In another passage, the Gospel of Truth starts out with something that sounds very much like the parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15:1–7: “He is the shepherd who left behind the ninety-nine sheep which had not strayed and went in search of that one which was lost.
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However, the passage goes on to put a Gnostic spin on it by saying, “He saved the life of that sheep, bringing it up from the pit in order that you may understand fully what that Sabbath is, you who possess full understanding.” For instance, the Gospel of Truth contains this description: “He labored even on the Sabbath for the sheep which he found fallen into the pit,” which seems to be a reference to Jesus’ healing of the man with a withered hand in Matthew 12:9–14.
The Gospel of Truth does not contain any firsthand accounts of Jesus’ life such as we find in the New Testament gospels, although it does use some similar language. The first line of the Gospel of Truth highlights this aspect of salvation: “The gospel of truth is joy to those who have received from the Father of truth the gift of knowing him by the power of the Logos” (tr. According to Gnosticism, Christ came to save us from ignorance more than from the penalty of sin. The Gnostics believed that this knowledge was not revealed in the canonical gospels or in the rest of the canonical writings of the New Testament but is revealed in the Gnostic writings, including the Gospel of Truth.
The term Gnostic comes from the Greek word gnosis, which simply means “knowledge.” (For instance, an agnostic is someone who claims to have no knowledge of God’s existence.) The Gnostics were a heretical branch of Christianity that taught that special knowledge was imparted to their leaders and that this special, secret, hidden knowledge was the true key to salvation. Along with the Gospel of Truth, the Nag Hamadi library (as it has come to be called) also contains the more well-known Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip. Nag Hamadi is a location in Egypt where thirteen ancient books were found in 1945, and translations of these books were finally completed in the 1970s. The Gospel of Truth is one of the Gnostic writings discovered at Nag Hamadi.