Guest wester Posted December 29, 2010 Share Posted December 29, 2010 This text was posted before in this forum, but here it is again with its own thread. ____________________________________________________________________________________ The History of the Christian Bible - The first ideological wars of Christianity. - Part 4 The Texts, The Sects and the Lost Books: The original Old Testament is a collection of texts written in Old Greek. The actual writers of these texts are not known. Although the texts contain titles synonymous with the various apostles of Jesus, the books of the New Testament could not possibly be written by any of the original apostles. Jesus, as a Jewish Palestinian, and his followers would have spoken and written the language of Aramaic (if they could in fact write). No original Biblical apostolic Aramaic texts have ever been discovered. The original apostles of Jesus were not scribes, historians or scholars - they were of the common people of Palestine, and they would not have been able to write Greek. Therefore, the stories contained within the New Testament likely would have been spoken and carried through the oral tradition for several decades after the death of Jesus, until these stories were translated and transcribed into Greek. However, this remains speculation and to this day the actual writers, translators and transcribers of the Greek text of the most influential books in the history of Western civilization remain unknown. According to Bart Ehrman, Professor of Religious Studies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “The books were written decades after Jesus’ death. They weren’t considered scripture for a long time after that, and they weren’t collected into a cannon for a long time after that. The stories in the Gospels were handed down by word of mouth and not written down until thirty-five to sixty-five years after Jesus’ death. Scholars are fairly unanimous that the gospels were written some decades after Jesus’ death: Mark, AD 65–70; Matthew and Luke, AD 80–85; and John, AD 90–95.” Many diverse Cristian sects existed from 0 -100 AD. Each sect claimed to be orthodox. Each sect had a collection of texts that they used to back up their claims. Some early Christians believed there were 2 Gods. Some believed there were 30 Gods. Some said the world was created by an evil deity. Some said Jesus was divine but not human. Other said that he was human and not divine. Some Christians said that Jesus’ death was for the salvation of the world, others said that Jesus’ death had nothing to do with the salvation of the world (Gospel of Thomas) . Others said that Jesus never actually died. They all said that what they taught was what Jesus taught and they had books that could prove it. We’ll look at three Christian groups: The Ebionites, The Marcionites, and The Gnostics. ____________________ The Ebionites (circa 100-200 A.D.) were Jewish Christians. They were Monotheists. They said that any follower of Jesus had to be Jewish and keep Jewish law. They taught that Jesus was not born of a virgin, he did not exist before his birth. Joseph was the father of Jesus. They believed Jesus was a human but not divine. Why didn’t they read the New Testament to find out that they were wrong? Because the New Testament didn’t exist. They used a Gospel - like Matthew, but they did not use the first two chapters describing a virgin birth. _______________ The Marcionites (circa 100-200 A.D.) were followers of Marcion who wrote a book called “Antithesis”. They believed that a Christian is a Christian not by following Jewish law, but by faith. They said there were two separate Gods. One of the Old testament, another of the New Testament. Jesus came to save people from the harsh, wrathful God of the old testament. They believed that Jesus did not belong to the creator God, because he came from another God. They believed Jesus was a God and was not a human, he just seemed to be a human. They had books that authorized their view. The Marcionites were anti-Jewish Christians. They claimed Paul as their ultimate authority. _______________ The Gnostics believed that the world is an evil material place inhabited by evil material spirits. This world could only be transcended by the spirit through special correct knowledge. Gnosis = Greek for “Knowledge” The Gnostics believed that there were three types of people: 1. Some are like animals. When they die that’s the end. 2. Some people can have an afterlife, like normal Christians. 3. Then there are the elite Christians - or Gnostics - These people had a pre-existence. Now they are trapped in their body. When they acquire the correct gnosis they can return to heaven from which they came. How were spirits trapped in this world? One Gnostic myth says God emanated 8, 10, and 12 divine beings - each one came into existence in pairs. Sophia (wisdom) was the top divine being. She wanted to understand everything and she could not so she fell from the divine realm. She fell without her partner, and her fall created and precipitated the God of this Universe. The God of this universe created the material world as a prison for Sophia. Her spirit was divided into millions of pieces and trapped in this world. Some humans therefore have a spark of this divinity within them. The spark of Sophia is always longing to be set free. Her spark can be set free when people know themselves and how they came to be in this world and how they can return from where they came. Gnostics give knowledge of the truth of one’s real being. How can somebody get this knowledge? It can’t be found through sense experience or thinking about this world. Knowledge can only be found if a figure from the divine realm comes down and reveals the secret knowledge. In the Gnostic system, Jesus is a divine being who comes down from the divine realm to reveal the knowledge that is necessary for salvation. When you learn the knowledge, then you can be set free. Gnositcs didn’t accept the literal interpretation of the scriptures. They believed one needs to go below the literal words if one is to get the true meaning of scriptures. They also believed in 30 divine beings or Gods who lived in the divine realm (8+10+12). _______________________________ Each of these groups, The Ebionites, The Marcionites, and The Gnostics were Christians. Each claimed to be correct. Each group had books to support their views. Each group said that their views were the views of Jesus himself. And each of these groups ended up being declared heretical and were overruled by the group that won the struggle over what Christians should believe. The winners have been called the New Orthodox Party. So, modern Christians must understand that their theology did not come as a single revelation or divine inspiration - as we have seen, there were plenty of revelations and inspirations to go around. The fact is that the modern incarnation of Christianity is the result of the triumph of the New Orthodox Party. _______________________________ Here is some interesting information about the texts that didn’t make the final cut into the New Testament: In 1945, in Nag Hamadi, Egypt, 45 early Christian texts were found including: The Gospel of Phillip The Gospel of Thomas The Gospel of Truth The Gnostic Myths The Secret Book of John The Origin of the Worlds In the 1800s - a French team of archaeologists working in Achmim, Egypt discovered the tomb of an 8th century monk which contained: The Gospel of Mary (the only gospel written by a woman) The Gospel of Peter Also discovered in the early 1800s was a list of books called The Muratorian Canon. This list was used by some Christians as “The New Testament” circa 100 A.D. It accepted 22 of the current 27 books. It did not include: Hebrews James 1,2 peter 3 john But it did accept The Apocalypse of Peter The Wisdom of Solomon The Apocalypse of Peter was written c. 100s A.D. In this book, Jesus gives Peter a tour of Heaven and Hell. A precursor to Dante’s Divine Comedy! __________________ So when was the New Testament canon finalized? Drum roll please…. The first Christian of record to recommend the 27 books used today in the New Testament was the Bishop of Alexandria (Egypt) named Athanasius in the year 367 AD. That was ~330 years after Jesus. His letter didn’t finalize the matter by any means. Debates and power struggles raged on for years after. In the 400s A.D., the 27 books were more or less agreed upon as Christianity became the official religion of Rome. However they were never ratified or finalized. Martin Luther made an attempt to remove the books of Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation from the canon. The New Testament was finally decided and ratified by the Roman Catholic Church at the council of Trent in 1546. When people think about the ‘ancient’ past, time-lines start to get pretty fuzzy rather quickly. Let’s make an analogy. Imagine that nobody made a written record of the American revolution circa 1776. The story of this revolution was handed down through word of mouth for many decades until around 1850-1860 when the story was finally written down - not in English but in Spanish. The Spanish texts were passed around and debated. Finally, in the year 2100, it was decided which stories to use. Some stories, like Jefferson, Washington and Adams were included…while others like Patrick Henry, Aaron Burr, and the views of the slaves in South Carolina and Georgia were dropped. ____________________ Information for this post was gathered from lectures on the history of the bible by Bart Ehrman, Ph.D. of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. and also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_canon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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