Gnostic Gospels?

Question

I'm not sure if I am spelling this right but what are the Gnostic Gospels?

Answer 1

Early writings not included in the Bible

Writings of creative and redemptive mythology, including Gnostic alternative versions of creation and salvation: The Apocryphon of John; The Hypostasis of the Archons; On the Origin of the World; The Apocalypse of Adam; The Paraphrase of Shem. (For an in-depth discussion of these, see the Archive commentary on Genesis and Gnosis.)

Observations and commentaries on diverse Gnostic themes, such as the nature of reality, the nature of the soul, the relationship of the soul to the world: The Gospel of Truth; The Treatise on the Resurrection; The Tripartite Tractate; Eugnostos the Blessed; The Second Treatise of the Great Seth; The Teachings of Silvanus; The Testimony of Truth.

Liturgical and initiatory texts: The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth; The Prayer of Thanksgiving; A Valentinian Exposition; The Three Steles of Seth; The Prayer of the Apostle Paul. (The Gospel of Philip, listed under the sixth category below, has great relevance here also, for it is in effect a treatise on Gnostic sacramental theology).

Writings dealing primarily with the feminine deific and spiritual principle, particularly with the Divine Sophia: The Thunder, Perfect Mind; The Thought of Norea; The Sophia of Jesus Christ; The Exegesis on the Soul.

Writings pertaining to the lives and experiences of some of the apostles: The Apocalypse of Peter; The Letter of Peter to Philip; The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles; The (First) Apocalypse of James; The (Second) Apocalypse of James, The Apocalypse of Paul.

Scriptures which contain sayings of Jesus as well as descriptions of incidents in His life: The Dialogue of the Saviour; The Book of Thomas the Contender; The Apocryphon of James; The Gospel of Philip; The Gospel of Thomas.

This leaves a small number of scriptures of the Nag Hammadi Library which may be called "unclassifiable." It also must be kept in mind that the passage of time and translation into languages very different from the original have rendered many of these scriptures abstruse in style. Some of them are difficult reading, especially for those readers not familiar with Gnostic imagery, nomenclature and the like. Lacunae are also present in most of these scriptures -- in a few of the texts extensive sections have been lost due to age and deterioration of the manuscripts. The most readily comprehensible of the Nag Hammadi scriptures is undoubtedly The Gospel of Thomas, with The Gospel of Philip and the The Gospel of Truth as close seconds in order of easy comprehension. (These texts were all also thankfully very well preserved and have few lacunae.) There are various translations of most of these scriptures available; the most complete being the one volume collection The Nag Hammadi Library in English, edited by James Robinson, from which the translations presented here are principally quoted.

Answer 2

Do the lost books of the Bible prove that the Bible has been altered?



There is much talk these days about lost books of the Bible. Sometimes people claim that the Bible was edited to take out reincarnation, or the teaching of higher planes of existence, or different gods, or ancestor worship, or "at-one-ment" with nature, anything that disagreed with what the people in power didn't like. But, none of this is true. The "lost books" were never lost. These so called lost books were already known by the Jews and the Christians and were not considered inspired. They weren't lost nor were they removed from the Bible because they were never in the Bible to begin with.
These so called lost books were not included in the Bible for several reasons. They lacked apostolic or prophetic authorship; they did not claim to be the Word of God; they contain unbiblical concepts such as prayer for the dead in 2 Macc. 12:45-46; or have some serious historical inaccuracies. These books were never authoritative, inspired, or authentically written by either the Jewish Prophets or the Christian Apostles.
Nevertheless, in spite of these problems the Roman Catholic church has added certain books to the canon of scripture. In 1546, largely due in response to the Reformation, the Roman Catholic church authorized several more books as scripture known as the apocrypha. The word apocrypha means hidden. It is used in a general sense to describe a list of books written by Jews between 300 and 100 B.C. More specifically, it is used of the 7 additional books accepted by the Catholic church as being inspired. The entire list of books of the apocrypha are: 1 and 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the Rest of Esther, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, (also titled Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah, Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, The Additions to Daniel, The Prayer of Manasseh, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. The books accepted as inspired and included in the Catholic Bible are Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees Wisdom of Solomon Sirach (also known as Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch
The Pseudepigraphal books are "false writings." They are a collection of early Jewish and "Christian" writings composed between 200 BC and AD 200. However, they too were known and were never considered scripture. A list of these would be the Epistle of Barnabas, the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, the Second Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, the The letter of the Smyrnaeans or the Martyrdom of Polycarp, the The Shepherd of Hermas, the The Book of Enoch, the Gospel of Thomas (140-170 AD), the The Psalms of Solomon, the The Odes of Solomon, the The Testaments of the twelve Patriarchs, the Second Baruch, the Third Baruch, the The Books of Adam and Eve.
The Deuterocanonical (apocrypha) books are those books that were included in the Greek Septuagint (LXX) but not included in the Hebrew Bible. The recognized deuterocanonical books are 1 Esdras (150-100 BC), 2 Esdras (100 AD), Tobit (200 BC), Judith (150 BC), the Additions to Esther (140-130 BC), the Wisdom of Solomon (30 BC), Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) (132 BC), Barach (150-50 BC), the Letter of Jeremiah (300-100 BC), the Susanna (200-0 BC), Bel and the Dragon (100 BC), the Additions to Daniel (Prayer of Azariah (200-0 BC), the Prayer of Manassesh (100-0 BC), 1 Maccabees (110 BC), and 2 Maccabees (110-170 BC).1
These pseudepigraphal and deuterocanonical books were never considered scripture by the Christian church because they were not authoritative, inspired, written by either Prophets or Apostles, nor do they have the power of the word of the books of the existing Bible. Therefore, since the books are not lost and were never part of the Bible to begin with, they have no bearing on the validity of the Bible.

Answer 3

Gnosticism was a dualistic religion from around the 1st century. A gospel is (in this context) a written account of Christ's life. The gnostics had their own version of Christ's life.

Answer 4

2nd century and later books often attributed to prominent figures in the early church written to support gnosticism, a belief that people had special revelations/knowledge, usually an idea that the body and spirit are separate so the actions of the body cannot affect the spirit.
There were no gnostics in the first century, so scriptures thought to oppose them were in fact dealing with predecessors to their philosophy. These gospels relate many mystic claims about Jesus' ministry and childhood.

Check out http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/

Answer 5

Gnostics were a different sect of early Christians who beleived in a philosophy similar to Buddhism and others. They hated the flesh and beleived this world was not meant to be enjoyed at all. Apostle Paul mentioned philosophers such as these and the Epicureans who were the exact opposite, lovers of physical pleasures. True Christianity teaches balance. Jesus himself enjoyed fellowship, drinking wine with his food, and even wore very nice linens that Roman soldiers gambled over. The gnostic gospels are writings such as the gospel of Judas which makes him out to be a hero and a true servant . They rely heavily on mysticism and do not agree with the books of the bible.

Answer 6

Gnosticism was a way of thinking about things, a form of "theology". Some 200 years after Christ and the Apostles, the gnostics wrote books putting their "spin" on Christianity.

The Gnostic Gospels are a class of writings about the life of Jesus which are associated with the early mystical trend of Gnostic Christianity. They are not accepted by mainstream Christianity as authentic, and are therefore declared heresy and not included in the standard Biblical canon. Rather, they are part of the so-called New Testament apocrypha.

The Gnostics were named after the term "Gnosis", a Greek word for knowledge. Gnostic philosophy and religious movements began in pre-Christian times. After the Crucifixion, the name "Christian Gnostics" came to represent a specific section of the Christian community who believed that the path to spirituality was not by simply worshiping Christ, but in each person gaining knowledge and insight of the spiritual nature within themselves, thus gaining a spiritual enlightenment. This community blends the teachings of Jesus Christ with a variety of other beliefs.

The documents known as the Gnostic Gospels were not discovered as a complete book, but rather through a number of various finds. The Nag Hammadi Library was discovered accidentally by two farmers in December of 1945 and was named for the area in Egypt where it was discovered. Other documents are also included in what are now known as the "Gnostic Gospels", but were found at different times or in different locations, such as the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which was recovered in 1896 as part of the Akhmim Codex and published in 1955. Some documents were duplicated in different finds, and for others, such as the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, only one copy is currently known to exist.

Though there are many documents that could probably be referred to as Gnostic Gospels, the term most commonly refers to one or more of the following:

Gospel of Thomas (versions found in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt in 1898, and again in the Nag Hammadi Library)
Gospel of Mary Magdalene (recovered in 1896)
Gospel of Judas (recovered via the antiquities black market in 1983, and then reconstructed in 2006)
Book of Thomas the Contender
Gospel of Philip (Nag Hammadi Library)
Gospel of Sophia (Nag Hammadi Library)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnostic_Gospels

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLC,GGLC:1969-53,GGLC:en&q=%22gnostic+gospels%22

Answer 7

Come and see for yourself. Its most books that the orthodoxy forbid from the 'real' books of the bible and they managed by 200 when Rome went Jesus use military to stop the texts as they by then was declared heresy and so many hundreds of years gone with only the critics wievs on them but in 1945 in NagHammadi in Egypt a big collection was found and to be read at the gnosis archive among info that will answer you question more accurate than me,

Answer 8

by way of fact they did not meet the time line and different standards for the Bible gospels. one million. there is no solid information that the gospel of Mary Magdalene replace into incredibly written via her 2. nicely, he might have 'favorited' by some potential her for her being a girl and following Him in spite of the reality that it replace into not person-friendly for women to be waiting to try this, yet God loves all the two. 3. Jealousy did not make the Gnostic gospels any further solid 4. Jesus replace into sinless, Jesus did not have any enthusiasts and He under no circumstances had intercourse, under no circumstances. 5. No, Judas had his unfastened will. Jesus only knew how he replace into going to apply it. Jesus replace into appropriate. 6. confident, Christianity is a private courting with God, not a faith. although, God made us for the community and that's the reason church has a huge function in our own courting with God. we are the physique of Christ. Church is the physique of Christ. anybody might desire to function appropriate for that physique to accomplish appropriate, meaning additionally exhibiting up for the worship. The 4 gospels are secure via God. They help the Scripture. Jesus shown the previous testomony and promised the NT.

Answer 9

They may actually be a small part of the actual teachings of Jesus that survived the efforts of the catholic church to wipe them from the face of the earth.

Some of them seem more likely to be the words of Jesus than much of the nonsense that you can read in the bible.


Love and blessings Don

Answer 10

Scrolls found in caves near the Jerusalem. That supposedly were left out of the bible