Left out?

[Per Sempre]

There are many television programs and books about some of the books of the Bible that were left out, and other things that were not included. Your thoughts?
Your feelings?

[pacifiquesea]

Aside from the fact that I trust God to get his message across, there were all sorts of councils and whatnot the were held with the purpose of prayerfully considering the matter. The people who make those shows have nothing better to do, it seems.

[Adanedhel]

Sometimes I wonder about the gospel of Mary Magdalene *spelling*. I think that i am going to read it this summer if I have the time!

[Parthian King]

There's already been quite a bit of discussion of this topic in the DaVinci Code thread (Christianity and Narnia section).

Think about it guys: Early Christians had to decide what was going to be "canon" (meaning "rule" or "standard," a legitimate testimony to faith). By very definition this means that some things were going to be "left out," otherwise there's no deciding to be done--anytime anybody put pen to paper about anything to dow tih Jesus, then into the "Bible" it goes. Even just a little thinking will bring you to the conclusion that that is impossible and even downright silly.

So a series of councils held over a period of centuries by different Christians and in different places worked things out and arrived at what they considered legitimate. There was some minor differences over a few books that took some time, but for the most part they agreed about the main books that were to be in the New Testament--mainly the four Gospels and the letters of Paul. Another thing they were also in firm agreement on was the many flaky, marginal books that were total nonsense.

And those are the ones people seem so fascinated with--probably because in today's society, if something got "left out," that means there's some conspiracy or something. The real reason is that those writings are just plain hooey. Read 'em if you like, but when you get done, take a closer look at the books that thousands of Christians then and now think are the greatest--the ones that made it in.

[Siren]

I was watching an A&E program on the "banned books of the Bible" or something like that. They explained that the church decided which books to include and which books were not to be included. Most of the "banned" books were burned. A few remained, hidden away for centuries.

[Per Sempre]

Sounds interesting.

[Parthian King]

It is interesting--especially since many who burned the books were the ones who had previous used them....

[Per Sempre]

Yes,'tis so. There are some questions that are not meant to answered.

[Parthian King]

There are some questions that are not meant to answered.

Well, I guess I don't mean that. I have a set of volumes on my shelf filled with these works. But they are really useful to read for scholarship purposes--to understand how the early church was formed, you not only look at what decided was good, but also what they decided was no good at all. Once you take a look at them you'll understand why. Many are very short works, and are not coherent stories about Jesus, but rather fantastic (i.e., way out) stuff that goes far beyond the miracles we read about in the Gospels. They are propaganda works that are obviously written one or more centuries after the canonical Gopels, and they are clearly written to push this or that doctrine.

As a Christian I do not fear the knowledge of these works. I don't fear that people will read them. Actually, I'd rather people just take a look at a few to break the "mystique" of them in their own minds. The reason they were burned is that the church didn't want well-meaning people to think they were the "real thing" and keep copying and spreading them. The point was not to hide their contents. For instance, Irenaeus (an early church father and scholar) tells us in detail what the Gospel of Judas said. When it was found 30 years back, hey guess what? It was just what Irenaues said (maybe that's why it sat in a fridge for so long since no one found it interesting enough to spend any money on); there was no "conspiracy" to hide anything after all. The early church wasn't trying to keep the contents a secret--it taught what the contents were, and said, "Because this said so-and-so, we trashed them because we didn't want folks who wouldn't know any better to keep preaching it as gospel, or mixing it in with the truth."

The early church was a bunch of people who believed there was such a thing as the truth, and that by following it, you could be saved eternally. Because of that they fought for the real story of Jesus. But since so many today don't believe in absolute truth, and want to impose all sorts of modern ideas about "plagiarism" and "freedom of expression" and even "book burning" on ancient history (when nobody thought that way), all of a sudden there are "conspiracy theories" about what happened in the first 4 centuries of the Church.

[Lawrence]

To those who want to read the "Banned Books" of the bible:

The Lost Books of the Bible and The Forgotten Books of Eden

It's ISBN is 0-529-020601-0

It is a collection of most, but not all, of the more curious works circa 1926 so it is missing a good portion of the Gnostic stuff.

Now, as for the idea that the early Church got together, put forth a list and burned all the copies that didn't make the list I would have to say hogwash. The reason that these books did not make the canon was simply because these later (and decidedly weirder) Gospels were only followed by a few communities who were looked upon as out of the mainstream by Alexandria, Rome, Jerusalem, Antioch and Constantinople. The earliest "list" that I know of comes from the Easter Sermon of St. Athanasius, sometime in the 340's which is essentially the New Testament we know today. Were there other gospels? Most assuredly. Did the early Church actively seek them out to destroy them like the great library fire in The Name of the Rose, probably not. Some, I repeat some, of the texts embraced by heretics like Valentinus were discarded, The Gospel of Truth, but I have yet to read an account of 2nd century book burning.

But please, correct me if I am wrong as later Christianity is not my field.

Pax,
L

[Parthian King]

Dead on the money from where I stand, Lawrence. It is historically reductionist (i.e., a vast oversimplification) to say that there was a meeting, a final list was made, and the rest were summarily rounded up and burned. The process was very long and as complicated as any process would be that was not controlled centrally, took place (as I said before) over a period of centuries, involved many people, and spanned as far west as France and as far east as Syria and Egypt.

On the other hand, for the sake of summing things up, it is not inaccurate to say that copies of certain heterodox texts were in fact eventually destroyed. But while people make much of that (casting it as suppression or even worse, like persecution), it would really be more analogous to refining a final draft on a paper or a project. There is a reason why you delete things, and it isn't because you have something to hide. In any case, these decisions were made by local bishops as they dealt with preachers using texts they considered out of line.

Perhaps the best way to put things is that by the time the final form of the canon was decided upon, most of the "weeding" had already been done. People have it backwards when they think that the canon was a club for elite books that left a bunch of others standing in line outside, wanting to get in (and when they found they weren't, they were hunted down and destroyed or successfully "went into hiding"). The fact is, most had already elimintaed them from the running, or they were never taken seriously in the first place when the canon took its eventual shape. Besides, most of the decision making was self-evident. No one at the councils would even dare to suggest anything about Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, or the writings of Paul. Such works simply were, and served as a measure for all others.

I use the New Testament Apocrypha in 2 volumes, edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ISBN 0-227-67915-6 and 0-2276-7917-2.

[onlymystory]

I thought I'd add that a lot of the "burning" of Christian manuscripts/books happened in the early fourth century under the reign of Diocletian and Galerius the two senior Augustuses of the Roman Empire. They both hated the Christians and ordered that all Christian buildings and books were to be burned. A lot of manuscripts were lost then despite the best efforts of Christians. It might also help to remember that every one of these Christians who were found hiding books were tortured and killed. The order of Galerius brought about more martyrs within about 8 years than any other period in history. Books weren't burned by the church to put forth the view they wanted. Books were burned by pagan emperors wanting to stamp out any remnant of Christianity.

[inkspot]

Books weren't burned by the church to put forth the view they wanted. Books were burned by pagan emperors wanting to stamp out any remnant of Christianity.
Thanks, OMS, that is very helpful to know. It's kind of funny how non-Christians today can get the story so backward.
:)

[Parthian King]

Here's a quote from an article I found much to the effect of what has been said....

By the time of the Diocletianic persecution in 303 Roman authorities, in their campaign to confiscate Christian property, included the requirement that Christian books be handed in and burned. In the words of Eusebius, "We saw with our very eyes ... the inspired and sacred scriptures committed to the flames in the marketplaces" in response to the imperial letter "ordering the destruction by fire of the scriptures" (Hist. eccl. 8.2.l and 4). The requirement showed that the authorities knew Christians had an identifiable set of holy writings and knew their importance to the Christian communities. Hierocles, governor of Bithynia and the chief promoter of the persecution, knew the Christian Bible, and had already attempted in two books against the Christians "to prove the falsehood of sacred scripture," by which was meant Christian sacred writings, as the reference to Paul and Peter makes clear. Christians themselves thought they had an identifiable set of scriptures, for they immediately experienced a moral dilemma over giving up documents to the authorities, an issue that became the occasion for the Donatist schism. Christians might hide writings, try to pass off apocryphal and heretical texts, or in some cases debate what to hand over and what not to, but for the most part they knew what books the soldiers were looking for. (Lee Martin McDonald, James A. Sanders, Editors: The Canon Debate; Everett Ferguson, Factors Leading to the Selection and Closure of the New Testament Canon, p 317, 2002)

Christians therefore did in fact (indirectly) destroy heterodox texts. However, as OMS has pointed out, those texts were burned in the fire of persecution. Christians fought to maintain what they considered sound texts, and gave decoys to be burned when they could get away with it. Scholars use the fact that some "lesser" texts (like 2 & 3 John) survived this period as strong attestation that the early church respected them, though compared to the Gospels and other letters that choice may seem odd to us now.

Nevertheless, Augustine did call for the destruction of certain Gnostic texts in the 4th century. But although much is made of that, a better understanding of what really happened is found here (http://www.livius.org/gi-gr/gospels/disappearance.html). Links are thrown into posts a lot, but this one is really worth the read, and it is relatively short. It explains that since most heterodox writings were on papyrus, and the only way for them to be both preserved and read was continual recopying, many Gnostic texts were lost because they fell into disuse and nobody cared to read them anymore--like I said earlier, Christians began to recognize them as fringe. (Note that the Nag Hammadi texts survived because though they were preserved in jars in an arid region, they were not being handled.) There is a big difference between deciding something is not worth the read and letting it rot, and making a bonfire out of it. By and large, in relation to the Gnostic texts, Christians did the former, not the latter.

On a note that may be interesting to OMS, it is significant that later (early Medieval) Irish monks became the great copyists of the Church. The copied everything they could get their hands on--even things they didn't like. They even put notes in texts of pagan origin stating that the thing was perfect nonsense. But they copied it anyway. So to say that the Church was then on a book burning rampage to suppress heterodox thought is, as Lawrence says, hogwash.

[onlymystory]

On a note that may be interesting to OMS, it is significant that later (early Medieval) Irish monks became the great copyists of the Church. The copied everything they could get their hands on--even things they didn't like. They even put notes in texts of pagan origin stating that the thing was perfect nonsense. But they copied it anyway. So to say that the Church was then on a book burning rampage to suppress heterodox thought is, as Lawrence says, hogwash.

Oh absolutely. I'm not overly familiar with early Christianity its just not my field. But Ireland and Celtic tradtion is all me. In fact if it hadn't been for Ireland's Christians, who knows how long it would have taken to come out of the dark ages. Ireland (thanks to St. Patrick) was predominantly Christian and opened numerous schools and monasteries teaching both pagan and Christian literature. And indeed they copied tediously. Much of what we know of the Greek philosophers was preserved by the Irish as well. Christians then knew well the value of the written word. Now however, I might be willing to accept that very few people in today's world would value a book. But Christians of history, especially medieval history, did not burn books nor did they have some deep ulteriour motive.

[Lawrence]

There is a great book out there along the lines of "How the Irish Saved Civilization". I read it when I was trying to reconnect with my W. Irish roots (Great Grandma McGee was from Co. Leitrim). V. good stuff about the monks. A great little margin note from one of the Irish manuscripts written by a bored copyist:

I and Pangor Bang, my cat. At alike tasks we are at.
Hunting mice is his delight. Copying words I sit all night.

Erin Go Bragh