ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) (10/19/90)
In article <Oct.7.03.21.56.1990.5301@athos.rutgers.edu>, rick@jts.com (Rick Yazwinski) writes: > I believe that my date of the 15th Cent. was wrong; however, the Pistis Sophia > is said to be part of Paul's work, and was at one time part of the Christian > bible, and was at some point (unfortunately I don't have the precise date) > removed. I believe in something I call "the productive use of doubt". As an example of that, when I came across the question "how do we know that the right books made it into the Bible?", I used doubt productively and decided that the way to handle the question was to take a look at some of the books that *didn't* make it. Example: there are two thick volumes of "The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha" edited by James H. Charlesworth, Doubleday 1985, ISBN 0-385-18813-7. If you want to read 1st Enoch (which Jude in the NT quotes) for example, this is a good place to look. Quoting from the introduction to that book, "the New Testament Canon was not closed in the Latin Church until much later, certainly not before the late fourth century and long after Constantine the Great established Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. All the 27 books of the NT, for example, are listed for the first time as the *only* canonical NT scriptures by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, in his Easter letter of 367AD. .. the Greek Church [had doubts about] Revelation until about the 10th century. ... The [east] Syrian Church [uses the Peshitta which] contains only 22 books, excluding 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation." As part of this exercise in "the productive use of doubt", I located a copy of Pistis Sophia in a public library about 10 years ago and read it. NO WAY is that part of Paul's oeuvre. It is just *so* different from the accepted books. I mean, it makes the Revelation look *tame*. (So, for that matter, does 1 Enoch. Revelation is delightfully humdrum in comparison with many of the things which didn't make it.) There is no known list of accepted books which includes Pistis Sophia. (The Gnostics didn't go in for lists of accepted books. Any time they wanted another authoritative book, they wrote one (:-).) The Church Fathers don't quote from it. They _do_ quote from other non-NT documents: the Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas, 1 and 2 Clement, (all of which survive and are readily available), and several others. If anyone seriously believes that Pistis Sophia was part of Paul's work, I entreat you to *read* all the letters that claim to be by Paul and to *read* Pistis Sophia. They just aren't in the same conceptual universe. There's a large paperback called "The Other Bible" which has some of the things that didn't make it into either testament; they have several Gnostic things there including The "Gospel of Thomas". I don't remember if they have Pistis Sophia; my copy of TOB is in another city right now. I got my copy from Printers Inc. in Palo Alto, it's not that hard to find elsewhere. > Another example of mortals modifying the word of God is the King James VERSION. > I believe that this is one of the most common versions around. It was > explicitly modified by King James for POLITICAL REASONS!!! This is the first I've heard that King James had any hand in the AV at all. The AV is very very close to Tyndale's translation, and Tyndale's translation was strongly influenced by Luther's German translation. I would be most interested to hear what are the changes James "first and sixth" is alleged to have made and what the political motives for them might be. As it stands, this looks like disinformation to me. Speaking of old books and the Church Fathers and such, I urge anyone who has the time and opportunity to drop into their local university library some time and look in the religion section. If you're a Catholic, you may already have heard of some of them. If you're a Protestant, as I am, remember that they are part of *our* history too, and that they have much to remind us of. I was stunned, for example, when I read Origen's "Against Celsus", to discover how many of the questions raised against Christianity today were raised and *answered* back then, yet people who claim to be scholars keep on asking the same questions as if there had never been any answer at all, adequate or not. Then too, some of the Church Fathers wrote pretty well: when I read Irenaeus's take-off of the Gnostics I nearly fell over laughing. -- Fear most of all to be in error. -- Kierkegaard, quoting Socrates.