andreap@ms.uky.edu (Peach) (04/03/91)
I have a athiest friend who keeps telling me I need to read the Coptic(sp?)
version of the gospel. He says it will give me better insight into the
true nature of Christ. Is this just another one of the bogus gospels that
was running around after Christ's death or what? I am not familiar with
it and would like to be able to talk with him intelligently.
Request: Please keep your responses SHORT! I love this group, but find
myself constantly skipping very interesting postings because I
don't have time to read volumes.
---------------
Harold G. Peach, Jr. Internet: hgpeach@ca.uky.edu
252 Ag. Engineering Bldg., U.Ky. Packet Radio: N4FLZ@KF4NB.KY.USA.NA
Lexington, KY 40546-0276 Phone: (606) 257-3335
[Coptic is a language, spoken in Egypt. According to the Oxford
Dictinoary of the Christian Church it was spoken from the 3rd to 10th
Cent's AD. Many Gnostic works were written in Coptic, but there were
also Coptic translations of the Bible and other works. Probably he's
thinking of one or more Gnostic works. A well-known source of such
works is a find at Nag Hammadi. An English translation of many of
those documents is published as "The Nag Hammadi Library", ed. by
James M. Robinson. It has a variety of works, of varying degrees of
"bogosity". The Gospel of Thomas is the only one that I'd say is
likely to contain historical material about Jesus, possibly
independent of the NT (there are debates about that). This document
was written in Greek originally, but we have only a fragment of a
Greek manuscript. The full text is known only in its Coptic form, if
I'm drawing the right conclusion from the description in "the Nag
Hammadi Library". --clh]