The Real Jesus vs. the Gnostic Jesus

One of the more laughable claims of Brown’s novel is that the early Christians “literally” stole Jesus and shrouded his “human message . . . in an impenetrable cloak of divinity, and using it to expand their own power”. The novel claims that the gnostic Jesus is far more human than the divinized Jesus of the four canonical Gospels contained in the Christian Bible.

That sounds fine—unless you actually read the so-called “gnostic gospels” and compare them to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The Jesus of the gnostic writings is rarely recognizable as a Jewish carpenter, teacher, and prophet dwelling in first century Palestine; instead, he is often described as a phantom-like creature who lectures at length about the “deficiency of aeons”, “the mother”, “the Arrogant One”, and “the archons”—all terms that only the gnostic elite would comprehend, hence their secretive, gnostic character.

In reality, the “gnostic gospels” aren’t gospels at all in the sense of the four canonical gospels, which are filled with narrative, concrete details, historical figures, political activity, and details about social and religious life. On this point, as on others, Brown has it completely wrong and backwards.