RE: 'Gospel of Judas' Called An Authentic Fabrication

It has generally been accepted that the Holy Spirit guided the church
fathers in deciding what did and what did not go into the canon. Seems to
me that revisiting this decision puts us on a very slippery slope. Any
information that could be gleaned from written documents or human artefacts
would, by its very nature, be suspect. The Turin Shroud is an example of
the latter: even age dating that object was a contentious issue for years.

For a document to have any credibility, some sort of verification is needed
and, the older the document is, the more difficult it is to authenticate it.
This applies to written documents as well as it does to paintings.

It is possible that, by "studying all material form those days" we can get a
more complete picture of Jesus and of Christianity but how likely is it that
our fundamental understanding of the historical events will change? If
somebody were to find a copy of the Jerusalem Post dated ~33 AD that
contained an article by an investigative reporter who had interviewed the
disciples, Mary Magdalene, and the Roman soldiers, and had concluded that
they were off their rocker and who had first-hand evidence that a huge lever
had been used to roll the stone away from the tomb, he or she might have
something. Although, even in that case, the authenticity of the document
would have been called in question and we would be in situation of "he said,
she said." So, about the only evidence we can expect is going to be
circumstantial.

To put this into a more current context, what evidence would you accept that
Neil Armstrong really landed on the Moon and that this was not an elaborate
hoax? After all, the only evidence we have, as far as I am aware, is in
electronic form or word-of mouth.

Chuck Vandergraaf

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Pim van Meurs
Sent: Saturday, April 08, 2006 2:50 PM
To: Rich Blinne
Cc: Janice Matchett; asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: 'Gospel of Judas' Called An Authentic Fabrication

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.

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Received on Sat Apr 8 18:23:38 2006