Gnostic Gospels

marlowe007 · Aug 27, 2009

Nickolai said:
However, those who wrote them, The Gnostics, were condemned by St. Paul.

This fact has never been an obstacle for the Gnostic sympathisers. For example, according to Elaine Pagels, the Apostle Paul was actually a Gnostic himself and the anti-Gnostic Pastoral Epistles were "pseudo-Pauline" forgeries written by the corrupt and ambitious Church prelates who wanted to conceal Paul's Gnosticism.

I would not say that Gnostics who uphold the divinity of Christ are somehow "non-Christians." But they do have an obnoxious inclination to knife-up scripture and remake the Bible to suit their own needs, rather like Marcion.

plmarquette · Nov 2, 2009

apocrypha 15 books translated with vulgate, 7 of the 15 in the catholic old testament [deuterocanocals works of a lesser nature]...Judith, tobit, 1,2 macabees; Wisdom, Sirach , Song of the Hebrew children, bel and the dragon....

pseudopigraha gnostic texts, "science fiction", fiction, fantasy...

marlowe007 · Nov 7, 2009

It's fair to say that most Gnostic principles are contained in the New Testament. The only thing that separates the Orthodox and Gnostic interpretations is that Gnostics read between the lines and apply Jesus' parables to Spiritual essence and not to Ego-creature...

Christos Anesti · Nov 9, 2009

Certain heretical sects and teaching are often categorized under the term "Gnostic" (or rather "Gnostic's FALSELY so called") but the Fathers did not mean to imply by this that there is not a TRUE Christian gnosis .

Harry3142 · Nov 9, 2009

If this has been posted earlier on this thread, I apologize. If not, this site will help identify what those circa 170 A.D. saw as canonical books of The New Testament: www.bible-researcher.com/muratorian.html

lenpettis74 · Nov 9, 2009

marlowe007 said:
It's fair to say that most Gnostic principles are contained in the New Testament. The only thing that separates the Orthodox and Gnostic interpretations is that Gnostics read between the lines and apply Jesus' parables to Spiritual essence and not to Ego-creature...

RUBBISH!!!

If your goal is to embarrass yourself by demonstrating the pinnacle of absurdity, congratulations on a job well done!!!

stray bullet · Nov 15, 2009

lenpettis74 said:
RUBBISH!!!

If your goal is to embarrass yourself by demonstrating the pinnacle of absurdity, congratulations on a job well done!!!

What is rubbish about it?

marlowe007 · Nov 29, 2009

A. believer said:
Yes, the New Age movement borrows from ancient Gnosticism. Hence, the current interest in the Gnostic "gospels."

The sayings ripped from the Gospel of Thomas are in my opinion too intelligent and insightful to have been fabricated; the debased new-age world fails to come close to resonating with those words. By the way, I have a keen disliking of the new-age crowds draped in robes seeking the glamour of Eastern spirituality, and I do not favour the material from Thomas over the canonical Gospels in the slightest. However, upon my knowledge of the mysticism spoken by those who lived and breathed the NT Gospels, the sayings in Thomas fit perfectly within that heritage, and are a million light years beyond the ken of the average new-age goo-goo mystic.

wayseer · Nov 30, 2009

lenpettis74 said:
RUBBISH!!!

If your goal is to embarrass yourself by demonstrating the pinnacle of absurdity, congratulations on a job well done!!!

Perhaps you embarrass yourself - the Gospel of John is generally recognised a Gnostic Gospel.

Epiphoskei · Dec 6, 2009

wayseer said:
Perhaps you embarrass yourself - the Gospel of John is generally recognised a Gnostic Gospel.

The Gospel of John is universally recognized as written by the author of I John, who in short order declares all Gnostics damned.

We have two sets of Gospels. Those which are Jewish in thought, and those which are Greek. Which ones were written by the Jewish followers of Christ, and which ones represent the infusion of foreign philosophies into a preexisting belief system? It's not rocket science. The only hard part in studying Gnostic gospels is figuring out why so many people are under the mistaken understanding that Gnostophiles like Pagels, et. al., are unbiased scholars who produce reasonable or mainstream scholarship.

Jeffwhosoever · Dec 12, 2009

As I understand it, gnosticism is the belief that Jesus came in Spirit only and not in the flesh, and John emphasizes many times that all teachings that deny Jesus came in the flesh is heresy.

marlowe007 · Dec 12, 2009

Jeffwhosoever said:
As I understand it, gnosticism is the belief that Jesus came in Spirit only and not in the flesh, and John emphasizes many times that all teachings that deny Jesus came in the flesh is heresy.

John associates docetism - not gnosticism - with the antichrist.

Docetism often turns up in gnosticism, but they're not the same thing.

Epiphoskei · Dec 12, 2009

I John condemns both Docetism and Cerinthianism, and one of those two is absolutely necessary for the Gnostic belief system, being that they believe matter is inherently evil, and must avoid a corporeal Christ at all costs.

dayhiker · Dec 17, 2009

I've enjoyed studing the Gnostic writings. Their world view seems pretty strange to us today. But then the patrearchal world view is quite foriegn to how I prefer to live my life. WOmen being equal and all that.

The thing that I've found most interesting about the Gnostic writings is how they try to deal with the problem of evil. They wanted to seperate God from the evil in this world. Well, that can't be done. Most Christians today that I talk to try to take God's by saying created a perfect world and we disobeyed. That is true but I don't think that gets God off the hook. God knew all the evil that men would do to each other before he created the world, yet he went ahead with this creation anyways.

So I think we have as big of a problem with evil and how we deal with it today as the Gnostics did.

dayhiker

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