PERIODICALS

RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY

"The Discovery of the Gnostic Gospels," Gnostic "The Threat of the Gnostics," "The Sup- pressed Gnostic Feminism," and "The D;- Christians feat of the Gnostics" bv Elaine Paeels in The New York Review of Books (0ct. 25, Nov. 8, Nov. 22, and Dec. 6, 1979), Sub- scription Service Department, P.O. Box 940, Farmingdale, N.Y. 11737.

In 1945, an Arab peasant discovered some 52 papyrus texts buried in the upper Egyptian desert. Among them were 4th-century Coptic trans- lations of early, previously unknown Christian gospels-the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Phillip-as well as poems, treatises, and secret writings attributed to Jesus and his disciples. Some had been composed before A.D. 120 (by contrast, the New Testa- ment gospels are known to have been set down c. 60-1 10). Roughly 100 years after Christ's death, a broad schism developed among Christians between the orthodox (literally, "straight thinking")

In his five-volume De- struction and Overthrow of Falsely So-called Knowledge, St. Zrenaeus, Bishop ofLyon, led the Christian Church's 2nd- century fight against the gnostic cult, branded "an abyss ofmadness and blasphemy."

The Wilsoit Quarterl~IWii~ter1980 3 1 PERIODICALS

RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY

and the gnostics ("those who know"). Whereas orthodox Christians be- lieved that " became accessible to humanity through the church," the gnostics accepted the possibility of "inner vision." "Abandon the search for God," wrote the gnostic teacher Monoimus. "Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point." Some gnostics argued that God the Creator of both good and evil served a greater Divine, the "Depth." Others celebrated an Almighty who was both feminine and masculine ("She became the Mother of everything, for she existed before them all, the mother-father"). Still others argued that Christ's Crucifixion and Resurrection should be taken symbolically, not as historical events. Orthodox leaders viewed gnostic teachings as falsehoods; they also perceived them as a threat to the development of a "unified hierarchy of church offices," writes Pagels, a professor of religion at Barnard. Thus, Irenaeus (c. 180), bishop of Lyon, railed against gnostics who chose their priests by lot. And the inclusion of women in gnostic cere- monies was a source of much consternation. ("These heretical women-how audacious they are!") Yet, Pagels notes, the Christian movement had initially shown a "remarkable openness toward wom- en." This was due partly to the religion's start among the lower classes, where everyone's labor was needed. Only "as increasing numbers of Christians were recruited from the middle classes," she observes, were women relegated to a silent, subordinate role. To the orthodox, the gnostic denial of Apostle Peter's version of the Resurrection was heretical. But particularly galling was the gnostics' figurative reading of Christ's Crucifixion. During a period of brutal Roman persecution, the orthodox derived comfort and pride in the notion that their suffering mirrored the Lord's. With Emperor Constantine's conversion to in the 4th century, Christian bishops, once persecuted, became the inquisitors. Possession of gnostic books was made a criminal offense; those works not destroyed remained hidden for nearly 2,000 years. As the new-found texts show, remarks Pagels, "contemporary Christianity, diverse and complex as we find it, actually may display more unanimity than the Christian churches of the first and second centuries."

"Censorship and the Defenders of the French Cartesian Faith in Mid-Seventeenth Century France" by Trevor McClaughlin, Censors in Journal of the History of Ideas (0ct.- Dec. 1979), Temple University, Philadel- phia, Pa. 19122.

Censorship, or the threat of it, was an overriding fact of life for French scholars in the second half of the 17th century. The "stifling orthodoxy" demanded by Catholic state and Church officials discouraged - sophic and scientific inquiry just as the Enlightenment dawned. Beginning in the 16th century, numerous French laws dealt with the