What are the hidden or missing Gospels and should they be given equal place with the four main Gospels?
Just because the word gospel is in the title, don’t get that confused with the four Gospels in the New Testament. The Missing Gospels walks us through in detail about the effects of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts.
The discovery of these texts significantly influenced modern scholarship into early Christianity and Gnosticism.
Books like the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown were influenced by the claims of these discoveries. The author claims that their origin and the theology that they teach in no way could possibly go back to Jesus and the Apostles. He makes us realize that the material we have in the Gospels, and even the material we hear abut from skeptics, have discrepancies.
You may not accept that the Apostles wrote the material and that kind of thing, but you will recognize these are second and third-generation Christian expressions that do have some ties and link back to Jesus to some degree.
Orthodoxy and the missing gospels...
Darrell Bock, the author, explores the weakness of popular ideas that other Christian religions developed together with orthodoxy. These ideas claim that orthodoxy won over them. The book is quite technical and requires an effort to read through. But if you are interested about the topic, it is worthwhile reading.
Bock negates the ideas of the "new school" of Walter Bauer, and the modern popular writings of Bart Ehrman and Dan Brown, etc. He examined a large sample of the new materials, particularly the Gospel of Thomas found in Nag Hammadi. He also looked at samples of the works of the early church fathers such as Irenaeus, Justin Martyr and Clement.
The missing gospels require a lot of research. The author just made it easy for ordinary people like us to understand the nature of these missing gospels. Bock shows us that the origin and nature of Gnostic materials and that the philosophy of the Bible is way better.
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Check out Did St Paul Get Jesus Right?: The Gospel According to Paul for further reading.
elendara
http://elendara.com/missing-gospels/
