What is the Christian (or your) perspective on Biblical apocrypha?
Asked by
DominicX (
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April 13th, 2011
Many people take for granted that groups of people had to decide what was to be included in the Bible (I’m referring mainly to the NT here). In the 4th century, there was much debate about what books were to be included and eventually the New Testament as we know it came about. Different groups, however, include and exclude different books.
There were many books that were discarded and regarded as heresy, many of which present a very different picture of Jesus. The Gospel of Peter, for example, suggests Jesus was not human, but purely divine. The Gospel of Mary Magdalene suggests a more elevated position for women. The Gospel of Philip suggests that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a special relationship.
My question is simply how do people regard these texts? How can we simply throw them out? How do we know which books are valid? How does the knowledge of apocryphal books effect belief?
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8 Answers
Based on what they taught me at the ol’ religious school, the only apocryphal gospel that was plausibly written in the first century was the gospel of Thomas. All the other ones appear to be rather late additions.
That said, all of the gospels were written decades after Jesus bit the dust.
@Qingu
Ah, the good old Gospel of Thomas:
Simon Peter said to them, “Make Mary leave us, for females don’t deserve life.” Jesus said, “Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven.”
I suppose the date is a valid argument against their inclusion in the Bible. It just seemed problematic to me that people claim the Bible is the infallible word of God and yet there were many books considered for inclusion that were excluded and I wondered it was decided they were “invalid” in comparison to the others.
They’re all equally valid.
I think this is a great question and one I’ve thought little about. I want to think about this and decide what I believe. I saw a documentary that said some men were given the right to decide which books to include and the others could be tossed into the trash. I do have a book entitled, The Lost Books of the Bible -somewhere.
Thanks for asking the question.
Mild disdainful literary intrigue.
What I was taught was, not that the accuracy of the work was in question, but whether it was inspired by The Lords Hand.
All cultural legends are interesting and worthy of study.
Especially in issues of historical evolution and development of various religious doctrines.
YAY apocrypha! May you be outed everywhere!
Wow! This turned out to be more boring than I could have ever imagined! I think God died some time ago! Can’t you smell it?
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