Two brothers were digging for fertiliser in the Egyptian desert in 1945.
As they dug around, they found a mysterious earthenware vessel.
These two brothers had no idea inside that vessel was one of the most significant finds
in archaeological history.
There was no pharaoh's treasure or ancient sword of legend, but papyrus.
A stack of ancient writings.
These papers changed hands multiple times.
Some people destroyed pages of this collection and separated the rest.
The significance of the collection would take a long time before they found what a treasure
these would be.
Hi, I’m Tristan, and this is Step Back, where we look at history sideways.
Be sure to subscribe and hit the notification for more history every week.
Several decades after this discovery, a pile of papyrus, rotting away in a New York safety
deposit box came to light.
After decades of swimming around the grey market of antiquities, an ancient manuscript
stolen by a Greek trader, suffering decades of poor storage, found its way to archaeologists.
Thousands of pieces of text would need to be painstakingly preserved and pieced together
to find out its true significance.
These two collections of writing might be some of the last remaining documents written
by a school of Christianity around during the religion’s early days.
Until these pieces were found, the only record of these Gnostics were writings from the early
church depicting them as baby eating heretics.
But now we had, in their own writing, their ideas describing a radically different concept
of God, the cosmos, and salvation.
This is the story of these people, the Gnostics.
Those two documents go by the names of the Nag Hamadi Library and the Gospel of Judas.
Both of the collections of texts written by a group called the Gnostics.
I think it would be easier, to begin with the issue of the term Gnostics.
There was no such thing as a faith called Gnosticism.
It’s more of an umbrella term used later to refer to a bunch of early Christian movements
sharing a few common beliefs, often with a lot of difference in the details.
It’s significant enough to the point where some religious studies scholars dispute using
the term because it oversimplifies this group.
So, I want to approach the topic with this forewarning.
This isn’t a formal group.
There was no leader.
I use the word because it makes categorisation easier.
If you wanna break into the minutia, you will want to approach the subject with something
with a spine and a few hundred pages.
Early Christianity was, for lack of a better term, buck wild.
Keep in mind, for a long time, Christians weren’t ruling super powerful institutions.
They were a small but growing Jewish cult thriving in the periphery of the Roman empire.
Its main leaders were the figures of the ‘holy generation’, which you might recognise as
many of the more prominent disciples in the new testament.
However, a lot of what we take for granted as Christianity such as the Trinity, bodily
resurrection, and even the books of the bible were far from solidified.
So, many early church leaders were trying to figure out what was the right way to worship.
What did this god with this new saviour figure really want for humanity?
What did Jesus’s message mean?
What did his story say about humanity?
For a long time, there was a lot of opinions.
The most recognisable would probably be the proto-orthodox church.
Their leaders developed a lot of the theological work for what would become staples of modern
Christianity.
This is the group that eventually found its way into the power structure of the Roman
Empire, and was the theological root for Catholics and Protestants.
Unless you are a Coptic Christian, or Ethiopian Christian (More about them in this video),
then your sect of Christianity probably traces its theological routes to this group.
The Gnostics were different from Christians today.
Their interpretation of Christianity was unrecognisable compared to traditions taken for granted today.
So let’s chew on those differences for a bit, shall we?
So I guess we should begin with what you would think is one of the most settled parts of
Christian dogma.
God.
One, kinda three somehow, but definitely one, right?
Well, let’s pick this apart.
Gnostics did believe in god, so they’re still good in that sense, but they adopted
little bits from some Greek Philosophers like Plato with his sweet cave, and Pythagorean
cults with their like… triangle worship thing to build a concept called the Monad.
Some groups go as far as to say the Monad is a sort of unknowable agendered perfect
being that definitely exists… but… he didn’t make the world.
This is because, well, the Gnostics generally had two gods.
Or a sort of imperfect replica of god, so maybe like one and a half gods?
Either way, the material world, people, the earth and all that good stuff, wait; I mean
bad stuff because Gnostics, was created by a different entity called the Demiurge.
Now I kinda imply he’s considered evil, but like I said earlier, opinions are diverse.
Everything ranges from evil incarnate to imperfect and he's just trying the best he can you guys.
Both the Monad and the Demiurge according to some Gnostics have servants called Aeons
and Archons.
Often the Aeons travelled in pairs and depending on the Gnostic Jesus, or the Demiurge himself
was one of these creatures.
The Demiurge is the entity who made the earth and us.
He’s the grumpy god of the old testament who drowns the planet, causes pain in childbirth,
and yells at people for doing sex wrong.
And this hits on a different, but in some ways weirdly familiar part of a Gnostic Christian
tradition.
They believe that the material world, with material bodies, is a trap.
This ranges from the material world being an imperfect manifestation of reality we need
to transcend to us being physical cages made by the Demiurge to trap our spark of creation.
When we die and shed this mortal coil, we are usually reunited with the Monad, becoming
part of them.
So Gnostics were not too worried about ritual and hierarchy, as they were just products
of this imperfect prison-plane and what counts is how you feel… in your heart.
The last and most important thing to the Gnostics is probably evident from the Greek origins
of their name.
Gnostic has the root word gnosis, meaning knowledge or wisdom.
At the core of Gnosticism is all these beliefs I mentioned above were secret knowledge they
were trying to understand and uncover.
They even believe the Demiurge freaking out about Eve eating dem apples from the tree
of knowledge was him hiding this revelation from humanity.
Jesus, for example, was an entity, usually not even a Human one, sent to give us the
prisoners secret knowledge of the bigger universe.
That what we saw were just shadows in the cave to make their connection with Plato again.
Oh, by the way before we continue, if you want to see a much better and more detailed
breakdown of this theology, I got a lot of help from Andrew Mark Henry over at Religion
for Breakfast.
After this video, you should check out the cards or the description to watch a playlist
of his on early Christianity.
For the longest time, we had little to go on to study Gnostic groups.
The only writing scholars had to work with was stuff written by that proto-orthodox church,
who wrote about them as literal baby eating monsters who were heretics against god.
I mean, believing the god of the old testament is a sort of evil god pretender will probably
do that.
The Orthodox religion relied on strict hierarchies, ritual, establishment, and performance of
deeds.
The Gnostics, believing in none of those things, found themselves on the out.
Let’s just say being a heretic back then was not as safe a life as it might be today.
By the 4th century, Gnostics were more or less gone.
------------------------------- Hey folks,
Intermission Tristan here to give you a big bold CALL TO ACTION.
There’s going to be a big meetup in Toronto on May 19th, 2018.
At 7PM come to Disgraceland where Mexie, Thought slime, and myself will all be in attendance.
I hope to meet a bunch of you there.
Now, back to the shoooow.
Ok, that was weird.
Anyway, Christianity’s open range of ideas began to narrow over the centuries.
Big moments like the canonisation of the official books of the bible left many many holy Christian
texts considered everything from not religious to evil.
The official books meant that splinter groups who considered Seth, the son of Adam a messiah
figure, or those who elevated Mary Magdalene above even the apostles were now heretics.
That being said, there’s still a Gnostic offshoot group living in modern day Iraq called
the Mandaeans.
Only about 60-70 thousand live today, but they remain.
So when the Nag Hamadi Library and the Gospel of Judas were rediscovered, it was a huge
deal.
Those bits of papyrus served as a super rare glimpse into Gnostic beliefs FROM THE GNOSTIC
POINT OF VIEW!
The information was priceless for uncovering the secrets of these people who worshipped
so long ago and gave us a peek into just how different Christianity could have been if
the war of ideas had only gone a bit different.
Thanks to 12 tone for the theme, and Patreon patrons Don and Kerry Johnson, Kolbeinn Mani,
Garrick Kwan, and Scott Smith.
Here’s a playlist of other world religion videos I’ve done.
If you have an idea for the next one, tell me in the comments.
I chose this one based on comments.
See you next time for more Step Back.