What if Jesus is not who the early Church said he was?

Question

I'm sure that some of you know that there was a systematic massacre of an earth-based religion called the Gnostics. They possessed certain documents that would have unseated what the Church had built around Jesus and the Bible. If the early Church didn't have anything to hide then why did they massacre a people and destroy the documents. You can find this in a book called 'Not In His Image' and no this is not written by an atheist. What if everything that has been written about is only half of the information available about Jesus? I am asking this in the spirit of inquiry and not condemnation. Thank you for your thoughts. Blessings to everyone.

If the thumbs down fairy makes a visit please know it's not from me.

hasse: you contradicted yourself. At any rate, as far as I can tell it's easier for people to kill to cover the truth or bury it or defend their own lie.

Jocko: this is a historical book about the Gnostics written by a historian in the last year.

Thanks U.P. I only have a book but no links:) If anyone cares to check out Universal Pants link then feel free to do so. Most of what is written about Gnosticism comes from anti-gnostic texts. How is that an accurate basis for scholarly writing?

Thanks, everyone for sharing your thoughts with me today. It is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Yes indeedy, and What about the Essenes? Jesus specifically told them (us) to pray to both our Father in Heaven, and our Spiritual Mother. The early church, was quick to reject and try to destroy copies of the Gospel of the Essenes. And, What about the "church" for the last two thousand years hiding the original meaning of the word "blessed" which did not mean happy or worldly fortunate. I discovered it in some Greek Philosophy books, and only recently has the Catholic Church, their research department , admitted to the original meaning at the time Jesus used the word. -- sorry for rambling (((hugs)))

Answer 2

People have made many attempts to show that the Church has corrupted the early texts in order to play up Jesus as the Messiah. There are several problems with this approach.

1. Surely the early church would have made its adherents more heroic. Instead, we have Jesus' followers not understanding Him, doubting Him, even fleeing from Him when He was taken.

2. We have a male-centric community made into a laughing-stock as Christ appears to Mary, and the women believe Jesus more than the apostles.

3. We have the foolish words of Jesus' disciples intact. Peter's denial if Jesus is there. Why would the early church want to preserve his story? We have the disciples words for when they wanted to rain fire down on a city. We have disciples who argued among themselves who would be greatest in the kingdom. Why are these words still there?

4. If Jesus did not indeed die on the cross and rise again, why did the disciples not produce the body? 11 of the disciples died cruel deaths (crucified upside down; limbs ties to separate horses and pulled apart.; beheaded; tied up to the back of a horse and dragged to death on the streets). All of this could have been avoided if they had recanted and told the torturers where they hid the body. But the body was nowhere to be found. Jesus had risen from the dead and will give eternal life and an inheritance untold to those who would persist in faith to the end.

Sorry, books with theories like these you read will come and go. These books also do not consider the more than 100 prophecies that were literally fulfilled by the birth, life, and death of Jesus, nor do they account for the many passages that have come true in the past several decades and even in our times in preparation for Christ's second coming.

Answer 3

The Gnostic beliefs survive today. I am vaugely familiar with some of the Gnostic Gospels such as Philip and Mary Magledene. There are some interesting writings that don't completely agree with cannonized Bibles. There also seems to be an equality of gender which does not appear in some forms of Christianity.

Answer 4

Somebody has been feeding you bad information. There was no systematic massacre of Gnostics, and they were about as far from earth-based as you can get. In fact, they were decidedly anti-earth-based.

As for the early systematic massacre of Gnostics, I don't even know where to begin. My mother always said, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." But I seriously recommend that you invest in some history books. Or some books on Gnosticism, for that matter.

Answer 5

I assume that Early Church was too busy trying to survive leaving it without time to massacre anyone else.
Think of Christianity in terms of combining two cultures Greek and Jewish. Incompatible ideas have to be dropped. The Jewish Christians 'lost' their Levitical law. The Greek Christians 'lost' their Gnosis. The Christians held onto the important Stuff that can be linked to the Old Testament.
As you can see I am biased but I think this is a very good question and I hope you get some good answers.

Answer 6

Well I believe that their was lots of things hidden about Jesus that the church did not want poeple to know. If their was nothing that threatened their beliefs then the Gnostics and the books that they had would not have been destroyed. The only time that things are destroyed are when they threaten others. So I believe that their is a lot of stuff we should know that we don't because it has been hidden from us.

Answer 7

I am a Religious Historian and Biblical Scholar with specialized focus in Early Christianity. Christianity, by the end of the first century, had eight groups with entirely different theological viewpoints. They all claimed similar authenticity, though. What we saw emerge in Roman Catholicism represents just one of those eight different groups and theological viewpoints of what Jesus represented. In all honesty, any one of these eight viewpoints, including Gnosticism, could be the correct one and the others could be wrong. The reason why Rome won is because it was the largest army on Earth and declared war in 392 CE on all of the other forms of Christianity. A great book covering first and second generation Christianity, even though it is a complex read requiring a lot of focus, is John Dominic Crossan's, "The Birth of Christianity."

Answer 8

First off... here's a link to support your statement that the early church killed the Gnostics as best they could...

http://www.rotten.com/library/religion/gnosticism/

Now... The Gnostics predated Christianity, and incorporated christian philosophies into their own. Why on earth would Christians not adopt that as some historical evidence of Christ's existence... hmmmm.... clearly what they wrote about Christ did not suit the early Christian or current Christian agenda.

Answer 9

the gnostic gospels were written after the "big 4"

i don't think the gnostics were earth-based, i thought that they believe we were a divine spark trapped in an earthly body (or at least Jesus was)


lost.eu/21618

Answer 10

When I was watching the Gospel of Judas documentary last year I heard the Jesus character laugh. It was not the laugh of a meek and humble man, but a man arrogant and prideful.

Is that who the Gnostics claim Jesus was?