didn’t appear until the second or third centuries AD.
The sacred texts of Gnosticism were written in the second and third centuries which removes them a long way from the historical events of the life of Jesus and the apostles. Traditional Christianity and its sacred texts which comprise the New Testament were mainstream and generally accepted from the earliest days of church history long before gnosticism reached full flower.
The best scholarship shows that the books of the New Testament were written in the first century. They were universally accepted by the early Christians and were later formally codified as the New Testament.
The Gnostic writings attempt to connect Christ to a Greek philosophical and religious worldview. The Gnostic writings make little mention of real events of real history. The traditional gospels and epistles of the New Testament rightfully connect Christ to the Hebrew worldview and make many references to real events that occurred in real history.
The New Testament shows that Jesus was the promised Messiah of Israel who came in fulfillment of over 300 Old Testament prophecies. No other faith, including Gnosticism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism and Jainism has anything to compare with the Old and New Testament record of prophecy and fulfillment of prophecy.
Most sacred writings of other faiths contain no prophecies at all. I have often said that the many hundreds of Bible prophecies and their fulfillments are like God’s signature on His holy book and prove that God inspired the writing of the Bible.
The professor in that comparative religion class would do well to look into the matter of prophecy and