gnosticismexplained.org

The Gnostics were in agreement with the “proto-orthodox” Christians of their time – the group of Christians that would eventually give rise to the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant churches – about many things concerning Jesus Christ. They saw him as an extension of God that had existed before the world was made, and who came to earth on a divine mission to bring salvation to humankind. That mission began in earnest with Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist, involved delivering many oral teachings about the mysteries of the world and heaven, and culminated in a dramatic, meaning-soaked death by crucifixion and subsequent wondrous resurrection.