Re: Rants about the "lost gospels" -- Utah's Religion Debate

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Date Posted: 15:38:30 10/24/05 Mon
Author: Lord Veritas
Subject: Re: Rants about the "lost gospels"
In reply to: MyLadyBanshee 's message, "Re: Rants about the "lost gospels"" on 21:43:28 09/25/05 Sun

MyLadyBanshee,
If I were you, I would just ignore Brother D. Thomas. There's no reasoning with him, so don't bother. Some people just like to make noise to get attention and actually giving them attention, good or bad, only serves to make them louder.

>Now on to the subject.
>
>In 315 AD, Athenasius, the Bishop of Alexandria,
>identified the 27 Books which we recognize today as
>the canon of New Testament scripture. Many important
>writings never made it into the Bible at all. The
>Bishops of Rome and the Pope tried to eliminate the
>use of these other materials, Gnostic or otherwise,
>which were considered by the Church of Rome to be not
>just irrelevant but harmful and damaging (Most likely
>to the power they themselves wielded over the
>people)!! Many of the writings are still available for
>us to read, so in a sense are not �lost�
>
>However, the Bible itself refers to several books that
>have not been found. Let me list a few;
>
>Old Testament
>
>1. Book of the Covenant (Exodus 24:4, 7)
>2. Book of the Wars (Numbers 21:14)
>3. Book of Jasher (Joshua 10:13 & 2 Samuel 1:18)
>4. Book of Statutes (1 Samuel 10:25)
>5. Book of the Acts of Solomon (1 Kings 11:41)
>6. Book of Nathan (1 Chronicles 29:29 & 2 Chronicles
>9:29)
>7. Book of Gad (1 Chronicles 29:29)
>8. Prophecy of Ahijah (2 chronicles 9:29)
>9. Visions of Iddo (2 chronicles 9:29)
>10. Book of Shemaiah (2 chronicles 12:15)
>11. Book of Jehu (2 Chronicles 20:34)
>12. Acts of Uzziah, Written by Isaiah (2 Chronicles
>26:22)
>13. Sayings of the Seers (2 Chronicles 33:19)
>14. Prophecies of Enoch (Jude 14)
>
>New Testament
>
>1. Missing Epistle of Paul (1 Corinthians 5:9)
>2. 2nd Missing Epistle of Paul (Ephesians 3:3-4)
>3. 3rd Missing Epistle of Paul (Colossians 4:16)
>4. Missing Epistle of Jude (Jude 3)
>
>In Matthew 2:23, there is a mention of a prophesy that
>Christ would be called a Nazarene. A prophecy, please
>correct me if I�m wrong, not found in our Old
>Testament texts.
LV:You made a lot of interesting references above. I will research them as soon as I can (my schedule is tough, so I apologize for my sporadicity)

>
>
>These are just a few of the references I have found.
>I have also read many fascinating papers on the
>subject.
LV:I would like to hear of some of them, if you don't mind.
>
>Lord Veritas, stated; �I suggest you tell us how the
>Gospel of Thomas could have been written by Thomas
>when he was killed more than five decades before it
>was written.� All scriptures are copies of copies.
>To my knowledge, no �original� texts have survived.
>Even the New Testament came from Greek texts which
>were themselves copies of older texts. The King
>James Bible�s New Testament was translated from the
>Textus Receptus which is classified by scholars as the
>Byzantine texts, dated somewhere between the 11th and
>12th century. It is also interesting that the Gospel
>of Thomas was not only preserved in a Coptic
>translation at Nag Hammadi but also in Greek
>fragments at Oxyrhynchus, proving that scriptural text
>were traditionally copied and recopied.
LV:You rose an interesting subject in the above fragment as well, but unfortunately, it does not answer my question. My question was how could St. Thomas write a gospel that was dated many decades after his death. Your diatribe on copying processes does not answer this at all, since it does not prove that he did in fact write the "lost gospel of Thomas", nor does it address the methods of dating its authorship, or call into question the dating of St. Thomas's death. You merely say that scriptural texts are copied and recopied, which is an entirely different subject altogether. I know that its hard to avoid going down tangents in these debates, but next time, please stick to information of relevance when answering an objection.

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