I found very interesting the author's descriptions of how women were excluded from the Church and how scriptures were modified to suit the political atmosphere of the day... some excerpts:
THE WISDOM DIALOGUE INSPIRED BY THE BOOK OF JOB reached its culmination in the teachings of Jesus-yet those same teachings never found their way into orthodox Christianity. The Church aggressively resisted the Divine Mother and succeeded in erasing every trace of her from its official doctrines.
In Christianity's earliest days, of course, things were very different. The first Christian churches were loosely organized communities in which a spirit of gender equality often prevailed. We know that women participated in discussions, taught alongside men, and sometimes even led services. Unfortunately, the early policy of openness was the first casualty of institutional Christianity. During the second century, a male hierarchy of deacons, priests, and bishops emerged. Thereafter, men dominated decision making and equality went out the window. By 200 C.E. women had been relegated to subservience. Nor did their low status improve over the many centuries.
Today, one of the justifications given for this continuing policy is the pseudo-Pauline gospel of I Timothy 2:11-12, which most scholars agree was not the work of Paul: "Let a women learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no women to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent."
The above line exaggerates Paul's alleged bias against women. In Galatians 3:28 Paul states a more congenial view, one reminiscent of Jesus himself: " . . . in Christ. . . there is neither male nor female." Unfortunately, because Paul's views on women are also more ambiguously stated elsewhere, orthodox bishops seized on the most conservative interpretation. They also argued that because the first apostles were male, the priesthood should be as well. As a result, women were banned from leading services; Mary Magdalene's prominent role was obscured, along with the prophetic mission of the sister and the saintly daughters of the apostle Philip (Acts 21:9; Acts of Philip 108, 109, 115, 126, 142, 148). And let us not forget Mariamne, the inspired teacher mentioned in the Naassene Sermon (Refutation 5.7.1), who, no doubt, was dismissed as a heretic. Also suppressed was the Book of Jasher, with its glowing description of the prophetess Miriam, sister of Moses, who, curiously, also turns up in the Sermon (Refutation 5.8.2).
Even while the Church was in full retreat regarding the role of women, some Gnostic sects preserved the original policy of gender equality. Although we have no information on this regarding the Naassenes, we know that the Valentinians, another prominent Gnostic community, actively encouraged women to participate in discussions and decision making. Women helped with teaching, baptisms, curing, and even exorcisms, functions that the institutional Church reserved for priests and bishops.
But the Church's subordination of women was only the most visible sign and symptom of a deeper malady: the obfuscation of the vital role of the Holy Spirit. One of the earliest lists of orthodox scriptures appeared around the time of Irenaeus (180 C.E.). It is known today as the Muratorian Canon, named after Ludovico Antonio Muratori, the Italian archaeologist who discovered the Latin fragment in 1740. Its date is disputed, but most scholars believe the list was from an earlier rather than a later period. Conspicuously absent. from it is any mention of the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospel of Thomas, both of which, as we have seen, associate the Spirit with the Divine Mother.
The Church's official erasure of the Mother had the effect of reducing the Wisdom literature to mere scribblings from the past. The last books of the Old Testament became a quaint collection of gargoyles with no apparent connection with or relevancy to the Gospels. The Church expunged every image of the feminine from its official teachings, the sole exception being the Blessed Mary, mother of Jesus. Given the official misogyny, the question as to why Mary was retained is an interesting one. The probable answer is that there was simply no way to be rid of her. In the year 427 C.E., after the defeat of paganism, Cyril, archbishop of Alexandria, delivered a famous speech in Ephesus, Greece, in which he proclaimed Mary the" Mother of God." Thereafter, statues of Mary were installed in the pagan temples in place of Artemis, Demeter, and Aphrodite. Some of the temples were even converted into Christian basilicas. No surprise that the Virgin Mary immediately acquired a quasi-divine status, a curious compensatory phenomenon that the Church fathers tolerated over the centuries even while frowning upon it.
Although the Church officially retained the Holy Spirit as an equal member of the Godhead, the Paraclete was either rendered neuter or transformed into a masculine energy imbued with the seminal virility of a pagan fertility god. We are informed in the infancy Gospels of Luke and Matthew-doubtless both late additions-that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, the mother of God, accounting for the virginal conception of Jesus-a contrivance that blurred and even obliterated the enormous difference between sexual insemination and the descent of grace. Another effect was to trivialize the Spirit to the point of meaninglessness. No wonder the term Holy Spirit has become a cliche! Yet we need to remember that this stands in sharp contrast with its potency in the first century C.E., when the expression generated incredible excitement.
THE GOSPEL OF HERMAS
We shall now explore how orthodox Christianity promulgated the removal of the Mother from Church teaching in the day-to-day liturgy. Although the Gospel of Hermas is no longer used and, in fact, is all but, forgotten, it was one of the most important Christian scriptures in the second and possibly third centuries. Today it continues to have a recognized place among the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. The Gospel of Hermas purports to be an inspired revelation. It probably served as a teaching device and may even have been read aloud during services.
It is of great interest that it begins with a river crossing-an obvious allusion to the events at the Jordan from the Old Testament that we have already discussed: involving Joshua, Elijah, and Elisha. No doubt the reference to the Jordan served to establish the gospel's scriptural pedigree. While dreaming, a young man is shown a number of visions. In these he encounters an old woman who counsels holiness and teaches him many wondrous things and who, we are explicitly informed, is responsible for the visions. In one the young man observes a crew of workmen constructing a great stone tower over a foundation of water - a remarkable image. When the man inquires about it, the old crone explains that he is witnessing the construction of God's Church. Here, the tower is the Church and the workmen, it seems, are angels. The foundation of water is an extremely important mythological concept that we shall explore in more detail in chapter 13. The young man also learns that the crone is a manifestation of the Church-which, notice, means that the Church itself is responsible for the visions. Although one passage dutifully informs us that the Spirit comes from above, in a key section the Holy Spirit speaks through the Church: The gospel describes the Church in language that is reminiscent of the descriptions of the Divine Mother in Proverbs 8:22-24,27, and 29-31 and in Ecclesiasticus 24:3-30 (see chapter 8 ) : " . . . she [the Church] was created before all things. . . and for her sake the world was formed."
In this way the Gospel of Hermas was used to prepare Christians for an expansion of Church authority into an area where it had no business going: The goal, it seems, was not simply to expunge the Divine Mother from Christian teaching but in fact to supplant her - that is, to establish the Church in the seat of the Divine Mother herself! Evidence for this can also be found in the writings of patriarchs like Tertullian and Cyprian, both of whom regarded the Church (rather than the human body) as the temple of the Spirit. In a denunciation of schismatics Cyprian wrote, "He cannot have God for this Father who has not the Church for his Mother." A similar idea occurs in the following passage from II Clement 14:2 (whose author is unrelated to Clement of Alexandria), an apocryphal but orthodox gospel dating to around 100 C.E.: "For the scripture says 'God created man male and female.' (Gen 1:27) The male is Christ; the female is the Church. Moreover, the books and Apostles declare that the Church not only exists now, but has been in existence from the beginning." Notably, the author here never states precisely which "books and Apostles declare that the Church. . . has been in existence from the beginning" - and not without reason, for there are no such sources in canonical scripture. The line referring to the Church existing "from the beginning" again echoes the references to the Divine Mother in Proverb 8 and Ecclesiasticus 24 (see above and chapter 8 ) . All of this surely accounts for the familiar expression Holy Mother Church.
The displacement of Sophia by the Church in the Gospel of Hermas is a shocking example of male chauvinism gone amok. There is humorless irony in the fact that the very same Church fathers who, as we have seen, installed an artificial chasm between God and humankind by repudiating immanence also sought to collapse a very real and crucial distinction between a human institution (the Church) and the prerogatives of God (the Divine Mother) - another clear example of the abuse of spiritual authority. In light of the Gospel of Hermas, the subsequent dark chapters in Church history become more understandable. A foundation of water, after all, is spiritual bedrock compared to the shaky footing of a human institution that presumes responsibility for the bestowal of visions, revelations, wisdom, and even divine grace. It could even be argued that in attempting to supplant the role of the Divine Mother, the fathers of the Church came perilously close to the worst kind of blasphemy, for, as we have observed, the bestowal of grace - the Holy Spirit - plainly falls within the purview of the Divine Mother. It most definitely lies outside the jurisdiction of a human institution. The three synoptic accounts are unanimous and unequivocal on this: Every sin is to be forgiven except one - blasphemy against the Spirit (Matthew 12:31, Mark 3:28, and Luke 12:10). Such a judgment, frightening in its implications, may explain why it so often seems that our Christian civilization has gone to the devil.
TAMPERING WITH SCRIPTURE?...
...Today, Mark is indisputably the principal source document for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, although a second sayings source, now lost and known as "Q," has also been identified.
It is easy to show that all three of the synoptic accounts of the New Testament are parallel to each other in structure. For example, Peter's Confession (or his Profession of Faith) also occurs in Mark 8. But the line "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church" is conspicuously absent. Nor can it be found in Luke 9. Because the famous line is absent from the original source document - Mark - the obvious question arises: How did it find its way into Matthew? The Roman Catholic Church has no answer to this question. The evidence we have reviewed strongly suggests that the line in Matthew equating Peter with the foundational rock of the Church was a fabrication, the result of tampering, perhaps, by someone with a political agenda.
The oldest extant copy of the Gospel of Matthew dates to no earlier than 200 C.E.22 If some lucky archaeological find in the future should produce an older draft - say, a copy of Matthew dating to the last years of the first century - we will probably discover that the line "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church" is nowhere in evidence. The omission will be as telling as a cloven hoof print in the mud. The main scriptural foundation for the authority of the institutional Church of Rome will have been demolished, once and for all, clearing the way for the rediscovery of the Wisdom teachings of Jesus by many more Christians, leading to a spiritual renaissance in the West. Toward this end, we shall now look more closely at the primary source document for this book, the Naassene Sermon.
"Gnostic Secrets of the Naassenses" by Mark H. Gaffney pgs. 110-122
