Gnosticism, Essenes and Secret Teachings of Jesus

Gnosticism is more purely dualistic than the Christianity that has come down to us, and links more clearly with the Essene world view and the source of Judaism, Zoroastrianism. The world is the creation of the evil spirit but humans have a spark of divine light in them. The Essenes saw men as having different proportions of good and evil in them, but even the most evil man could be saved by choosing righteousness. For Gnostics, salvation was through divine knowledge which allowed the spark of divinity to ignite. For Christians, it was purely through faith in the return of Christ at his Parousia.

The spread of Christianity is aptly described by the metaphor of the Gnostic “spark.” The Hellenized Jews fled from Judaea into the empire each carrying a spark that could ignite a new religion. Each place where a bright spark landed a new fire burned, but all differed through the lack of any central authority.

Evangelists like Paul tried to impress this mosaic of people with their own coherent interpretation, and the initial phase of Universal Christianity will have been a condensation of disparatcuntrpretations into areas of more unified doctrine. In the next 100 years they evolved in different directions, and only in the second century did the Roman Church succeed in asserting its central authority.

All this had to be done in secrecy from the authorities for whom Jesus had died a rebel, whatever Christians ancient or modern might have thought. Those supporting a rebel could only be seen as rebels themselves—traitors or potential traitors—and so Christians were distrusted by Romans and Jews alike. By disguising itself as a mystery, Christianity could suppress the truth about their Saviour until a novice had been suitably indoctrinated.

Remember, too that the strongest motivation for these people was that they expected the world to end soon! The Romans thought they were intent on bringing it about, whereas most Christians were probably content to wait for their Saviour to return on a cloud, and meanwhile to decide how they should behave to avoid an unfavourable judgement when he arrived. Later, they were more inclined to be aggressive against the Pagan religions they convinced themselves were devilish, and therefore provided grist for the mill of Roman distrust.

Robert L Wilkins (The Myth of Christian Beginnings, Doubleday 1979) says bluntly:

There was no original Christian faith… no definitive statement of the meaning of Christ for all times… Christians said one thing while going ahead and doing something else.

Myths and Secrets
The teaching of the various Gnostic sects was not well known until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi cache of Gnostic texts, and even now, no one is saying they understand it. Previously, what was known depended entirely on the biased and fragmentary refutations of Fathers of the Church. The Fathers greatly misrepresented the Gnostics. Gnosticism was itself sub-divided into more than fifty sects, each with its own bishops, organizations, and accepted books, and each with some divergency of doctrine from the others. From that mass of doctrines, surviving only in fragmentary forms, the principal theories held by early Christians have been deduced, and the rise and fall of Gnostic Christianity roughly dated.

Gnosticism dates from the first century BC, and was originally a Theosophic movement, which attempted to reconcile diverse elements such as Judaism, Greek philosophy, Iranian metaphysics, and aspects of mythology. From this blend sprang a Gnostic Christianity which fed, and fed on, gospel Christianity. The Pauline epistles came between some form of Gnosticism and gospel Christianity. They were probably written in the middle of the first century AD, and the synoptic gospels were not completed before the end of the first century AD. But Christian Gnostics had adopted, in the earliest of their writings with which we are acquainted, some doctrines which were foreign to the Gnosticism of the first century BC, and whence these proto-Christian rather than orthodox doctrines came is not certain.

That the attacks on Gnosticism made by the Fathers of the Church do not begin until well on in the second century need not have been due, as alleged by the orthodox, to the fact that Gnosticism began only then. Perhaps only then did gospel Christianity separate from and begin to compete with Gnostic Christianity. In the middle of the second century Gnostic Christianity and gospel Christianity do not seem always to have been clearly distinguished. Valentinus, the leader of the Christian sect which was afterwards anathematized by the Catholics as heretic, was, on the evidence of the Fathers themselves, a member of the same Church as that considered by them as orthodox.

The schism between them may have been caused as much by a change in one as in the other. Perhaps Gnosticism became more mystic, while gospel Christianity became more materialistic. From one religion, they became two widely differing religions, evolving in different directions, but each took from the other doctrines formulated after they had begun to branch away from each other.

For the Sethians, the disciples were deluded in believing that Christ had risen in a bodily form and deliberately appeared to them to prove that the resurrection was spiritual not physical. Mary is often depicted in Gnostic works as a visionary who understood through her hallucinations more than the orthodox apostles. Tradition has it that she was mad or unstable and the verses added to the gospel of Mark in the second century might confirm it. She had had seven devils in her.

In the Gospel of Mary, Mary explains her vision to the disciples but they are thoroughly skeptical, especially Peter. She is conscious of the constant presence of Jesus but Peter is suspicious of such intangible revelation. Mary like Paul felt her awareness of the risen Jesus was more valid than the historical knowledge the appointed apostles had of him. Her sincerity and distress wins them over and they believe. The story expresses the point at which the Jesus of history, the leader of a band of rebels against the Roman usurpers of God’s kingdom—Israel, disappears and instead becomes a myth.

Jesus became mythical for both orthodox and Gnostic churches but the orthodox Church wanted its organization to reflect the political organization of the empire whereas the Gnostics retained an element of revolutionary outlook, abhoring central authority in favour of personal revelation. The Church offered its solace to “the many” (hoi polloi, from the word the Essenes used of their congregations) but Gnostics retained the exclusive outlook of the Essenes claiming the additional insight of secret teaching for the few prepared to seek it. The distinction possibly reflects a dissappointment with the apocalyptic outlook of the Essenes, the result of repeatedly foiled beliefs that the terminal battle had begun.

Gnostics like Valentinus, according to Irenaeus, thought that passages like Mark 4:11, in which Jesus says he speaks in parables, following the Essene tradition, intended to be hard to understand for gentiles and unreligious Jews, meant that he had reserved certain secret knowledge for his apostles alone—the “hidden things” of the Essenes. They believed the apostles in turn taught this secret knowledge only to those who were ready to receive it.

In fact, the followers of Jesus had mainly been his converts and those of John the Baptist, the simple of Ephraim and backsliders desperate to make amends with God before the kingdom came. Mostly these were not people who were sophisticated in Judaism and therefore took away with them, after the death of their leader, whatever they knew of him and his teachings in a fairly undigested pieces. Those who remained loyal told others the story and by degrees it became mythologized. Others of course, Jews or Greek observers, also saw the story unfold and regarded it in a much more skeptical way. Critical stories of a renegade monk from them would keep conflicting with the preferred story of a pacific holy teacher and had to be countered. They could not be ignored because they were widespread and tied in with the stories of the faithful quite often, so they had to be altered.

Eventually, we had the gospels stories, which became the basis of orthodox Christianity. Those who believed that there was more to it however began to seek in the stories the hidden secrets that they thought were there. They interpreted the stories in an even more mystical way when the correct way to get the truth from the distortions of the bishops was to disentangle the genuine tradition from the inventions. The Gnostics also followed Paul in believing that Jesus continued to reveal himself after death. In 1 Corinthians 2:6 Paul sounds just like one of the revealers of hidden things. Gnostics, like Paul, were not interested in the real life of Jesus, but the life they felt for themselves—much like most pious Christians today. The risen Jesus, the spiritual being, is of interest to them, not the humble Essene Poor Man who led an obscure band of converts against the Romans in Palestine.

Many Gnostic works presume that the Jesus of the flesh is dead. Their Jesus is the Christ, the redemptive superbeing. He appears to them as he did to Paul in mystical experiences, like the Old Testament God, as a bright light, as an appropriate form or as an ever changing form. Each visionary sees him as they want to see him. Gnostics also wrote pseudepigraphic gospels, supposedly written by those close to Jesus. For the orthodox Church these were blasphemous even though their own four canonical gospels were also not written by eye witnesses.

Irenaeus tells us that Gnostics were encouraged to write down their intuitive spiritual revelations. Irenaeus found this offensive, as attributing merely human feeling to the divine. He felt the Gnostics were boasting that their own revelations were superior to those of Peter and Paul, and this he found absurd in itself but also threatening towards the authority of the apostles, and therefore of the bishops and priesthood in general. Gnostics opposed a professional priesthood, preferring to chose people from among their own number at each service. Irenaeus also pressed the claims of the church of Rome in settling disputes on doctrine, because it had been founded by Peter and Paul, was the oldest church, and because of its “pre-eminent authority”.

There is much to be said for letting people express their spiritual selves in writing, and without disparagement. Everyone, for a Gnostic, had a spark of the divine, and it would have the chance of revealing itself through religious creativity. Those which were appreciated would be read, given that people had the opportunity. Those that were relatively valueless would not. The Holy Ghost could work through anyone and would manifest itself through its effect. Thus, Gnostics wrestling with one problem or another would feel themselves inspired by one or other of Jesus’s companions and would write in their spirit. Modern Gnostics should do the same. Works which are popular could be kept in libraries and those which are not can be archived like old holy books of a synagogue genista.

Gnostics and Christians
Marcion contrasted the God of love of Jesus with the wrathful God of the scriptures who made the evil world and sent laws so that he could enjoy punishing those who broke them. These must have been different gods, one good and one evil. Irenaeus and the orthodox Christians denied that there was another god and that the creator was evil and introduced the creed:

I believe in one God, Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

The Valentinians happily recited this creed because they also accepted only one God. Irenaeus was distressed that the ordinary religious punter could not distinguish between the orthodox and the Valentinian churches. Actually Valentinians thought that Christians had mistaken the image of God for the real thing. For them, the real God was incomprehensible but the Christians pictured Him as a tetchy old craftsman, a king or a judge. But Jesus taught “God is Spirit” and the “Father of Truth” according to Heraclaon, quoted by Origen.

Remember that in the empire at the time of the first bishops, gods were rife. Besides the Greek and Roman pantheons, many eastern gods had been introduced and often identified with one or other of the old pantheon. Nobody was concerned with blasphemy, and nobody boasted that their god was superior to another’s because they still feared the revenge of the offended god. Christians had no such qualms, labelling all other gods as devils.

The Christian bishops in Rome were interested in centralized authority. The political authority of the Empire rested in Rome. So too the religious authority should rest in Rome. Yet, other churches were as prominent, though not always as orthodox as the Roman church. So it suited the powers of orthodoxy to emphasise the sole power of God. Ignatius of Antioch declaimed: “One God! One bishop!” The bishop had to obeyed as if he were God on earth.

The archons of the Gnostics are these earthly rulers as well as evil angels. In his epistle, 1 Clement, Clement, an early Pope, threatens those in the church of Corinth who disobey the rulers of the earth with death—presumably the everlasting death of the Essenes—excommunication. He insists on strict rankings within the church, again from the Essene tradition but lacking the strict humility of the Essenes.

The “Hidden Tradition” which Valentinus claimed to receive from a student of Paul is that the God of the Christians is really only the Creator or the Demiurgos, a servant of the Highest God. He makes false claims of power as the only god because he is blind (Samael) and ignorant. Gnosis is the recognition that God is really “the Depth”. Those who get this revelation of knowledge receives the secret sacrament called the release or the redemption (“apolytrosis”)—he is released from the power of the Demiurge. The ritual involves a spoken defiance of the Demiurge and an assertion that the proper place to be is with the pre-existent Father. This again is reminiscent of the Essene chants against Satan.

Because the Christian bishop receives his authority from the God of the Hebrews, the Gnostic who does not recognize this god as God, can defy the power of the Church—the power of the earthly rulers or archons. The Gnostics were egalitarian, at least after their “apolytrosis,” and had no hierarchies. The sevices they held were conducted by one of their number chosen by lot—a bishop, a priest, a prophet and a reader each with their own role. This egalitarianism is closer to the Essenes’ idea of precedence than the authoritarian Church’s. The choice by lot was simply an expression of God’s will.

Women and the Mother Spirit
Even women had equal representation, Tertullian observed appalled. They took part in the lottery and could serve in any position. This is a very significant distinction from the Essenes of Qumran, but that was a monastery for the holiest of the saints. The ordinary village Essene, and more so the converted followers of the Nazarene, included women, for the scrolls tell us that, at the End Time, all Israel will be called including women and little children. Though the monastic Essenes regarded women as sinful and temptresses—and this came through to the Church, the village Essenes and Nazarenes accepted them, and it became a principle to do so for the Gnostics. The church originally had a large majority of women members and had a liberal view of them, but by 200 AD women were forbidden all active roles.

Irenaeus says the Gnostic heresies mainly attracted women and they were allowed to prophesy, an ability denied them by the orthodox Church. Many of the powerful emanations of Gnosticism—Grace, Thought, Silence—were feminine. The Hebrew word for spirit is “ruah,” a feminine word whereas the word for spirit in Greek, “pneuma,” is neuter. For Christians the Holy Ghost is either masculine, being an aspect of God, or is sexless. In the original Semitic, it was a female principle.

In the Apocryphon of John, John describes a vision of the Trinity reassuring him after the crucifixion, and the Holy Ghost is shown as a feminine principle, the Mother. That Gnostics associated the Holy Ghost with the Mother is confirmed in the Gospel of the Hebrews where Jesus refers to her as “my Mother, the Spirit”. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus’s divine mother, as opposed to his earthly mother, is the Holy Ghost. The Gospel of Philip declares “the Spirit is mother of many”. This is another possible element in the myth of the virgin birth because the Holy Ghost is also considered a virgin.

Sophia was also a feminine principle which might have been identified with the Holy Ghost or an aspect of God equal to it. The voice of the “Preacher,” the Ecclesiates of the Wisdom Book of Ecclesiates, is similarly, in Hebrew, a feminine word, “koheleth,” and yet is supposed to have been Solomon. It is not Solomon but the voice of Sophia who was preaching. Ideas are, metaphorically, conceived, emphasizing Sophia’s aspect as a Mother and linking with the Holy Ghost. Much Gnostic writing asserts the female against the male in the shape of Mary Magdalene against the orthodoxy of Peter.

For Gnostics, the proper witness to Christ was an exemplary life, not an exemplary death. Tertullian, at the end of his life rejected the Church in favour of the Gnostics, joining the Montanists.

Christianity has been successful because it provided apparent certainties and cajoled, bullied, tortured and murdered to ensure there was no opposition. Yet love and truth reside in one’s own conscience, must be sought there and openly expressed whatever organized churches or hierarchical societies care to command. Irenaeus said:

The preaching of the truth, like the sun, shines everywhere the same in the world and enlightens all people who are willing.

Irenaeus was intent on distinguishing the universality of the orthodox church as opposed to a perceived exclusiveness of Gnosticism. Yet plainly he fails for he has to qualify those who are enlightened with the clause “who are willing”. No one can claim that all Christians are good and undoubltedly some of the not-good ones are evil. So the sun of truth can shine but it does not necessarily enlighten—it also casts shadows. Irenaeus’s small qualification proves that no church can be universal unless the kingdom of God came in the meantime. The qualifying clause actually makes his statement Gnostic because it becomes the entire point of the metaphor. Only those who are willing can become enlightened! That is elitist and quite properly so.

The Essenes did not believe, like the Christians, that baptism made anyone righteous. Baptism with fire was also needed. They had to seek the spirit of holiness inside themselves, repent sincerely and behave righteously. The orthodox church effectively abandoned all but baptism. The Gnostics did not. Yet it was the Gnostics who died out, and with it went genuine soul searching, and genuine effort to find and do good. That is perhaps the trouble with the world.

[link to www.askwhy.co.uk]