@J @amerika @une @7666 @arcana @sun

You should check out David Litwa. He not only goes into the Nag Hammadi Library, but also all the various heresiological texts written by other Christian authors (eg. Origen, Ireneaus, etc) who describe the various groups now lumped together as Gnostic, and the various theological differences between them. There's more than enough evidence to distinguish the teachings of Marcion from the teachings of Simon of Samaria, from the teachings of the Naassene preacher, etc.

It's also not as though Gnostics were entirely wiped out by the 4th century. You have a lot of derivative groups like the Bogomils, Cathars, Albigensians, Patarenes, Waldenses, Anabaptists, etc, who survived for at least another thousand years afterwards. Then there are Christinanities like the Pelasgians, who (like the Hermeticists) rather than seeing the world and matter as inherently evil, denied original sin, regarded creation as inherently good and redemptive, etc.

If there were a uniform understanding of theology within Christinanity then the Catholic church and it's ideological successors wouldn't have spent a thousand years viciously murdering anyone within their own religion with a different point of view.