FABLE #6 “The Gnostic Nag Hammadi gospels are as old as the gospels in the New Testament

Not a single one of them is as old as even the youngest of the Biblical books (completed by 90 A.D.)! See here for more. http://www.apologeticsinfo.org/papers/fivegospels.html

The Gnostic Gospels do not represent a set of uniform religious beliefs which would present a consistent and uniform source that could easily be consulted by myself or Brown. Gnosticism” covers so much intellectual territory that many scholars feel the term itself is not useful

Indeed, the only common definition of Gnosticism which finds acceptance in orthodox Catholic circles as well as by non-theologically oriented scholars is “those religious doctrines and myths of late antiquity that maintain or presuppose that the cosmos is a result of the activity of an evil or ignorant creator and that salvation is a process in the course of which a human being receives the knowledge of his/her divine origin and returns to the realm of light after having been freed from the limitations of the world and the body http://www.davincilegacy.com/Infringement/Perdue-April8-Filings/Exhibit%20C.pdf

As far as the Gnosticsim which they represent are concerned, Pastor Paul Hughes offers much more material, only a very smal; part is given here (see links at bottom for the rest).

Many scholars recognize pre-Christian elements having been incorporated into Gnosticism, but are critical of theories of a pre-Christian Gnostic religion such as that Bultmann constructed from post-Christian sources.

A transcendent and impersonal God rules the heavens.

The material world is evil (i.e., cosmological dualism).

Man has fallen from a pure pneumatic (i.e., spiritual) state into the evil material realm.

God and the material realm are separated by a spiritual realm (the plērōma), filled with intermediate beings (aeons, “emanations,” or “hypostases”).

The material world is ruled by an evil archōn or archōns (“rulers”) or Demiurge.

God at times sends redeemers to man to reveal a saving gnōsis.

Through the esoteric gnōsis, man is able to save himself, regain his spiritual (pneumatic) nature, and in the end ascend to his place in the plērōma.

This salvation is available to a limited number of “elect” pneumatics.

Unlike the imaginary Da vinci code, the deceptive picture Mr. Brown's paints is not difficult to “decode, and we will see herein how Dan Brown must not only suppress substantiated factual history and the conclusions of objective examination, but he must invent scenarios and evidence to supplant the Christian faith, which stands upon substantiated truth and has and will withstand similar specious attacks against it.

©2003 Paul A. Hughes

pneuma@aggienetwork.com

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Crete/6111/pneumatikos/gnostic.htm

Home: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Crete/6111/pneumatikos/launch.htm

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia provides this definition:

Gnosticism may be described generally as the fantastic product of the blending of certain Christian ideas—particularly that of redemption through Christ—with speculation and imaginings derived from a medley of sources (Greek, Jewish, Parsic; philosophies; religions, theosophies, mysteries) in a period when the human mind was in a kind of ferment, and when opinions of every sort were jumbled together in an unimaginable welter. It involves, as the name denotes, a claim to "knowledge," knowledge of a kind of which the ordinary believer was incapable, and in the possession of which "salvation" in the full sense consisted. This knowledge of which the Gnostic boasted, related to the subjects ordinarily treated of in religious philosophy; Gnosticism was a species of religious philosophy (Early Church History to AD 313, II, 71).11

JESUS CHRIST is LORD. Only HE Can Save You, and you Must be Saved!

(click here for how).

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