18 May 2010
Steve Meikle
People hanker for the Gnostic Gospels as they refuse to believe the canonical Gospels. Buit if they think the known gospels are absurd one would think that common sense would lead them to consider the Gnostic forgeries (forged in the 3rd century and therabouts) to be screamingly insane.
After all the Gnostics believed that matter was intrinsically evil, that therefore having a physical body was a curse, that sex was evil and that Knowledge-with -a -Capital-K was the solution. Some claimed that Jesus was a ghost who only seemed to die as he had no body. Because their bodies were so vile some thought orgies were fine, others burned themselves alive to escape the curse of matter
It seems that G K Chesterton was correct. When the people cease to believe in Christianity they believe not nothing but will fall for anything, in this instance the nuttier the better