There are a whole bunch of books that never made it into the bible. Ancient Christians used to teach from books known as the Gnostic Texts. That was until the Catholic church gathered all the christians together and made them get rid of their books. The church even went so far as to destroy all the Gnostic books they found.

Some Gnostic christians hid the books in a mountain in Egypt before the Catholics could get to them. Not long ago... 1945 if I remember correctly... Archeologists found the books buried in Nag Hammadi, Egypt.

Now they are available for people to read. So have you read the Lost Books / Gnostic gospels / Nag Hammadi texts / The Dead Sea Scrolls?

And if you have read them what do you think about them?

I did have the 10 lost books.. some were very wierd but I found the Book of Barnabus very interesting.

Barnabus was the Companion of Paul .He was like Pauls personal Scribe writing for him Paul dictating.

He speaks of thigs that make other scriptures make more since. He speaks alot of anologies about whats happening with them and OT prophicies. ..I have looked and not found a copy of The Revelations of Peter.

Johns and Peter's Revelations were at a great conversy as which one would get into the canon.

Even split believers up over it ..I would like to read it and see why new believers back then seen Peters just as important as Johns.. Blessings..Miles

I once read a small manuscript that purported to be the written by one of the three that traveled to see the baby jesus.

Evidentially those 'three' stayed with him to observe.

Anyway the end portion of this manuscript described the taking down of Jesus from the cross alive but in very bad shape (the centarian who was on guard believed him to be dead however one of the three was a 'doctor' of the time and new that he was in a coma).

He was taken down, treated for his injuries and spirited away (after a brief meeting with his disciples) to an area the discription of which sounds like the same place where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.

According to this manuscript he took a wife and lived in that area till old age... and left two children.

I have tried several times to find that manuscript again. However it seems that the original belongs to one of the many 'secret' organizations that abound within our world.

One that builds and watches and observes.

Bet the Christian churches would freek if the 'original' was to surface.

Whato all,

I read a fair chunk of the Nag Hammadi library, as well as some of the Bruce Codex and the related but nonchristian Corpus Hermeticum. Some of it was part of a course I did in college and some is just because it's interesting to me.

From a historical perspective, it helps to avoid referring to the Catholic Church when talking about things that happened in Antiquity. This is mainly because the Catholic Church doesn't really exist in the terms we understand. I know the Church argues otherwise, but there just isn't evidence to back them on that point. The theological baggage for a Pope isn't written until until well into the second century, and we're almost in the third before anyone suggests the Bishop of Rome might be viewed as an authority on anything to anyone outside of the Roman episcopacy. The term my professor put forth was 'great church', which seems a little more accurate since the Great Church includes Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria, rather than seeming isolated to Rome.

The Great Church seems to have largely evolved in consequence of the influence of Gnostics. The Gnostics were not so much an organized contra-church as they were a body of random spiritualists, ascetics, fanatics and charlatans who wandered into cities with claims of religious experience and esoteric knowledge. The spiritualists were disruptive to the Christian churches. They were also not always good intentioned. St. Irenaeus mentioned one fellowed called Marcius who's the earliest version of a sleazy preacher I can think of off hand. Irenaeus complains of him using his 'church' and the idea of gnosis to get women into sleeping with him, ( and given that Lyons was a Roman town, it's not too far a stretch to say that the 'getting women to sleep with him' part probably extended to include boys and was not exclusive of pedophilia).

Ancient texts, it should be noted, are subject to certain peculiarities when it comes to authorship. Most of the time, an author is very confident and is good enough to write his name on whatever book he's just finished. However, there is also a big chunk of writers who did not feel very confident and chose to hide their identities by ascribing their work instead to a more famous individual. Aristotle and Plato were both subject to this, their complete works supply and marking pseudonymous texts. The above mentioned Corpus Hermeticum was written by members a Greco-Egyptian pagan cult, called, conveniently, the Hermeticists. They were big on complex and vaguely Platonist metaphysics and popular among Gnostics, who tended to pillage their works with the same shamelessness with which they approach Christian texts. They are also distinct in this line of argument, given that each book in the Corpus claims to have been written by the god Hermes. One of the arguments against canonicity for Gnostic writing is their late dates. Most of them, while claiming the authorship of apostles, are by internal references and language dated to much more recent periods, claiming the authority of first hand experience with the apostles centuries after the New Testament texts were written.

Lastly, I don't think there's much argument for Nag Hammadi being the result of Gnostics on the run. In the main because heretics in Antiquity were not backed into a corner as was the case with say the Cathars or Jews in post-Reconquista Spain. Antiquity saw a lot of heretical sects, the majority of which were localized in the Neareast. When heretics of this period found themselves persecuted they tended, more often than not, to pick up and move eastward. Most of Asia's earliest experience with Christendom was through these outcast heretical tribes.

Even when they went east, they didn't just die out in the desert. (Well, some probably did.) In Mongolia, thirteenth century (?), Genghis Khan's mother was a Nestorian Christian, descending from a group of schismatics who broke off from the Great Church in the fifth and took to the East. The Manichaeans -- who were kind of Gnostic and condemned by such a lauded figure as St. Augustine of Hippo -- went as far as China and lasted until the eleventh century, when the Emperor decided he had enough of them. The travels and preaching of lesser heretics and schismatics who argued for Christ being only a man is the most likely reason for Muslims continuing that assertion today. And the Mandaean Gnostics are still around and practicing today in Iraq.

The fact that Nag Hammadi texts were buried and not brought along suggests that the owners wanted to stick around and were not that picky about their belief system. The best theory I've come across is relative to a festal letter written by St. Athanasius.

Alexandria was a mess in this period and Athanasius, trying to push for a vision of orthodoxy had a real pain in his ***. This is the period of the Nestorians and the Arians, it's the period the monophysites, the homoousians and maybe dozen other schisms just waiting to occur. Alexandria was also a major crossroad even back then. It was the last stop on the spice road before Europe. The cults of isis and Mithras were still forces to be reckoned with. The Hermeticists originated in Alexandria. There were sects of Gnostics in at least the Sethian and Valentinian traditions. A generation or two early, St. Clement of Alexandria had even met with Buddhists, after a group of them wandered into town. Faced with this mess of beliefs and lack of clear authority, I get the impression Athanasius went after the heretical texts with a kind of desperation / reactionary conservatism in an attempt to keep his church from going to pieces on him.

The theory ascribse ownership of the Nag Hammadi library to a Pachomian monastery that existed formerly in the vicinity of where they were found. Genuine Gnostics, that is to say Gnostics who earnestly believed their preaching, as opposed the charlatans like Marcius, tended to take a very ascetic line. The body is created by the Demiurge and is therefore evil. The soul comes from the True God and is awakened by Sophia and thus is pure. Anything that had to do with the body was generally bad news in their book. The Marcionites even went so far as to condemn sex. All sex. Even between married couples, was evil and therefore forbidden. Monasticism is likewise ascetic, but it tends to be a little less explicit about it. The body is not evil. God created all things and called them good. But, indulgences of the body are viewed as the slippery slope to sin and damnation, so they in turn remove themselves not only from indulgence but from the possibility of indulgence by moving their church out into the desert where they can be left alone to practice in purity. It makes perfects that monks would find Gnostic writing of value in that lens. The idea of a canon was still a novelty for Christians. Writing's sole value was through its utility to the reader. They preserved the Gnostic writing alongside the Christian writing and probably also the Rule of their order because all that writing spoke to them in a deep way. When the bishop, their superior in matters of faith, said here's the canon, get rid of the rest, they did as they were told. Cause, as monks they were anything if not obedient. They buried the books because they felt no need to abandon the monastery on the grounds of semantics. Nag Hammadi wasn't holy scripture to them, just a set of books the bishop decided they shouldn't be fiddling around with.

Anyways, that turned out a bit longer than I was expecting. Enjoy.

--K.

Well thanks, K. I did enjoy. You seem knowledgable about this topic so I think I will ask you what year was the oldest canonical book written? I heard in passing the year was about 100 AD.

I read some of them and they were interesting to read. The Apocrypha is interesting to read, too because it covers the 400 years between the old and new testament.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01601a.htm

I believe the earliest texts are traced to about 70 AD, but I could wrong. It's been a long time since I read about them.

I don't know all the dates off hand for everything. We can date the origin of some Gnostic sects based on the appearance of their founders. Manichaeism to the third century, as that's when Mani lived. Valentinian Gnostics to the fourth. Sethians are a little ambiguous since they claimed to predate Christ, possibly spinning off from one of the Jewish apocalyptic cults that were en vogue from around the second or first century B.C.

The pronounced parallels between Gnostic imagery and Zoroastrianism inclines me to lean more towards Late Antiquity -- when Christianity was already well-established and moving toward dominance in major Neareastern cities -- when speculating about their origins.

That said, I think some of the Gnostic writing, particular the Gospel of Thomas, smells like it's an adaptation of something older. Like the Thomas writer in the fourth century picked up a copy or version of the Q-text, then integrated his own thoughts in writing it out. Unfortunately, I seriously doubt we're going to find the older text under the newer one.

Regarding the dates for the canonical books, whoever gave you that date was right on maybe two counts and wrong otherwise. The earliest canonical books are the epistles of Paul. Most of them date to the 50's. The pseudepigraphic pauline epistles dating to a period a little bit after that, probably closer to 70's.

The synoptic gospels were all written in the period after that. The Gospel of Mark in the 70's, showing a clear bitterness about the Jewish War. Matthew, Luke and Acts were written sometime after that, but still a ways before the century-turn. I've seen mixed views on John and Revelation, but it's usually placed at or possibly just past 100.

Great information! Thanks.

so how many books,are there? the synoptics and gnostics, the dead sea scrolls, the lost books and the Nag hammadi texts.. how many of each, are there in all and how many are readable?

I read the gospel of Judas a couple of times...it is worth the read!

I wonder if they might find any 'lost' manuscripts in the newly excavated 'tunnels' in Jerusalem?

Those tunnels may have been used to 'smuggle' people in and out of the city during the time the Romans occupied that area.

People being what they are.

Cities, really aren't that great for preserving books.

Picture: first century house in Jerusalem. You live there with your family. You spend your time spying on your neighbor across the way. Neighbor lives with his family. Neighbor moves out. Takes his stuff with him. Maybe he dies. Heirs inherit the house. Heirs take the stuff out. Paper's expensive. Means paper holds more value sold to be washed and reused than to lie in a house. At some point the time comes that you have an owner who wants to redevelop. More oft than not the new owner demolishes the existing house and builds over the same lot. And, even should some guy bury books in his backyard, cities are subject to constant development. People are always digging up gardens, laying new foundations or running pipes for aqueducts or sewer lines. That kind of work makes it unlike for a private individual to be able to bury something at the right level for it to be found today.

Even then, the kind of paper specimens that tend survive in cities are most often characteristic of the general population, not a minority of believers. For instance, mercantile paperwork is very common: inventories, book keeping, debt accounts and that sort. Also, quasi-religious fragments, like blessings and curses. A little note written on a scrap of paper, then rolled up and stuck someplace holy (or unholy), like the bottom of a well or a crack in a wall, for gods to find and answer.

On a very rare occasion we find books in cites. I'm still crossing my fingers that the Emperor Claudius's works on the Etruscans and the Carthaginians will surface during my lifetime, but I fully expect a lifetime of disappointment on that count. The library at Pompeii is a good example of what hopes along those lines lead to. A.D. 74, Pompeii gets buried in ash. In the twentieth century excavations of the city stumble upon a Roman villa wherein they find a library packed full of burnt scrolls. They painstaking dismantle the scrolls. Gently peeling off bits of burnt paper that's more delicate than tissue paper. They arrange the paper fragments as close as they can to the shape of the original scroll unrolled. They scan the paper in infrared and in that spectrum are able to pull up the ink and determine what was written on it. They forward a transcription to a classical scholar who then sets to work trying to translate the text. Inherent problems in texts of that period make the work slow. Takes a long while. Finally though, the classicist comes back with a finished translation of the scroll. It's one scroll of maybe a dozen or so. It's a scroll from the middle of the work. The work is a book by an Epicurean philosopher. The translation is fifty print pages of drivel categorizing the different kinds of atoms and what they're good for.

The big and worthy finds for great old books are not in cities, where two millennia of developers have pillaged before us. The big and worthy finds lie out in the middle of nowhere. Buried in the desert. Especially in the desert around old monasteries. Monk wrote a lot. They're like the bloggers of Antiquity. They wake up. They eat. They pray. And they write. There's not a lot left for a monk to do besides. Nag Hammadi and the Dead Sea Scrolls both come from ascetic communities, same probably goes for the Bruce Codex. Most Greco-Roman secular materials are preserved through monastic writing. Plato and Aristotle survive this way with real strength, while Thales, Democritus and Heracleitus have fallen into obscurity. The Latin poet Catullus actually survived through a single manuscript found under a dead monk's bed. Saved from the brink of extinction by one religious man's perversion.

That said, new discovered manuscripts have not really added anything significant to what we know about Gnosticism. The mediaeval and ancient style of attacking a theological or philosophical position involved the necessity of showing that they understood the position in the first place. They would show their understanding by either explaining the position in detail or quoting passage from the text they were writing against. In combination with the heresiologists of the period, we already have a very well document record of who the Gnostics were, what their beliefs amounted to and what they were like in practice. Findings like Nag Hammadi are great, but they are not actually telling us anything about them that we didn't already know. Just giving us insights into how they tried to tell others about what they knew.

AB, Have you checked out the Sacred Texts website?

I have and I like what I've read so far. Insomuch as its another interesting story like the current OT and NT stories.

Do you include the Pseudographia and the Apocrypha in this group?

The Nag Hammadi Library and the Dead Sea Scrolls have historical validity, but many other "lost" books of the Bible simply do not. For example, one of the two texts about which I asked have a letter from Pontius Pilate explaining what happened to him after he sentenced Jesus--actually written hundreds of years after PP died.

We now know these texts are forgeries, but they continue to influence the "understanding" of Biblical aspects in the modern world. The long held idea that Joseph was much older than Mary is one of these beliefs started in these books.

In the early days of Christianity, there were several sects with varying beliefs; the Catholic Church stamped them all out.

In the early days there were several dozen sects. But, you can't really level blame for ancient persecution on the Catholic Church. Sure, what we know as the Catholics were a part of the great church that was involved, but the persecution of heretics in Antiquity tended to involve the sees of Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria, none of which needed an ok from the Bishop of Rome. The Roman branch just didn't have the same kind of problems the eastern divisions did. Aside from a few odd instances, Rome's only constant rivals were pagans and the sociopolitical landscape after the Edict of Milan made it inconvenient to stay a pagan.

As the nuance has been floating around here for a while, I would like to suggest something that would seem the minority opinion on this board. That the suppression of Gnosticism, (in the sense of the religion, not the scriptural texts), regardless of whether you agree with what I've been saying or still maintain the Catholic Church is to blame, was not necessarily a bad thing, and to a limited extent would not be a bad thing today.

The average Gnostic in Antiquity is a snobbish antisemite. The esoteric knowledge gleaned through the lens of gnosis is not much beyond snobbery. I know something. You can't know it because you haven't been shown what I know. (Picture me blowing a raspberry, for effect.)

The esoteric knowledge they gleaned from that lens is in effect an antisemitic metaphysics: i.e., Yahweh reconceived as the Demiurge renders Jews as his chosen people into minions of the dark lord. The mythos today would be like a newage revision of the Protocols of Zion.

Admittedly, exclusive antisemitism is a little strange for this period. That is to say, it's not unusual for a Gentile to hate Jews in Antiquity, but it is unusual for him to single out Jews, to hate them to the exclusion of Greeks, Celts, Arabs, Persians and everyone else not of his own hometown. But, we can kind of forgive them for that. Hate wasn't unusually. And more important, when you look on Antiquity at the history of Gnostics what you find is that they didn't really do a whole lot. The average Gnostic in Antiquity joined a monastery. At worst he formed a cult in some town like Lyons or Alexandria. He made trouble for the local bishop, but that was about all he did. Like church as a collegium or a social club.

On the other hand, think about what it would like if he did go out and do something. While they tended to disagree on the number of gods and arrangement of the cosmos, there are a few points they can be nailed down on. One is the emphasis on esoteric knowledge and perceptions that are enabled through the experience of gnosis. The attitude that only they and those like them are capable of understanding the world as it truly is, as opposed to what the Demiurge wants you to believe it is. The other part they agreed on was radical dualism. Christians have dualistic tendencies, but it's only the rare nut that takes it so far as the Gnostics did.

Review: A belief in Christ. A sense of personal superiority in perception and understanding of the world and man's place in it. Radical dualism that colors their perception of the world. An sense of utter disgust with the material realm. A hatred for the institutions of the world as instruments of Yaldabaoth: government, the media, the census, et cetera. A distrust of Jews.

Roll all that together and take a look around. What kinds of people ring closest to it. What kind of pastors do those people go to see on Sundays? What you're going to find are characters like Pat Robertson, Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell and Fred Phelps at the helm.

Against all odds: Gnosticism alive and well today.

They are certainly interesting, but not worth considering as canon most of the time. We Catholics did a better job then people give us credit for back in antiquity, most of these "lost" books are quite fake or have gigantic problems of historiography you know :p

Gnosticism is however a fascinating, if at times bizzare thing to study.

You might consider the fact that being declared the official church of the Roman Empire in the third century helped the proto orthodox church along in there quest to exterminate the Gnostic's.Torture and murder that was sanctioned by Constantine[who was baptised on his death bed]gave real power to the roman/Alexandrian heresiologists.The Christian Gnostic's weren't Out there by any means.They were In the church it's self.They were the intellectuals of the church and as has been the habit of the Proto christian church through out history the Intellectuals were not tolerated.Very few,bordering on None of the original works,canonical as well as non canonical Manuscripts,have ever been found,only copies of copies of copies etc etc.The four canonical gospels were not assigned authorship for decades after they were written.Only later were they attributed to Mathew,mark,Luke,and john.There is clear evidence that some early old testament Rabi's were Gnostic.The hidden books of the gnostic's were hidden to Preserve them due to the fanatical heretic hunters[hit men for the"Great"church so to speak.The church of modern times Fears the Nag Hammadi find because the Christian Gnostic portion of these books illustrates the Devious and destructive lies the"Great" church used in there attempt at wiping variational Christian thinking out.The mutilation of the beautiful varied thinking that was early Christianity occurred at the rubber stamp council of Nicaea.That was also the death knell of Christianity and the beginning of the monstrous entity that claims to be Christs church today.The end of the book of John[or the pseudonymous author]tells those who have an ear"These are only a few of the things Jesus said and did.If you put them in to books,I suppose they would fill up the whole world".Read it and ask yourself:If there is more information about Christ out there,Why is no one looking for it?Why has the Proto Orthodox Christian Church of today tightened it's grip on it's congregations rather than objectively Examining new finds?In history there are winners and losers,the winners Always write their side into the history books while slandering all others,Look at the history of brutality,war,and the carnage that Christianity has following it around and it becomes very clear that the"Bad Guys"won in the battle for Christian domination...all because Constantine happened to live in Rome where the wealthy Roman"Catholic"church dominated the scene.As usual the Rich"Stuck it"to the poor...and it's been happening again and again,like a nightmare that won't go away.I could go on about this for a week but my fingers are tired from"Hunt and peck"writing so I'll end it here.BTW,I'm a christian Gnostic.

I thought the Council of Nicea was in Constinople Turkey and not Rome in 325ad.. when he joined the Roman adopted relgion of Roman Soldiers of Zorasterism which was is still in Iran with the scriptures to bring about a State Religion that would bring inb the Pagans and believers on the same foot.. mixing thier beliefs and Holy Days..Blessings...Miles