Martin Luther excluded Revelation when he prepared a German translation of the Bible; he just couldn’t believe anything that horrible belonged in the canon.
Really? Well, you learn something new every day. The Lutherans I know include it.
I thought he actually did include it…he just considered excluding it, the Petrine letters, and the Epistle of James, I believe.
I actually meant to call it an apocalyptic text, not an apocryphal one. My bad. Slip of the keyboard.
How many actual writings are available to be read? And I do mean “actual writings” and not copies handed down by “mainstream” Christians.
In any case, I think I was surprised by j_sum1’s assertion that Revelation is “not apocryphal” because I was subconsciously confusing the words “aprocryphal” and “apocalyptic.” Revelation is nothing if not apocalyptic.
But honestly, j_sum1 – you don’t believe anything that horrible belongs in the canon . . . do you?
Very few. (No complete originals of any letter.)
However, that point is really irrelevant. We have copies of the letters and translations of the letters in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and Aramaic for a large number of those offerings, with a substantial body of evidence that those translations date back as early as the late first century. Heck, Rome can’t keep all the Catholics in line today and the early church was notorious for its squabbling. The idea that there was some great conspiracy at a later date that was effective in wiping out all signs of early heterodoxy is simply not tenable. There were occasional efforts to silence individuals (such as Marcion) that were more or less successful (although not so successful that we do not know what Marcion said), but the idea that an entire philosphical theme was silenced does not stand up to serious scrutiny.
Check out King Jesus by Robert Graves. In that novel, best as I can remember (can’t find my copy right now), Mary Magdalene is of a pre-Hebrew royal line of Canaan that embodies “the power of Rahab,” which is matrilineal and descends upon the youngest living married female. Jesus comes of the line of David, but he cannot truly become king until he marries Mary, which he does (in an elaborate coronation-and-wedding ceremony which also involves Jesus getting his hip dislocated, like Jacob/Israel when he wrestled the angel). But he refuses to consummate the marriage, because he is trying to “destroy the work of the Female” and to break the basic birth-sex-death cycle of human existence. (His idea is, we should all live forever, without sex. Crucifixion was too good for him.) I really don’t know the sources of Graves’ scholarship, but he gives the impression of having studied a lot about Near Eastern religious traditions. For instance, he mentions the tradition that Yahweh originally was not worshipped alone but had a wife – or even two wives.
I’m not j_sum1, but why is it horrible? It’s violent, and rambling, but why horrible?
Actually, Revelation is pretty well written in decent Greek, and does a very good job of following the established apocalyptic tradition. There is nothing “horrible” about it. (I do note that it is so clearly written as symbolic that any effort to squeeze predictions of specific events out of its prohecy are fairly silly.)
Revelation may seem strange or even distressing now but it’s really not that 'horrible" it’s just very highly stylized. Beneath all of the sometimes admittedly awkward, even bizarre imagery, the intent of the book is somply to give comfort and encouragement to the faithful during a time of persecution. It used coded allegory so that it would not be readily understood by the uninitiated (or more to the point, by the Romans), so that’s why you get descriptions of multi-headed beasts and the like. The author couldn’t just say “God’s gonna fry the Emperor” but that’s what the message amounted to.
Have to disagree here.
The Thomas Christians considered themselves the inheritors of the tradition of James, Jesus’s brother. See the Gospel of Thomas, which may be as ancient as any of the canonical gospels. Their intellectual descendants, the Gnostics, were widespread in the third century. Don’t have my references handy, but I know at least one Church Father complained that the Gnostics were in every church. THe Nag Hammadi find gave us a couple dozen documents that had been completely supressed by the “orthodox” church for 2000 years. This shows just how successful the later church was at supressing “heretical” views.
The Jewish-Christian Ebionites probably considered themselves the true inheritors of Jesus’s teaching, and with some reason. Aren’t Jews likely to have preserved the tradition more correctly than Greeks who were adopting it from a pagan background? The Ebionites taught that Jesus was a prophet, not God.
The Arian christians were probably in the majority in the 4th century. Several large church councils adopted Arian creeds.
It isn’t until the 5th century at the earliest that you can really talk about “mainstream” christianity, in the form we know it. Before that, the evidence is sparse, but it’s clear that “orthodox” christianity was only one form among many. And we all know that history is written by the winners. The orthodox violently supressed opposing views and destroyed their texts.
That said, I have to agree that there’s no real evidence for the specific views that Jesus was married, or that he taught about the divine feminine. Those ideas only show up in later writings (probably 3rd century or later).
Thank you FriendRob - that was the most succinct answer minus sarcasm I’ve seen. And coming from me, someone who is NOT in the know about early historical models of Christ, I appreciate the clarity.
I disagree that the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas is any older than the early second century (although it is, obviously, an arguable point). However, it tends to stand alone without any context that genuinely ties it to James (whatever the Gnostics may have claimed). For that matter, the Gnostics were not actually the “descendants” of any Christian group. Gnosticism was already in its developing stages before Jesus preached. Now, as a movement, Gnosticism “grew up” with Christianity and in many communities, people borrowed from both growing traditions. Paul wrote against Gnostic beliefs and practices as early as the middle 50s. However, wedding Gnosticism to Christianity does not change the core beliefs of the earliest Christians. Admittedly, we do see the various competing traditions through the words of the “survivors” of the dogma wars, but the group that won out is not merely the group with the greatest numbers, but includes all the significant writers of the period. We know about Marcion, Origen, Tertullian (often from their own writings that were not suppressed) and the conflicts are almost universally with the group that I maintain was mainstream. We do not find a tradition of anti-Arian Gnostic tracts or Monophysites condemning Gnostics. All the arguments (pro and con) focus on the tradition that eventually won.
Is that utterly conclusive? I will not claim that it is incontrovertible proof, but I submit that it is much more persuasive than the alternative theories that have been put forth in the last 40 years.
Again, it depends how one defines successful suppression. There were references to most of the finds at Nag Hammadi before that discovery. We did not have the actual texts, but we had discussions about them–discussions that were pretty accurate descriptions (although they obviously did not present them in a favorable light).
Please don’t ask me for the cite, because I can’t remember where I first read it. It’s in book in a box someplace, and maybe somebody else remembers. I’m super busy, forgive me.
But I was taught that the writer of the Gospel of Thomas may have had access to either written or oral tradition that is indeed perhaps older than Mark. However, a great deal was added that dates much later, and brings the whole into line with Gnostic beliefs. Many Biblical scholars find Thomas fascinating, because it may preserve some of the oldest language that has parallels in the Synoptic Gospels (I’m thinking of the Sermon on the Mount, and the Beatitudes, specifically, though I could be wrong on the details).
So, yeah, Thomas may contain some stuff of great interest to even modern-day orthodox Christians. However, what sets it apart is of later origin and decidedly heretical. This can be gleaned through fairly straightforward literary criticism, if I remember correctly, the same kind of analysis that Biblical scholars use, say, to identify narriative strains in the Hebrew Bible.
The Dagobert’s Revenge website is back online! Check it out! http://www.dagobertsrevenge.com
From the welcome page:
I LOVE it!
I also should add, if my memory serves me correctly, that the hypothetical Q (the older source the writers of Matthew and Luke used in addition to Mark and some unique sources) is thought to be a sayings gospel, without any narrative. It just so happens Thomas is a sayings gospel. While no one would argue Thomas is Q, it lends credence to the notion that such a sayings gospel could exist in the first place.
As for the dating of Thomas, I think some scholars put the bulk of it as old as to make it a contemprary of Luke, maybe around the end of the 1st century. However, the most blatantly Gnostic portions I think could date as much as 100 to 200 years later. It really is a fascinating document.
The general consenus is that that Thomas is a first century book and there is a very good circumstancial case for making it contemporary with Mark or even earlier.
It’s also not a Gnostic text despite the fact that it was later adopted by Gnostics as part of their library.
In it’s earliest form, Thomas may well have been a genuine compilation of authentic sayings (much like Q).
Although it’s not canonoical, I personally think that Thomas may be the earliest extant Gospel and may even have an apostollic origin.
I’m curious, what is the circumstantial case? All I remember is an old Greek translation that I think dated to the middle of the 2nd century.
Also, it’s true, Thomas isn’t a Gnostic Gospel. However, tacked onto it somewhere is the whole thing about how Jesus will “Make Mary male.” If I remember arights, Peter objects to Mary Magdalene’s presence, because she’s a woman, and Jesus says “I will make her male, and everyone who becomes male goes to heaven” or something to that effect. This resonates well with Gnostic mystical theology, where male = light and spirit while female = darkness and matter. I think there are parallels to this in the Pistis Sophia.
Also, now that I think about it, DtC, if Thomas contains material that is as old as you assert, that pretty much makes it part of Q, doesn’t it? I’ve never heard of Thomas being given that status.