What do you know about the gnostic gospels?Why where their copies destroyed? Why are they such a thread?

Answer 1

its a shame that many were destroyed and covered up throughout history.

We could have learned so much about the history and culture of the groups that wrote them and what they believed.

Just because these documents contradicted the beliefs of others should not mean they should have been destroyed.

hopefully we have learned from such mistakes.

Answer 2

For some reasons (mostly speculative), the church hated and killed many Gnostics. However, many of the Gnostic gospels did survive after all and were discovered only within the last few centuries. The modern-day Essenes practice according to Gnostic gospels.

Generally, the Gnostic (true) Jesus spoke of the following that were stripped from the church:
-Vegetarianism
-Reincarnation (in more than just this world)
-Male and female aspects of God
-Mysticism
-Meditation
-Naturalism
-Rejection of war

Man's sinful nature caused such things to be rejected. The crusades should never have happened, and probably would not have had the Essene gospels been kept in use. However, even Yeshua (Jesus) foretold of the loss of his testaments--as well as their eventual rediscovery.

He also did reject the so-called "rapture," which can actually be found out about in Revelation. Many of the events of Revelation are interesting, for there are certain overtones that come from ancient Pagan tales of the world's end.

Answer 3

Well, first of all, of my knowledge at least, the gnostic gospels were not destroyed, they were rather excluded from the Canon. There are various kind of books known as gnostis or apocrypha, a great part of them describe the life and teachings of Christ and the early Christians did not included them in the Canon because they included information which could give place to a lot of doubts and misinterpretations. The early Christians choose only four books out of the 12 because only for those four they felt because the rest, thought they were accurate, they were written in such a way that they could lead to misunderstandings.
The gnostic gospels are:
Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Truth and Gospel of Philip, recognised by Catholic Christians
First and Second Book of Clement, Pastor of Hermas and Didache, recognised only by Orthodox
Also Ortodox recognise as gnostic books the Epistle of Barnabas, the Third Epistle to the Corinthians, the Apocalypse of Peter and Book of Enoch (the latter is the only one refered to the Old Testament).
I do not believe they are considered thread, on the contrary, Orthodox use them and quote them, but they still would not trust a not so well informed Christian to use them, as misinterpretations because of ignorance are very common.
You might about the so called Gospel of Mary or the Gospel of Judas: the DaVinci Code book was refered to them, but these books have been discovered the latter years, there origin is unknown and there are most probably heretical
I hope you ll find this info useful

Answer 4

It is interesting to note that the process of the creation of the New Testament made it far more likely to exclude authentic Scripture than to include false writings.

The long process insured a healthy debate from many different perspectives. Yet majority of the books of the New Testament enjoyed sustained and overwhelming support for inclusion.

Bruce Metzger describes this process saying: In the most basic sense neither individuals nor councils created the canon:instead they came to perceive and acknowledge the self-authenticating quality of these writings, which imposed themselves as canonical upon the church" Merrill C. Tenney agrees saying " The church did not determine the canon; it recognized the canon."

The New Testament has very strong chain of tradition surrounding its authorship by eyewitness of those who wrote down what the eyewitnesses reported. The books that are not included in the New Testament, useful though some may be, have no place in the canon given the criteria for inclusion. Thus the Bible was written by people who could reliably document the events they recorded.

I do not see ANY "such a thread". Agnostic gospels excluded themselves, apocryphal gospels and their credentials will prove that no one excluded them from the Bible.

Answer 5

They were the losers of a power struggle in the early church. There is as much evidence to support each gnostic gospel's claim to be true as there is the 4 traditional gospels. Its just that the followers of the 4 traditional gospels won this battle. The last thing the catholic or any other church needs is for the old divisions to become apparent, because it could do considerable damage to the authority of their version of the bible if these others were widely publicised.

Answer 6

They are a threat to organized religion becauser they quote Jesus talking about having a personal relationship with God, and against organized religion. You can see a few hints of this in the "regular gospels", like when Jesus is quoted by Matthew saying that people who pray in public are hypocrites. If people follow what the gnostics said, no one would go to or give money to the churches.
To me, the gnotics make more sense.

Answer 7

They threatened the status quo. I understand that it was a set of religious beliefs that the God of the old testament was evil and that the God of Jesus Christ was better, new and improved. They preached about a hidden knowledge that only a select group would receive as necessary for salvation. The powers that were did not take too kindly to them.

Answer 8

They were destroyed because they contradicted the views the early church espoused. Things like the Trinity and Jesus' divinity were hotly debated and often led to violent in the church's early history.

Answer 9

they were written by pagans disguised as "christians" who never even met jesus christ about 200-300 years after jesus died. they contain many historical errors and they teach salvation by gaining "secret spiritual knowledge" instead of by Jesus' work on the cross. the 4 christian gospels were written within 50 years of Jesus' death by his 2 apostles and 2 friends of the apostles.

Answer 10

Think Rushdie's "SATANIC VERSES" - only earlier.