What do you know?
Bumming around Barnes & Noble last night, I was kind-of-sort-of-not-really surprised to see so many books on gnosticism. Authors like Elaine Pagel and titles such as Gnostic Gospel of St. Thomas and The Nag Hammadi Library seemed to be getting as much shelf space and display area in the Christian section as the orthodox authors and books.
I also saw what looked like a couple of books by orthodox writers written in response to this new trend. Most of the works appeared to be aimed at The Da Vinci Code, but I wouldn't be surprised to see more specifically in reply to the gnostic gospels in the future. Wright's Who Was Jesus?, for example, had a chapter that dealt with Barbara Thiering and The Gospel of Philip, arguing that The Gospel of Philip is too late and fantastic to take seriously as a picture of Jesus.
The ironic thing is that this has all been done before. The first several centuries of church history saw a significant amount of polemics related to various forms of gnosticism. Perhaps we're due for a repeat of it. There's nothing new under the sun ...
July 14, 2004 10:34 AM