Abstract: Scholars have recently suggested that The Teachings of Silvanus, a text from Nag Hammadi Codex VII, is the product of several authors with the earliest portion dating to the late first or early second century and the latest portion to the third or early fourth century. Silvanus’ provenance, therefore, allows this single document to serve as a potential microcosm evidencing the change and alteration of early Christian thought and doctrine. Latter-day Saints have long contended that the Restored Gospel is more closely aligned with the earliest strains of Christianity vis-à-vis the creedal form. Through the lens of Silvanus, Latter-day Saint and Calvinist positions are evaluated relative to the early and late Silvanus authors and are found to be most compatible with the early and late portions of the text, respectively.

As a teenager my first exposure to the Nag Hammadi texts came via a series of Einar Erickson audio tapes that my mother purchased. I still remember his vivacious voice reading tantalizing snippets from ancient texts and favorably comparing them to aspects of the restored gospel of Christ. He would always conclude his presentation with the question, “Where did Joseph Smith get this?” After hearing about all of these remarkable discoveries, I eagerly anticipated the impending wave of confirmatory evidences from ancient hidden texts that would definitively prove the miracle of the restoration. It is forty years later, and Erickson’s prediction of a tidal wave of faith affirming scholarship has yet to emerge; at least it has not emerged from the sands near Nag Hammadi. While these texts have had an intensely dramatic effect on New Testament scholarship, they have had relatively little impact upon members of the Restored Church of Christ, especially its lay members. Why is this?

[Page 14]One reason is that many of the Nag Hammadi texts were produced and cherished by Gnostics — groups whose writings and beliefs were directly attacked by early Church Fathers. For example, Irenaeus famously designated Gnostic writings as “an abyss of madness and blasphemy against Christ.”1 While the Nag Hammadi corpus has proven a treasure trove for secular scholars, traditional Christians have generally dismissed the documents as Gnostic heresy and doctrinally trivial.2 This line of argument was the essence of the evangelical response to Erickson’s audio series. Melanie Layton shares the argument that the early Christian/Latter-day Saint similarities highlighted by Erickson “do not confirm, they condemn if one considers the source of the parallels.”3

For similar reasons,