The Gospel of Philip is a Valentinian gnostic text dating from sometime during the 3rd century. The translator of this work believed it was “a collection of excerpts mainly from a Christian Gnostic sacramental catechesis.”1 If anyone is interested, he can visit a new bookstore, a used bookstore or the local library and see many books on the co-called “secret” or “lost” gospels of the Christian church (for example, see the image to the left!).
There are people who believe there was no original “rule of faith” or core content to the Christian message. Instead, the hypothesis goes, there were several competing versions of “Christianity,” and what we now know as “orthodoxy” is simply the party which won out over the rest. The so-called “gnostic Christians,” these scholars claim, were originally just as “orthodox” as any other group.
The editor of the Nag Hammadi Library in English waxed eloquent about these gnostic texts and remarked that they reveal “an understanding of existence, an answer to the human dilemma, an attitude toward society, that is worthy of being taken quite seriously by anyone able and willing to grapple with such ultimate issues.”2