Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Bible - How to Read the Bible. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bible - How to Read the Bible. Show all posts

Thursday, January 18, 2024

Short Shorts... Christian Sloganeering, Inspiration, Revelation, & Universalism



Short Shorts... Christian Sloganeering,
Inspiration, Revelation, & Universalism



What is Kitsch?

Well, it's NOT the Canadian actor Taylor Kitsch... he's cool.




Art as Kitsch

It seems religious kitsch is everywhere on social media regardless the religion or faith. Here, I ask the question whether it is useful or not? Offensive? Helpful?

I suspect the answer lies in the eyes of the beholder as it would with any display of art...

...and also what the artist wishes to communicate to us about their faith or beliefs.

Some artistic kitsch I like... It may make me laugh, cry, be cynical, or be uplifted by it.

The ones displayed below I generally don't like though I realize they are telling us to be thoughtful of how Christian behavior to be loving, just and wise, and to emissaries of Jesus wherever we go.

On Parenting

In the case of raising and teaching little kids I'd like to see less abject brainwashing and more liberty for them to be directed to ask better questions when trained up in the household of their parents.

Children are innocent souls and if they are allowed, a bit of childhood respite from the wickedness of the world would be nice to be encouraged at all times.

And when approaching the subject of God as they grow older I think sets them up for good or for ill to be worked out the rest of their lives. Hence, a bit of caution to religious parents on the energy of their beliefs. Allow children to breathe a bit. Become themselves a bit. Simply watching you will be instruction enough when the time comes to verbalize wisdom and beliefs.

I love children and always wish to error towards love, patience, broad-mindedness, and good will. We each need wisdom when it comes to children... and with that wisdom we might learn ourselves and share it with those around us.

R.E. Slater
January 18, 20224


Defined

Dictionary
Definitions from Oxford Languages
kitsch /kiCH/ 

as a noun
art, objects, or design considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way.
  • "the lava lamp is an example of sixties kitsch"
as an adjective
considered to be in poor taste but appreciated in an ironic or knowing way.
  • "the front room is stuffed with kitsch knickknacks, little glass and gilt ornaments"
  • a tacky or lowbrow quality or condition.

KITSCH



Kitsch (/kɪtʃ/ KITCH; loanword from German) is a term applied to art and design that is perceived as naïve imitation, overly eccentric, gratuitous or of banal taste.

The modern avant garde traditionally opposed kitsch for its melodramatic tendencies, its superficial relationship with the human condition and its naturalistic standards of beauty. In the first half of the 20th century, kitsch was used in reference to mass-produced, pop-cultural products that lacked the conceptual depth of fine art. However, since the emergence of Pop Art in the 1950s, kitsch has taken on newfound highbrow appeal, often wielded in knowingly ironic, humorous or earnest manners.

To brand visual art as "kitsch" is often still pejorative, though not exclusively. Art deemed kitsch may be enjoyed in an entirely positive and sincere manner. For example, it carries the ability to be quaint or "quirky" without being offensive on the surface, as in the Dogs Playing Poker paintings.

Along with visual art, the quality of kitsch can be used to describe works of music, literature or any other creative medium. Kitsch relates to camp, as they both incorporate irony and extravagance.




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Christian Beliefs

 

I had two reactions to the pictures above and below...
First the con... however I read this bit of nonsense it's still crap. If religion isn't true and gets exposed by science than let's put faith to death immediately. But if religion can survive the true truths of the universe than just maybe its metaphysic might be true too. Never be afraid to autopsy your faith. We want a living faith... not one that is dead and fighting for its zombie-self to manipulate and control our agency! - re slater

Now the pro... as people of science-and-faith we are to live in the present, not flee from difficulties... especially as presented by religious zealots defending an idolatrized faith. If prophecy is in any sense alive today as I think it is, we stand up and tell (forthtell, NOT foretell) our generations it's goods and bads, pros and cons, about itself. We don't stand mum and hope to leave disruption. Esp against sin and evil whether birthed by a church gone bad or leaders turned rotten. - re slater


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Bench Pressing with Rance
Subject: Universalism


Ok, warning. A good many of my friends may not want to read this. And I admit I sound pretty self-righteous, but here goes....

Today, I met and talked with a pastor who serves a non-denominational church in Alabama who only a few months ago became a persuaded Christian universalist.

He, like me in a previous life, came from the ‘free grace’ movement (names like Charles Ryrie, Zane Hodges, Bob Wilkin, etc) and in fact his church was part of that movement. We both agreed that, despite its name, it is one of the most narrow and doctrinally legalistic theological groups around. In reality, ‘grace’ is reduced to an abstraction and salvation is reduced to something like a commercial transaction. Unless you get all the t’s crossed and i’s dotted in the ‘faith vs works b.s.,’ you’re probably not saved, according to them.

There are approximately 8.1 billion people living on earth right now. So your chances of ‘going to heaven’ (as they put it) are extremely thin. Billions of people will roast forever according to these wacko beliefs.

From my research there are somewhere between 3.9 and 7.7 million Evangelical Christians in the world. That’s a mere 4-7% of the world’s billions of people who ever end up in heaven. By the time the ‘grace movement’ people get through with their nitpicking, only a fraction of those who identify as Evangelicals will be saved. How crazy is this? Plenty, if you ask me.

Evangelicals believe they are the only religious people on earth who will be saved. In general, Catholics aren’t ’really saved.’ Liberal and progressive mainline Christians arent saved. And certainly those Orthodox and Coptic Christians aren’t either. Muslims, ditto. Hindus, ditto. Buddhists, ditto.

And it gets even more depressing still since most Evangelicals believe in a literal hell. This was one of the main reasons I departed from Evangelicalism. I could no longer tolerate this narrow view of the world informed by a legalistic narrow view of the gospel.

There’s no good news at all in this kind of Christianity. It’s 99% bad news. Who could begin to love a god who is willing to create children made in his own image only to condemn billions of them forever? Not me, thank you very much.

I was schooled in this stuff, brought up in a Southern Baptist context and then trained in fundamentalist colleges as a young man. But relatively speaking, it didn’t take me long to feel increasingly uncomfortable with such nonsense.

My deconstruction began nearly 40 years ago. I haven’t de-converted from Christian faith by any means, but after all these decades my faith looks very different now than it did back then.
As my new pastor friend told me today, ‘everything looks different now. I view people differently. I see God differently. And once I understood universal salvation, I saw it everywhere in the Bible.’

I had to agree.

- Rance, 1.17.2024


Comment 1

I think you hit this spot on Rance. Might I publish it on my site? As always, I'll add a few thoughts too. You're my hero! BTW, I left one church after 27 years as I had become tired of my fellowship's incessant judgmentalism of others-not-like-themselves.

I couldn't evangelize for God, or bring converts into the church, if the church wasn't going to provide them with a nourishing, enriching fellowship as vs some imagined legalistic interpretation as to what they thought was holy or not holy.
To this day connecting divine sovereignty to power and determinism curdles my stomach. Divine sovereignty is always about divine love working with creation towards blessed, redemptive ends. Not power. Not wrath. Not hell. Not Christian inquisitions.
Thx again. - re slater

Reply: Rance - "Of course, brother."


Comment 2
by RRW

Hi Rance. I don't think you sound so much self-righteous as misinformed. I read a lot of people saying things about "Evangelicals" that aren't necessarily and definitely not universally true. I tend to distinguish Evangelical from Fundamentalist, though I recognize considerable overlap in many areas of thought.

My theological education started around Fuller Seminary (progressive? non-denominational Evangelical) and was consolidated at Regent College (also non-denominational, and very ecumenically diverse) as an Anabaptist. I suppose I'm something like a free-will baptist now, but I've always been rather iconoclastic, rejecting every post-biblical human tradition and line of thinking I could identify. I am not dogmatic about much except insofar as I am committed to biblical revelation as exemplified by apostolic teaching as represented by the canonical texts of the Old and New Covenants.

Abandon biblical revelation and you are on your own. If we are all on our own as to what truth is we are no longer thinking and acting as followers of Christ. He is our Lord; what he said as remembered and recorded by those who knew him best must be what we believe or we have departed from faith in him. If we recreate God in our own image however we see fit we are no longer fit for eternal life with him.

Universalism is one of those ways people impose their own thinking on the gospel as received. The words of Jesus are a plain refutation of that belief; eg., separating the sheep from the goats simply can’t be ignored as irrelevant here. And there is a lot more you have to excise from scripture to make the case for God’s eventual inclusion of everyone as members of His family. Someone in the comments mentioned that universalism results in monism, or in other words a deterministic world view. God would have to coercively override the will of those he created with free will by forcing them to accept him as God.

At some point our doctrines, if they are derived from scripture, have to all be correlated and coherent, otherwise they are not reasonable. I think it is not only possible but necessary for Christian teaching to be reasonable and coherent. That doesn’t mean the same as “logical” because a logical system requires more than humans are capable of (too much to explain that here, but ask if you want clarification). I think the Bible provides a coherent structure of beliefs if we mere humans don’t force it into our own distorted ways of thinking, which are then inherently incoherent and contradictory whether we realize it or not. I think that eternal conscious torment (torture!) is not a biblical doctrine. The only reasonable alternative is something like conditional immortality, with the expectation that some form of conscious and appropriate (just!) punishment is what scripture teaches, and then comes the “second death” of annihilation (the cessation of conscious existence) for the unfaithful and unbelieving.

Scripture does not teach that humans are immortal because we are created in the image of God. In fact Genesis teaches that because we have rejected the will and commandments of God we have lost the potential for immortality. The Old Covenant says we lost immortality and the New Covenant says we can regain it through faith in and obedience to Christ. People do not have God’s Spirit dwelling in them by nature; believers in Christ receive new life through the gift of Holy Spirit. Believe the Good News and you will be saved.

Reply by Rance
Richard, I have been very careful to build my faith in ultimate reconciliation for all on the Bible. A good case can be made for it, I assure you. I don’t even know where to start but simply to say it is how one reads scripture. The number of texts that explicitly state it are amazing.

Reply by RWW
Is there not an inherent conflict in proposing that the Covenant can be regained "through faith in and obedience to Christ" and "Believe the Good News and you will be saved?"

Reply by re slater
I no longer can read the bible as a "one-time" revelation. I believe the only kind of communication God provides is one that is daily and constant.

When I read the bible I read how past cultures thought about God... especially the Jewish culture. Jesus did too and had to correct Second Temple Judaism's covenantal legalisms of the day.

I feel much the same way....
God is a God of love... NOT a God of wrath and hate. That's what we do to one another when failing to love one another and creation-around-us again.
Further, Jesus revealed this loving God he called Father not with a sword but with targeted teaching on divine love and Spirit enablement.

Today, Christianity may simply expand the doctrine of inspiration to discover God never stopped talking to our hearts, minds, and souls by study, fellowship, experience, and history. 

If you wish, we might describe these events as General Inspiration as versus Special Inspiration... but when reading the bible it seems to me that all is generally inspiration and never one-on-one audible discussion except in the Christ-event when God became man.

As corollary, this would mean that the Christian commentaries, stories, and bios we read are from people moved perhaps a bit, perhaps a lot, or not at all, by the Spirit of God. To discern whether their words are from God I ask myself if God's love is at the center of the conversation and in their works. If not, they may have some things to say but I then read such beliefs in a different light as more human than divine. Some of which may be really helpful and some of which is complete rubbish.

How people think of God and act out their faith tells us a lot about the God they believe in.

For myself, divine love displays itself in acts which are healthy, healing, and redemptive.

When I read of God by those who push protestations, defensive apologies claiming biblical authority, or are generally off-putting to those around them, I read of people trying to push their idea of God on others. An idea which may be either good or bad. But love must always be the outcome as it must be the beginning and middle of any conversation.
As to the doctrine of hell it is what we do to one another rather than a place a wrathful God puts you in. Always remember, God is not hell nor is fellowship with God through Christ anything but redemption working itself out through us. And for the unbeliever, pagan, or non-Christian (my preferred term) God will always be a God to them as well despite religion or belief.

So why teach hell?

Well, that's the question isn't it... if there is no hell as the bible says there is... or as its Jewish culture in the first century may have believed; ...and certainly in what the early, middle, and late Middle Age church taught after (Catholic?) Dante's description of hell in his Divine Comedy of Hell's Inferno (published c.1321)... then what do we do with hell?

For myself, it is how we act towards one another and to nature around us. It is a description of our relationship with one another individually, familiarly, societally, and globally. Relationships are not places there are esoteric. And the pain and torture of a soul rueing life and troubles aptly describes a soul burning under the sin and evil caused.

The only place I find resolvement is in Jesus Christ's and the hell he took upon himself for us as God's sacrificial Lamb. Who served as our Atonement and Redeemer by the force of his life and death and resurrection. For without the resurrection, says the Apostle Paul, Jesus' death would not be legitimate. But with Jesus' ascension and transfiguration as the first fruits of salvation, we may find in Jesus One who will take our past, forgive it, and begin healing those of us seeking forgiveness and transformation.

Next topic...

As a former fundamentalist and later conservative evangelical I have to call my faith out. I've leaned into my original Baptist roots into Arminianism (free will) and thrown out Calvinism (divine determinacy).

Then expanded the former to incorporate and Open and Relational Theology.

And finally, I've removed the church's Westernized (Greek Hellenism) bias towards doctrine and replaced it with Whitehead's process philosophy and Cobb's process theology.

Why?
  • Because I can remove the limitations of Western philosophical theology upon church doctrines and traditions. It also allows me to freely use redactive tools upon the ancient biblical text to expand its godly content and to apply a loving divinity which is never absent of us.
  • Which is also why divine inspiration and revelation are important. If kept as a one-time reveal than God has bound us as God has bound God's Self. But I don't think God works this way... an imminent, intimately-near-to-us-never-to-leave-us God is always speaking, revealing, and inspiring. Some get it, many don't. Some get a bit of it while others make a "mash" of it.
  • When I read inspiring novels or fiction; see illuminating art pieces, paintings, and sculptures; hear the joy filling within a good rock opera or punk rock piece; or witness architects and landscapers weaving buildings and gardens around light and sound; I behold lively works of divine inspiration such as in the American Constitution with it's Bill of Rights. Public documents which give people liberty, personal rights, freedom, justice, and equality.
  • God is present and is presently doing what he can when his creation yearns to speak, be, and breathe atoning redemption and transfiguring healing to all.
Hence, at the center of love is:
  • humane and humanitarian forms of social justice;
  • intersectional faiths (certainly non-Christian faiths don't have Christ but in Process thought we can emphasize a redemptive center); and generally,
  • behave in progressively liberating norms of behavior with one another while abiding to love and covenantal integrity with one another.
Such thoughts never rests easily upon a Westernized conservative evangelicalism as its newer, postmodernal form of progressive evangelicalism can attest. But when uplifting Reformed and Evangelical doctrinnaire into Processual Theology's realms we may liberate bad ideas of God and judgment and recover the good news which is in Jesus anew. This, to me, is invaluable.
Lastly, if God is what evangelicalism says God is - whether Calvinistic or Arminian - than such a God is not worth following. And just like ancient man's ideas are always reforming the primal questions of purpose and destiny, so too those divinely driven burdens ask of God today to reveal a better Christ and more humane faith than in times past or present. Amen

Comment 3
By CM

I think people assume all forms of universal salvation are the same. The ultimate redemption that Brad Jersak, Chris Green and others put forward is one that has been in the historical church family all along. It includes judgement and "hell" but just sees these as penultimate not the final word. Can God's Love really fail? Will Jesus be all in all of will he not?

Reply by Rance - Exactly.




Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Divine Inspiration, Reading God's Word, & the Apocryphal Books of the Bible


click to enlarge

Divine Inspiration, Reading God's Word,
& the Apocryphal Books of the Bible

by R.E. Slater

Part I - Old Wineskins

My Christian heritage and bible training all concentrated on the "approved" books of the bible of which my faith recognizes 66 books - 39 in the OT and 27 in the NT.... All other bible sources are regarded as oral narratives / beliefs by Christian fellowships and the early church. In this matter of a divinely inspired biblical canon I still feel the same as my previous fundamental/evangelical teachings however I've crossed a "tipping point" in my faith life which I believe will only continue to expand for me in regards to the subject of divine inspiration....

Let's just say I believe God continues to speak today as commonly as we do with one another. That God's breath and melodies, wisdom and love, warnings and forebodings, continue apace with our movements through this life. I have spoken to divine synchronicity in articles past but generally, God's "Word" - however it comes - is alive and active and always about us everywhere we turn. In this then I have expanded the idea of divine inspiration rather than to limit it or qualified it to certain individuals, fellowships, churches, or movements. Every man, whether believer or not, God is whispering, pursuing, working through (in good ways, not evil), and so on. Spirit inspiration was never a "one-and-done" process. Nope, it ever was and it ever is.

Many of those friends and acquaintances in my previous faith will regard my "transgression" as a heresy and no longer consider my words or my Spirit-driven passion to expand the bible beyond its ancient milieu. Which is OK with me as many of my fellowship had left me when I left Dispensational Calvinism for Covenant Theology and Arminianism (that is, by returning to my roots found in early Baptist assemblies and in today's Wesleyan congregations). To which I've updated Jacob Arminius' "freewill" theology (sic, Divine indeterminancy v Calvinism's determinant future) with Open-and-Relational (Process) Theology along with that of Whiteheadian/Cobb Process Philosophy and Theology.

In the long run it's been a good trade for me and my continuing Christian faith. As the old adage says, "Out with old-line thinking and in with the new." Jesus said something similar when exclaiming the new wine of the gospel (which was bathed in Jesus' atoning sacrifice) would burst the used skin-bags of the old wine. That is, if new wine were poured into old wineskin bags those bags would burst under the fermentation period of the new wine - splitting the "leathered" (inflexible) winebags of the Law with the resurrection Love of God. Meaning, even as God had loved in the OT God would continue to love in the NT forever and forever regardless of man's teachings.

And so, I've taken this charicature of God's Love and have "run" with it by expanding Jesus' New Covenant Love (or, by writing a "Theology of Love") in every manner I can think of - which brings me to the bible and the "heresy" I present to my former evangelic faith....

Part II - New Wineskins

As I see it, God's love got lost in man's "prophetic" statements of God a long time ago. In order for me to reconcile God's love with Israel's religious laws and tribal / nationalized policies of killing and war I now regard those acts of religious man as unlike God's love and but a mere interpretation by God's people of God's love. An interpretation which tells us more about our own hearts then they did God's heart.

And so, I've drawn a "virtual line" in the sand like Jesus did before his accuser's when the priests and scribes spoke ugly statements about his compassion and forgiveness of the adulterous woman. He possibly sat there idly drawing in the sand speaking to their sins until one by one they left him alone with the woman whom he blessed before she turned to leave and proclaim her new found faith.

I too believe that the bible has its stories of redemption but inside-and-around those stories runs man's stories of not loving nor showing wisdom. The failures of religious priest, tribe, and nation tell not of God - but the struggles of the bible characters in determining what God's love means to them when working it out on individual, family, tribal, and national religious levels. By which I mean, the "wobbly" religiously ethos' I read of in the bible is not necessarily something we should be doing today... nor yesterday as Israel had at one time. In this way the bible is not "inspired" as it usually is regarded.

Part III - Working It Out

The best I can say is that my evangelical "bible" church of the past in all it's faithfulness and zealous passion has shown to history that many of its decisions for themselves and for those around them have proven dishonoring to God's image in us, harmful and harming, oppressive, colonizing, murderous, and discriminative. God's love isn't these things no matter what we tell ourselves when we read the bible (in a literal fashion) pretending we're "at war with the world". If God loves, and is not at war with the world, why then - may I ask - are we???

Hence, my long introduction here to say that the apocryphal books of the Old and New Testament as well as those outside of the biblical canon may have value in themselves even as the church's early commentaries by its leaders and historic names as well as those down through history.... And since the 19th century - even as I survey the "book/bible" sections of bible and retail stores - it seems lately every man and woman has become a "biblical prophet" in their own right.

Which is why I write with the hindsight of age and experience. I'm less bound up in the church's dogmatic words of a bible which is "God-breathed" or "divinely inspired" or that horrid word of "inerrancy" used to "bind up the literalism of the bible" for unreflective dogmatic thinking granting all manner of ugly acts in the name of God. My God is a God of Love and this same God is not a God who executes wrath and judgment willfully upon mankind no matter what the church believes.

Where sin and evil, wrath and judgment, reside - so comes with it our own freewill agency as well as that of nature's. God's love - and loving example in Christ Jesus - forewarns us that when we cease to consider how to love each other, and nature around us, we may expect ugliness to arise. And like the proverbs in the bible we are forewarned to be wise and not fools when moving about this world we live; that we are to bless and be a blessing like Melchizedek of old when he blessed Abram (sic, Abraham) travelling from Ur at our Lord's bequest to the lands of Canaan.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
February 21, 2023

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Who Wrote the Bible? Episode 4: The Apocrypha
 Aug 13, 2021

Complete series in one video: https://youtu.be/KqSkXmFun14
Individual episodes:
5. Gospels & Acts - https://youtu.be/Z6PrrnhAKFQ
7. Daniel & Revelation - https://youtu.be/fTURdV0c9J0
8: Summary Chart - https://youtu.be/9uIXzUEwrOg









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Books that Didn’t Make the Cut:
The Gnostic Gospels

by Rich Herbster  |  September 8, 2016


Capernaum - Kfar Nahum - Israel

Jesus didn’t really die on the cross.  He married Mary Magdalene, moved to France, and had several children.  All that claptrap about his identity as God’s incarnate Son, his sacrificial death and resurrection from the dead?  All propaganda foisted upon you by a deceptive church.  The real truth is to be found in the writings of other groups of “Christians” you never heard of: they were repressed and silenced…until now!

The preceding paragraph is idiotic (as well as blasphemous).  Fortunately, it doesn’t reflect my own thinking.  It does reflect the teaching of a group of ancient heretics: Gnostic Christians.  It also reflects the historical assessment of some scholars of our day (folks like Princeton’s Elaine Pagels) that the writings of these heretics deserve at least equal standing with the gospels in your bible.

Gnosticism (the “g” is silent) has been big business in recent years.  We need look no further than author Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code – a bestselling book turned Hollywood blockbuster (featuring Tom Hanks!) – to see the popularity of this long ago almost forgotten movement.

Where did Dan Brown and Elaine Pagels find this stuff?  Their sources are documents (dating from the second through the fourth centuries) such as The Gospel of Thomas and The Gospel of Judas.  What are these books?  Why aren’t they found in our bibles?  Is this a conspiracy?!?

Let’s rewind and start at the beginning.  With Jesus himself.  Jesus chose twelve men to be his apostles.  In so doing, Jesus announced that he is reconstituting Israel.  Just as there were twelve tribes in Israel, now there are twelve apostles – true Israel is centered on and identified with Jesus and his work.  These twelve carried on the ministry of Jesus and authoritatively grounded the church and its teaching.  The scriptures of the New Testament gained their standing based on the apostolic origin and the authority of those apostles.

The canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written within the first century, as early as the 50’s (for Mark), as late as the 90’s (for John).  They had a well established pedigree and identity with their apostolic authors.  The canon itself was formally fixed later, but the early apostolic bona fides of these books are what won the day in recognizing them as scripture.  The church was also aware of another group of writings which lacked these credentials: the writings of the Gnostics.

Who were the Gnostics?  The Gnostics were a group who had a set of fundamental beliefs very different from those taught in traditional Christianity.  There are lots of different types of Gnosticism, but most Gnostics teach some form of the following:

  • Spirit/Matter. Spirit is good; Matter is bad.  Bodies are bad.  Our souls are trapped in these material shells.  We want to get rid of our bodies and get back to good spiritual realities.  (Christianity doesn’t teach that matter is bad – God declared the Creation “very good.”  The problem with the body and the soul is sin.)
  • Two gods. There are two gods: the bad god, called the Demiurge, is the god of the Old Testament – he created everything, which is bad.  The good god is the God of the New Testament – he is spirit and we want to get back to him.
  • Secret Knowledge. Gnosticism gets its name from the Greek word gnosis, which means “knowledge.”  All Gnostics taught that you needed to get some sort of secret knowledge to escape the bad body and get back to the good god.  Salvation is essentially learning the secret handshake.
  • Jesus and the Gnosis. Not all Gnostics claimed to be Christians, but some glommed on to Christianity because it seemed to offer a suitable vehicle for their secret knowledge philosophy.  Jesus became the keeper of secret knowledge and you can get “saved” through him, though not in the orthodox sense of faith in his substitutionary atoning death for your sins.  Rather, you get access through Jesus to the secret handshake that would open the door to the spiritual world.
  • Weird Ethics. Because the Gnostics taught that the body was bad, they taught that it was good to punish the body by treating it poorly. Therefore, some Gnostics were very hard on the body, embracing a form of radical asceticism (intense fasting, absolute chastity even in marriage, etc.). Others pursued the opposite course and embraced a form of licentiousness – the body is bad so let’s punish it by doing all sorts of base things with it: drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, etc.  Either course led in a direction contrary to orthodox Christian ethics.

To ground their teaching they penned documents that use the form of the canonical gospels, attributing them to the apostles – Thomas, Judas, and so on.  But these “gospels” have no connection to the historical person of Jesus.  They don’t reflect his teaching or his work.  They also have nothing to do with the apostles that they identify with ( The real Thomas had nothing to do with the “Gospel of Thomas”!).  They instead reflect the beliefs of people with an alien worldview living centuries later.

Unfortunately, this isn’t communicated to modern audiences.  Instead people are told, “We’ve discovered these ancient documents that the church doesn’t want you to know about.  They reveal a very different Jesus from the one in your bible.  And these should be read alongside of, or even instead of, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.”  And people believe it.  Some folks just love a good conspiracy theory.  Some are just too lazy to study the history of the canon.  Some are just happy for an excuse not to have to deal with the actual Jesus of the bible.

The Gnostic gospels aren’t reliable documents for learning anything at all about Jesus.  They are late documents (though ancient from our perspective) that teach us more about the confused people who wrote them than they do about Jesus.  If you really want to know anything about Jesus, you’ll have to open the New Testament.



* * * * * * * *




New Testament apocrypha

The New Testament apocrypha (singular apocryphon)[1] are a number of writings by early Christians that give accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives. Some of these writings were cited as scripture by early Christians, but since the fifth century a widespread consensus has emerged limiting the New Testament to the 27 books of the modern canon.[2][3] Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant churches generally do not view the New Testament apocrypha as part of the Bible.[3]

Definition

The word "apocrypha" means "things put away" or "things hidden", originating from the Medieval Latin adjective apocryphus, "secret" or "non-canonical", which in turn originated from the Greek adjective ἀπόκρυφος (apokryphos), "obscure", from the verb ἀποκρύπτειν (apokryptein), "to hide away".[4] From the Greek prefix "apo" which means "away" and the Greek verb "kryptein" which means "to hide".[5]

The general term is usually applied to the books that were considered by the church as useful, but not divinely inspired. As such, to refer to Gnostic writings as "apocryphal" is misleading since they would not be classified in the same category by orthodox believers. Often used by the Greek Fathers was the term antilegomena, or "spoken against", although some canonical books were also spoken against, such as the Apocalypse of John in the East. Often used by scholars is the term pseudepigrapha, or "falsely inscribed" or "falsely attributed", in the sense that the writings were written by an anonymous author who appended the name of an apostle to his work, such as in the Gospel of Peter or The Æthiopic Apocalypse of Enoch: almost all books, in both Old and New Testaments, called "apocrypha" in the Protestant tradition are pseudepigrapha. In the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, what are called the apocrypha by Protestants include the deuterocanonical books: in the Catholic tradition, the term "apocrypha" is synonymous with what Protestants would call the pseudepigrapha, the latter term of which is almost exclusively used by scholars.[6]

History

Development of the New Testament canon

That some works are categorized as New Testament apocrypha is indicative of the wide range of responses that were engendered in the interpretation of the message of Jesus of Nazareth. During the first several centuries of the transmission of that message, considerable debate turned on safeguarding its authenticity. Three key methods of addressing this survive to the present day: ordination, where groups authorize individuals as reliable teachers of the message; creeds, where groups define the boundaries of interpretation of the message; and canons, which list the primary documents certain groups believe contain the message originally taught by Jesus. There was substantial debate about which books should be included in the canons. In general, those books that the majority regarded as the earliest books about Jesus were the ones included. Books that were not accepted into the canons are now termed apocryphal. Some of them were vigorously suppressed and survive only as fragments. The earliest lists of canonical works of the New Testament were not quite the same as modern lists; for example, the Book of Revelation was regarded as disputed by some Christians (see Antilegomena), while Shepherd of Hermas was considered genuine by others, and appears (after the Book of Revelation) in the Codex Sinaiticus.[citation needed]

The Syriac Peshitta, used by all the various Syrian Churches, originally did not include 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude and Revelation (and this canon of 22 books is the one cited by John Chrysostom (~347–407) and Theodoret (393–466) from the School of Antioch).[7] Western Syrians have added the remaining five books to their New Testament canons in modern times[7] (such as the Lee Peshitta of 1823). Today, the official lectionaries followed by the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church and the East Syriac Chaldean Catholic Church, which is in communion with the Holy See, still only present lessons from the 22 books of the original Peshitta.[7]

The Armenian Apostolic church at times has included the Third Epistle to the Corinthians, but does not always list it with the other 27 canonical New Testament books. This church did not accept Revelation into its Bible until 1200 CE.[8] The New Testament of the Coptic Bible, adopted by the Egyptian Church, includes the two Epistles of Clement.[citation needed]

Modern scholarship and translation

English translations were made in the early 18th century by William Wake and by Jeremiah Jones, and collected in 1820 by William Hone's Apocryphal New Testament.[9] The series Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 8, contains translations by Alexander Walker.[10] New translations by M. R. James appeared in 1924, and were revised by J.K. Eliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, Oxford University Press, 1991. The "standard" scholarly edition of the New Testament Apocrypha in German is that of Schneemelcher,[11] and in English its translation by Robert McLachlan Wilson.[12]

Constantin von Tischendorf and other scholars began to study New Testament apocrypha seriously in the 19th century and produce new translations. The texts of the Nag Hammadi library are often considered separately but the current edition of Schneemelcher also contains eleven Nag Hammadi texts.[13]

Books that are known objectively not to have existed in antiquity are usually not considered part of the New Testament apocrypha. Among these are the Libellus de Nativitate Sanctae Mariae (also called the "Nativity of Mary") and the Latin Infancy gospel. The latter two did not exist in antiquity, and they seem to be based on the earlier Infancy gospels.[citation needed]

Gospels

Canonical gospels

Four gospels came to be accepted as part of the New Testament canon.

Infancy gospels

The rarity of information about the childhood of Jesus in the canonical gospels led to a hunger of early Christians for more detail about the early life of Jesus. This was supplied by a number of 2nd-century and later texts, known as infancy gospels, none of which were accepted into the biblical canon, but some scholars have noted that the very number of surviving infancy manuscripts attests to their continued popularity.[14]

Most of these were based on the earliest infancy gospels, namely the Infancy Gospel of James (also called the "Protoevangelium of James") and Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and on their later combination into the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (also called the "Infancy Gospel of Matthew" or "Birth of Mary and Infancy of the Saviour").[citation needed]

The other significant early infancy gospels are the Syriac Infancy Gospel, the History of Joseph the CarpenterLife of John the Baptist.

Jewish-Christian gospels

The Jewish–Christian Gospels were gospels of a Jewish Christian character quoted by Clement of AlexandriaOrigenEusebiusEpiphaniusJerome and probably Didymus the Blind.[15] Most modern scholars have concluded that there was one gospel in Aramaic/Hebrew and at least two in Greek, although a minority argue that there were only two, Aramaic/Hebrew and Greek.[16]

None of these gospels survives today, but attempts have been made to reconstruct them from references in the Church Fathers. The reconstructed texts of the gospels are usually categorized under New Testament Apocrypha. The standard edition of Schneemelcher describes the texts of three Jewish–Christian gospels as follows:[17]

1) The Gospel of the Ebionites ("GE") – 7 quotations by Epiphanius.
2) The Gospel of the Hebrews ("GH") – 1 quotation ascribed to Cyril of Jerusalem, plus GH 2–7 quotations by Clement, Origen, and Jerome.
3) The Gospel of the Nazarenes ("GN") – GN 1 to GN 23 are mainly from Jerome; GN 24 to GN 36 are from medieval sources.

Some scholars consider that the two last named are in fact the same source.[18]

Non-canonical gospels

Passion Gospels

A number of gospels are concerned specifically with the "Passion" (from the Latin verb patior, passus sum; "to suffer, bear, endure", from which also "patience, patient", etc.)[19]) of Jesus:

Although three texts take Bartholomew's name, it may be that one of the Questions of Bartholomew or the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is in fact the unknown Gospel of Bartholomew.

Harmonized gospels

A number of texts aim to provide a single harmonization of the canonical gospels, that eliminates discordances among them by presenting a unified text derived from them to some degree. The most widely read of these was the Diatessaron.

Gnostic texts

In the modern era, many Gnostic texts have been uncovered, especially from the Nag Hammadi library. Some texts take the form of an expounding of the esoteric cosmology and ethics held by the Gnostics. Often this was in the form of dialogue in which Jesus expounds esoteric knowledge while his disciples raise questions concerning it. There is also a text, known as the Epistula Apostolorum, which is a polemic against Gnostic esoterica, but written in a similar style as the Gnostic texts.

Dialogues with Jesus

General texts concerning Jesus

Sethian texts concerning Jesus

The Sethians were a gnostic group who originally worshipped the biblical Seth as a messianic figure, later treating Jesus as a re-incarnation of Seth. They produced numerous texts expounding their esoteric cosmology, usually in the form of visions:

Ritual diagrams

Some of the Gnostic texts appear to consist of diagrams and instructions for use in religious rituals:

Acts

Several texts concern themselves with the subsequent lives of the apostles, usually with highly supernatural events. Almost half of these, anciently called The Circuits of the Apostles and now known by the name of their purported author, "Leucius Charinus" (supposedly a companion of John the apostle), contained the Acts of Peter, John, Andrew, Thomas, and Paul. These were judged by the Patriarch Photios I of Constantinople in the ninth century to be full of folly, self-contradiction, falsehood, and impiety. The Acts of Thomas and the Acts of Peter and the Twelve are often considered Gnostic texts. While most of the texts are believed to have been written in the 2nd century, at least two, the Acts of Barnabas and the Acts of Peter and Paul are believed to have been written as late as the 5th century.

Epistles

There are also non-canonical epistles (or "letters") between individuals or to Christians in general. Some of them were regarded very highly by the early church. Those marked with a lozenge (♦) are included in the collection known as the Apostolic Fathers:

Apocalypses

Several works frame themselves as visions, often discussing the future, afterlife, or both:

Fate of Mary

Several texts (over 50) consist of descriptions of the events surrounding the varied fate of Mary (the mother of Jesus):

Miscellany

These texts, due to their content or form, do not fit into the other categories:

Fragments

In addition to the known apocryphal works, there are also small fragments of texts, parts of unknown (or uncertain) works. Some of the more significant fragments are:

Lost works

Several texts are mentioned in many ancient sources and would probably be considered part of the apocrypha, but no known text has survived:

Close candidates for canonization

While many of the books listed here were considered heretical (especially those belonging to the gnostic tradition—as this sect was considered heretical by Proto-orthodox Christianity of the early centuries), others were not considered particularly heretical in content, but in fact were well accepted as significant spiritual works. Those marked with a lozenge (♦) are also included in the collection known as the Apostolic Fathers.

While some of the following works appear in complete Bibles from the fourth century, such as 1 Clement and The Shepherd of Hermas, showing their general popularity, they were not included when the canon was formally decided at the end of that century.

Evaluation

Present day

Among historians of early Christianity the books are considered invaluable, especially those that almost made it into the final canon, such as Shepherd of HermasBart Ehrman, for example, said:

The victors in the struggles to establish Christian Orthodoxy not only won their theological battles, they also rewrote the history of the conflict; later readers then naturally assumed that the victorious views had been embraced by the vast majority of Christians from the very beginning ... The practice of Christian forgery has a long and distinguished history ... the debate lasted three hundred years ... even within "orthodox" circles there was considerable debate concerning which books to include.[20]

Historical development towards today's canon

The historical debate primarily concerned whether certain works should be read in the church service or only privately. These works were widely used but not necessarily considered Catholic or 'universal.' Such works include the Didache, Shepherd of Hermas, 1 Clement, 2 Clement, the Epistle of Barnabas, and to a lesser extent the Apocalypse of Peter.

Considering the generally accepted dates of authorship for all of the canonical New Testament works (ca. 100 CE), as well as the various witnesses to canonicity extant among the writings of Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, etc., the four gospels and letters of Paul were held by the gentile Christian community as scriptural, and 200 years were needed to finalize the canon; from the beginning of the 2nd Century to the mid-4th Century, no book in the final canon was ever declared spurious or heretical, except for the Revelation of John which the Council of Laodicea in 363–364 CE rejected (although it accepted all of the other 26 books in the New Testament). This was possibly due to fears of the influence of Montanism which used the book extensively to support their theology. See Revelation of John for more details.

Athanasius wrote his Easter letter in 367 CE which defined a canon of 27 books, identical to the current canon, but also listed two works that were "not in the canon but to be read:" The Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache. Nevertheless, the early church leaders in the 3rd and 4th Centuries generally distinguished between canonical works and those that were not canonical but 'useful,' or 'good for teaching,' though never relegating any of the final 27 books to the latter category. One aim with establishing the canon was to capture only those works which were held to have been written by the Apostles, or their close associates, and as the Muratorian fragment canon (ca. 150–175 CE) states concerning the Shepherd of Hermas:[citation needed]

...But Hermas wrote The Shepherd very recently, in our times, in the city of Rome, while bishop Pius, his brother, was occupying the chair of the church of the city of Rome. And therefore it ought indeed to be read; but it cannot be read publicly to the people in church either among the Prophets, whose number is complete, or among the Apostles, for it is after their time.[21]

Published collections

  • Cumberlege, Geoffrey (1926) [1895]. The Apocrypha: translated out of the Greek and Latin tongues: being the version set forth A.D. 1611 compared with the most ancient authorities and revised A.D. 1894 (reprint ed.). Oxford: University Press.
  • Michel, Charles; Peeters, Paul (1924) [1911]. Évangiles Apocryphes (in French) (2nd ed.). Paris: A. Picard.
  • James, Montague Rhodes (1953) [1924]. The Apocryphal New Testament (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • González-Blanco, Edmundo, ed. (1934). Los Evangelio Apócrifos (in Spanish). Vol. 3 vols. Madrid: Bergua.
  • Bonaccorsi, Giuseppe, ed. (1948). Vangeli apocrifi (in Italian). Florence: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina.
  • Aurelio de Santos Otero, ed. (1956). Los Evangelios Apócrifos: Colección de textos griegos y latinos, versión crítica, estudios introductorios y comentarios (in Spanish). Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Christianos.
  • Kekeliże, Korneli, ed. (1959). Kartuli versiebi aṗoḳripebis mocikulta šesaxeb [Georgian Versions of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles]. Tbilisi: Sakartvelos SSR mecnierebata akademiis gamomcemloba.
  • Moraldi, Luigi, ed. (1994) [1971]. Apocrifi del Nuovo Testamento (in Italian). Translated by Moraldi, Luigi (2nd ed.). Turin: Unione tipografico-editrice torinese.
  • Robinson, James M. (1977). The Nag Hammadi Library in English. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
  • Erbetta, Mario, ed. (1966–1981). Gli Apocrifi del Nuovo Testamento (in Italian). Vol. 3 vols. Translated by Erbetta, Mario. Turin: Marietti.
  • Aurelio de Santos Otero (1978–1981). Die handschriftliche Überlieferung der altslavischen Apokryphen (in German). Vol. 2 vols. Berlin: De Gruyter.
  • Herbert, Máire; McNamara, Martin (1989). Irish Biblical Apocrypha: Selected Texts in Translation. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
  • Elliott, J. K. (1993). Apocryphal New Testament.
  • Bovon, François; Geoltrain, Pierre; Kaestli, Jean-Daniel, eds. (1997–2005). Écrits apocryphes chrétiens (in French). Paris: Gallimard.
  • Ehrman, Bart D.; Pleše, Zlatko (2011). The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-973210-4.
  • Markschies, Christoph; Schröter, Jens, eds. (2012). Antike christliche Apokryphen in deutscher Übersetzung (in German). Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck.
  • Burke, Tony; Landau, Brent, eds. (2016). New Testament apocrypha: More noncanonical scriptures. Vol. 1. Grand Rapids. MI: Eerdmans.

See also

References

  1. ^ Kelly, Joseph F. (2017-03-15). The World of the Early Christians. Liturgical Press. ISBN 978-0-8146-8379-8There are both Old and New Testament Apocrypha [singular: Apocryphon],
  2. ^ Van Liere, Frans (2014). An Introduction to the Medieval Bible. Cambridge University Press. pp. 68–69. ISBN 9780521865784.
  3. Jump up to:a b Ehrman, Bart D. (2003). Lost Christianities: Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. Oxford University Press. pp. 230–231. ISBN 9780199756681.
  4. ^ "Apocrypha – Definition"merriam-webster.com.
  5. ^ "apocrypha | Search Online Etymology Dictionary"www.etymonline.com. Retrieved 7 March 2021.
  6. ^ Charlesworth, James H (1985). Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson. p. 2257. ISBN 978-1-59856-489-1.
  7. Jump up to:a b c Peshitta
  8. ^ Reliability Archived October 8, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  9. ^ The apocryphal New Testament, being all the gospels, epistles, and other pieces now extant. London, W. Hone. 1820.
  10. ^ ANF08...Apocrypha of the New Testament.
  11. ^ James McConkey Robinson, Christoph Heil, Jozef Verheyden, The Sayings Gospel Q: Collected Essays, Leuven, Peeters 2005, p. 279 "Not only has a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth edition of the standard German work by Edgar Hennecke and Wilhelm Schneemelcher prepared under the editorship of Schneemelcher appeared, but independent editions are being produced ...
  12. ^ New Testament Apocrypha, Vol. 1: Gospels and Related Writings (1990), Vol. 2: Writings Relating to the Apostles Apocalypses and Related Subjects (1992), Westminster John Knox Press.
  13. ^ Stephen J. Patterson, James McConkey Robinson, Hans-Gebhard Bethge, The fifth Gospel: the Gospel of Thomas comes of age. 1998. pg. 105. quote: "The current edition of Wilhelm Schneemelcher's standard New Testament Apocrypha contains eleven Nag Hammadi tractates."
  14. ^ Cook, William R. (2009). The Catholic Church: A History. Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company. pp. Lecture 3. ISBN 9781598035964.
  15. ^ Elliott 2005, p. 3.
  16. ^ Ehrman & Pleše 2011, p. 199.
  17. ^ Vielhauer & Strecker 1991, pp. 134–78.
  18. ^ Craig A. Evans
  19. ^ Cassell's Latin Dictionary, Marchant, J.R.V, & Charles, Joseph F., (Eds.), Revised Edition, 1928, p.396
  20. ^ Ehrman, Lost Scriptures pp. 2, 3
  21. ^ The Muratorian Fragment : 74–76

Sources

External links