In AD 180 Bishop Irenaeus of Gaul (now Lyons, France) faced the challenge of selecting four gospels out of the hundreds that circulated throughout Europe, Greece, Egypt, and Asia Minor. At a time when the earth was considered flat, and therefore had four corners, he chose four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Bishop Irenaeus wrote, “There are four winds, four directions on the compass, four elements, and four pillars of the church, therefore there must be four gospels” He mentions many of the discarded gospels by name, in particular those of Thomas, Philip, Judas, and Mary Magdalene. By his very account we know that they existed.

In AD 318 Rome ceased its persecution of the followers of Jesus, called the Christ. Seven years later the Roman Emperor Constantine held council in Nicea (present day Iznik, Turkey) to unite the many Christian sects in Europe and establish a uniform doctrine under the Roman Empire.

The primary objective of the council was to determine the spiritual versus the terrestrial essence of the Israelite they called Jesus and his relation to the Creator/Father.

Any connection of Jesus to the feminine was set only in terms of salvation, since the feminine was associated with the fallen world of procreation and original sin. (In AD 591 Pope Gregory the Great drew the moral conclusion that Mary Magdalene was not an apostle and teacher who was close to Jesus but a repentant prostitute. In 1969 the Second Vatican Council apologetically removed this label, which had debased her memory for close to 1,500 years.)

The Council of Nicea placed Jesus as a uniquely divine incarnation with the Church of Rome as his representative. Bishops and priests became Christ on earth, omnipotent intermediaries between humankind and Father God.

Central to the goal of establishing a unified church was the extermination of the many Gnostic sects whose precept were arrived at through intuition and the knowledge of self through transcendence. Such an intangible could not be harnessed by an institutional oligarchy. The danger of Gnosticism was that “inner knowing” negated the need for a conduit, i.e., an authoritarian church. Furthermore, some Gnostic Gospels portrayed Mary Magdalene’s position in the life of Jesus as that of intimate consort. As Gnosticism did not possess an effective system of organization, for it is a solitary path, it was no match for the military forces of Rome. Gnosticism was annihilated.

In 1945 twelve leather-bound papyrus codices containing fifty-two Gnostic treatises were found in Nag Hammadi, Northern Egypt; a discovery that altered established precepts of Christian doctrine for all time. Why were these manuscripts, along with that of the Gospel of Judas, delayed in reaching the public for so many years?

Unlike the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered the same year, the Nag Hammadi codices were ensnared in greed and political battles: antiquities dealers trying to get rich, political roadblocks, and the competitive atmosphere of academia. The Jung Foundation in Zürich, Switzerland bought twelve codices in 1952 and stored them in a safe-deposit box. In 1961 UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) intervened, setting up a committee to arrange publication. The Nag Hammadi documents finally came into the public domain in the 1970’s, inspiring Dr. Elaine Pagels, Princeton historian of religion, to write the 1979 bestseller, The Gnostic Gospels.

The Gospel of Judas, discovered in 1978, was plagued by the same dynamics that hindered the Nag Hammadi codices: traded on the antiquities market for decades, stashed in a safe deposit box in New York for sixteen years, and eventually rescued by art scholars at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Selected quotes from the Gnostic Gospels of Thomas, Philip, Mary Magdalene, and Judas are presented here for the first time in union with the Canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Any words other than those of Jesus are solely for the purpose of clarification of context.

The same verse may be found quoted in more than one chapter. For example, references to love will be found both in the chapter “Relationship to Others” and in the chapter “Love.” Quotes relative to enlightenment will be found in the chapter “Relationship to Self” and “Awakened Perception.” References to truth will be found in the chapter “Anxiety” and the chapter “The Spirit of Truth,” etc.

Another reason the quotes may seem repetitive is that Mark, Matthew, and Luke, often intersecting one another; are what is referred to as the “Synoptic Gospels,” the term coming from the Greek ‘syn,’ meaning “together,” and ‘optic,’ meaning “seen.” Scholars agree that the Gospel of Mark was written first, AD 65-80, followed by the Gospel of Matthew AD 80-100, then Gospel of Luke AD 80-130.

The Gospel of John, AD 90-120, is considered he most unique of the four and is not included as a Synoptic Gospel, although John echoes the style of Mark, and his Passion narrative resembles Luke’s.

It is well known that the gospels, now preserved in historical archives, are copies of copies of copies. In the first century of the Jesus movement the tradition was oral; Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John did not write the gospels whose names they bear. Although carbon-14 dated from the second to the fourth centuries, the Nag Hammadi Papyrus and the Gospels of Judas and Mary Magdalene, are also considered to be copies of copies of copies, originating before the time of Irenaeus.

What is remarkable is that these Coptic scripts, unearthed some 1,800 years after they were banned and buried, corroborate the Canonical Gospels; a testimony to the veracity of the teachings and the life of Jesus of Nazareth. 

In AD 180 there was a 90% illiteracy rate. In 2010 that number stands on its head with close to a 99% literacy in North & South America, Europe and the Middle East Basin. 

We can now read with an open mind.