Myths and Secrets
For the Sethians, the disciples were deluded in believing that Christ had risen in a bodily form and deliberately appeared to them to prove that the resurrection was spiritual not physical. Mary is often depicted in Gnostic works as a visionary who understood through her hallucinations more than the orthodox apostles. Tradition has it that she was mad or unstable and the verses added to the gospel of Mark in the second century might confirm it. She had had seven devils in her.
In the Gospel of Mary, Mary explains her vision to the disciples but they are thoroughly skeptical, especially Peter. She is conscious of the constant presence of Jesus but Peter is suspicious of such intangible revelation. Mary like Paul felt her awareness of the risen Jesus was more valid than the historical knowledge the appointed apostles had of him. Her sincerity and distress wins them over and they believe. The story expresses the point at which the Jesus of history, the leader of a band of rebels against the Roman usurpers of God's kingdom—Israel, disappears and instead becomes a myth.
Jesus became mythical for both orthodox and Gnostic churches but the orthodox Church wanted its organization to reflect the political organization of the empire whereas the Gnostics retained an element of revolutionary outlook, abhoring central authority in favour of personal revelation. The Church offered its solace to "the many" (hoi polloi, from the word the Essenes used of their congregations) but Gnostics retained the exclusive outlook of the Essenes claiming the additional insight of secret teaching for the few prepared to seek it. The distinction possibly reflects a dissappointment with the apocalyptic outlook of the Essenes, the result of repeatedly foiled beliefs that the terminal battle had begun.
Gnostics like Valentinus, according to Irenaeus, thought that passages like Mark 4:11, in which Jesus says he speaks in parables, following the Essene tradition, intended to be hard to understand for gentiles and unreligious Jews, meant that he had reserved certain secret knowledge for his apostles alone—the hidden things of the Essenes. They believed the apostles in turn taught this secret knowledge only to those who were ready to receive it.
In fact, the followers of Jesus had mainly been his converts and those of John the Baptist, the simple of Ephraim and backsliders desperate to make amends with God before the kingdom came. Mostly these were not people who were sophisticated in Judaism and therefore took away with them, after the death of their leader, whatever they knew of him and his teachings in a fairly undigested pieces. Those who remained loyal told others the story and by degrees it became mythologized. Others of course, Jews or Greek observers, also saw the story unfold and regarded it in a much more skeptical way. Critical stories of a renegade monk from them would keep conflicting with the preferred story of a pacific holy teacher and had to be countered. They could not be ignored because they were widespread and tied in with the stories of the faithful quite often, so they had to be altered.
Eventually, we had the gospels stories, which became the basis of orthodox Christianity. Those who believed that there was more to it however began to seek in the stories the hidden secrets that they thought were there. They interpreted the stories in an even more mystical way when the correct way to get the truth from the distortions of the bishops was to disentangle the genuine tradition from the inventions. The Gnostics also followed Paul in believing that Jesus continued to reveal himself after death. In 1 Corinthians 2:6 Paul sounds just like one of the revealers of hidden things. Gnostics, like Paul, were not interested in the real life of Jesus, but the life they felt for themselves—much like most pious Christians today. The risen Jesus, the spiritual being, is of interest to them, not the humble Essene Poor Man who led an obscure band of converts against the Romans in Palestine.
Many Gnostic works presume that the Jesus of the flesh is dead. Their Jesus is the Christ, the redemptive superbeing. He appears to them as he did to Paul in mystical experiences, like the Old Testament God, as a bright light, as an appropriate form or as an ever changing form. Each visionary sees him as they want to see him. Gnostics also wrote pseudepigraphic gospels, supposedly written by those close to Jesus. For the orthodox Church these were blasphemous even though their own four canonical gospels were also not written by eye witnesses.
Irenaeus tells us that Gnostics were encouraged to write down their intuitive spiritual revelations. Irenaeus found this offensive, as attributing merely human feeling to the divine. He felt the Gnostics were boasting that their own revelations were superior to those of Peter and Paul, and this he found absurd in itself but also threatening towards the authority of the apostles, and therefore of the bishops and priesthood in general. Gnostics opposed a professional priesthood, preferring to chose people from among their own number at each service. Irenaeus also pressed the claims of the church of Rome in settling disputes on doctrine, because it had been founded by Peter and Paul, was the oldest church, and because of its "pre-eminent authority".
There is much to be said for letting people express their spiritual selves in writing, and without disparagement. Everyone, for a Gnostic had a spark of the divine, and it would have the chance of revealing itself through religious creativity. Those which were appreciated would be read, given that people had the opportunity; those that were relatively valueless would not. The Holy Ghost could work through anyone and would manifest itself through its effect. Thus, Gnostics wrestling with one problem or another would feel themselves inspired by one or other of Jesus's companions and would write in their spirit. Modern Gnostics should do the same. Works which are popular could be kept in libraries and those which are not can be archived like old holy books of a synagogue genista.
