Due to its inherently mysterious characteristics, hermeneutics of suspicion, and thousands of years of being THE heres in the West, Gnosticism has attracted conspiracy theories to it since the very beginning. And thanks to the internet, a resurgence of Gnosticism, and the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories there’s quite a few mentions of the Gnostics in less savory corners of the web.

Last time I covered three conspiracy theories about Gnosticism and now Blog Gnosis is back with three more that are complete and utter bullcrap (unless I’m in the Illuminati and this what my masters WANT you to think).

The Gnostic Scriptures Prove There Was No Historical Jesus

Talk Gnosis did both pro and anti shows on the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth but that’s not exactly what I’m discussing here. There’s a whole family of conspriacy theories saying Jesus was made up by the Romans or the Illuminati or the Roman Catholic Jesuit Cabal or whatever sinister group secretly rules the world, and that this mythic figure was invented to control people through the church.

In some iterations of this theory the Gnostics knew the truth that there was never a historical Jesus and you can find it in their scriptures. But grab any text from the Nag Hammadi and no matter how closely you read or attempt to twist the words such an idea isn’t there. The closest you can find, and this is a huge stretch, is some Gnostic groups (remember Gnosticism is basically a family of interrelated traditions with a fair amount of variety)  were Docetists and didn’t think Jesus had a human body, instead he’s kind of a divine hologram. But this is a very different idea from saying, “there was no historical Jesus.”

The Gnostics Eat Babies

This one’s true.

Naaaa, JK! But the fascinating thing about this nutso idea is that you can find it 2000 years ago and you can find it now! Heresy hunters and opponents of the Gnostics wrote in the 2nd and 3rd Centuries about dark rituals where Gnostics would consume fetuses and newborn babes. Jump ahead to now and you can find paranoid fantasies about the Gnostic cabals who rule the world consuming children to get the sweet life prolonging andenchrome from their succulent brains.

Now there isn’t a direct line between these two points in history except that killing and eating kids is a slur made against marginalized groups and/or against whatever group is associated with “elites.” Though it was even an accusation lobbed against the early Christians by the pagan Romans it’s most associated with antisemitism and the blood libel.

The Gnostic Scriptures Prove Jesus Married Mary Magdalene

Jesus and Mary Magdalene being married is not found in a single Gnostic text or in any reports from the heresiologists about their beliefs. But in the middle of the 20th Century a French con artist named Pierre Plantard planted documents and spread the idea that Jesus had married Mary, they had a child who came to France and started a line of early French kings, and that Pierre was their direct descendant and therefore was both the rightful ruler of France and Christ’s heir on Earth.

His con got picked up by a myriad of “alternative historians,” kooks, grifters, and thriller writers, and it’s now been widely disseminated, most famously in the book and movie The Da Vinci Code, and most iterations of the conspiracy theory very directly point to the Gnostic texts (but rarely quoting them) and saying that the proof is in them… it’s not.

The Gnostic scriptures where Mary appears definitely indicate she was a highly regarded teacher of wisdom and had a special relationship with Jesus that the other apostles did not. But nowhere does it say they were married, let alone had a child in France.

Head to the comments section to keep the conversation going! Let me know if I’m doing a good job of being a shill for THEM, if there’s interesting Gnostic conspiracy theories I left out, or anything else you want to jaw about. And there will be a future installation with the Gnostic conspiracy theories I have some sympathy for…