2007-10-23 05:36:00 · 27 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
The Gospel of Thomas is a New Testament-era apocryphon completely preserved in a papyrus Coptic manuscript discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Egypt. The Biblical canon was constituted circa 367. The Gospel of Thomas was discovered about 1578 years later: that's why it's not included in the Biblical canon. And even if this book was not unknown in the 4th century, it may have been excluded from the canon of the New Testament because it didn't correspond to the orthodoxy.
2007-10-23 05:39:52 · answer #1 · answered by NoName 3 · 9⤊ 0⤋
Is Opinionated for real? Has she not ever heard of the Council of Nicea, that men chose what was to go into the Bible or not? The Bible was written by men, and what went into the final edition was decided by men. Not some God creature deciding, but men deciding what books were better at supporting their cause of expanding their religion and therefore their revenue and power. Religion is all about money and power, nothing more.
In regards to the Book of Thomas not getting into the Bible, that is because the Book of Thomas depicts Jesus for what he was, just a human. Not some God or anything like that. So to exclude the Book of Thomas was very necessary in order to have Jesus appear to be the Son of God, and therefore a supreme being. In order to gain more converts into Christianity, they needed an ace up their sleeve and that was having their God having actually walked on the planet and having some "first hand" accounts of his miracles. So you could not have a first hand account which only viewed him for what he was (if he existed at all) and that was human. Hence the exclusion of the Book of Thomas. The Christians are a very interesting bunch, since they are so willing to look the other way and act like children and ignore evidence. They do not need evidence for anything or logic, just faith. Seems really silly to me to exclude anything, include it all and let people decide. But then again that would destroy their religion and therefore their revenue stream and power.
And for those people stating that the Book of Thomas was written by someone besides Thomas, what of the other books? Do you really think that simple fishermen could read or write at that time? Not at all. All of the Books in the Bible were written well after Jesus died, which means that those Books would also have been written well after. Jesus died in his thirties (supposedly 32 CE).
This is the supposed guessing of the dates when the books were written:
Matthew = Matthew - A.D. 55 (23 years after)
Mark = John Mark - A.D. 50 (18 years after)
Luke = Luke - A.D. 60 (28 years after)
John = John - A.D. 90 (58 years after)
- Come on, remembering some event after 18 years minimum and being able to quote exactly what Jesus supposedly said, word for word. If the disciples were born the same year as Jesus, most would have been dead by that point. People must remember that they did not live as long as we do today. That a man at 60 was extremely old back then. Please see the light.
2007-10-23 05:48:08 · answer #2 · answered by corona001500 3 · 4⤊ 1⤋
In the early days of Christianity, the first 400 years or so, there was no New Testament. There were only various writings. There were many different groups of early Christians who believed a wide variety of different things. A major disagreement between was whether Jesus was a god, a man, or both.
The group that finally won out was the one founded by Paul, which explains why Paul's writings, and the story of Paul in Acts, figure so largely in the New Testament. This was the group that the Roman emperor Constantine allowed to select the documents to go into the canon, the New Testament.
After that, books and documents that didn't fit the Pauline view were systematically destroyed, and early church fathers wrote about them as being heretical. In fact all of what we know about many of these books are the critical reviews they received from early Pauline writers.
Just after WWII, a cache of old books was discovered near the town of Nag Hamadi in Egypt. These books are collectively called the Nag Hamadi Library. Many of the books are Gnostic, belonging to a mystical sect of early Christians. The Gospel of Thomas is one of these. Unlike the gospels of the canon, it is simply a list of the things Jesus said. Some of them are the same as reported in the New Testament, some are different. There are 114 sayings.
The book begins: "These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymus Judas Thomas wrote down. And he said, 'Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death.'" This is considered a statement of Gnosticism since they believed in 'gnosis', meaning 'knowledge'.
Gnostics believed things very different from Christianity today, for instance that there wasn't just one God, and that some people were descended from deities.
2007-10-23 05:51:58 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 0⤋
In my opinion it is suppressed because, if taken literally, it would counter some very old interpretations of the Bible.
For instance:
"If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you."
"Jesus said, "I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."
"Whoever does not hate [father] and mother as I do cannot be my [disciple], and whoever does [not] love [father and] mother as I do cannot be my [disciple]. For my mother [...], but my true [mother] gave me life."
"His disciples said to him, "When will the kingdom come?"
"It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, 'Look, here!' or 'Look, there!' Rather, the Father's kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don't see it."
Keep in mind that Thomas directly quotes Jesus unlike other books of the Bible that were passed down for generations before being recorded.
Jesus seems to encourage the development of one's spiritual knowledge through personal development and independent thought. How could a church control it's congregation if people are encouraged to seek inside themselves for knowledge?
2007-10-23 06:08:50 · answer #4 · answered by Peace Yo 4 · 3⤊ 0⤋
It is one of the Gnostic gospels of early Christianity. The Gnostic gospels were very active in the Christian world until about 325 C.E. when the Council of Nicea held a gathering of bishops for the purposes of assembling the "true" gospels from the "false" ones. The Gospel of Thomas was one of the ones branded as false and anyone who believed in it was considered a heretic. The "true" gospels were assembled into the New Testament.
All of the Gnostic gospels were hunted down and systematically destroyed, or so history thought. In 1896, the Gospel of Mary Magdala was found in Cairo, but the big prize was the find at Nag Hammadi in 1945 when several gospels, including Thomas', were rediscovered. They are now all available for anyone to read.
The reason the Gnstic gospels were left out is not hard to imagine. They tended to reject an anthority based church (like the Catholic and Orthodox) and saw the path to salvation as one of wisdom. They felt one's link to God was direct and personal, and most did not needed any church acting as intermediary. They also deemphasized redemption from sin (a non-issue for most Gnostics) and emphasized that ignorance was the real sin and that enlightment brought you closer to God.
There are several books out there on Gnostic Christianity and it is a whole course of study in itself, but what I have tried to give you here is a very brief overview and believe me, I have left a lot out.
Hope all that helps.
2007-10-23 05:48:58 · answer #5 · answered by Bookworm 4 · 7⤊ 0⤋
The Gospel according to Thomas, Mary Magdalene. Peter, Judas, Phillip, and others, where not put into the bible because they contain no direct quotes from Jesus, just as the other books of the NT. Those books that were included in the NT had the name of Jesus only, the Words therein are the words of the writer not of Jesus.
The 4 Gospels and the Book of Revelation are the only 5 books in the entire bible that are made up of mostly direct quotes from Jesus. The old KJV highlighted these direct quotes in red.
The Gospel according to Judas and of Mary Magdalene tell a completely different story than that of the Gospel of Peter,
You need to read the Gospel of Peter, actually you need to read the 4 Gospels, because it is obvious you have only read bits and pieces.
2007-10-23 05:55:09 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 3⤋
It wasn't included because it didn't fit in with what the Church Fathers wanted the official message to be. It was probably not written by the disciple Thomas, but rather written in a part of the world where Thomas spead the gospel.
It's a collection of Jesus' sayings, with no stories included. It's believed to be written about 80-120 AD, and that the early church ordered that all copies be destroyed (as they were believed to be "gnostic" and heretical). A copy was hidden in the Nag Hammadi desert, and discovered in 1948.
It's a great read, with a lot of inspiring and thought-provoking ideas.
2007-10-23 05:44:44 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 6⤊ 2⤋
Maybe because the Bible is already full of too many contridictions. Or maybe it was lost like the rest of the 25 Commandments.
2007-10-23 05:49:05 · answer #8 · answered by 2 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
There was a lot of books that could have been put in the bible but wasn't chosen for one reason or the other.That is a very good question you asked and deserves futher research. May God Bless You.
2007-10-23 05:51:13 · answer #9 · answered by preacher 5 · 0⤊ 2⤋
All the books of the New Testaments were written within 100 years of the death of Prophet Jesus; Thomas was written long afterwards and doesn't convey the same messages of the other books. Thomas is Gnostic.
2007-10-23 05:46:27 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 4⤋