The Gnostic Gospels

THE CHRISTIANITY THEY ERASED

In 1945, a farmer in Upper Egypt named Muhammad Ali al-Samman was digging near the cliffs of Jabal al-Tarif when his mattock hit something buried in the desert sand. He had found thirteen leather-bound books: 52 ancient texts written in Coptic, sealed in a clay jar and hidden there about 1,600 years earlier by monks who knew what was coming. What he found in that jar was the Christianity that lost the war. Before the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE set official Christian doctrine and branded the rest heresy, early Christianity was a sprawling, wildly alive conversation. There were dozens of gospels. There were Christian communities that treated women as equal spiritual leaders. There were teachings that placed the divine not in an outside God demanding obedience but inside each human soul, as a spark of divine light waiting to wake up. There were cosmologies of stunning depth and power. The Gnostics (from the Greek gnosis, meaning direct, firsthand knowledge) did not want to believe in God. They wanted to know God. This course goes into what they found.

What You'll Learn