Word: gospels
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...this treasure-trove is Gnosticism, a potent heresy of Christianity's early days, which interpreted Jesus' life and teaching as an esoteric message of salvation directed to an elite equipped with secret knowledge. As such, most of the manuscripts are interesting mainly to scholars. But the Gospel of St. Thomas has a special concern and fascination for all Christians, for it is a 3rd or 4th century collection of 114 "sayings of Jesus" that dates back to a Greek manuscript from the first half of the 2nd century-within 50 years of the Gospels themselves. Such compilations...
Beatitudes & Parables. Some of the sayings are word-for-word versions of material in the four canonical Gospels, some are variations of the Gospel versions, some are quotations from Jesus known only through the writings of the early church fathers, and some are completely unknown. The word-for-word repetitions include the sayings about the mote and the beam, the blind leading the blind, that which is hidden and must be revealed, the prophet not without honor save in his own country, "to him that has shall be given," leaving one's father and mother to follow Jesus...
...Cullmann cited two examples of Christ's sayings found both in the Gospel of St. Thomas and the church fathers: 1) "He who is near me is near the fire, and he who is far from me is far from the kingdom"; 2) "Split a piece of wood -I am there; lift the stone and you will find me there...
Unknown & Genuine. Will the newly found "Gospel" (scheduled to be published soon by Professor Henri-Charles Puech of the College de France, and colleagues) affect the New Testament? No, answers Theologian Cullmann: The collection "was rightly not included in the New Testament." His reason: It includes "obviously Gnostic material," and apparently was compiled by a Gnostic who arbitrarily put the collection under the authority of the Apostle Thomas.-* Says Cullmann: "Our four canonical Gospels are the only ones on which we can rely. Again and again we must marvel at the fact that from the large number of primitive Christian...
...other hand, it is possible for previously unknown and yet genuine sayings of Jesus to be found in other documents which are not in the canon, sayings which, even when they bring no fundamentally new revelation, are capable of enriching and furthering our understanding of the canonical gospel...