What do Christians think of the Gnostic Gospels?

I think everybody has the right to read and decide for themselves

what is true, lie or fiction

Without any "filtering" from church, government or agency

Every time anybody makes the decision what you may or may not read

your free will is being compromised

http://flickr.com/gp/funhaha/eS87S4

Peace

To fully understand the Gnostic Gospels, you need to understand the source. Gnostic means knowledge; the writers of these Gospels called themselves spiritually knowledgeable folks who lived in caves near the dead Sea. They had a completely different concept of Jesus from that of the original Gospels which some call enlightened.

Gnosticism is not new; it existed during the period of the Old Testament and Masonic groups today teach some of their concepts.

Of course the Catholic Church of the Middle ages considered those teachings evil and banned the writings but then again, the Church also considered the Bible sacred and only Priests and Bishops were supposed to read it. It was not until the era of Martin Luther that the Bible was made available to laymen.

Gnostic Bibles

Edit: @ Bob Klein -- In all humility, I'd happily give you references if you can point to one proto Gnostic that appears in the Bible. If you are really that smart and well read, this is your chance to prove it. If you can't, then let me be!!!

"...but were purposefully destroyed by the Church." That is not true.

Anyway, gnostism revolved around the idea that you needed a special kind of knowledge to know God, thereby making it very exclusive. The gospel of Christ was meant for everyone, not a select few. If gnosticism had won the day over traditional Christianity, the world we know today wouldn't have been the same.

The ideas of equality and freedom, which is central to Christianity would have been replaced by a class system more rigid and stern than that which we spite today, as the ones that existed in Europe, for example.

I am not saying that Christianity itself hasn't been abused, however, the abuse of Christianity by various people throughout history does not in anyway take away the message of salvation from Christianity -- a message that Gnosticism was loathe to communicate.

The very fact that we still have those "gospels" with us today should point to the fact that the church never destroyed gnostic gospels. In fact, most gnostic gospels were already out of common circulation before the Christianization of the Roman empire.

The gospel of Judas was written about 180 C.E. The gospel of Mary was written even later. They were written by a group of heretics called Gnostics who believed that Jesus was only a man and not God.

Christians of both of that time and now do not believe these gnostic "gospels" are true or inspired by God.

This is clearly shown when the Holy Spirit guided the early Christians to select which gospels and other writings should be included in the New Testament, the gnostic gospels were not included.

With love in Christ.

The Roman Catholic Church preferred Paul's Jesus who was about guilt and fear. The Gnostic Gospels teach of a Jesus who advocated for enlightenment, not the man made asinine dogma that furthered only the position of the church. The Church feared losing that control that they had gained through selling that man made guilt and fear to sheeple who cannot think for themselves, so it declared the Gnostic Gospels to be heresy and ordered them to be destroyed.

One could say that the Gnostic Gospels only survive today because God wanted them to survive.

there are various gnostic writings. there have been rejected with the help of the early church. They declare secrets and methods yet Christianity is an open faith with public revelation. Gnostic ability people who know the secrets and methods that's known that Thomas is named the twin no longer because of the fact he grew to become right into a twin of Jesus yet because of the fact he gave the impact of him. The apostles preserved the instructions of Jesus for the period of the church, those teachings are the two interior the bible or in custom. Paul mentions this. He tells us to maintain what grew to become into exceeded down(custom ability exceeded down) with the help of be conscious or in writing.

I have only read the Gospel of Thomas. It is interesting and it is thought that the 4 Bible Gospels were once like the Gospel of Thomas.

I have gleaned some interesting facts from Gnosticism and I have incorporated them into my belief system.

The existence of the gnostics indicate that christianity was not a hard-and-fast formalized belief system, even in the first decades after jesus died. It does a lot to argue against fundamentalist biblical theology and the fervent fundamentalist christian assertion idea that the first few generations of christians were some small homogeneous group with identical beliefs.

Are you familiar with the term oxy moron? What's so good news about an untruth? Why would we care what some book has to say that has nothing to do with our faith?

You answer your own question. You speak like you have what it takes to better someones life, but you're the only one who could take that seriously. The point is, these other geniuses that wrote these books were people like you. Sorry Charlie, not good enough for star kist.