This is an interesting view from an interview with John Lash of Metahistory. In it, he says that the Gnostic Christ and the New Testament Christ are not the same thing at all.

In fact, the name Christ never occurs in the Nag Hammadi Codices, nor does the name Jesus. Rather, there is a recurring code: Coptic XC or XRC (translated CHS or CHRS) and IC or HC (translated IS). For instance, in The Tripartite Tractate (117.10) you find HC in Coptic, and the translators modify this to H(COY)C, “Esous,” then translated into the name Jesus. You can see how far scholars must go to manipulate the codes and make them fit a preconception. Most Gnostic texts use the terms “the Savior,” the “Lord” and the “Revealer,” with no specific mention of Jesus or Christ at all.

Scholars who come from a Christian background and consider the NHC to be early Christian writings routinely decode XRC as Christ, or sometimes as Chrest, and IC as Jesus. There is, however, no clear or firm basis for this convention. I am convinced that these codes do not refer either to “the Christ” of Saint Paul or the “historical Jesus” of the New Testament. The codes are used precisely to avoid those identifications. The term “the living Jesus” found in the NHC refers to an inner guide or psychic entity, not a historical person. To Gnostics “the living Jesus” indicated a spiritual force that does not die, hence it could not be a real human person. Jesus Christ in the NT says things that would never have been said by a Gnostic initiate. His words and acts are inconsistent with an illumined teacher from the Mysteries. The Gnostic Christos is not the Christ, the Only-Begotten Son of God, in the theology of John and Paul.

Personally I don’t see this as too much of a problem. I’ve not spent any time with the original Coptic or even read all the Nag Hammadi texts themselves. But is there really any value in saying their Jesus (let’s call him “Super-Jesus”) is different from the “regular” Jesus of the New Testament? I’m personally more drawn to the distinction that *some* Gnostics make between Jesus and the Christos, a sort of force that comes down and dwells within Jesus at his Baptism. Even that though I’m not too hung up on. You can switch around the details, have Jesus wear sneakers instead of sandals, and there’s still room for everybody’s interpretations.

But then, I guess I don’t totally see eye-to-eye with Lash on some other areas either:

If Catholic authorities were to recognize the Gnostic message, they would be admitting that their belief system is an extraterrestrial implant in the human mind!

Mm… I really don’t think that’s what it would mean if Catholics got into Gnostic stuff. I think it in fact means they would have another highly-creative mythical system to compare their own against, and drawn new potential meanings from, rather than being glued to literalism one way or another. Why is believing in aliens implanting ideas better or more enlightened than believing that the Devil hid dinosaur bones in the dirt to challenge the faith of Christians? Seems exactly as weird to me.