Science Channel program on "Lost Gospels" - did anyone else see it?

by JWoods 23 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  JWoods

  I would love it if a genuine collection of the teachings of Jesus were to be found, along the lines of the "Gospel of Thomas" , but without doubt almost written as Jesus spoke them.

  The Science channel program made the point that at least one of the lost gospels had only spoken sayings of Jesus - it ommitted completely the fabulous stories of miracles such as walking on water or the making of the loaves and fish. This was taken (it was implied) that this was evidence that it was more primative.

  That could also be taken by skeptics to mean that some of the more fabulous or miraculous incidents may have been manufactured later, according to the general rule of "chinese whispers" in a largely oral tradition.

  It was also pointed out how unlikely it was that the traditional Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were even the true authors of "their" gospels - being that practically none of the ordinary population of the day was even literate in written language. I always thought it unusual that nothing in them is very "first person" like (for contrast) the letters of Paul.
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  PSacramento

  It was also pointed out how unlikely it was that the traditional Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were even the true authors of "their" gospels - being that practically none of the ordinary population of the day was even literate in written language. I always thought it unusual that nothing in them is very "first person" like (for contrast) the letters of Paul.

  Well, that is not totally correct in regards to them being illeterate, but they probably had help no doubt.

  Luke was a physician so he probably wrote his stuff, but Mark's was the words of Peter probably and Matthew was a tax collector so he probablywas educated, but they all may have had writers do the writing, like Paul did in some of his letters.

  I don't think that was uncommon in those days and IF they were written when the apostels were as old as they probably were, it makes sense they were written by someone close to them and perhaps even edited after into the actual Gospel we have now.
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  ProdigalSon

  Constantine as a "practically non-religious person"? The guy was a monster who brutally murdered his own family. The Roman Church is the MAIN REASON that the Age of Pisces was not the age of mankind's spiritual awakening, because a wave of gnosis came through this place around the time of Christ just as its happening again now at the beginning of the Aquarian age.

  The Bible was put together by Satanists to be the biggest deception and the cruelest hoax in the entire history of the planet. They took bits and pieces of divine wisdom and accurate cosmology in mythical form and made it all literal to spoon-feed to the uneducated idiots in their domain, because they did away with the education too! And then they burned everything else. This was the "milk" versus the "meat" (gnosis) that Paul spoke about.

  ~PS
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  Leprechaun

  I enjoy reading the Book of Enoch, I think that it should have been included in our modern bible.
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  Leolaia

  That some consensus was reached on the four canonical gospels by the middle of the second century AD can be seen in the production of the Diatessaron and the proto-Diatessaronic harmony used by Justin Martyr. This shows that such opinions about a four-gospel canon were shared in both the West and the East. But each community had different stances and opinions on what books were useful and authoritative, and many of the "gnostic gospels" were written for communities which were counter to the hegemony of proto-orthodoxy and thus such books (often drawing on rather different intellectual traditions than the canonical gospels, such as Middle Platonism) would never have been candidates for canonicity in those proto-orthodox communities that followed a rather different religious and intellectual outlook (I am thinking here of Sethian gospels like Judas). The Jewish-Christian gospels (such as the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Nazoreans) and some early proto-gnostic gospels, such as the Gospel of the Egyptians, did have some influence in the Western church. And then there were other communities, like those who followed Marcion, who in the second century AD only recognized one gospel, the version of Luke used by Marcion.

  So it is worthwhile to recognize that the early Christian movement was diverse and had many different opinions about the gospels, while at the same time recognizing that the modern four-gospel canon was one of these opinions that arose early by the middle of the second century AD and which came to be very influential, in part because of the huge popularity of the Diatessaron (which at times surpassed that of the original gospels themselves).
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  Leolaia

  The Science channel program made the point that at least one of the lost gospels had only spoken sayings of Jesus - it ommitted completely the fabulous stories of miracles such as walking on water or the making of the loaves and fish. This was taken (it was implied) that this was evidence that it was more primative.

  That would be the Gospel of Thomas, and its primitiveness is not simply because it is a sayings gospel but also because of the literary form (which is more oral and less literary in terms of parallels, in contrast to the synoptic gospels which show close literary interdependence), and the fairly primitive nature of the proto-gnostic material (which shows zero interest in the kinds of advanced ideas found in second-century Sethian or Valentinian works); April DeConick has suggested that this material originally represented reinterpretations of apocalyptic sayings that resulted from the failure of parousia expections. This would put Thomas on a similar trajectory as John, which also is proto-gnostic but not at all like later second-century gnostic works, and which has displaced imminent future-oriented eschatology with realized eschatology.

  Some more conversative scholars have argued that Thomas is actually literarily dependent on the synoptic gospels and John, but the evidence of dependence is not that convincing imo, although one must recognize that as a rolling corpus, Thomas reached its current form at a much later date than the time when it was originally written.
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  PSacramento

  I think that, in regards to Thomas, soemthings said there were so out of "whack" with what was accepted "Gospel" that the time that it was just to "hard" to make it canon and the rest was already in the more accepted works, so it may have been the case of why include something that can cause confusion when the good stuff in it is already present elsewhere.
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  JWoods

  I think that, in regards to Thomas, soemthings said there were so out of "whack" with what was accepted "Gospel" that the time that it was just to "hard" to make it canon and the rest was already in the more accepted works, so it may have been the case of why include something that can cause confusion when the good stuff in it is already present elsewhere.

  Any specific examples come to mind that are out of whack?
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  PSacramento

  Going on memory, there is the one about women turning into men or something like that, its been awhile since I read the GOT.
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  JWoods

  Going on memory, there is the one about women turning into men or something like that, its been awhile since I read the GOT.

  If so, that would be the only biblical miracle that modern society has been able to achieve in the 20th/21st century!

  OK, back on the serious topic: I have long wondered about the suppression of non-canonical material as sort of a point of religious honor...For one thing there are many points in the accepted canon that seem out of place or contradictory.

  Looks to me like (historically at least) all of the archealogically authentic writings should at least be considered in the eyes of history - but of course I am viewing it without any religious prejudice.