Why did the Early Church Accept the Four NT Gospels and Reject the Gnostic Gospels?

by Christ Alone 58 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Emery

  I have read opposing views and they are all from evangelical biased sources with the agenda of proving foundamentalism. Have you read his book?
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  designs

  CA- you sound like a guy who has never sat down with a Rabbi. 'rules and regulations' it's the Torah! lol

  Paul sure did a number on the western world, worse than Freddy Franz could ever do in ten lifetimes.
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  Christ Alone

  designs, you seem to be someone that doesn't understand the Talmud which is separate from the Torah. The "rules and regulations" I was speaking of had nothing to do with the Torah. Halakha contained 39 categories of extra-biblical rules of what one could and could not do on the sabbath. Sort of like the rules we have in the WT. They were BASED on the Talmud, but went far beyond what was required. While the Torah only stated that one could not "work" on the Sabbath, the Talmud went into detail as to what they believed constituted "work". This included gathering, cooking, winnowing, planting, traveling, dyeing, making TWO loops, smoothing, measuring, lighting a fire, erasing, etc.

  This is why Jesus said that the Sabbath was made FOR man not man FOR the Sabbath. The Jews were putting heavy loads on people. But the Sabbath was never meant to be a heavy load. Jesus was Lord of the Sabbath, the creator of the Sabbath.

  With claims like that, no wonder the Jews hated Him. Especially those that had power by use of these rules.
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  mP

  Many gospels got rejected because they were simply stupid and are simply a joke and had to be eliminated. The other real reason is they gave mesags that were incompatible with the Romans. Take for example stories like Hecla (sp) and other stupid sexual moral stories.
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  mP

  Emery:

  Ehrman is one of THE authorities on the subject and a great teacher.

  mP:

  Bart cant be that great, it took him 30 years to figure out xianity was bunk and thats after full time study.
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  trillaz

  In once place it is said the Gnostic gospels did not exist upon the early church evaluating the 4 gospels of M,M,L and J.

  In another it is said that the Gnostic gospels were rejected.

  The play is made that the earliest was the Gospel of Thomas (150 A.D.). What about others that came after the comments?

  How can one reject something that does not exist yet?

  Also, why claim that the early church "exposed (them) as false" only 1500 years ago? Why is that not 1800-1900 years ago?

  I hereby reject any future clarification made regarding the assertion and accept for gospel that the early church made a decision on the information they had at the time but did not directly reject Gnostic teachings, for which they had no copies of to evaluate.
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  PSacramento

  I have Bart's books and they are great for the layperson BUT that are HIS opinion only.

  His own teacher, Bruce Metzger, didn't agree with Bart's conculsions and Metzger was perhaps THE NT scholar of the 20th century, his books on the NT canon and the tranmission of scripture are excellent.

  Bart makes vald points but the problem is thatare NOT new and have all been dealt with over the centuries.

  It is important to understand however, where Bart was coming from. As somone that believed the bible to be inerrant when Bart realized that it was the way HE thiought it should be, he decided to bring what he viewed as the errors and inconsistencies of the beible to laypeople ( Scholard and historians had know about these issues for centuries).

  In many ways Bart did a great job of bring this issues to the forefront and in doing so, IMO, made every Christian who wanted to address this concerns a better apologist.
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  transhuman68

  LOL, it was Irenaeus who said there had to be four Gospels:

  it is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout the world, and the pillar and ground of the Church is the Gospel. . . it is fitting that she should have four pillars. . . (Against Heresies 3. 11.7)

  And who knows how many other Gospel accounts were searched for and destroyed? The ones that were found in the Egyptian desert at Nag Hammadi are proof that any not hidden away were destroyed...
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  mP

  transhuman:

  the four creatures of the gospel authors and the four creatures of ezekiels vision are the same and are the four cardinal zodiac signs. Iraneus comment above is perfectly in line with this astrological observation.