Christ's incarnation in different ways. According to some Gnostic thought Christ comes to our earth and puts on Jesus' human body so that he may walk among us. "I visited a bodily dwelling" (Ehrman, 231). Some of the Gnostic writings show Jesus as an earthly being with a heavenly nature, while others show Jesus as a purely heavenly being with a lack of earthly context. In the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, Christ's incarnation was into Jesus' body in which he cast out the original occupier (Franzmann, 75). Christ's arrival on earth in the Gospel of Thomas is described in a docetistic way, "I stood in the midst of the world, and I appeared to them in flesh" (G. of Th, v.28). He is said to appear to them in flesh only in outward appearance (Franzmann, 78).
             The Gospel of Truth describes Jesus as "a fruit of knowledge" that when eaten gives people gnosis (Ehrman, 161). This Gnostic text shows Christ as a revealer. He is referred to as the book or logos, which reveals to us all that is unknown (Ehrman, 162). He put on the book, was nailed to a tree and published the edict of the father on the cross (Ehrman, 162). These actions say that by dying on the cross, which in this text is not in flesh, he is helping people receive gnosis.
             Many Gnostic views have implied a hatred of the body. The body is what is keeping people from realizing their origin (G. of Thomas, v.29). For Christ to have a human body seems strange because he has gnosis. "Woe to the flesh which depends on the soul; woe to the soul which depends on the flesh" (G of Th, v.112). According to the Hypostasis of the Archons, the body is just a shell for the spirit. "Locked within the material shell of the human race is the spark of this highest spiritual reality which (as one Gnostic theory held) the inept creator accidentally infused into humanity at the creation -- on the order of a drunken jeweler who accidentally mixes gold dust into junk metal" (Groothu...