What Scripture says
The New Testament already warns against ideas that later developed into Gnosticism:
- Teachers who deny that Jesus came in the flesh: “every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God” (1 John 4:2–3, ESV; see also 2 John 7).
- “Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge” (1 Timothy 6:20). The Greek word for knowledge is gnōsis.
- Those who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods (1 Timothy 4:3).
- Those who say the resurrection has already happened, spiritually (2 Timothy 2:18).
The New Testament insists that Jesus came in a real body, died and rose bodily (Luke 24:39, 1 Corinthians 15:3–4).
What the evidence says
History
What Gnosticism taught
“Gnostic” describes a range of groups in the 2nd century and later, with varied beliefs. Many shared some key ideas:
- The material world is evil or flawed, made not by the true God but by a lesser, ignorant god, sometimes identified with the God of the Old Testament.
- Humans contain a divine spark trapped in the body.
- Salvation comes through secret knowledge (gnōsis) that awakens the spark and frees it from the body.
- Jesus is a revealer of this knowledge. Some taught he only seemed to have a body (docetism), or that the divine Christ left Jesus before the crucifixion.
The discovery
Most Gnostic texts were unknown, except through their critics, until 1945, when farmers near Nag Hammadi in Egypt found a jar containing 13 leather-bound books. The 52 texts, in Coptic, were copied in the 4th century and include the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Truth and the Apocryphon of John. The Gospel of Mary had been found earlier in another manuscript, and the Gospel of Judas surfaced in the 1970s and was published in 2006.
The main texts
| Text | Likely date | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Gospel of Thomas | 2nd century (some argue earlier) | 114 sayings, no narrative (3B.17) |
| Gospel of Judas | Mid-2nd century | Secret revelation to Judas (3B.18) |
| Gospel of Mary | 2nd century | Mary shares secret teaching (3B.19) |
| Gospel of Philip | 3rd century | Reflections on sacraments (3B.19) |
| Gospel of Truth | Mid-2nd century | A meditation, possibly by Valentinus |
Textual Criticism
The dating matters. The four Gospels are dated within the 1st century, within living memory of Jesus (see 4.4). The Gnostic gospels come from the 2nd century or later, and most show dependence on the earlier Gospels rather than independent memory of Jesus. Simon Gathercole, for example, argues the Gospel of Thomas reflects the wording of Matthew and Luke.
They also teach a different faith: a secret Jesus who reveals hidden knowledge to a few, a world made by a lesser god, and salvation by escaping the body rather than resurrection.
The early church’s response
The church rejected these texts as soon as they appeared:
- Irenaeus (c. AD 180) wrote Against Heresies, describing and refuting Gnostic groups, and mentioned the Gospel of Judas by name. He argued there were exactly four Gospels, received by the churches from the apostles.
- Tertullian and Hippolytus wrote against them too.
- No church canon list included them.
Where they meet
The early church rejected these books not because they were suppressed by a conspiracy, but because they came too late to have apostolic roots and taught a different message. The New Testament’s warnings show that Christians recognized these ideas as departures from the faith from the start.
What’s still open
- The date of the Gospel of Thomas, and whether any of its unique sayings preserve early tradition.
- How diverse early Christianity was. Scholars like Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrman stress diversity; others argue the apostolic faith was dominant from the start, and Gnostic groups were later offshoots.
Bottom line
The Gnostic gospels were written in the 2nd century or later, long after the apostles, with Gnostic theology that clashes with the earlier Gospels. Their late date is widely agreed, so this is rated Settled.