Scholars have long known that the earliest church was little more than a Jewish sect, and that it morphed into what we know as Christianity as it absorbed Hellenistic elements and teachings that were alien to Judaism. As pointed out in The Noahide Code: A Guide to the Perplexed Christian, it was not simply some vague “Greek philosophical ideas” or “pagan mystery religions” that contributed the non-Jewish elements to Christianity, but specifically concepts and teachings from Gnostic Christianity. Gnosticism played a greater role in the development of Christianity than the Church has been willing to admit. These Gnostic elements had a profound influence not only on Christian theology, but on the New Testament itself, particularly in the epistles of Paul and the writings of John. Gnosticism was, in the opinion of the early church fathers, the most dangerous of heresies, for unlike the marginalized and separatist Jews, the Gnostics from the beginning of Christianity had made up a goodly portion of the early churches, even providing much of the leadership. The threat of Gnosticism lay in its similarity to “proto-orthodox” Christianity (to borrow Bart D. Ehrman’s term). Many of the Gnostic teachings resembled too closely the proto-orthodox teachings; the theological concepts of Gnosticism were much more akin to orthodox Christianity than, say, the Jewish teachings of the rabbis. It was these Gnostic teachings that influenced not only the writings of John and Paul, but Gnostic elements even crept into the Ebionite-flavored texts of Matthew and James.

The advanced Gnostic theology in the Gospel of John (as well as Paul’s epistles) had a tremendous influence on Christianity. When the Church eliminated its Gnostic rivals and destroyed their literature, they felt the battle for control of Christianity had been won for ever, and with the threat of Gnosticism silenced (forever, as the Church believed), the arguments and debates about Gnosticism were regulated to scholarly studies in the teachings of Ireneaus and Tertullian. However, with the discovery and translation of the Nag Hammadi texts, it became glaringly obvious that Christianity had much more in common with Gnosticism than it did with Judaism, and that the tenets of Christianity were Gnostic concepts and ideas.

Gnosticism taught that man can do nothing to save himself, that there was an inseparable gulf between himself and G-d. They taught that the world was in the grip of an evil god (the Demiurge, or Satan,) and man was powerless to save himself. The Gnostics often used dualistic language to describe theological ideas, such as saved versus lost, fleshy versus spiritual, and light versus darkness. The most noticeable difference between Gnosticism and Judaism was that Gnosticism was a religion that focused on personal salvation, and that only by the gnosis (knowledge) of Jesus could one’s soul escape the boundaries of this sinful materialistic world and go to “heaven,” as in the gnostic concept that no one comes to the Father except through the gnosis of Jesus.

Compared to other areas of theology, the study of the impact of Gnosticism on Christianity has been sparse to say the least. Christian scholars know that there are many Gnostic elements in John and Paul’s writings. They know that the Gnostic sects of Christianity were very very close in content and belief as the “orthodox” form of Christianity. They know that there were a great many Gnostics in the early churches, often as leaders or elders. Even the early church fathers espoused many ideas that were known to be Gnostic. Christians love to point out Jesus’ Jewishness. What they do not point out is that Christian theology is not based on the Jewish teachings of Jesus, but on the Hellenistic (Gnostic) teachings of John and Paul. Christianity does not simply owe a debt to Gnosticism for many of its ideas; it is Gnosticism. This is why theologians have been so reluctant to talk much about the similarities between classical Gnosticism and Christianity; after all, everyone knows that Gnosticism was a pagan and heretical religion.

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