The early church was fixated on the idea of an exclusively patrilineal lineage: Jesus came to earth from God in heaven, assembled an all-male team of disciples, and, upon his ascension, anointed them as his priests, end of story. That the church deemed the Gnostic Gospels (and their followers) heretical and then hunted them says it all about the church’s desire to assert itself as the sole authority, the mediator of God’s will, and the enforcer of behavior required for salvation.
