to many scholars, the flavor of the sayings appears somewhat gnostic in tone, primarily because its doctrines do not accord with orthodox interpretation of canonical scripture. the manuscript was also found among explicit gnostic teachings in the nag hammadi library. the text also uses gnostic terms, such as referring to "fullness" as a means to salvation, but the doctrines in the apocryphon of james certainly do not accord with the valentinian or other developed gnostic cosmologies, so it is not usually counted as a truly gnostic text.