The "Other" Gospels?

[Zandrax]

My apologies if this has been answered before. But does anybody know the validity of what some call the "other gospels" that aren't in the Bible? I keep hearing of Gospels of Mary and Thomas that for whatever reason were excluded from the Bible. Does anybody know about them or why they weren't included?

[3kixintehead]

Dr. Bart Ehrman has a book out called Lost Christianities that is like an anthology of all the gospels that weren't included in the Bible. He is a professor of History and he talks about them from a historical perspective. But its an interesting read.

[PatristicArcana]

My apologies if this has been answered before. But does anybody know the validity of what some call the "other gospels" that aren't in the Bible? I keep hearing of Gospels of Mary and Thomas that for whatever reason were excluded from the Bible. Does anybody know about them or why they weren't included?

The vast majority of other Gospel accounts extant today (including the Gospels of Thomas and Mary) are of Gnostic origin; hence their exclusion from the canon and the invalidity attributed to them by Christians throughout the ages.

[Jaltus]

Dr. Bart Ehrman has a book out called Lost Christianities that is like an anthology of all the gospels that weren't included in the Bible. He is a professor of History and he talks about them from a historical perspective. But its an interesting read.

No, he talks about them from an intentionally antagonistic point of view. Bart hates Christianity and will do what he can to destroy it. His specialty is text criticism, not history. He is a professor of NT at UNC, Chapel Hill and a rabid atheist who deconverted from Evangelical Christianity during his graduate school years.

[Amazing Rando]

My apologies if this has been answered before. But does anybody know the validity of what some call the "other gospels" that aren't in the Bible? I keep hearing of Gospels of Mary and Thomas that for whatever reason were excluded from the Bible. Does anybody know about them or why they weren't included?

You can read them at http://www.gospels.net/oldindex.html, or on http://www.earlychristianwritings.com and see for yourself. :smile:

[Erland]

Well in a nutshell;

They are written far too late and spread far too locally. The canonical Gospels were written within the generation of emerging Christianity and remained the Gospels. As far as we know these were the only four written Gospels extant and with any claim of eyewitnesses or apostolic authorship. They are found and mentioned from the earliest Fathers from Rome, Alexandria and the South of France with dozens of early manuscripts. Other Gospels, exluding the proto-evangelium we only have one or two extant manuscripts and many are never quoted or alluded to by Church Fathers whatever the timespan you open up, nor do even heretic groups.
Compared to that the canonical Gospels seem almost implicitly the standard. Texts such as the infancy and post-passion narratives are made, most likely, to fill in the gaps the canonicals left. Gnostic writings and Gospels reference and allude to these four. In short they are the standard.

[Ryokan]

Well, Bart Ehrman is a rabid athiest, but an entertaining other, and as an ex-rabid athiest I find him interesting enough. Basically standard flavor Christianity competed with a bunch of other brands that generally were a confluence of Christian and some other religions ideas, like greek non-Christian gnositicism, Judaism, etc. Orthodox Christianity, with the help of the holy spirit and the fact its earlier start gave it numerical supremacy and its popularity with greeks gave it a comfy philophical underpinning, eventually won out. The early noncannonical gospels and other works are either these other sects texts, or they are Orthodox texts that, well not without merit, were deemed not to be included in the canon for various reasons.

[robto]

Well, Bart Ehrman is a rabid athiest, ...

Ehrman is agnostic.