I should add…or I’ve been whooshed. 
Of course, the same could just as easily be said of the four canonical gospels.
Eh, I think it’s pretty well accepted that the canonical gospels at least got the basics of his teachings correct, as well as minimal biographical details (son of Mary wife of Joseph; crucified by the Romans). Other “gospels”, you can find Jesus reported as teaching anything at all that folks wanted to sell, or that he was not related to any mortal human, or that he faked his own death at the Crucifixion, or whatever.
Of course, the miracles are far from universally accepted, but (other than the Resurrection) those aren’t really the point of the gospels, anyway: The miracles are just to get peoples’ attention, so they’ll listen to the teachings.
That depends on the gospel. A couple could plausibly be dated to the same time period as the canonical works. They may have been turned down because they indicated that women had an equal standing in the early church or otherwise simply didn’t mesh with what the Gentile church expected a hundred years later.
But yes, probably a significant number of apocryphal works are written long after the fact and according to particular agendas.
Which ones? I think the only one you might be able to say that about is the Gospel of Thomas predating John, and maybe the Gospel of the Hebrews/Gospel of the Egyptians, but it’s more likely they’re post John.
Gospel of Thomas, The Apocryphon of James, The Apocryphon of John, 1st Apocalypse of James, 2nd Apocalypse of James, and The Gospel of Judas could all have been written within the 1st century. They’re generally placed in the second century because they are not canonical, not because anything in the content would actually necessitate it.
If you hold that Gnosticism came in after Christianity, then it makes sense that anything which strikes a person as Gnostic came later (i.e. in the 2nd century).
Personally, that doesn’t seem like a reasonable argument to make. Sethianism, for example, most likely predates Christianity. All of the works listed, stylistically appear to be pre-Valentinian, which means that they are probably earlier than 130CE. Dositheos, the founder of Mandaeanism and student of John the Baptist, is written about by Hegesippus (110-180CE). Josephus (94CE) talks about Simon Magus as also being a contemporary of Jesus. Basilides was also active around 130CE.
We have a Gnostic religion before Jesus, two Gnostic teachers (Simon and Dositheos) contemporary with Jesus, and a body of work that seems to predate Valentinus and Basilides (~130CE) when Gnosticism started to get ornate. At least one Gnostic religion says that John the Baptist (Jesus’ teacher) was its originator.
The works listed also tend to refer to James, Peter, and John as the leaders of the church exclusively, which would make sense for items made in retrospect of the original Jewish-Christian church, rather than the Paulian/Gentile church which was largely created and operated separately from Jesus and anyone Jesus personally preached to.*
Personally, I’d say that this makes it fully plausible for these works to have been created anytime before 130CE, to as early as 40CE. That’s the same time period as the canonical gospels.
- This is, unless you accept Paul’s story that he received all knowledge from the resurrected Jesus.
Personally, I find Matthew, Mark and Luke to be pretty similar.
Maybe that’s why they’re considered to be the Synoptic Gospels cough cough :rolleyes:
These three are fairly straightforward. I’ve always loved the Gospel of John more. It’s just…more beautiful.
Debate as you will.
I consider Paul’s writings to represent a very separate take on Jesus from the Gospels, the problem being is that they are most telling in what they don’t say.
He barely quotes Jesus, doesn’t care about the usual miracles, doesn’t mention anything close to a virgin birth (using “born of a woman” with the Greek term for a mature woman vs. the more ambigious maiden term), etc.
Biographically, he really only cares about Jesus’s death and resurrection. Basically an otherwise unnoteworthy individual that did one really spectacular thing. That’s quite a different view.
Paul is pretty much hung up on “Jesus the Symbol” – as opposed to the human being with teachings. Paul’s theology is built around the Atonement and its (sort of) abrogation of the Law. His example is followed by many evangelicals today.
Superhal writes:
> . . . “official” bible . . .
So what’s the unofficial Bible?
No, it’s not even pretty well accepted that Jesus was a real historical figure, so even these minimal biographical details are suspect. There aren’t really any contemporary accounts of the guy, and except for a few rather suspicious-sounding references in Josephus, hardly a mention of him in non-Christian sources in the following centuries. The historicity of Jesus continues to be debated, both in scholarly circles and here on the SDMB, and in both one encounters a range of opinions, from proclaiming the inerrancy of the four gospels to denial that a person (or god) called Jesus ever truly existed.
I still believe that the fact there was nobody assigned to chronicle Jesus’ life from the moment he was born, after being born under such “odd circumstances”, is the clearest evidence of all that Jesus was a fictional being, or just an above average orator in a time when people were as ignorant as a pig turd.
Or is the explanation, that his identity was kept secret in fear of his safety until he was old enough to decide for himself?
According to this Wikipedia entry:
> Nevertheless, the historicity of Jesus is accepted by almost all Biblical scholars
> and classical historians. The New Testament scholar, James Dunn describes the
> mythical Jesus theory as a ‘thoroughly dead thesis’.
Here’s the Wikipedia entry discussing the various theories of the nonexistence of Jesus:
So it is pretty well accepted, but not universally accepted, that Jesus existed.
Quoth Sage Rat:
Right, I didn’t mean to imply that all of the non-canonical gospels were frauds, only that some of them were. Thanks for the clarification on that.
ivan, that might be evidence that the circumstances of Jesus’ birth were relatively unremarkable, but then, my birth wasn’t particularly remarkable, either, and I have no doubt that I really exist. Nor would I cease to exist if someone later started telling stories about how amazing my birth was.
Various odd Gospels, several of which tell interesting but tall-sounding stories about Jesus’s infancy and childhood; the books of Enoch, a particularly holy pre-Noah patriarch who was taken up bodily into Heaven while still alive (like Elijah, and unlike most everyone else); and a few other works I can’t remember right now.
That’s a clever answer, but I want to know what Superhal meant by “the official Bible.” I really doubt that he has been reading nothing but various late, noncanonical gospels and only now has gotten around to reading the Bible itself.