Saturday, March 28, 2020

Islam critiqued tastes bitterness; A glimpse into biblical apocrypha?

In answer to the video "What is the Quran?"

The issue of apocrypha is a big can of worms in the turbulent history of the Christian texts. The apocryphal Gospels were rejected because of many reasons including doubtful authorship yet the canonized scriptures arent that much more authentic. Some books are considered apocrypha by the western church and scripture by the eastern church. When comparing the canonical and apocryphal writings, it isnt a case of first-hand versus second-hand information. It is merely a choice between doctrinal points of view, with the choice being made by men with a doctrinal bias. Some have been partially preserved such as the Gospel of Thomas. It is different than the infancy gospel of Thomas, and lacks any mention of crucifixion or resurrection. It is considered by some scholars to be the or one of the initial documents out of which developped the other more elaborate gospels. This Gospel of Thomas was for the first 2 centuries considered holy scriptures.

The same with the gospels of Matthaias or "The Twelve", Acts of Andrew or Acts of John, Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas. The last 2 books were still included in the codex sinaiticus, which is the earliest complete copy of the NT that is dated to around the year 350. There is also the Didache and the Apocalypse of Peter. On the other hand rejected by the early church fathers were Paul’s letter to Philemon, the 2nd and 3rd letters of John, the 2nd letter of Peter and the General Epistle of Jude, all part of the canon after Christianity became the state religion.

Nobody ever found the books from which the writers of the NT are sometimes quoting, as in Jn7:38,Lk11:49 or James4:5,Jude1:14-15.
The Book of Revelations was considered apocrypha for the first 200 years of the Christian Church until it became God-inspired. However even as late as the 4th-century, many Christians either rejected it in favor of the Apocalypse of Peter, or believed that they should both be included in the canon.

The Epistle of St James was ignored for centuries until the Council of Trent put it in the canon in 1563. That book received a cool reception, obviously as it appeals greatly to JEwish scriptures, rejects the Pauline concept of "faith alone".

In the 2nd century, Marcion who claimed to have known Paul, composed the first NT, calling it "Evangelicon" which he attributed to Paul himself, and appended ten of Paul's epistles to it. He rejected all of Jewish scriptures, based on YHWH's cruelty versus Paul's loving god. One can argue he was right in a sense, nothing could be further in terms of similarities than the Gods and their plan for creation than the Gods of the HB and the NT.

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