![]() But the Christians who carefully stored the Nag Hammadi library had a deeper appreciation for the wisdom of other cultures. 391 Christians burned the enormous library at Alexandria, repository of the wisdom of the ancient world, because they believed that books written by non-Christians were a threat to their religion. Many other Nag Hammadi texts speak of the Goddess with reverence, including On the Origin of the World, The Hypostasis of the Archons, and The Thunder, Perfect Mind. For example, in The First Apocalypse of James, Jesus discusses the goddesses Sophia and Achamoth. Today orthodox Christians pride themselves on having rejected the “primitive” belief in a universal Goddess, yet text after text reveals that at least some of the early Christians highly venerated the Goddess, and Jesus himself is quoted referring to her. ![]() ![]() For example, we all assume that Jesus’ closest students were his famous 12 male disciples, yet texts such as The Gospel of Mary, The Gospel of Philip, and The Gospel of Thomas from Nag Hammadi affirm that Jesus was actually closer to his women devotees. The accounts of Jesus’ life preserved in this ancient library sent scholars reeling. Some of the texts they preserved for future generations are probably about as old as sections of the New Testament itself, and describe events in Jesus’ life that overlap with the biblical version, but they also contain other information about Jesus that had been lost for 1,600 years. Fifty-two tractates, or treatises, were recovered, offering us a priceless glimpse into the beliefs of at least one group of Jesus’ followers. Painstaking analysis of this, and numerous papyrus rolls uncovered nearby, revealed that a spiritual library had been sealed away in the desert sometime around A.D. They found, hidden in a jar, a manuscript written in Coptic, the ancient language of Egypt. In December 1945 two brothers, digging at the base of a cliff near the town of Nag Hammadi in Egypt, made one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. The reason for the public silence is that much of what has recently been learned about early Christianity is astonishingly different from the version many of us were taught in Sunday School. Theologians are understandably reluctant to share new information that may confuse or upset their congregations. You would think they would be rushing to share these exciting new findings with the public, yet in every magazine article and television special on early Christian history I’ve seen, theologians have avoided mentioning some of the most important discoveries-in spite of the fact that they’re common topics of conversation in many seminaries. It turns out that in the past 60 years, thanks to a number of stunning archaeological finds, scholars have discovered more about the historical Jesus than they had learned in the previous 1,000 years. Much of what has recently been learned about early Christianity is astonishingly different from the version many of us were taught in Sunday School. There were answers all right, though they weren’t always the ones I was expecting. Several years ago, I finally quit my job and enrolled in a leading seminary, hoping to find some answers. Was Jesus a yogi? Did he teach his disciples meditation, how to awaken their kundalini, or that the human soul and divine spirit are one? Having been raised a Christian, I’ve often wondered about the connection, if any, between early Christianity and yoga.
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