As others have already pointed out, that argument does not hold. Many
hundreds of years ago, some got to decide what they liked and disliked
as the 'canonical gospel'. Studying all material of those days will
likely present a more complete picture of Jesus and Christianity than
relying on that which was ruled to be acceptable.
Just my opinion of course.
Rich Blinne wrote:
>
>
>
>
> The scholars in this book did what Natioinal Geographic did not. They
> applied their critical techniques to the gnostic literature just as
> they did to the canonical Gospels. I would contend that it is even
> more appropriate to do this for this class of literature. The Nag
> Hammadi library is an incoherant mish-mash of many different
> redactions. With the Jewish Gnosticism there is no debate which came
> first like there is for canonical Gospels/the Gospel of Thomas.
> Gnosticism modified Judaism and not the other way around. The picture
> becomes clear of an enterprise that feeds and edits off of a host
> tradition. The editting goes in both directions where Christianity and
> Judaism is gnosticized and there are also examples going the other
> way. But, given that this religion is provably derivative then it
> cannot be something written by the alleged eye witnesses.
>
> On the other hand, the canonical Scriptures show the signs of copying
> and not redaction. The many copies in may geographies don't change
> much except for what can easily be explained for the most part as
> copying errors. The only notable exception was the Johanine Comma and
> since it was in Latin the insertion was easiliy found. While there are
> disputed passages and some issues with authorship and dating there is
> an order of magnitude difference when comparing the canonical
> Scriptures with the gnostic Scriptures.
>
> Pim, this is why we should treat the canonical Scriptures and the
> gnostic ones differently.
>
>
>
>
>
Received on Sat Apr 8 15:50:48 2006
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