Zain's Guide to Overthinking Everything

Notes on the Basics of Gnosticism            The Gnostics were an early sect of Christianity who had various beliefs, scriptures, and branches. Gnosticism derived its name from the Greek word “gnosis” which means knowledge. However, for them it signified an intimate, experiential knowledge of the divine and esoteric wisdom that are necessary for liberation. The Gnostics generally claimed that this world was created by a false God known as the Demiurge who is the god of the Hebrew Bible and is an evil vengeful god. While the Demiurge claims to be the highest God, in reality it is a creation of an emanation or Aeon, Sophia, of the absolutely transcendent real God, the Monad or the Neoplatonic idea of the One. Human beings are essentially divine spirits trapped within physical bodies and through proper gnosis or knowledge, one can achieve spiritual enlightenment and salvation and this gnosis was taught by Jesus Christ. In their cosmology, Aeon...

Solving the Synoptic Problem: Investigating Gospel Harmony Theories            The three Gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke are referred to as the synoptic Gospels because they share many of the same stories in a similar sequence and even sometimes identical wording. They stand in contrast to John, whose content is largely distinct who often different in these details. For simplicity’s sake, despite the Gospel authors being unknown, they will be referred to by their traditional names. As shown in the diagram above, the three synoptic Gospels share similar information about the life of Jesus. Statistically. over three-quarters of Mark’s content is found in both Matthew and Luke, and 97% of Mark is found in at least one of the other two synoptic gospels. Furthermore, 23% of Matthew and 23% of Luke have material in common that is not found in Mark. The question of how these 3 Gospels share the same information so closely while being written at di...

  Between Heaven and Earth: The Quest for the Historical Jesus                What can we know about the “historical Jesus”? Firstly, it must be explained what is meant by the term. The historical Jesus refers to the figure of Jesus of Nazareth as he existed in history, separate from the religious beliefs and doctrines that have developed around him. It is an attempt by scholars to reconstruct the life, teachings, and actions of the actual person who lived in the 1st century C.E. in ancient Palestine. I will assume that you have some background knowledge of what the four canonical Gospels are: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and why they will be useful in our quest. However, we need to truly examine these Gospels to determine how useful they are in seeing who Jesus truly was. One must question their historicity, authorship, dating, and examine what they say. It might be surprising to read that the oldest Gospel in the...