Did the early church destroy Christian writings?

[Christian2]

Were early Christian writings destroyed by Church Fathers in order for the Church to assert its version of the Christian message to the exclusion of all others?

I read that it did in an article some time ago but I cannot find any historical documentation of it. I wrote to the author asking for details but never received an answer. This was years ago.

More recently a friend of mine said that Irenaeus "and other church leaders" destroyed as many early Christian writings as they could, including the Gnostic "Gospels," but she is unable to document the historical evidence.

Do any of you know of any historical evidence concerning this allegation?

Thanks.

[LilPunkishOfTerror]

hello Christian2

firstly, I have a hard time calling Gnostic works "Christian". I don't think the church in the 2nd century was into destroying works, they tended to reply to them (cf Against Heresies)

If the author of the claim didn't reply then I don't see the point in believing the claim. I might be wrong, but I have my doubts that the church at this stage (Irenaeus) actually destroyed heretical works. It's possible Christian commentaries that responded to Porphyry were destroyed when his Against the Christians went to the flames, that's all I can think of offhand.

Punkish
edit: book title more clear

[Hail Mary]

Were early Christian writings destroyed by Church Fathers in order for the Church to assert its version of the Christian message to the exclusion of all others?

I read that it did in an article some time ago but I cannot find any historical documentation of it. I wrote to the author asking for details but never received an answer. This was years ago.

More recently a friend of mine said that Irenaeus "and other church leaders" destroyed as many early Christian writings as they could, including the Gnostic "Gospels," but she is unable to document the historical evidence.

Do any of you know of any historical evidence concerning this allegation?

We do know that at the end of the 4th century the church finalized the canon. So, it is reasonable to assume at this time that documents found to non-canonical were not given the care of the canonical books.

For example, lets say you're the priest of a church in Syria in the 5th century. You don't have any extra money or time, you're just trying to make sure your flock is fed everyday and the canonical text in your possession are legible enough to continue the liturgical readings every day. Then, you find in your attic a copy of the Infancy Gospel tucked away in a chest. You notice its rotting, torn, and damaged from a storm. Before it finally crumples into illegibility, do you spend time and money copying it? Probably not, you probably toss it in the garbarge heap. But its not because of some insidious conspiracy to eradicate non-canonical text, its just that it was hard enough to maintain the canonical books with the limited time and money that you have.

[Christian2]

hello Christian2

firstly, I have a hard time calling Gnostic works "Christian". I don't think the church in the 2nd century was into destroying works, they tended to reply to them (cf Against Heresies)

I think we could call the Gnostic works a parasite of Christian works. Against Heresies is a good point. This was Irenaeus' reponse.

If the author of the claim didn't reply then I don't see the point in believing the claim. I might be wrong, but I have my doubts that the church at this stage (Irenaeus) actually destroyed heretical works. It's possible Christian commentaries that responded to Porphyry were destroyed when his Against the Christians went to the flames, that's all I can think of offhand.

This is the problem. If they can't backup their allegations, then why believe them? The problem arises when people read articles like the one I did and don't investigate or know any better and repeat them too.

I think my friend got her information from a book by Elaine Pagels but I haven't read her books.

Punkish
edit: book title more clear

Thank you for your comments.

[Christian2]

We do know that at the end of the 4th century the church finalized the canon. So, it is reasonable to assume at this time that documents found to non-canonical were not given the care of the canonical books.

For example, lets say you're the priest of a church in Syria in the 5th century. You don't have any extra money or time, you're just trying to make sure your flock is fed everyday and the canonical text in your possession are legible enough to continue the liturgical readings every day. Then, you find in your attic a copy of the Infancy Gospel tucked away in a chest. You notice its rotting, torn, and damaged from a storm. Before it finally crumples into illegibility, do you spend time and money copying it? Probably not, you probably toss it in the garbarge heap. But its not because of some insidious conspiracy to eradicate non-canonical text, its just that it was hard enough to maintain the canonical books with the limited time and money that you have.

I have read that many of these rejected books disappeared simply because they were not used. If they had been used as you point out they would have been continually copied and it was expensive to do that.

I have been looking for quotes from the Gnostics in the works of the early Church Fathers, but cannot find any--I mean in the first century and early second.

Thank you for your comments.

[Pursuing_Truth]

Were early Christian writings destroyed by Church Fathers in order for the Church to assert its version of the Christian message to the exclusion of all others?

I don't know of any evidence of this. I know of Christian zealots burning the Hippocratic library at Cos but not what you have mentioned.

[Archon]

Your best guide to this question is a book by Prof. Bart Ehrman, Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill, called "Lost Christianities". He details the process by which "orthodoxy" emerged by the fourth century from the battles among competing factions within Christianity up till that time. It's not that "Christianity" as such was consistently defined all the way from the first through the fourth centuries. There were many different threads and sects, each striving to put out their versions of the Gospel and the message (including the Gnostics). The ones who eventually succeeded in establishing the canon managed to define "orthodoxy" in their own terms, by which all the competing versions which lost out became heresies.

Prof. Ehrman has collected many of the texts which lost out in the competition in a companion volume called "Lost Scriptures". And he specifically addresses the question of destruction and alteration of early "non-orthodox" (i.e., heretical) scriptures in his more technical text, "The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture".

All of these books are currently viewable at www.amazon.com.

[LilPunkishOfTerror]

Excuse me Archon, but isn't Gnosticism non-Christian because of its

a) spiritualizing the resurrection of Christ,
b) incorporating pagan philosophy into its system, and
c) assuming the world was created imperfect and YHWH was the lowest and least worthy?

Such things make the Gnostics' beliefs non-Jewish, and therefore cannot be called Christian. I think Bart Ehrman is doing another Elaine Pagels from your description (I do not own the book) but truly, how many variants of the Gospel can there be?

from Punkish

[Pursuing_Truth]

Your best guide to this question is a book by Prof. Bart Ehrman, Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill, called "Lost Christianities". He details the process by which "orthodoxy" emerged by the fourth century from the battles among competing factions within Christianity up till that time.

I don't know about best guide. I would call it more of an entertaining theory. Attributing orthodoxy to a mere survival of the fittest is not the dominant theory I would go with. Was there some of that? Sure, but I think he has an extreme view.

[Archon]

Originally posted by Jedi Punkish

Excuse me Archon, but isn't Gnosticism non-Christian because of its

a) spiritualizing the resurrection of Christ,
b) incorporating pagan philosophy into its system, and
c) assuming the world was created imperfect and YHWH was the lowest and least worthy?

Such things make the Gnostics' beliefs non-Jewish, and therefore cannot be called Christian. I think Bart Ehrman is doing another Elaine Pagels from your description (I do not own the book) but truly, how many variants of the Gospel can there be?

We have to avoid the anachronistic fallacy here—reading second-century scriptures with 21st-century brains. Yes, the Gnostics are today not considered to be Christian, for the reasons you mention (among others). But the early Gnostics (Valentinus et al.) quite clearly considered themselves to be Christians. Irenaeus and other early church fathers denounced them as heretics, and it was this view that ultimately prevailed in what became the Christian church.

Pagels attempts to derive new meaning and understanding from the Gnostic writings, but even she admits she is not “Christian” in the orthodox sense; she exemplifies what I call the anachronistic fallacy. I’m not sure that even Valentinus would recognize where she has gone with Gnosticism.

Originally posted by Pursuing Truth

I don't know about best guide. I would call it more of an entertaining theory. Attributing orthodoxy to a mere survival of the fittest is not the dominant theory I would go with. Was there some of that? Sure, but I think he has an extreme view.

Ehrman is quite clear that he is not propounding a Darwinian theory of early Church history. It was not a matter of survival of the “fittest” school, but of the work of the Holy Spirit through the early Church fathers. One cannot regard the development of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as a linear or evolutionary growth out of the epistles of Paul. The biggest arena of dispute in the early Church was its Christology. The early Gnostics had one Christology, the proto-orthodox (Irenaeus, Clement et al.) had another. The latter proceeded in fits and starts until orthodox Christology was settled, and the Arian heresy rejected, at the Council of Nicaea. I would not call consiliar theology a “Darwinian” process.

[Sheepdog]

A simple answer to this question is, well, if these hypothetical books existed, where are they now? well, they wouldn't exist now, since the theory holds that they were destroyed (as well as any evidence they even existed).

this is simply yet another hook, shunted into the Early Church in order to validate one's pet heresy as having a line back to Jesus' day when no such line can be found in the evidence. modern psuedo-Christian cults do it. heck theologic liberals do it, even for views they don't necessarily agree with, if only to undermine orthodoxy.

but it's a spook game. really, such reasoning can be used for any view. for instance, i propose a hypothesis that there was an early sect of Christianity which held that Jesus was actually a stage actor in some of the Greek tragedies, and in fact this sect was much more primative and closer to Christ than Nicean Christianity, but the orthodox adherents utterly destroyed this sect and any evidence it existed.

[Pursuing_Truth]

Ehrman is quite clear that he is not propounding a Darwinian theory of early Church history. It was not a matter of survival of the “fittest” school, but of the work of the Holy Spirit through the early Church fathers. One cannot regard the development of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as a linear or evolutionary growth out of the epistles of Paul. The biggest arena of dispute in the early Church was its Christology. The early Gnostics had one Christology, the proto-orthodox (Irenaeus, Clement et al.) had another. The latter proceeded in fits and starts until orthodox Christology was settled, and the Arian heresy rejected, at the Council of Nicaea. I would not call consiliar theology a “Darwinian” process.

Thank you. I'll have to look into his position more closely.