I'm not trying to start anything here, but I have a question relating to the bible. Also, I'm sorry if these are redundant.
When the original bible was finally being compiled in to the books it is today, the church gathered all religions scripture based on Jesus and God at the time. Out of the so very many scriptures they found, they placed all the ones they deemed 'relevant' and organized them in to the bible. the rest were ordered destroyed as they were said to be blasphemous.
Remnants of these books have been found in recent years, remnants of books entitled things like "The Gospel of Mary" as well as several gospels based on Jesus' childhood, that time between when he was a teen and an adult, and one written by his siblings. (Half brothers and sisters)
There was a book entitled "The Gospel of Judas". Be it blasphemy or not, if they were the real words of Judas, according to him, Jesus told Judas to betray him. Told Judas that he'd become a hated person because of it, but in doing so he would help Jesus become a martyr and (I believe) would hold a seat in heaven for doing so.
My first question is this.. Why get rid of these books? Why get rid of some of them when they would show further insight in to what one of the most important men in the religion was all about?
The second one is this: For the Christians, if the book of Judas was real, and I'm not saying it is, but if it was, how do you think your perception of Jesus would change?
wefmeister2010-11-05T22:43:09Z
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No one ever "got rid of" these books - they simply refused to endorse them or acknowledge them as the word of God; and there was quite simply no reason to accept them as the word of God.
If I wrote an "Epistle" tomorrow, and claimed divine revelation, do you suppose I should be granted the same credibility as the Apostle Paul?
If you are seriously looking for answer, and so few are; then you could find answer to your question, and I suppose you could start at this site, which is an honest and reliable source of information from Christians; and believe it or not, no one understands Christianity better than Christians......
>>When the original bible was finally being compiled in to the books it is today, the church gathered all religions scripture based on Jesus and God at the time.
This is not true. There was only one Church with one set of doctrines. The Church existed before the Bible, a bible did not make a church.
>>Out of the so very many scriptures they found, they placed all the ones they deemed 'relevant' and organized them in to the bible. the rest were ordered destroyed as they were said to be blasphemous.
This is not rue. Nothing was ordered to be destroyed. They just were not accepted as inspired.
>>My first question is this.. Why get rid of these books? Why get rid of some of them when they would show further insight in to what one of the most important men in the religion was all about?
No one "got rid" of anything. We still have many of them. They did not have libraries preserving books in the first 3 centuries of a heavily persecuted Church. If anything was "destroyed", it was probably the Roman soldiers who were trying to wipe out Christianity.
If you really are interested in further insight of the early Church, and what was practiced and believed, read the Early Church Fathers.
This raises a few questions in my mind. Quick note however, I do not believe that Jesus is God, and I have no hint from your question whether you do or not, so no offense to either side of the argument.
But the first question that I would ask a christian, is if the Bible is God's holy word, why would he let it be defiled by all the offshoots and recreations of it? If it is really the only evidence of God we have in this modern age, why would it be so low on his list to keep it up to date and factual. If you look at catholicism, Judaism, Christianity, Mormonism(?), Islam, all of these have different versions of the same basic Bible. It doesn't make sense that God would just let mankind destroy his word in such a way that it isn't even his word anymore.
That goes for the lost books as well. Why would they be taken out as blasphemy? Shouldn't God be the deciding factor as to whats true and whats false? Not the clergy who took it upon themselves to destroy the writings of a man and woman's testimony, that was just as reliable as any other apostle?
Another question however, is that if your religious beliefs could be changed by information in a single book, how stable is your religion? That's like growing up being taught that 2+2=4, and then finding some lost article that says it actually equals 7. I mean, if Jesus TOLD Judas to betray him, his prediction would not be a prediction at all. Instead just a clarification of what he has already planned out.
I mean, to me christianity has always been flawed, and even when I truly felt that God had a hold of my heart, I was still left with unanswered questions and prayers. I'm just glad that I'm finally free of this damnable act for good.
Did the church try to destroy these other texts? That wasn't my impression of what happened... but I could certainly be wrong.
That's not to say I couldn't see why the church would want such texts destroyed. In answer to your first question, if the church *really did* try to get rid of particular texts, it was because they thought these texts would be hindrances to the faith of Christians. If it was in their power to get rid of these texts, why wouldn't they? Though I don't know that the early church sought to get rid of these texts, I do realize that they were against them. Why? For the same reason Christians today are against the works of many famous tele-evangelists and prosperity teachers; because they pose hindrances to people's faith. And more specifically, these types of texts are falsity disguised as truth. Books such as Dawkins' The God Delusion might hurt Christian faith, but at least it's not *pretending to be* Christian faith.
Now, I do know that these so called "gospel of Judas"es(and other 'gospels' and books) are pretty generally accepted to have been authored by people other than that which their titles make a claims to. That alone puts the content of the texts under a suspicious light.
The book of Judas is real. My perception of Jesus doesn't change because even though the text is real, the ideas which it contains are false. Why do I believe this? Because they are at odds with scripture. My faith in scripture is a whole other complicated topic, though. I have reasons for believing in the reliability of scripture. Thus if they are at odds with other texts(such as the gospel of Judas), why would I believe in the truths which the gospel of Judas makes claim to? There's really not much to back up the truth of the accounts of these texts. Accepting their truth in antithesis to that of scripture would be like rejecting the concept of gravity because we see a particular leaf falling up(perhaps blown by the wind, or affected by some other natural phenomena), concluding that our previous conception of gravity has been all wrong.
What do you advise via precise? The literal aspects are remarkably precise. in fact, extra so than the different text cloth of this era, via slightly of roughly 1000. in spite of the incontrovertible fact that, aspects are no longer literal in any respect. how are you able to confirm the accuracy of a few thing like that? E.g., a made up tale that teaches a element? Or, a song? Or, a love tale? And, there is likewise "fantasy," which in Theological words is a narrative approximately fact, yet, for which the main substantial factors might desire to no longer be. So, the main substantial factors might desire to be horribly faulty, yet, the tale will nevertheless be smart for direction. And, different thoughts (like the Apocalypses) are written in symbolic language, so, the words are easily a "code" for some thing else completely. The Bible might nicely be a particularly complicated set of books! exceptionally for a newbie.