Sorry for the slow response...hadn't checked email for a couple days.
Originally posted by Vulcan
So imagine if the government formed a council to revise the bible now, how would you feel about that?
Ummmm.....clever, but a non sequitor.
Your proposition SOUNDS like its a response to teh issue at hand, but in reality you've completely changed the basis of argument from the historically ancient origins of the canon (by consensus of believers), to governmentally controlled religion in the modern day.
Nice footwork.
Originally posted by Vulcan
I also find it incredibly amusing your attitude to the "new age drivel" - ie biblical teachings like the Gospel of Judas which sound a lot closer to the likes of buddhist teachings - and sounds like it teaches away from the institutionalised ways of the current christian regime.
OK, I guess I have to spell out the logic I'd implied previously.
1) Ancient documents were sparse even back then. We take near universal literacy for granted, but in ancient times you could actually make a living out of simply being one of the few around who could read and write. "readers" were like, say, accountants now -- with unique and marketable skills. So, few reades mean few originals, and even less chance of finding a preserved one now.
2) Ancient documents dont last without special efforts at preservation. Parchments and papyri decay rapidly with exposure, and the information on them would only persist if recopied or preserved. So, for all intents and purposes, only documents preserved by institutions persist from ancient times.
3) The "Church" only became an institution after Constantine removed punitive laws in 313. So, dont be surprised by paucity of documents prior to that...could you really expect otherwise?
4) Multiple ancient documents that DO survive quote or refer to texts (liek the letters of Paul) now considered canonical, so you cant really claim they were invented by a council long after the fact.
As to the last point...about "incredible amusement"...well, you kinda proved my point about the Gnostic "gospels". To me they sounded New Age; to you they sound Buddhist. I think we can safely agree that they do NOT sound consistnat with the rest of the biblical texts.
Does that mean that current Christianity is wrong, departed from its roots? Not at all...because Gnosticism was considered a competing religion, separate from christianity, by the people who lived back then.
In other words, the Gnostics talked about Jesus but had very different beliefs about him than Christians did. (Augustine wrote extensively about this.) Its jsut like today, when Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Christians all talk about Jesus but have fundamentally different ideas about his origins, his nature, and his role in humanity's relationship with god. And, to a rational person finding contradictions between Mormon and (say) Baptist writings about Jesus today cant be taken as damaging to the Jehovah's Witness theology...right?
Vulcan, if you're interested in understanding the issues, you might check into any number of resources on the net...including a pretty nice and even handed one on Wikipedia. If you've already made up your mind, and don't think you need any new info, well...good for you, I guess.
