A rchive Date
[ 10-07-2005 ]
Category
[ Philosophy ]
sub-Categoy
[ Gnosticism ]
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[http://www.exorthodoxforchrist.com/nag_hamadi.htm
The Books of Nag Hamadi
In the early era of Christianity, many cults flourished. As people began to see the growing influence of Christianity, some of them tried to cut themselves in, for a piece of the action.
The result was the apocryphal books. There are many books that are considered apocryphal. Many of them are of a "pietist" nature, with much religiosity thrown in. Most of them are - in some way - an attack on the central message of the books in the Bible, which is Salvation by faith alone in Jesus Christ, accepting to believe in his death and resurrection as payment for our sins, a sacrifice that accomplish our entire and total redemption, once and for all. Most of the Apocryphal books also claim some kind of system of salvation by faith, or to be recognized by God as special, on the basis of Good Works, instead of the meritorious work of Jesus Christ.
Many of the apocryphal books were attacked by some of the Church Fathers, such as "Tertullian against Marcion". In the 19th century, many scholars attacked the Bible for its supposed lack of archeological and historical basis. The 20th century was much less kind to the attackers, who spent most of their time conceding that the Bible was right archeologically speaking, after all.
The response by Bible Attackers has been to attack the Canon - those 66 books of the Bible which are authentic - and press for a change in the content of the Bible, with such books as The Lost Books of the Bible, and the Gospel of Thomas.
Elaine Pagels, a well known Gnostic advocate has argued (wrongly) that the Gospel of Thomas is genuine and should be accepted as the "true" Gospel of Jesus. Mainly what the Gospel of Thomas says is that you can save yourself, if you recognize that you are inherently divine.
Elaine Pagels also worked on the editing of the Nag Hammadi library. The Nag Hamadi library (essentially a compilation of gnostic and occult texts) is interesting, but it should be kept in mind that many of its "scholarly" advocates are on the same page as those from the "Jesus Seminar" who are committed to undermining Christianity and the specific message of Jesus Christ, in all ways possible.
It is more difficult to defend traditional christianity these days, as detractors attempt to use tools of litterary deconstruction to suggest that the "true" Gospel of Jesus Christ, could be about anything, except what He himself said it was...in the Bible.
The Deuterocanonical Books in the Douay version were formally incorporated into the Roman Catholic Bible, but were not formally elevated to the level of scripture and scriptural authority until the Council of Trent in the 1500s, when the Catholic Church leaders decided finally to "anoint" the additional books with the sanction of its church leaders - as being scripture itself -, as an additional means of argumentation against the writings of Luther and Calvin, which were specifically condemned in the 27 anathemas of the Council of Trent.
Of course to condemn those works was the easy part. To actually refute them would be quite another.
While some apocryphal books were read in some of the early christian churches, most were not. IF a specific bishop happened to endorse a particular apocryphal book, that is a far cry from the book being endorsed by the true Christian Churches as a whole.
What is consistently found within almost all of the lists of authentic books that the early church advocated - are the 27 books of the New Testament.
Though it is not the Nag Hamadi library, the book "The Dead Sea Scrolls" by Randall Price does explain some of the historical context for old texts in circulation at the time of the Early Church.]
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