The Da Vinci Hoax (16)

Appendix

Gnosticism

Much of the confusion, fascination and credibility given to Dan Brown's claims comes from his allusion to Gnostic writings. The general public is totally unfamiliar with this early heresy. The antiquity of its origins combined with the Christian-sounding titles of its texts gives credibility to Brown's assertion that history is written by the winners. Here it seems we have an alternative form of Christianity that simply lost out in the fight for control but is every bit as old and valid - maybe more - than the brand we have long been familiar with. Is it true?

Gnosticism is an umbrella term that modern scholars use to describe a number of religious movements in the ancient Roman world, of which some had no relation to Christianity, but shared several common themes. The members of the various Gnostic sects believed they had a secret mystical knowledge not available to others. They had a dualistic outlook that saw an antithesis between matter and spirit, body and soul. The existence of the physical world was explained not as the work of the higher spiritual God (the Monad) or the lesser mediating divinities called Aeons or Archons, but as formed and governed by malevolent forces - the lesser evil Demiurge - to imprison the souls of human beings. The physical world was the place of struggle between these competing forces of light and dark. Such strange ideas started to insinuate themselves under a Christian guise probably near the middle of the second century AD.


Leather cases containing the codices

In 1945 a collection of forty-seven ancient documents, predominantly Gnostic in character, were discovered near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Although much excitement has been generated by the Nag Hammadi discoveries, not a little misunderstanding has been mixed with the enthusiasm. The overriding assumption of many is that the treatises unearthed in upper Egypt contained "lost books of the Bible" - of historical stature equal to or greater than the New Testament books. Much of this has been fueled by the titles of some of the documents such as the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Mary and the Apocalypse of Peter. Many of these documents, however, were actually known to scholars from citations in the writings of early Christian writers like Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, who refuted their teachings. But other than citations most of the texts themselves had been thought extinct.

It is claimed these are the most ancient Christian records. They are not. The discovered scrolls are dated by archeologists, textual critics, and historians to about the 4-5th centuries (AD 350). Dating when the autograph (i.e. original) versions of these Gnostic texts were composed, however, has become a thorny issue. The advocates of Neo-Gnosticism of course want to date them as early as possible. However the majority consensus of historians and textual critics is that most of the works found at Nag Hammadi originally belong to the late 2nd and 3rd centuries. This is much later than the canonical Gospels on which the Gnostic works can often be shown to depend and chronologically at least as far removed from the earthly life of Christ (c. 4 BC - AD 30) as we are from the life of Abraham Lincoln. Some Scripture scholars put the composition of the earliest canonical Gospel at around AD 45 but this is contested. The general consensus dates them as follows: Mark AD 65-70; Matthew and Luke in the 70s to 80s; John around AD 90.

An important feature of Gnostic writings is how much they vary in character from the canonical writings. They are non-historical, even anti-historical, in style and content. They contain little narrative or sense of chronology. There is almost a complete lack of detail as to time and place. They are mainly sayings and dialogues.

So while the Gnostic texts are ancient, their value as independent sources of information is exceedingly questionable. They are less the alternative voice of the first followers of Christ than writings of later dissenters who broke away from the established teachings and authority of the Church. This is not a controversial statement. The actual struggle is noticeable in writings from around 135-165 AD, and continued for some time. It is to this struggle that apologists like Irenaeus wrote his polemic refuting Gnosticism (Against Heresies) around 180.

Elaine Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels) argued that Gnosticism should be considered at least as legitimate as orthodox Christianity because the "heresy" was simply a competing strain of early Christianity. Although Pagels, Brown and others have provoked sympathy, if not enthusiasm, for the Gnostics as the underdogs who just happened to lose out to orthodoxy, the Gnostics' historical credentials concerning Jesus are less than compelling. It may be romantic to "root for the underdog," but the Gnostic underdogs show every sign of being heretical hangers-on who tried to harness Christian language for conceptions radically different to early Christian teaching.

Even if treated as a competing strain of Christianity it does not necessarily provide support for the truth or falsity of Gnostic doctrine. If truth is not a matter of majority vote, neither is it a matter of minority dissent. It may be true, as Brown says, that "the winners write history" but that does not of itself make them bad or dishonest historians. If so, we should search for Nazi historians to give us the real picture of Hitler and his Germany and relegate all opposing views to that of dogmatic apologists who just happened to be on the winning side.

There is the misleading notion that the Gnostic writings are all pro-woman while New Testament authors anti-woman. In The Da Vinci Code Sir Leigh Teabing states that "Jesus was the original feminist. He intended for the future of His Church to be in the hands of Mary Magdalene" (p. 248). This idea may explain why Brown never mentions the most famous of all the Gnostic texts, The Gospel of Thomas, nor does he have any of his characters quote its final and probably most famous verse. That verse reads: "Simon Peter said to them: 'Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.' Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven" (v. 114). This passage and others like it do not fit well with the feminist view of Gnosticism, just as the Church's positive treatment of women does not compare well with the negative picture often depicted by feminist groups.

The "Christian" Gnostic movement is difficult to define, coming as it did in such diverse forms as Docetism, Valentinianism and Manichaism. But like Gnosticism in general it was typically dualistic, focused on secret spiritual knowledge (gnosis), elitist, antagonistic towards or uninterested in time and history, and distrustful - even hateful - towards the physical universe and the human body. Put simply, the material realm is evil and the goal of man is to escape it. This can only be accomplished through gnosis, or secret knowledge given to the elect few, of the true God. (See James A. Herrick, The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition, 2003). This gnosis is rooted in the belief that humanity is not meant for this evil, material world. His spirit is imprisoned in it and must escape back to its heavenly abode. Ignorance insures destruction, while self-knowledge provides liberation and escape from suffering. Thus the Gnostic Jesus cannot be the Incarnation of God since flesh was evil and not befitting of God. Jesus was instead usually depicted as a kind of ethereal being. The Docetic form of Gnosticism held that Jesus only seemed to be a man but was in actuality not.

For example, in the Gnostic Acts of John (late 2nd century) we read: "Sometimes when I would lay hold on him, I met with a material and solid body, and at other times, again, when I felt him, the substance was immaterial and as if it existed not at all…. And oftentimes when I walked with him, I desired to see the print of his foot, whether it appeared on the earth; for I saw him as it were lifting himself up from the earth: and I never saw it" (Acts of John, 93)

As Philip Jenkins writes: "It was the orthodox Christian Church that . . . insisted on keeping the Christian religion rooted in historical realities, rather than the random mythologies reinvented at the whim of each rising Gnostic sage. The church was struggling to retain the idea of Jesus as a historical human being who lived and died in a specific place and time, not in a timeless never-never land" (Hidden Gospels [Oxford University Press, 2001], 211).

The Jesus of the Gnostic writings is rarely recognizable as a first century Palestinian Jew. Instead, he is often described as a phantom-like creature who lectures at length about esoteric matters. For example, in The Letter of Peter to Philip, the apostles ask the resurrected Jesus: "Lord, we would like to know the deficiency of the aeons and of their pleroma." These are terms that only the Gnostic elite would comprehend, hence their gnostic (gnosis = secret knowledge) character.

What attracts adherents to Gnosticism today is Elaine Pagels interpretation that some of the early Gnostics believed "that humanity created God - and so, from its own inner potential, discovered for itself the revelation off truth" (The Gnostic Gospels, 122). In other words God is not outside or separate from us but a part of us (a popular idea with the New Age), salvation is not about overcoming sin through the power of the death and resurrection of Christ our Saviour but about overcoming ignorance through self-knowledge (p. 123-4).

This very modern Neo-Gnosticism imbibes gnosis but not without straining out anything that might offend modern tastes. The harsh Gnostic dualism of dark matter versus pure spirit is ignored or redefined in psychological terms. The fantastic hierarchic cosmologies of innumerable spiritual being is likewise ignored or reinterpreted in Jungian or psychological terms.

Neo-Gnosticism could prove attractive to that large constituency interested in spirituality without religious dogma, in a sense of communion with the sacred without conversion from sin. The Gnostic Gospels appear more malleable to personal adaptation, psychologizing, and syncretism with Eastern ideas. Jesus as a Teacher of Wisdom is much more appealing to them than Jesus as Lord, Suffering Saviour and Judge. Their spiritual journey does not so much involve a turning toward the transcendent God with humble and contrite hearts but as a turning in - an inner quest to discover the god within - recognizing and celebrating the divine part of us.

Neo-Gnosticism is attractive for that large constituency interested in a personal spirituality without religious dogma, in a sense of the sacred without humility and moral conversion. The Gnostic Gospels appear more malleable to personal adaptation, psychologizing, and Eastern ideas. Jesus as a Teacher of Wisdom is much more appealing to them than Jesus our Suffering Saviour. Their spiritual journey does not so much involve repentance and conversion and a turning to Christ as our only Help, but an inner quest in which we discover the god already within, the divine part of ourselves.

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