| garvey0 said: Just a quick note, many of the early Church fathers who lived in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd century (before the Bible was compiled,) quoted the new testament books frequently. These quotes all line up with the text of the books as they are today. If anyone is interested, here is a site that quickly explains a lot of this and cites some of the source material (Church fathers' letters) which is also easily accessible on the internet: http://www.datingthenewtestament.com/Fathers.htm Also, new testament manuscripts have been found (and continue to be found) that date back as early as the 2nd century and which line up 99% with today's versions. Most of the discrepancies are grammatical errors. Here's a site that gives some information on this if anyone cares to check: http://biblefacts.org/history/oldtext.html As for the gnostic gospels, the gospel of thomas, judas and other texts, we also find writings from the early Church fathers from the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries which state reasons which, if true, give us good reason to believe that they were in fact invalid. Most of the unincluded gospels were indisputably written too late to have been authentic. In the case of the gospel of thomas, there are some people who apparently believe that it was written around the same time as the canonical Gospels. The church fathers, however, state that it was not written by thomas and that it was written after thomas had died. Having read the gospel of thomas, I see no motive as to why the church fathers would lie about this text. For the most part, it contains rephrasing of some of Jesus's quotes mixed with some new quotes that are based off of the same principals contained in the other Gospels. It does have a small bit of very strange material in it, but nothing mind-blowing that people would want to cover up. Your illustration seems to imply that the Gospel of john was originally based on the gospel of thomas. The only evidence for this is that there are some similarities in the text, and such evidence could imply the opposite as well (that thomas was based on john.) We, on the other hand, have much more evidence from the testimony of Church fathers that the Gospel of john was either written by john himself or dictated to his brother and/or disciples and written by them. The church fathers also testify that the gospel of thomas is a forgery and, again, I see no motivation for them to lie about this judging from the contents of the gospel of thomas itself. |
My point with the image is to highlight that using the bible as a historical text and a text to base your life off of is somewhat flawed because it was written and then "edited" by men. The new testament was put together for political reasons rather than divine ones.
At the time there were a lot of different sects with a wide range of beliefs that were essentially streamlined into Christianity as we now know it. For instance, Mary Magdalene had a book which suggested men and women were equal; a big no-no for the Church leaders who were all men. Other books which talk of jesus as a man rather than mentioning divinity were also discounted.
We all know that humans have flaws which is why it amazes me that people can accept the bible wholeheartedly (or any religious text for that matter) when the decision of what to include in the final text lay solely in the hands of a small group of men. Respect to you for having read some of the other texts.
