Church History in Plain Language

by Bruce L. Shelley

Gnostics created their own versions of Christian literary works. Generally Gnostics took Jesus to be one of the many lesser deities lacking the purity and potency of the supreme reality or god. It was only such a lesser being who would engage the evil material world at all. Even so, they predictably picture a Jesus who was unconnected to the environment he came from and the movement he left behind. He rejected his Jewish orientation, the Torah, and Jewish titles like Son of God. He is not pictured as performing miracles or defeating death in resurrection. This was an otherworldly Jesus who passed on knowledge by what he said. Scholars differ concerning what the “Gnostic Jesus” actually taught. Often readers reconstruct a Jesus from these sayings who looks like the readers themselves. It is fashionable to picture a Jesus who is tolerant and inclusive of people who claim intuitive, prophetically given insights (typically suppressed by the controlling bishops). This Gnostic Jesus supposedly supported women, despite a misogynist declaration about women not being included in heaven at the close of the most famous of the Gnostic documents, The Gospel of Thomas.