The Gospel of Truth is an early Christian Gnostic writing that reflects the early teachings of Valentinus.
How Was the Gospel of Truth Discovered?
Around AD 1945, farmers in Upper Egypt near modern Nag Hammadi uncovered a jar while digging near the ancient village of Shenesit-Chenoboskion. Inside were 13 books (9 of which were largely complete) and 15 fragments written in Coptic. This discovery was the library of an ancient Gnostic sect (a religious movement that taught salvation through secret knowledge). It contained all or parts of 51 different Gnostic writings. Only two of these had been available to scholars for study before. This collection is now called the Nag Hammadi or Chenoboskion texts. It was the first discovery of original Gnostic literature in the modern period. All are Coptic translations of earlier Greek originals.
Codex I is titled the Jung Codex because it is now owned by the Jung Institute in Vienna. It is unique among the 13 works because it is written in Sub-Achimimic Coptic. The rest of the works are written in the more usual Sahidic Coptic. This codex contains five works, two of which are the enormously controversial Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Truth.
The Gospel of Truth has no heading. Instead, the title comes from the first line of the text. It mentions no author nor addressee. In fact, it is not a “gospel” in the usual sense of a story about Jesus. It is a theological reflection that presents early Valentinian Gnosticism.
Who Was Valentinues and What Did He Teach?
Most scholars think the author was Valentinus, a Christian teacher who lived during the second century AD. They believe this because
the book shows early forms of Valentinian ideas before they became complex and mythical, and
it uses language that is almost in line with traditional Christian belief.
However, no final proof of this has been discovered as yet. If Valentinus himself did not write this document, then it had to be someone in the immediate circle of his initial disciples.
Valentinus was born in Egypt around AD 100 to 110. He received a thorough education at Alexandria and became a Christian. He taught first in Egypt before moving to Rome around AD 136, where he stayed until 154 or 155. The early church father, Tertullian, in his work against heresy, seems to imply that Valentinus was twice expelled from the Roman church. He states that he was a brilliant and eloquent man who had hopes of becoming a bishop in Rome at one time.
Valentinus attracted many gifted followers who later expanded his teachings almost beyond recognition. By the time he left Rome sometime after 154 or 155, he had definitely broken away from orthodoxy. He was now teaching a form of Gnostic heresy. The Gospel of Truth is the product of what he taught. A later surviving source claims Valentinus later taught in Cyprus. There is no further mention of what he did or of what happened to him afterwards.
What Is the Message and Significance of the Gospel of Truth?
The early church father Irenaeus wrote that the Gospel of Truth is not a gospel because it is unlike the four Gospels (Against Heresies 3.2.9). Irenaeus was certainly correct, since the work is not a narrative like the biblical Gospels. The Gospel of Truth does not contain any story about Jesus, any place name of any type, any date, or any mention of any person other than Jesus, who is only mentioned five times.
More than 60 times, this brief work speaks about knowledge (gnosis) and the need to have knowledge. This knowledge is born from within as the soul returns to itself, finding there what Deity deposited in it. It may even find there the residue of Deity still entrapped within the soul. Through this knowledge, a person discovers who they are, where they came from, and where they are going.
In this "gospel," Christ’s role is to present the “Book of the Living” or the “Living Book.” “Book” is not understood as the Gospel proclamation of the life and teachings of Jesus. It is rather the primordial gospel or truth that existed before creation. It was error and ignorance that caused rebellion against the Savior and his crucifixion on the tree.
Although it is not explicitly stated, the Gnostic understanding implies that matter emerged or was created because of divine error and ignorance. Salvation for living beings entrapped in this matter comes with returning to flawless Deity. The path of this return is Gnosis (knowledge). The Pleroma, the fullness of the Deity, went out into the depths of matter in search of the elect among beings by way of Jesus and the cross.
While clearly Gnostic, the Gospel of Truth is closer to traditional Christian teaching than most Gnostic Chenoboskion writings. It speaks of only one Son of God, does not divide Jesus into a human and divine figure, and does not mention Sophia, the female spirit often central to other Gnostic myths. It is for these reasons, among others, that the Gospel of Truth is placed very close to Valentinus’s break with orthodoxy.
The Gospel of Truth has assumed some degree of importance in New Testament studies beyond that warranted by its heretical content, because it everywhere assumes our full New Testament canon. By some scholars’ counts, there are no less than 83 places where the Gospel of Truth echoes New Testament canonical books, even though it does not cite a single saying of Jesus directly. Most particularly, it relies heavily on the book of Revelation and on the Letter to the Hebrews.
See also Apocrypha.