[DaveZale]

ever looked at the Gnostic scriptures, discovered in the late 1940s? Not even close to understanding them completely, but neither have organized religions. The well established stories of certain faiths we were raised with may need revision.

you can find some in archive.org - I won't supply a specific link because what's freely available changes over time

[dmos62]

Say more.

[n4r9]

Not OP, but I've taken an interest in Gnosticism since watching youtuber Alex O'Connor interview various scholars about them.

Basically, by around 200CE the early Christians were an extremely diverse lot with a broad range of beliefs and world systems, only a little of which would seem that familiar to us today. Alongside the four canonical gospels, there was a large number of so-called Gnostic gospels. Gnosticism itself is quite diverse, but there are a few common threads: the material world is a sort of cosmic accident, the being that created it is not the supreme heavenly being, and it is only with the help of secret knowledge that we can escape it. The status of Christ within this worldview varies a lot - some gnostics saw him as little more than an apparition, whilst for others he was a mortal man.

Gradually, church fathers such as Iranaeus campaigned to wipe out gnostic practices and scriptures and unify Christianity under a standardised set of beliefs. This was likely political and a way to help expand and convert the religion.

This can be surprising because it's tempting to see modern Christianity as being a faithful reflection of what Jesus did and said. But in fact the scholarly consensus is that Jesus claimed neither to be divine nor the son of God. The main evidence that he claimed either of these things is the gospel of John, which was written second-hand maybe 50-100 years after his death, and happened to be the gospel that Iranaeus wanted to canonicalise.

I wrote some more details in a previous post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44198811

[amanaplanacanal]

Some gnostics saw the Creator God of the old testament as evil, and saw Jesus as sent by the Good god to show humanity how to escape from the evil god of this world.

There was a lot of variety in early Christianity.

[peterashford]

"it's tempting to see modern Christianity as being a faithful reflection of what Jesus did and said" - there's also the Council of Nicea a few hundred years later where people decided on the divinity of Jesus in a very political manner. It doesn't take too much looking at history to realise how much the nature of the religion is entirely a human story and whatever the nature of the Jesus (if he even existed) is probably unknowable by now.

[yahoozoo]

The gnostic scriptures aren’t considered second-hand?

[n4r9]

Yes they generally are. Sorry, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. Just that the choice of John vs the the Gnostic gospels may well have been to some degree a political choice over which second-hand gospel to canonicalise.

[dmos62]

You might find the Holy Grail traditions and the more recent Rosicrucian tradition interesting, if you're not already aware of them. These are, like Gnosticism, Western Esoteric schools. Esoteric, as in the in-group teachings, or occult (the hidden) teachings. I'm fascinated by all of it.

I'm currently into Rudolf Steiner, a highly-regarded Rosicrucian teacher that left behind many books that are available in English (he lived around 100 years ago), but his writings are sort of a dive off the deep end. They require a lot of open-mindedness, to say the least.

The "dark lords of the earth" who created the material world is a common theme: Steiner also called these the followers of Ahraman (misspelling that probably), they are then offset by the Luciferic beings (the light-bearers), who are on the opposite end of the spectrum. Both are considered similarly destructive in opposite ways. The former represents unbridled materiality, the latter unbridled spirituality. Then there are the middle beings, sometimes called the Michaelic, who embody the balance and thus are considered worthy guides. There's a holy image of Jesus on the cross with two thieves on either side, also crucified, one turning towards Jesus, the other away: this image is commonly interpreted as portraying this dark-balance-light framework.

Modern Christian teachings sort of reduce this three-point system into a simple duality of good and evil, light and dark: which completely misses the point of the earlier teachings. Both the dark can be too dark, and the light can be too bright, it's about the middle way. Or, in other words, light isn't necessarily good. Today Lucifer is associated with dark beings and is a synonym for Satan, which might be fine, except that it then suggests that a being is beneficial as long as it's not dark, which is not the case.

It's interesting to note that some scholars assert that other, seemingly unconnected religions (e.g. Tibetan) also recognize these same beings (using their own terminology).

I unfortunately don't have a reference, but I have it on good authority that you can find Jesuit writings where they openly talk about reincarnation, contrary to the outer-religion teachings. They also tought their missionaries the use of pendulums and dowsing to find drinkable water, food, medicinal herbs, etc. when they're alone in a strange land. There are books by at least one French Jesuit priest where he shares the techniques. The more you dig, the larger the discrepancy between the out-group and the in-group teachings. I love this stuff.

I over-shared I guess, but it was fun writing this.

[n4r9]

Thanks for the share. It's not so much that I find esotericism inherently interesting. It's more that Gnosticism undermines common perceptions about Christianity's roots. Alex O'Conner (the YouTuber I mentioned in my previous post) mentions the astonished looks he gets in response to stating the current consensus that Jesus did not claim to be divine.

[dmos62]

It's a niche hobby, esoterics. You might be interested to hear that Rosicrucians basically assert that Jesus was a master initiate (simply someone highly accomplished), while Christ is a diety (the solar logos, the sun god) that "incarnated" into Jesus in the middle of Jesus' life.

[DaveZale]

see the other comments also but this is a good write up on the 1945ish find. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library

Some of the text was burned ... in a kitchen to start a fire. We're lucky to have what's left. Highly recommend reading some of it if you have tolerance for alternative views.