rationalskepticism.org

Leucius Charinus wrote:
None of these Westar’s Christianity Seminar illuminati question the chronology of the so-called "Gnostic texts". They all are completely aware that the Nag Hammadi Library was assembled in Coptic in the mid 4th century. They then ignore the possibility that these texts may be part of the Greek literati reaction to the reception of the Christian State and instead prefer to see Greek originals of these texts as being authored in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. These elite mainstream scholars are taking their chronology of authorship directly from the literary testimony of the "Church Fathers".

• The wealth of documents that Nag Hammadi provides to both scholarship and the public has been blocked, or caricatured by the imposition of the 'gnostic' label on them. These documents offer important information to scholarship about the Jesus/Christ(ian) movements in the second and third century.

• "... the category “Gnosticism”— whether it names an ancient religion equivalent to “Judaism” or “Christianity” or it functions as a typological category for the grouping of various teachers, writings, and movements— no longer works."

• The category of 'gnosticism' to be dismantled.
• The relegation of 'gnosticism' to the scholarly sidelines

• Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and company should be liberated from “proto-orthodoxy” and allowed to “be their own idiosyncratic selves.”

• The post-Constantinian project of creating a “catholic” Church, characterized by uniform theologies, structures, and practices, co-opted selected earlier Christian persons and groups to legitimate that project and should not determine our understanding of those persons and groups.