The Gnostic Gospels

Introduction

The Gnostic gospels are part of the apocryphal gospels, ie, those biblical texts that are not part of the Bible. In the year 393, during the Council of Hippo was decided the list of biblical texts that would be integrated in the Bible that we know today, consisting of 46 books in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament.

For its part, the Gnostic gospels are written in Coptic texts which were discovered by a farmer in 1945 near Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. The vessel where they were found containing 13 books of papyrus, with 45 texts, the vast majority were not known, but spoke, like the canonical Gospels, the life of Jesus but in a different way the canonical Gospels, for example , one of them is the notion that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married (Bruce, pp. 111).

According to the analysis made to such documents could prove that they were written around the years 350 and 400 AD, however, as is most likely to have been translated from Greek into Coptic, it has been speculated that the Greek original may have been written between 120 to 150 AD, and that is precisely where the debate begins, it would be very close to the dates of the canonical Gospels that comprise the New Testament (60-110 AD) and then arise the question had already knowledge of the existence of these documents at the Council of Nicea? and if so why were not included as part of the New Testament?

As mentioned at the beginning of the preceding paragraph, the documents found at Nag Hammadi are 52, but only 4 of them are in the range of gospels:

Gospel of Thomas is perhaps the most important of all, consists of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus while talking to his disciples and are very similar to the 4 canonical Gospels of the New Testament.

Gospel of Philip, like the Gospel of Thomas, is made ??up of 143 words and fragments of conversations between Jesus and his disciples. The importance of the Gospel lies in the notion appears that Mary Magdalene was the companion (wife?) Of Jesus, this gospel also speaks of the possibility that Jesus has not risen from the dead and, finally, mentions that Mary was not conceived by the Holy Spirit.

Valentine Gospel or Truth: rather than being written as gospel, this text seems to be a sermon, consists of 53 sentences and was harshly criticized by Irenaeus. The Gospel of Truth 'but does not agree at all with the Gospels of the Apostles, so they really have no gospel that is not full of blasphemy. "( Irenaeus, 3.11.9)

Gospel of the Egyptians is one of the texts that come closest to the canonical Gospels, has a strong esoteric and mythological reference that speaks of September as savior in the person of Jesus.

Other texts that are not part of those found at Nag Hammadi, but with strong Gnostic style and dating from the same period ...