Episode Details

Last week we looked at David Bentley Hart’s translation of the New Testament, and compared some of the verses to verses out of the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi. And we see that when the ancient Greek, which was the language that the New Testament was written in originally, when it is correctly translated from the original text rather than simply anglicized out of old Latin editions that had been put out by the Catholic Church, we find that the similarities between this Gnostic Christian gospel and the gospel as presented in the New Testament of the Bible are very, very close. There is actually no distinction. Of course it is my opinion that the Tripartite and other Valentinian texts of the Gnostic Gospels were stripped out of the Bible on purpose by the Catholic Church and by the Emperor of Rome. Now, most of us are no longer Catholics and we’re certainly not Roman subjects, so I believe we have no allegiance in particular to the Council of Nicaea, which was set up around 300 AD and that was responsible for taking these books out of the New Testament. The only reason these books were taken out of the New Testament—it’s true they have a slightly different take on the origin story, on the pre-Genesis story, but as far as the New Testament goes, as far as the nature of Heaven, the nature of the Son, the nature of the Father, the nature of the Fullness of God—that all belongs back in the New Testament because it is not at all at odds with what Jesus taught.

So, we’re going to look again this week at one of the books of the New Testament, the 1st letter of John, which is attributed to John the Elder, and we’re going to look at it with a Gnostic mindset and see how it is that it is not conflicting with the New Testament. I want to share with you that it grieves me deeply that Christians would consider this Gnostic Gospel to be heresy because I believe it is the true Christian gospel, and that the reworking of it by the Catholic Church and the Emperor of Rome is what the heresy was.

So let’s take a look at this first letter of John. And right off the bat, we’re going to see that David Bentley Hart translates the Word “Logos” as Logos, who is a major character in this Gnostic Gospel that we learn about here on Gnostic Insights and at the Gnostic Reformation. This personifies the Logos. It’s not simply the Word of God, as if when God speaks, things happen, and of course they do. But the Logos of God was an actual character, one of the Aeons. And if you’re new to us here, if you go to the gnosticinsights.com website, there on the landing page, the homepage for Gnostic Insights, you’ll find 21 episodes that teach this Gnostic Gospel with great clarity so that you can understand it. I refer to the concepts in those first 21 episodes continually, because that is the basic teaching of the Gnostic Gospel.

So, from 1John 1:1-4: “What was from the origin… concerning the Logos of Life—And the Life was made manifest, and we have seen, and bear witness to, and announce to you the Life of the Aeon which was present with the Father and which was made manifest to us—Wha