Another feature of the “Bible Hunters” programme (part 2) that caught my attention was the reference to ancient “gnostic” Christians as “intellectuals.” That was very funny, really. Just read the relevant texts, which are readily available in English translation: James M. Robinson (ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library in English, 3rd rev. ed. (Leiden/New York: Brill, 1988)
It’s perhaps a natural mistake for people who haven’t read the texts, given that “gnostic” comes from the Greek word “gnosis”, which means “knowledge.” But in the case of those called “gnostics,” the kind of “knowledge” that they sought wasn’t “intellectual,” but (to put it kindly) what we might term “esoteric,” secretive truths expressed typically in cryptic, riddling form, deliberately intended to make little sense as expressed. Put unkindly, one might characterize it as a bunch of “mumbo-jumbo” with no attempt to present them reasonably and in terms of the intellectual climate of the time.
But there was substance. They tended, for example, to project the view that the world and all therein was evil, deceptive, ensnaring, and so to be rejected or at least minimized so far as possible. So, e.g., women were to avoid giving birth, as this only imprisoned souls in this mire. Instead, they were to “become male” and cease “the work of women,” i.e., live celibate. (Hardly the elevation of women some people erroneously ascribe to “gnostic” circles.)
Their aim and approach, however, wasn’t “intellectual.” They didn’t seek to understand through inquiry and argumentation. They didn’t seek to project and commend their views through patient exposition, argumentation, and the exercise of rational thinking. These were people who may well have imagined that they had some sort of superiority spiritually, i.e., the sort of souls (and they were really interested only in their souls) that regarded themselves as by nature more attuned to divine things perhaps, certainly superior to “mere” Christians.
For them, the ordinary beliefs/claims of Christian faith seemed . . . too elemental, even foolish. “God so loved the world,” “Jesus died for our sins and rose again for our salvation,” etc., these all apparently seemed . . . well, dull. It appears that ordinary Christian ideas just didn’t tickle their fancy, didn’t scratch their itch. They needed something more titillating in their view. They seem to have thought, “This can’t be it. There must be some secretive truths that we alone are worthy to find.”
