Hymns & Heretics Sample Chapter

With such views the Gnostics definitely had a problem with the Scriptures, particularly the New Testament revelation of Jesus Christ, which conflicted severely with their view of Jesus. The Old Testament they could just dismiss as a record of the evil Demiurge, although it too was filled with accurate information about the Christ, the Messiah, so that when his disciples did not understand his work he taught them about himself, saying,

“O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” (Luke 24:25-27).

They dealt with the threat that the Scriptures posed to their religious philosophy in a number of ways. The first of which was to do what the Apostle Peter warned the faithful against when he said, speaking of the Scriptures, “…in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.” (2 Peter 3:16). That is they radically reinterpreted many of Jesus’ sayings and actions, wresting them out of context and infusing new meanings into them.

Secondly, they corrupted the texts of the New testament Scriptures to reflect their own beliefs. In textual criticism there are two main classes of manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. The main stream of manuscripts are termed the Byzantine and comprise over 90 per cent of extant manuscripts. The other stream is the Alexandrian. Alexandria is the city in Egypt, famous for its devotion to Hellenistic philosophy, after all it was founded by Greeks in honor of a Greek, Alexander the Great. And Egypt of course was the place where the Gnostic sect rose to its greatest prominence. And it was there that the Gnostics carried out their program of radical emendation of the text of the New Testament to undermine its textual witness against some of their heretical teachings.

“Among the most evil opponents of the Gospel of Jesus Christ have been the Gnostics. In the early centuries after the death of Christ the life and death struggle to maintain the purity of the Scriptures was at its fiercest. It was open knowledge that manuscripts were being altered, and that in Egypt the Gnostics had become such a dominant force that the manuscripts executed in Egypt were to be suspected.”[2]

Nonetheless, in spite of their numerical inferiority, the Alexandrian texts have had a significant influence on the Scriptures. They were rejected by the early Christian Church which was committed to the unadulterated Scriptures represented by the Byzantine text. The Roman Catholic Church accepted a modified Alexandrian text as the basis for the Latin Vulgate and the Douay Version. The Reformers uniformly rejected the Alexandrian text (and there is historical proof that they were familiar with it and understood the issues) and used the Byzantine text (then called the Textus Receptus, Latin for the “received text”) for all their translations. However, sadly over the past century, the evil seed sowed by the Gnostics almost two millennia ago has born a lot of fruit. Most of the new versions, starting with Westcott and Hort’s revisions that were the basis for the Revised Version, are based on the corrupt Alexandrian text. Specifically, they are mainly based on two manuscripts, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. These two manuscripts are regarded as the best and the most accurate because of their alleged antiquity, older being considered more accurate. The former was discovered late in the last century in the Pope’s library in the Vatican and the latter in some trash at a Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai. These manuscripts show evidence of a high degree of tampering, having literally thousands of erasures and write-overs, often multiple emendations superimposed on themselves. A number of scholars[3] have studied the effects of these emendations of the text and have seen a significant and pervasive pattern of changes that weaken and undermine the testimony of the Scriptures with regard to the deity, virgin birth, and divine attributes of Jesus Christ. These manuscripts certainly represent a Gnostisized Bible.

In a Chapter entitled, “Nine Of The New Versions Have Adopted Gnostic Corruptions” Jay P. Green, Sr. complains…

“Upon studying certain portions of the Scriptures, the author was appalled, thoroughly shocked, when it was found that the NASB and NIV, supposedly ‘conservative’ translations, had eliminated such a noted testimony to the Deity of Christ as God manifest in the flesh. Other new versions were searched to see if they did this also. The following pages reveal the more extensive studies that were made to discover how the new versions treat the deity of Christ.

Such notable Gnostic corruptions as that in Matthew 19:16‑19, where the Scriptures were altered to make Christ deny His own goodness, have been resurrected and inserted into nine of the new versions. And this in spite of the fact that the many words the new versions have cast out of Matthew appear intact in Mark 10:17, 18 and Luke 18:18, 19. This, of course, puts a direct contradiction within the new versions. Further study turned up Ebionite, Manachean, and other heretical beliefs being reinserted into new versions. Among other things, the virgin birth, the sinlessness, the omnipresence, and other essential doctrines testifying to Christ as God have been changed or denied in the new versions.[4]

Thirdly, they deleted some books of the New Testament from the canon of Scripture. Specifically the Gospel of John was the object of their hatred. This was probably because, being the last gospel to be written many commentators feel that it particularly directs itself against the Gnostic errors that were already surfacing in the church during the first century. Certainly its consistent testimony to both the divinity of Jesus Christ and that he was God manifest in the flesh was a blow to Gnostic theology.

Fourthly, they wrote their own sacred “scriptures” which they added to their version of the New Testament canon. These were quite extensive and included, among others, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Mary, the Acts of John, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Second Apocalypse of James.

And finally, they specifically attacked the Psalms. The Psalms constituted a special problem for the Gnostics. The Scriptures in general were read and preached to the people. This gave Gnostic teachers a great deal of control over them. They could select the portions to be read and taught and could interpret and apply them according to their own heretical viewpoints. The Psalms however were different. The faithful sang then without the benefit of being theologically filtered by the Gnostic clergy and they memorized them and sang them throughout the week. And the Psalms were filled with Christ. The Psalms overflowed with an accurate and orthodox testimony about the person and work of Jesus Christ. Faithful Psalm singers would not easily accept the Gnostic Jesus and his weird teachings.

The Psalms are a treasure trove of Biblical theology. The New Testament authors quoted the Psalms far more than any other book of the Old Testament. Paul when he wanted to teach the Hebrew Christians about the person and work of Jesus Christ quoted predominantly and extensively from the Psalms. So did Peter in his first great public sermon at Pentecost when he proclaimed the risen Christ to Israel. Christ himself quoted frequently from the Psalter and in his final instructions to his disciples before his ascension he reminded them saying,

“And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures” (Luke 24:44-45).

The response of the Gnostics to this dilemma was to seek to supplant the Psalter. They did this by writing their own hymns and using them in their religious services. These hymns were filled with the teachings and doctrines of Gnosticism and were inculcated into the faithful to indoctrinate them in the teachings and tenets of Gnosticism. In short they could not afford to allow the power of music, especially the power of musical praise, and the power of the word of God in the Psalms to subvert their deluded followers from persevering in the mystical doctrines of the Gnostic faith. Instead they harnessed the power of music and song to instruct and confirm their proselytes in the teachings of the cult. And they were very successful. They spread rapidly through the Mediterranean world of the early Christian church and constituted a serious threat to orthodox Christianity. In Egypt, where Hellenistic philosophy was deeply entrenched, especially in the Jewish community, they came to dominate the professed followers of Christ.

The primal element of all things, the first principle of being and life, is the Spirit.

The secret of the holy way—

“This is a genuine Gnostic hymn of the kind which was most decidedly rejected by the Christians of that period, both in the Church at large and in the Montanist communities: in it the Spirit is the primal element; the son of the Spirit pours forth chaos; the soul is the third element, hunted in the labyrinth, between light and chaotic misery; it cannot find the ascent until Jesus descends to it, unveiling the knowledge (gnosis) of the mystery, after speaking with the Father and striding through the aeons.”[6]

All the above is typical of Gnostic thinking. They postulated a multi-level world in terms of their dualism. The ultimate level was the “pleroma”, the “fulness,” a place of pure spirit inhabited by the true god and the aeons, spiritual beings he created to dispel his own loneliness. The lowest level was the cosmos that was composed of matter. Some Gnostics had levels in between involving progressive stages of deliverance from matter, the essence of salvation in their view. These levels were populated by varying grades of aeons progressively less spiritual corresponding to their distance from the pleroma. The hymn depicts the plight of poor mortals trapped in world of matter seeking deliverance. Christ, often regarded himself as a super aeon, asks permission of the father (after all he is only a creature) to go and rescue them by bringing them the knowledge needful to thread the maze to the pleroma. He makes his way through all the aeons, the maze of all the levels, to the lowest level, the cosmos, to bring the saving gnosis to the few spiritual beings trapped there who desire salvation from the world of death, darkness, and matter.

The Gnostics were not only the first in using uninspired hymns in the public and private worship of God, they were so prolific in this that they also developed the first hymnbooks. Although its origins are somewhat obscure there was a collection of hymns composed and compiled in the second century entitled, “The Odes of Solomon”. From their contents scholars have attributed them to the Gnostics. They were well received not only by the Gnostics, but by other heretical pseudo-Christian cults and were still being used well into the sixth century.[7] Another Gnostic, the Syrian Bardaisan (Bardesanes) and his son Harmonius, compiled a collection of 150 heretical hymns[8] in Syriac late in the second century, setting them to catchy tunes to gain wide acceptance.[9] The number being exactly 150 it represented an obvious attempt to manufacture a pseudo-Psalter that reflected the anti-Christian mysteries of their cult.

[1] This is not to say that Gnosticism is not still around today. The author plugged “Gnosticism” into a major search engine recently and was astounded at the results. There were 36 sites identified as dealing with the subject. The author could not find one site that was critical of Gnosticism or had the courage to call it heretical. Many were sites openly advocating it and rather accurately identifying, defending, and promoting Gnostic teachings. Other sites were involved in damage control presenting “scholarly” arguments why Gnosticism should be accepted as a legitimate interpretation of the Scriptures, as just another “Christian” denomination.

[2] Jay P. Green, Sr., The Gnostics, The New Versions, and The Deity of Christ, Sovereign Grace Publishers, 1994, pp. v-vi.

[3] In additional to the extensive comparisons in the above noted The Gnostics, The New Versions, and The Deity of Christ, see also David Otis Fuller, Which Bible?, Grand Rapids International Publications, Grand Rapids, MI 49501, 1972, and Edward F. Hills, The King James Version Defended, The Christian Research Press, 1973, and John W. Burgon, The Last Twelve Verses of Mark, Associated Publishers and Authors, Grand Rapids, MI.

[4] Jay P. Green, Sr., The Gnostics, The New Versions, and The Deity of Christ, Sovereign Grace Publishers, 1994, p. vii.

[5] Eberhard Arnold, The Early Christians, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI, 1979, p. 241.

[6] Ibid, p. 394.

[7] Ibid, p. 395.

[8] Kenneth Scott LaTourette, A History of Christianity, Harper & Row, 1953, p. 207.

[9] John McNaughter, The Psalms in Worship, Still Waters Revival Books, Edmonton, Canada, 1992, pp. 167,174.

	They were dualistic, believing that matter was intrinsically evil or bad and only spirit was good. In this they followed Persian, Hindu, and Buddhist philosophy.
	This rejection of the physical world led them in two opposing directions. It could and did lead to both asceticism and withdrawal from the world, and to wild, licentious, profligate lifestyles, since what a man did in the flesh didn’t matter anyway as only the spirit was important. In the latter it resembled the cult of the Nicolaitanes condemned by Christ in the letters to the seven churches of Asia.
	The god of the Old Testament was an evil god because he created matter and tried to rule mankind through law.
	Christ was the representative of a higher, better god.
	Christ did not have a true physical body but only the illusion of one, because matter was evil. Some did believe that he had a real body resulting from normal generation from Mary and Joseph, but he was redeemed from this body when at his baptism he was filled with wisdom (Sophia) in the form of a dove.
	Salvation is by secret knowledge (gnosis in Greek, hence their name is derived) passed on by an oral tradition not contained in the written Scriptures. This knowledge is essential to one’s salvation and those who are initiated into it are the only true Christians.
	Christ came to save men by bringing this secret knowledge.