Which Gnostic gospels apocryphal gospels do you find most readable?

[Nietzsche]

Which Gnostic gospels apocryphal gospels do you find most readable?


I am NOT asking if you believe they are authentic or not, have any spiritual significance, or whatnot, i'm quite capable of deciding that for myself, I merely am inquiring to those who have read over them, irregardless of your opinion on the authenticity of them, which ones you found to be most readable or entertaining to think about? IE, The "Gospel of Mary Magdalene" I would not consider readable as it is merely fragments...

I don't care specifically if they are Gnostic in the Christian tradition; the Gnostic school of thought predates Christianity. I'm merely interested for philological purposes.

I differentiate between Gnostic and Apocryphal, because while all Gnostic gospels are considered apocryphal to the mainstream Christian tradition, not all of the apocryphal gospels belong to the Gnostic tradition. Some of them, such as the infancy gospels, are outside the Gnostic school of thought.

EDIT: I recall skimming over a book in the book shop once with Gnostic Gospels, I believe it referred to other deities (what I think the Gnostics called Æons or something of that nature). Does anyone familiar with them happen to know which that was?

[Nightshade]

What does Gnostic mean?

[mal4mac]

Short answer: Harold Bloom's pet hobby horse :D

Long answer: Deriving from (gnosis), a Greek word for "knowledge," Gnosticism offers salvation through occult knowledge. Gnosticism involves denial of the Christian God, and replaces Him with a "radical dualism" - the Gnostic deity is separate and alien to the universe, which it neither created nor governs. The world is viewed as the work of lowly powers *perhaps* descended from Him, but they do not know Him and obstruct the gaining of knowledge of Him.

So humans are prisoners in a world of frustration and deception, a vast prison whose innermost dungeon is the earth. Salvation requires the recognition that we are better than the situation into which we have been cast. Gnostic striving involves the release of the 'inner man' from the bonds of the world and a return to his native realm of light.

Gnostics insist that ignorance, not original sin, leads to suffering. The Gnostic realizes that the world is a prison of pain and escape lies in recovering her intrinsic goodness. By assuming there is no omnipotent God, the gnostic opens the way for human freedom.

We come to know the distant God by its likeness in ourselves, through the growing awareness that we, too, are alienated from the wicked world. For gnostics, theology is really anthropology. Worship of the "good" Gnostic God, is essentially worship of the self. The self already is "of God"; unlike body and even soul. The self is no part of the Creation, or of evolution. The gnostic soul is free, alone, and no part of nature.

Freudian Analysis relieves the neurotic mind from the repression of instinctual drives or libidinous urges in the id or unconsciousness. As in Gnosticism, "salvation" is liberation of the true self from a negative environment.

The ancient Gnostics, Sigmund Freud, and Harold Bloom loath the Christian vision of reality, which sees (1) disobedience & fallen nature as sources of misery; (2) God as creator and a redeemer to whom we must submit with self-effacing love.

The alternative Gnostic/Freudian/Bloom view urges us to satisfy our desires so far as we can amidst a hostile, threatening, frustrating natural environment. Our hope lies not in submitting to our situation, but in overcoming or transforming it.

The first principle of Bloom's theory of literature is willful error- authors who count are not true, but "strong," Poetry is less concerned with coming to terms with external reality than with asserting the self's inner compulsions upon reality.

From a Gnostic perspective, why would anyone wish to achieve an imaginative harmony with a heinous reality through a faithful representation? Rather, an author must wrestle the world into a shape agreeable to his desires. The classic mimetic poet imitates the handiwork of God; the Romantic, according to Bloom, is discontented by a disappointing creation, which must be transformed.

In Freud's "The Future of an Illusion" the "illusion" is Christianity--Freud calls on man to settle for a purely earthly existence. For death for which there is no remedy, he will simply learn to endure it with resignation. "Of what use to him is the illusion of a kingdom on the moon, whose revenues have never yet been seen by anyone? As an honest crofter on this earth he will know how to cultivate his plot in a way that will support him. Thus by withdrawing his expectations from the other world and concentrating all his liberated energies on this earthly life he will probably attain to a state of things in which life will be tolerable for all and no one will be oppressed by culture any more."

Following Emerson, Bloom assumes that each "strong poet" stakes a claim to divinity, and can brook no competition of another "god". In the Gnostic account the poet is not imitating God's creation, but substituting his own; and the work of prior poets is imperfect through being part of the botched realm of distress, dissatisfaction, and death. Whitman suggested "all the gods, Jehovah included, were once men, rising to superb blasphemy."

The Gnostic thesis of Bloom's "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human" is contained in the subtitle. Bloom here shows the Gnostic disdain for a "creative God" in favour of personal re-creation on the part of one's own semi-divine self.

"A substantial number of Americans who believe they worship God actually worship three major literary characters; the Yahweh of the J Writer ..., the Jesus of the Gospel of Mark, and Allah of the Koran." Bloom recommends that "Bardolatry, the worship of Shakespeare, ought to be even more a secular religion than it already is."

[Nietzsche]

To Nightshade : What Mal4Mac said, pretty much describes Gnostic views.

On top of that I would like to add, that Gnostic thought is something that predates Christianity, but always has seemed to be at odds with the God of Abraham. They didn't necessarily view him as evil, just imperfect and arrogant. Overall, there are 2 main branches of Gnostic thought Eastern-Persian and Syrian-Egyptian. Mandaeanism and Manichaeism are of the Persian school, and have little to do with Christianity. They each had their own ideals, the Mandeans seeing John the Baptist as a prophet, and Manicheans seeing the prophet Mani and Jesus Christ as prophets. I would like to point out that Valentinius who founded the Valentinian school of thought almost became Bishop of Rome in 153 AD of what Constantine later declared to be the universal, empire Church (Or Roman Catholic Church -- Catholic means universal). Obviously this Gnostic thinking was purged once Constantine and his buddies over took Christianity.

A real Nietzschean way of looking at them is they though that the Jews and Christians had in concept, killed god. "God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him you and I!" And they believed that God was something in us that had to be found. Many gnostic believed the physical world was made of suffering, and that true divinity was "locked away" in us. They believed in Sophia, the goddess of wisdom as well. They had a God and Goddess, that served more or less as symbolic (Think how Hindus believe all gods and goddesses are manifestations of one truth)... The Jews also once had a goddess named Shekinah, and in some passages in the old testament I think it even mentions a goddess of wisdom (though the monotheistic Jews and Christians say it is just for symbolic purposes, yet at the same time say every word in the bible must be true. Heh, humans are so peculiar.) so you can see how the Gnostics might have thought they had the right idea, but were doing it all wrong.

Irregardless, this still leaves me with the question of which Gnostic texts are the most readable as a story and most complete, and if anyone knows the one I described? I think it was something about cosmic deities... I can't remember for sure though.