Gospel of Thomas

[Jay_7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas

Has anyone heard of that story before?

[ray]

There are many ancient texts that are mentioned in older writings and many that we have parts of. While looking for these once I found a new word, Pseudepigrapha. These are books that are attributed to people in the Bible, like the book of Adam. Search that word and I think you'll find many interesting things, but you have to keep in mind that not all of them can be considered accurate.

Ray

[Jay_7]

Thanks for the word, i looked at some sites in google.

[CountryBoy]

I found this article concerning Lost Books of the Bible not to long ago and saved it.

No Lost Books of the Bible
Gregory Koukl
Some people claim there are "lost books" that should have been included in the Bible. Greg says this view doesn't make sense, whether or not you think the Bible has supernatural origins.
The whole question of lost books of the Bible hinges on what the Bible is. Now the Bible can only be two things. What is it that we mean when we use the word "Bible"? Well, a Bible is either God's supernatural Word -- God supernaturally oversees its production and its care. Or it 's a statement of beliefs of the leaders of Christianity. They say "this represents what we believe." Disregarding any supernatural element, it's based on consensus. Let's just say we're the only Christians in the world. We say we believe in these things, but we don't believe these other things so throw them out because they don't reflect what we believe. Any group has the right to determine what it is they believe. Now, notice that there are two ways of looking at this: a supernatural or natural perspective. I would contend that there are no other ways of looking at this question; no other options. No matter who you are out there you either think of the Bible as being God's inspired Word (most of the conservative Christian world holds this view, in some form), or the Bible is merely the statement of beliefs of the early church, without any supernatural content. Pretty much the rest of the world looks at it this way. Now, the question of the lost books of the Bible comes up. But my problem is: how is it possible that there can be any lost books of the Bible? Is it possible that in the first sense of the word Bible that the books could be lost? Wait a minute, if God is supernaturally overseeing it, then God is supernaturally involved in seeing that His book gets written down and preserved. So we have God's supernatural protection if it has a supernatural quality to it. You may say that the supernatural element is bogus, but you can see that from this sense of the definition that it's not really possible to think that God could lose His own book. "But man wrote it...." Can you make your dog sit? Of course. If you a mere man can make your dog sit, can't an infinite God oversee the care of His Word? It doesn't matter if man or monkeys were responsible for taking care of it. Maybe the Bible isn't supernatural, it's a statement of beliefs of the leaders of the church. Okay, if that's the case then who has the final word on which books belong in the Bible? The leaders of the early church. Therefore, by very definition any books that they cast into outer darkness are not part of the Bible. It's their decision to decide which books represent their beliefs. And if they say the Gospel of Thomas isn't our book and somebody else picks it up two thousand years later and say it's a lost book of the Bible, then it's fair to ask "In what sense is it a lost book of the Bible?" It might be a lost book of antiquity, a great archaeological find, a wonderful piece of literature, but a lost book of the Bible? No. The Bible has to be either a supernatural book, or a non-supernatural book. If it's supernatural -- if God is responsible for its writing, it's transmission and its survival -- then God, being God, does the job right. God doesn't make mistakes, he doesn't forget things, he doesn't get confused about what is true and what is false, and He isn't absent-minded -- He doesn't lose his lessons. If the Bible is not supernatural -- as many will contend, especially those who claim to have found lost books -- we have a different problem. By what standard do we claim these are bonafide lost books of the Bible? If, from a human perspective, the Bible is that collection of writings that reflect the beliefs of the leaders of early Christianity, then those writings they discard are not parts of the Bible by very definition. It's like writing a book of your personal beliefs from a stack of ideas you've collected over the years and then have someone rummage through your trash to find other beliefs you didn't include and then claim that these were your secret or lost beliefs. You say, "No, they're not my beliefs; that's why they're in the trash. If they were really mine, they'd be in the book. The irony is that many of the "lost books" advocates make the point that these books they've rediscovered, books like the so-called Gospel of Thomas, were missing because the church fathers "suppressed" them, which is another way of saying the early Christians threw them out, trashed them. And the accusation is true. They did. Critics think this strengthens their case. It doesn't; it destroys it, because it proves that these books were simply not accepted by the leaders as representative of their beliefs. So therefore it can't be their Bible. The Jesus Seminar people are taking a little different tack. They reject the idea that the Bible has supernatural origins. They suggest that since it's just man's opinion anyway, we should have a recall vote on the Bible and fix the defects. We should reconvene and reshuffle the deck, tossing some books out and including others to reflect what the church now believes about spiritual truth, which means "what the Jesus Seminar now believes about spiritual truth." They are not using the "lost books of the Bible" tack. So regardless of your view of the Bible -- supernatural or natural -- there is no sense in which it makes any sense to talk of lost books of the Bible. Ergo it's impossible, rationally -- nothing to do with spiritual commitments at all -- that there can be anything like lost books of the Bible. The phrase just doesn't make any sense.

[Jay_7]

So either God forgot about them, or the church leaders didn't want to use them...

I might go with these books were written by other people to trick people, such as the book of Thomas. And God didn't want those in the bible.

Also can we really trust the bible now? What if the church really did just put bunch of good stuff togethor??
Never mind, foudn this- http://www.gotquestions.org/lost-books-Bible.html

[CountryBoy]

Yep, someone trying to start a cult of thier own.

[Locker]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas

Has anyone heard of that story before?

Problem with the 'Gospel of Thomas' is that it inserts gnostic teaching into its pages. Paul warns us against gnostic teaching in his writings in Col.

[Mastriani]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas

Has anyone heard of that story before?

Problem with the 'Gospel of Thomas' is that it inserts gnostic teaching into its pages. Paul warns us against gnostic teaching in his writings in Col.

I will make two assertions, both based on studied historicity. I am not saying you have to agree, just what I have studied and understood.

1.)The Divine Creator did not canonize the Bible. This was done under the direction of the pagan king Constantine, and Church bishops at the three Councils at Nicea.(see also Athanasius, Arian, and homoousious)

2.)Gnostics/Gnosticism were the original branch of Christians who parted ways with the Church-run form of early Christianity, as they were of the mind that the formation of a money collecting institution built on materialism was in direct violation of the teachings of Y'Shua(Jesus).

Just information I have studied, and it was as far as a matter of record the Church that decided many books were simply "inferior" and should not be part of the official Bible.

[Fortigurn]

1.)The Divine Creator did not canonize the Bible. This was done under the direction of the pagan king Constantine, and Church bishops at the three Councils at Nicea.(see also Athanasius, Arian, and homoousious)

The Council of Nicea made no formal pronouncments on the canon whatever.

People have this idea that the Council of Nicea (325 AD), made a formal prononcement on the canon, and closed it for the RCC. In fact it did no such thing.

The Council of Nicea did not make a formal pronouncement on the NT canon, and the RCC canon remained open (despite the Councils of Hippo and Carthage), until the Tridentine Council of the 16th century.

The reason why people think that the Council of Nicea (325 AD), made a formal pronouncement on the canon is probably because of a single reference by Jerome, which has been misread:

'Among the Jews, the book of Judith is considered among the apocrypha; the basis for affirming those which have come into dispute is deemed less than sufficient. Moreover, since it was written in the Chaldean language, it is counted among the historical books.

But the Nicene Council is considered to have counted this book among the number of sacred Scriptures, I have acquiesced to your request (or should I say demand!): and, my other work set aside, from which I was vehemently restrained, I have given a single night's work, translating according to sense rather than verbatim.'

Jerome, Preface to Judith

Important points:

* Jerome refers here only to the Old Testament canon, not the New (the disputed book is one of the Old Testament apocryphals)

* Since none of the documentation of the Council of Nicea mentions the canon at all, it is considered by some scholars that Jerome may be referring to this council mistakenly, and that he actually meant to refer to the Council of Laodicea (354 AD)

* To add confusion upon confusion, the extant record we have of the Council of Laodicea's formal pronouncement on the canon is considered unauthentic (it seems to have been rewritten in order to agree with later pronouncements, in an attempt to obscure the lack of agreement on the canon among Church councils)

Finally, Jerome's own NT canon differed from the canon later adopted by the RC anyway.

2.)Gnostics/Gnosticism were the original branch of Christians who parted ways with the Church-run form of early Christianity, as they were of the mind that the formation of a money collecting institution built on materialism was in direct violation of the teachings of Y'Shua(Jesus).

I would like to see evidence for this claim.

Just information I have studied, and it was as far as a matter of record the Church that decided many books were simply "inferior" and should not be part of the official Bible.

The Catholic Church fooled around with the canon for centuries, because it couldn't figure out what should be in and what should be out.

This didn't stop other Christians recognising the books we recognise as canonical today.