The Apocrypha of the Bible: The History of the Ancient Apocryphal Texts Left Out of the Old Testament and New Testament by Charles River Editors

Author:Charles River Editors
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Charles River Editors
Published: 2018-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

The 3rd century theologian Origen of Alexandria wrote, "The Church has four gospels, the heretics have many." This of course, was his point of view. As Ehrman explains, people must understand that the lost gospels were considered to be "genuine" by those who read, copied and kept them in their libraries. Until recently (19th century), Christians and scholars alike only had a few verses of these documents, and in a few cases, nothing about the contents is known. For example, there are only a few quotes of the Gospel of the Egyptians and the Gospel of Matthias in Clement of Alexandria, another Church Father. "The Gospel of the Egyptians apparently opposed the notion of procreative sex," writes Bart D. Ehrman. "In one passage, a female follower of Jesus, Salome (...) says to Jesus, `Then I have done well in not giving birth,’ to which Jesus is said to reply, `Eat of every herb, but do not eat of the one that is bitter.’ At an earlier point he is said to have declared, `I have come to undo the works of the female.´ The Gospel according to Matthias may have been an even more mystical affair. At one point Clement (of Alexandria) quotes the intriguing words, `Wonder at the things that are before you, making this the first step to further knowledge.’”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.