a natural plain… like Jesus did not resurrect as he did not die in the first place and he was into a relationship with Mary Magdalene with whom he lived… just this one line negates the passion, death and resurrection of Our Lord and it therefore suggests that since he never died there was no redemption as maybe there was no redemption needed, also if there was no passion, death and resurrection then the coming of the Holy Spirit and the Church itself maybe very questionable and a product of some religious fanatics imagination and not something Divine.

One must be careful in indulging too much in such kind of literature as one may read it out of curiosity but it may leave seeds of doubt which can take root and destroy ones faith in Our Lord and the Church. These books do appeal to quench ones thirst for curiosities and the mysterious but there can be a backlash that one may never realize too soon. This is the reason reading of such texts were never encouraged and hence left out from catholic literature.
 
Last edited:
The lack of constant story dialog.
When compared to the Canon approved writing’s.
But it is interesting to compare. What people will believe.

Kinda like “fake news gospel”
 
RKS89 said:
You make an important point- Gnosticism is not a “Christians heresy”, it was a hodgepodge of often garbled pseudo theology, without central leadership or texts. It appropriated a little of this and that and Christianity, with its talk of God’s Wisdom personified and St. Paul’s apparent allusion to “secret knowledge”, fit the bill well for its adherents.
Click to expand...
In a way gnosticism was the most dangerous kind of heresy, because it absorbed whatever it came into contact, rather than rejecting. Among Jews it absorbed Judaism, among pagans it absorbed paganism, among Christians it absorbed Christianity.

The closest analogy to gnosticism would be the New Age Religion of recent decades. Some laity were pushing it in my former parish. The danger is that it did not have anything “hard” you could point out; it said “yes” to everything the Church said yes to…but to lots of other things too. Sure Jesus was divine…and you as well. Opposing it was tough, like trying to nail jello to the wall.

It indirectly taught relativism. It seems to have faded somewhat, as a result of St. JP II, but will creep back in, in various ways.
 
Last edited:
I am not sure if the comparison I am about to make is apt in this situation…
After the apparition of Our Lady at Lourdes to St Bernadette, there were reports of several other apparitions of Our Lady, St Joseph and even St Peter happening in and around Lourdes and even at the grotto of Massabielle but to other people… on careful examination it was found that these apparitions were fake and seemed to have its cause in the devil wanting to create confusion among the faithful… these incidents also took away the focus from the real apparition and the new apparitions seemed to be more sensational.

The gnostic gospels also seem to have the same effect as the fake apparitions of Lourdes, of taking away the focus from the real gospels and its message & creating a fake image, and also by playing on peoples baser instincts.
 
Gnosticism is a religion of late antiquity and the first centuries of the common era. Gnosticism borrowed elements some from other religions Including early Christianity.

Gnostic writings are heretical, they are not Christian.
 
Some of them are very interesting and were read widely during the middle ages. I can remember the name of it, but there was a book about Mary’s childhood and Giotto used this book to paint frescos from it. Likewise, there were others that were read and painted about.
 
1ke said:
Gnosticism is a religion of late antiquity and the first centuries of the common era. Gnosticism borrowed elements some from other religions Including early Christianity.

Gnostic writings are heretical, they are not Christian.
Click to expand...
Keep in mind some of the gnostics presented themselves as Christians, their scriptures as Christian, their traditions as Christian, and their doctrines as Christian. This goes to show why the living Magisterium was and is necessary.
If you say the Bible alone is sufficient, then their scriptures support their doctrines, and their doctrines support their scriptures.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top