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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Suppressed Gospels
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
This article and its associated links may provide some of the clues to the assertion. I got it by Googling so the usual health warnings apply.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Divine Outlaw
Gin-soaked boy
# 2252
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by A Feminine Force:
I don't think you would find we disagree.
FF
I'm sure we agree about a lot. I just get alarm bells ringing when concepts of 'authorship' are applied to the biblical books without a great deal of explanation.
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Posts: 8705 | Registered: Jan 2002
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A Feminine Force
Ship's Onager
# 7812
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Posted
I think I quoted Ehrmann at some length. Not a lot of explanation is needed because this issue is very simple. Let me sum up:
1) We know at least 3 books of the canon are not penned by the people they are attributed to.
2) We have no way of knowing for certain who wrote the rest of the books.
Conclusion: If the authority of the canon rests solely on the authenticity of its authorship, these are very shaky premises upon which to base that authority.
Conclusion: The canon's authority must come from somewhere else.
Where does it come from?
You believe authorship doesn't matter because the canon's authority comes from the fact that these writings were chosen for their quality of accurately representing the Christian experience.
I believe authorship doesn't matter because the canon's authority arises from its inspiration, which has its source in the divine.
I don't think it needs to be any more complicated than that. I used the word forgery. The emotional charge associated with this word is in the reader, not in the meaning of the word. If I had used the word pseudepigrah, the meaning is the same. Would you have objected to that?
FF
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C2C - The Cure for What Ails Ya?
Posts: 2115 | From: Kingdom of Heaven | Registered: Jul 2004
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Divine Outlaw
Gin-soaked boy
# 2252
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Posted
I'm a lot more pessimistic than you about attributing authorship. I think that, apart from the proto-Pauline letters, all material in the New Testament is either pseudonymous or anonymous. But as you say, it is the authority of the canon that matters for me, which I take to be the Church's retrospective recognition of inspiration.
What are your criteria for determining whether a text is 'inspired'?
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Divine Outlaw
Gin-soaked boy
# 2252
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Posted
Thanks. I think the 'catholic' Christian perspective is the same, only with 'us' rather than 'me', if you see what I mean.
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BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
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Posted
Actually, I think there is evidence to suggest that we can be more positive about authorship than this (see e.g. Martin Hengel 'The Four Gospels and the one Gospel of Jesus Christ'), but it is complex and doesn't boil down easily. I agree that hanging everything on authorship is a rather dodgy though. The question of authorship is about confidence in historical evidence, though, so we are talking about a sliding scale of conviction not a knockdown logical proof.
Posts: 3374 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2005
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Divine Outlaw
Gin-soaked boy
# 2252
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
Martin Hengel 'The Four Gospels and the one Gospel of Jesus Christ
Mmm. I disagree with Hengel, but that would be a tangent too far. Suffice it to say that, given we all agree that 'authentic' 'authorship' is not necessary to the value of the NT books, it seems unwise to base any arguments on it.
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ozymandias
Apprentice
# 11533
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Posted
Check out a book published most recently by Random house called "The lost books of the Bible" which shows that most of these supposidly suppressed books are infact frequently avaliable but have been forgotten because of their unreliability. Check out the gospels of Mary where we get the names Anne and Joachim or the even more bizzare Gospel of Pilate.Well worth a read because of the insight that it gives into early Christian thought.
Posts: 1 | From: Liverpool | Registered: Jun 2006
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Divine Outlaw
Gin-soaked boy
# 2252
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Posted
Are you thinking of the 'Protoevangelium of James' r.e. Anne and Joachim?
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Carys
Ship's Celticist
# 78
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Posted
Where does manuscript survival come in this? An awful lot of the material written over the last 2 millenia does not survive. What we do have often isn't selected by anyone, it just happens. For example, the earliest old Irish material is glosses on three manuscripts found on the continent (Wurzburg, San Gall and somewhere which currently escapes me). Viking raids and the like made survival in Ireland more unlikely, so it was in monasteries founded by the Irish on the continent that material survived. However, things regarded as important are more likely to be written on better quality vellum, looked after better and copied more (so often we have more Latin manuscripts than vernacular ones)
With the canonical texts there were reasons for their continued copying and preservation. The non-canonical stuff was less important presumably. I think we often forget how labourious it was to make books before the advent of the printing-press!
Carys
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O Lord, you have searched me and know me
You know when I sit and when I rise
Posts: 6896 | From: Bryste mwy na thebyg | Registered: May 2001
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BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
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Posted
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif) Carys. This says what I was trying to say in my first post on this thread - but much more comprehensibly.
Posts: 3374 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2005
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Carys:
With the canonical texts there were reasons for their continued copying and preservation. The non-canonical stuff was less important presumably. I think we often forget how labourious it was to make books before the advent of the printing-press!
Exactly. It's like the detractors of the early church are saying, "how dare they not carefully copy and preserve the books WE find interesting?"
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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MSHB
Shipmate
# 9228
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Carys:
Where does manuscript survival come in this?
Indeed. It is not like all the "orthodox" texts we want were preserved either. Where is Papias's history? And other documents quoted by Eusebius that we no longer possess? I am sure we don't have every scrap of paper written on by the apostles, either. Q?
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MSHB: Member of the Shire Hobbit Brigade
Posts: 1522 | From: Dharawal Country | Registered: Mar 2005
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
What bugs me is that there's a difference between active suppression and failure to preserve (as others have noted above), but even "active suppression" is not necessarily an Evil Thing. I mean, come on--how many of us have "actively suppressed" a Jack Chick tract by consigning it to the round file?
In my opinion, some kinds of crap belong in the same place the old Sears catalogues used to be kept. And being neither a librarian nor an archivist, I don't think I have any duty to preserve Chick tracts et al for the benefit of future generations.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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ozowen
Shipmate
# 8935
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Posted
Quoth Lamb Chopped
quote:
I don't think I have any duty to preserve Chick tracts et al for the benefit of future generations.
Aint that the truth.
I keep all my Chick tracks with my Abba collection.... ![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
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Without stupid people we would have no one to laugh at, so take time to thank a creationist for their contribution.
Posts: 2933 | From: The Never Never, Australia | Registered: Jan 2005
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Manipled Mutineer
Shipmate
# 11514
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by narnie83:
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Oh, and the terrible film 'Stigmata' with one of the Arquettes and Gabriel Byrne was all 'suppressed gospel-y' too. Jesus wrote soemthing alone the lines of 'the kingdom of God is in you.' I spent the whole film going 'but that's no different from what it says in the actual gospels you idiots...'
I think my response was on the lines of "Good heavens, I've never heard that before! Does the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
know?". But then sarcasm is one of my besetting sins.
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Collecting Catholic and Anglo-
Catholic books
Posts: 1533 | From: Glamorgan, UK | Registered: Jun 2006
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Timothy the Obscure
Mostly Friendly
# 292
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Posted
It's not something I've worried about at all (for Quakers it's mostly a non-issue, and my own position is akin to AFF's), but in the Athanasius letter Barnabas62 linked to above, he wrote:
quote:
...God-inspired scripture, concerning which we have attained to a sure persuasion, according to what the original eye-witness and ministers of the word have delivered unto our fathers...
This seems to suggest that Athanasius is claiming canonicity for those writings based on the fact that they were written by apostles who were eyewitnesses and first-generation ministers of the gospel. Am I misreading that? Has it ever been considered an important argument for canonicity?
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When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
- C. P. Snow
Posts: 6114 | From: PDX | Registered: May 2001
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Autenrieth Road
Shipmate
# 10509
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Posted
As I understand Ehrmans to say, yes, precisely. The early writings eventually made it into the canon, or not, based on belief in their authentic authorship, or not.
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Truth
Posts: 9559 | From: starlight | Registered: Oct 2005
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Steve_R
Shipmate
# 61
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:
As I understand Ehrmans to say, yes, precisely. The early writings eventually made it into the canon, or not, based on belief in their authentic authorship, or not.
According to John Drane Introducing the New Testament "The word Canon here comes from a similar Greek word meaning a measuring stick: the New Testament Canon was to be an accurate measure by which all theological and doctrinal viewpoints could be tested"
This clearly supports the view that the Canon derives its "authenticity" from its doctrine rather than its actual or purported authorship.
Also note that early canons also included:
The Revelation of Peter
Wisdom of Solomon
Excluded or dispiuted at one stage or another were:
Hebrews
James
2 Peter
Jude
2&3 John
Also considered for inclusion (but rejected):
The Shepherd of Hermas
Didache
Gospel of the Hebrews
Acts of Peter
Letter of Barnabas
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Love and Kisses, Steve_R
Posts: 990 | From: East Sussex | Registered: May 2001
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humblebum
Shipmate
# 4358
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve_R:
According to John Drane Introducing the New Testament "The word Canon here comes from a similar Greek word meaning a measuring stick: the New Testament Canon was to be an accurate measure by which all theological and doctrinal viewpoints could be tested"
This clearly supports the view that the Canon derives its "authenticity" from its doctrine rather than its actual or purported authorship.
Does it? That would imply that they had another measuring stick to measure the stick itself against.
My understanding is the same as Timothy the Obscure's and Autenreith Road's: that canonicity was based on the likelihood of apostolic authorship, or rather the likelihood of connection to the apostolic community (I don't think Matthew, Mark or Luke would actually be considered apostles themselves, even if it was them that authored the books in question). And then that was used as the yardstick against which to measure new theological viewpoints.
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humblebum
Posts: 584 | From: Belfast | Registered: Apr 2003
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Autenrieth Road
Shipmate
# 10509
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Posted
From my reading of Ehrmans (Misquoting Jesus), the point about books which were in but then dropped, or weren't in for a long time but finally accepted, was precisely because of debates about their authorship.
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Truth
Posts: 9559 | From: starlight | Registered: Oct 2005
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