Thread: lost gospels documentary

haven't seen this one yet, but thought it fit here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8erEWpsK3U

I just finished watching this. I enjoyed it. It was very informative.

Here were the most interesting ideas:

1) The idea of making a canon first came from Marcion who wanted to exclude the Old testament and made a canon that only included the gospel of Luke and 10 letters of Paul. Marcion's ideas were rejected as heresy, but once the question of canon had been raised this naturally became an issue that the church had to make a decision about.

2)The decision of what books were crucial to the Christian faith was a slowly growing consensus during years of persecution and Martyrdom. Thus it was only those consistent with a theology which validated this experience of persecution and martyrdom which could be accepted and this was the most critical deciding issue on which books were included in the canon.

3)Ultimately the decisions concerning theology and the canon were the ones that best assured the survival of Christianity as a religion.

also much has to be said about date and popularity, only the earliest and most popular writings became the new testament, some are early by fringe, others were popular however alot of thought went into the cannon. And lets not confuse the gnostics with christians

this documentary also got a link with dan brown novel. in christian view any thing that is not in the observation years is consided as legendary(fiction) ; were those people who heard about the story and changed it to make it an interestion story(big shock story). so scientifically there have to be around the time of JESUS/death ressurection; 40 AD to around -80ish AD,anything written below that time is thought to be faulse(legendary/fictional time).

i found nothing new being said in the first 3 episodes. going to bart erhman is just paininf one-side of the story.

gnostics were not christians.

Originally Posted by archaeologist

gnostics were not christians.

I agree.

And yet I think that many people who call themselves Christian in modern times are more like Gnostics than they realize. Any who think that they are saved by a special knowledge, dogma or statement of belief like these are magic words or a password for entrance into heaven and especially those with an elitist mentality acting like being Christian is an accomplisment to be proud of, are Gnostics from my point of view.

Not that you are interested, but the Gnostics were a varied group: Mandaeans, Manicheans, and the Plantonist Gnotics of the Syrian-Egyptian school. In fact it was recently recognized that these originally labeled a group so varied that maybe the term should only be considered to have a historical significance. I suspect that one of the reasons for this conclusion was that so much of modern Christianity fit the description Gnosticism.