The Gnostic Gospels: An Introduction to the Forbidden Teachings of Jesus

"So sug­gests Hochela­ga cre­ator Tom­mie Trelawny in the new video above, which explains the Gnos­tic Gospels, the "for­bid­den teach­ings of Jesus." As a sys­tem of beliefs, Gnos­ti­cism is a fair­ly far cry from the main­stream forms of Chris­tian­i­ty with which most of us are famil­iar today. But its sur­viv­ing texts may sound uncan­ni­ly famil­iar, despite also involv­ing out­landish-sound­ing ele­ments that seem to belong to anoth­er civ­i­liza­tion entire­ly. Gnos­tic teach­ings have long been con­sid­ered heresy by Chris­tians, but do they real­ly rep­re­sent just a dif­fer­ent evo­lu­tion­ary branch of the faith: anoth­er Chris­tian­i­ty?"

"Reli­gious schol­ars of many stripes have con­cerned them­selves with few mat­ters as inten­sive­ly as they have with theod­i­cy, that is, the mat­ter of how to square the notion of a good, omnipo­tent deity with the obvi­ous exis­tence of evil down here in the world. Since its loose coali­tion of beliefs came togeth­er in the late first cen­tu­ry, Gnos­ti­cism has pro­posed an ele­gant solu­tion: that the deity is not, in fact, good, or rather, that under the tran­scen­dent, unknow­able God is a much more poor­ly behaved "demi­urge" who dis­plays an indif­fer­ence, at best, to the lot of human­i­ty. In this view, our result­ing world is less a per­fect cre­ation th"

Gnosticism functions as a distinct strand within the broader history of Christianity, offering alternative beliefs and scriptures known as the Gnostic Gospels. Surviving Gnostic texts combine familiar-sounding sayings with exotic cosmologies and myths that diverge from mainstream Christianity. Gnostic thought addresses theodicy by depicting the creator of the material world as a flawed or indifferent demiurge rather than a benevolent, omnipotent God. This framework reframes human suffering and the imperfect world as products of a deficient creator, challenging orthodox claims and leading to historical classification of Gnosticism as heretical.

Read at Open Culture