All of the beliefs we hold about religion come from "truths" passed down from antiquity. Our only source for these notions, other than oral tradition, is in the text of ancient written scriptures. In fact, all we have in terms of any tangible legacy at all, are these old books. These scriptures have either survived down the ages, have been redisovered by archeology, or have been re-invented from memory.
Many of us are familiar with the popular books of religion accepted as mainstream by today's standards. There are, however, scriptures that have existed since antiquity that have been included in mainstream canons. Many of these texts have been excluded for good reasons and others not. What examining these "marginalized" texts helps us realize is that ALL of our scriptures were and are subject to the same wordly conditions. What we might be used to placing "on high" in our "holy texts" becomes comparitively humbled when revealing the details of their origins.
THE BIBLE IS WRITTEN BY PEOPLE
THE "APOCRYPHAL" TEXTS
"WHO WROTE THE BIBLE?"
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS
THE COUNCIL OF NICAEA
IS SCRIPTURE ACCURATE?
"BANNED FROM THE BIBLE 1"
"BANNED FROM THE BIBLE 2"
"SECRET LIVES OF JESUS"
THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS
THE GOSPEL OF MARY MAGDALENE
50 BOOKS LEFT OUT OF BIBLE
SECRETS OF THE QURAN
Gnostic texts preserved before 1945
Prior to the discovery at Nag Hammadi, only the following texts were available to students of Gnosticism. Reconstructions were attempted from the records of the heresiologists, but these were necessarily coloured by the motivation behind the source accounts.
For a complete list of the texts found at Nag Hammadi, please see the list in the Nag Hammadi article; to see a list showing which texts were attached to the different Gnostic schools, see below.
The Nag Hammadi library is a collection of early ChristianGnostic texts discovered near the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. The writings in these codices comprised fifty-two mostly Gnostic tractates; they also include three works belonging to the Corpus Hermeticum and a partial translation of Plato's Republic. The codices are currently housed in the Coptic Museum in Cairo.
Though the original language of composition was probably Greek, the various codices contained in the collection were written in Coptic. A 1st or 2nd century date of composition for the lost Greek originals has been proposed, though this is disputed; the manuscripts themselves date from the 3rd and 4th centuries.
For a full account of the discovery and translation of the Nag Hammadi library (which has been described as 'exciting as the contents of the find itself' (Markschies, Gnosis: An Introduction, 48)) see the Nag Hammadi library article.
Significance of the Nag Hammadi library
Prior to the publication of the translations of Nag Hammadi the only available sources for gnostic material were, as has been noted, heresiological writings. These suffered from a number of difficulties, not least the antagonistic bias the writers held towards gnostic teachings. Several heresiological writers, such as Hippolytus, made little effort to exactly record the nature of the sects they reported on, or transcribe their sacred texts, but instead gave us only titles and extended commentaries on their perceived heretical mistakes. Reconstructions were attempted from the available evidence, but the resulting portraits of gnosticism and its central texts were necessarily crude, and deeply suspect. The ability to overcome such problems provided by the Nag Hammadi codices need hardly be noted.
Of greatest difficulty was the fact that, prior to the publication of the codices, theological investigators, in order to proceed, could not help but to subscribe at least in part to the view of the heresiologists that gnosticism marked a heretical deviation from a fully-formed orthodox Christianity in the three centuries immediately following Christ's death. The availability of original texts not only allowed an unsullied transmission of gnostic ideas, but also demonstrated the fluidity of early Christian scripture and, by extension, Christianity itself. As Layton notes 'the lack of uniformity in ancient Christian scripture in the early period is very striking, and it points to the substantial diversity within the Christian religion' (Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures, xviii).
Thus, although it is still correct to speak of early Christianity as a single tradition, it is also a complex network of competing sects and individual parties, which express their contrasting natures through differences in their scriptural interests. These differences may have arisen as much from differences in cultural, linguistic and social milieus, the coexistence of essentially different theological conceptions of Jesus, as well as the differences in the philosophical or symbolic systems in which early Christian writers might express themselves. As such, the Nag Hammadi library offers a glimpse of the set of circulating texts that would have been of interest within a 'Gnostic' community (rather than as a gnostic canon in and of itself) and thus potentially provides an insight into the gnostic mind itself.
It was with the Council of Nicaea in 325 (convened during the reign of the Emperor Constantine; 272–337) and the 3rd Synod of Carthage in 397, which progressively cemented Christianity as the officially sanctioned religion of the Eastern Roman Empire, that a structurally coherent and crystallized form of orthodox Christianity began to emerge. Though Christianity was not made the official religion of the Roman Empire until Theodosius I 391 AD (Although, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, even though many barbarian tribes were Christian, Christianity wasn't technically official until Charlemagne, c800 AD, in the west). Central to the formation of orthodoxy was the creation of a binding and coherent scriptural 'canon', which was to be strictly observed by the adherents of that church. The Nag Hammadi library offers an intriguing source of texts whose intended exclusion as much drove the formation of the orthodox canon as did the desire to include certain other texts, now well-known. 'Orthodox Christian doctrine of the ancient world - and thus of the modern church - was partly conceived of as being what gnostic scripture was not' (Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures; emphasis writer's own). Thus a study of Gnostic scripture might also obliquely increase our knowledge of nascent orthodoxy, the intentions of the orthodox formulators, the effect of social setting on early Christian expression, and the Judaic foundations it rests upon.
Historian: First English Bible Fueled First Fundamentalists Heather Whipps, Special to LiveScience, LiveScience.com, Tue Dec 11, 8:55 AM ET
The translation of the Bible into English marked the birth of religious fundamentalism in medieval times, as well as the persecution that often comes with radical adherence in any era, according to a new book.
The 16th-century English Reformation, the historic period during which the Scriptures first became widely available in a common tongue, is often hailed by scholars as a moment of liberation for the general public, as it no longer needed to rely solely on the clergy to interpret the verses.
But being able to read the sometimes frightening set of moral codes spelled out in the Bible scared many literate Englishmen into following it to the letter, said James Simpson, a professor of English at Harvard University.
"Reading became a tightrope of terror across an abyss of predestination," said Simpson, author of "Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents" (Harvard University Press, 2007).
"It was destructive for [Protestants], because it did not invite freedom but rather fear of misinterpretation and damnation," Simpson said.
It was Protestant reformer William Tyndale who first translated the Bible into colloquial English in 1525, when the movement away from Catholicism began to sweep through England during the reign of Henry VIII. The first printings of Tyndale's Bible were considered heretical before England's official break from the Roman Church, yet still became very popular among commoners interested in the new Protestant faith, Simpson said.
"Very few people could actually read," said Simpson, who has seen estimates as low as 2 percent, "but the Bible of William Tyndale sold very well—as many as 30,000 copies before 1539 in the plausible estimate of a modern scholar; that's remarkable, since all were bought illegally."
When Catholicism slowly became the minority in the 1540s and 50s, many who hadn't yet accepted Protestantism were berated for not reading the Bible in the same way, Simpson said.
"Scholarly consensus over the last decade or so is that most people did not convert to [Protestantism]. They had it forced upon them," Simpson told LiveScience.
Persecution and paranoia became the norm, Simpson said, as the new Protestants feared damnation if they didn't interpret the book properly. Prologues in Tyndale's Bible warned readers what lay ahead if they did not follow the verses strictly.
"If you fail to read it properly, then you begin your just damnation. If you are unresponsive … God will scourge you, and everything will fail you until you are at utter defiance with your flesh," the passage reads.
Without the clergy guiding them, and with religion still a very important factor in the average person's life, their fate rested in their own hands, Simpson said.
The rise of fundamentalist interpretations during the English Reformation can be used to understand the global political situation today and the growth of Islamic extremism, Simpson said as an example.
"Very definitely, we see the same phenomenon: newly literate people claiming that the sacred text speaks for itself, and legitimates violence and repression," Simpson said, "and the same is also true of Christian fundamentalists."
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