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Quotes
On the Problem of Elite Knowledge
Ehrman is quite clear that the Christian Gnostics of the first centuries after the death of Jesus of Nazareth thought they belonged to an elect and their knowledge elite.
Christianity in nearly all its forms has always had its spiritual elite, the insiders who have a special insight into the true meaning of the faith, a cut above the rest of us in their nuanced understanding of God, the world, and our place in it. The Gnostics virtually fetishized this notion of an elite, a group of people in the know, who recognized the true nature of the church’s profession of faith, of its Scriptures, of its sacraments. Those outside the inner circle often felt threatened by it, so much so that the ones claiming to be in the know because the object of scorn and derision.
And the author goes on to say all Christian groups thought of themselves as the true faith and having the true knowledge, as we have come to expect.