Second Treatise of the Great Seth

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Second Treatise of the Great Seth is an apocryphal Gnostic writing discovered in the Codex VII of the Nag Hammadi Codices. This writing sticks out among Early Christian writings in that it depicts a Jesus who didn't die on the cross. The idea that the crucifixion was false appears only in a select few early Christian texts that have been rediscovered. Before manuscripts such as this one were found, this idea was thought to be an idea solely found in Islamic (7th century) theology in relation to Jesus. However some Gnostics believed Jesus was not a man but a docetistic spirit, and therefore could not die. Thus it is now thought that this form of christian theology actually influenced the development of Islam. From the translation by Roger A. Bullard and Joseph A. Gibbons:

"For my death, which they think happened, (happened) to them in their error and blindness, since they nailed their man unto their death...It was another, their father, who drank the gall and the vinegar; it was not I. They struck me with the reed; it was another, Simon, who bore the cross on his shoulder. I[t] was another upon Whom they placed the crown of thorns...And I was laughing at their ignorance." (Jesus as purported narrator)

Another mystery brought about by this writing is its label as The Second Treatise of the Great Seth, which would lead one to believe that there is an undiscovered First Treatise.

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