Banned from the Bible
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Banned from the Bible is a documentary television series that originally aired on the History Channel as Time Machine: Banned from the Bible in 2003.[1][2] Banned from the Bible discusses the ancient books that did not become part of the Biblical canon. The series was continued with Banned from the Bible II in 2007.
[edit] The Need for a Christian Library
The attempts of the early Church at forming some sort of library of holy writing can be found as early as the 2nd century with Marcion of Sinope (in present day Turkey). A wealthy merchant, Marcion (who latter was known for being the initiator of the Marcionite Heresy) was a Christian. Influenced by dualism, he imagined that the loving God Jesus talked about was vastly different from the vindictive God of Jewish scripture. He strongly advocated a Christian canon that excluded all Jewish writings. As such, of the four gospels, he felt that only the Gospel of Luke should be included as the other three made references to Jewish texts. Other early church leaders opposed him and some even called him the Son of Satan. Nevertheless, his idea of specific books to be compiled into official church scripture was a beginning point for compiling a holy library (or bible) of Christian writings.
By 150 A.D., there were hundreds of texts in existence, some of which were in contradiction with each other. By the 4th century, Constantine I, in an attempt to re-establish one empire with a unifying religion to back it up, felt that there should be a consensus as to what books should be the basis for this religion. At the time, there were two opposing camps of Christian thought, both centered in Alexandria. Arius felt that Jesus was a supreme human, but not God. Opposing him was Athanasius, who felt that Jesus was both man and God. In 325, Constantine I convened the First Council of Nicaea and decreed that only one creed should emerge from the council. Once settled, the Nicene Creed banned Arias and his fellow Arians as heretics and the need for a common scripture became more pronounced.
Bishop Eusebius, a scholar of early Christian writings found at Caesarea and Jerusalem and attendee of the First Council of Nicaea, published a comprehensive history of the Christian Church. In this history, he also critiqued many books and writings circulating in the Christian communities at the time in an attempt to form some sort common library. The books he reviewed were broken down into three categories: a) accepted (the four gospels, the Book of Acts, and the Pauline epistles), b) highly likely (First John, First Peter), and c) questionable (Second John, Third John, Second Peter, Gospel of James, Epistle of Jude, the Book of Revelation, and others) He was all too aware of other church leaders views concerning Revelations with its imagery of war being at variance with Christ’s message of love and peace. He finally came down to 18 books that he believed should become official Christian scripture.
Six years after Nicaea (331), Constantine commissioned Eusebius to create an official Christian Bible. 50 copies were made at state expense to be put in churches Constantine had planned to build throughout his capital at Constantinople. Eusebius included all 18 books he had referred to in his earlier work. As opposed to Marcion, he felt that the Jewish writings should also be included and lumped them together into the Old Testament. Unfortunately, none of those 50 copies are in existence today. The closest we have are two 4th century codices: Codex Vaticanus (found in the Vatican Library) and Codex Sinaiticus (taken from Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai and placed in the British Museum). Both codices differ from what is on Eusebius’s list (ie. Sinaiticus has included the The Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas).
Forty years later, a final list of 27 New Testament books was canonized by the Christian Church. This official list excluded many popular books either because they were written too late or they weren't felt to have been orthodox. The following are some of them.
[edit] The Book of Adam and Eve
This book is a background story of Genesis 3 (Adam and Eve). It was left out because it duplicated Genesis and was written at a much later time (3rd or 4th century). In this book, Satan is an angel in human form that accompanies the serpent when tempting Eve. Not only that, but Eve is tempted twice in this book. The first is the familiar one found in Genesis. The other takes place much later after the banishment from Eden when Adam feels that the two must do penance for their sin by standing in separate rivers (Jordan for Adam, Tigris for Eve) for 40 days. After 18 days, Satan approaches Eve in the deceptive form of a divine angel, tells her she is forgiven, and successfully tempts her for a second time to disobey a command by leaving the river.
The book also alleges that God made all his angels bow down to his greatest creation, Adam. Satan refused to bow to someone who is inferior to him and made later. He rebelled and built an altar in Heaven higher than God's. Enraged, God had him banished to Hell.
That last story is also in Islam’s holy book, the Quran. In that book, Adam was made of clay and some mysterious beings called Jinn were made from smokeless fire. As above, all the angels were ordered by God to bow down before Adam, His greatest creation. All the angels obeyed, and all the Jinns except Satan obeyed. Jinns or genies are supposed to have free will and so they can disobey God.
[edit] Book of Jubilees
In Genesis, there’s a question about Adam and Eve having three sons and no daughters. How did humanity flourish under such circumstances? It is also written that after Cain is ostracized, he leaves with a pregnant wife. Where did she come from? The Book of Jubilees (or Little Genesis), which was written c. 150 BC, tries to explain. In this book, Adam and Eve have 9 sons and daughters. Awan, their third child, ends up being Cain’s wife. But this creates a new problem, incest. Because of that, it’s felt that the Book of Jubilees was probably omitted from official western Christian scripture. But, this particular book was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls and it is also official canon in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
[edit] Book of Enoch
The Book of Enoch (also 1 Enoch[3]) is a pseudepigraphic work ascribed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah and son of Jared (Genesis 5:18).
While this book today is non-canonical in most Christian Churches, it was quoted as a prophetic text in the New Testament (Letter of Jude 1:14-15) and by many of the early Church Fathers. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church to this day regards it to be canonical.
It is wholly extant only in the Ge'ez language, with Aramaic fragments from Qumran and a few Greek and Latin fragments. There is no consensus among Western scholars about the original language: some propose Aramaic, others Hebrew, while the more probable thesis is that 1 Enoch, as Daniel, was composed partially in Aramaic and partially in Hebrew[4] . Ethiopian scholars hold that Ge'ez is the language of the original from which the Greek and Aramaic copies were made, pointing out that it is the only language in which the complete text was found[5].
According to Western scholars its older sections (mainly in the Book of the Watchers) date from about 300 BC and the latest part (Book of Parables) probably was composed at the end of 1st century BC[6]; It is argued that all the writers of the New Testament were familiar with it and were influenced by it in thought and diction.[7]
[edit] The Infancy Gospel of Thomas
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is a non-canonical text that was part of a popular genre, aretalogy, of the 2nd and 3rd centuries— a miracle literature of Infancy gospels that was both entertaining and inspirational, written to satisfy a hunger for more miraculous and anecdotal stories of the childhood of Jesus than the Gospel of Luke provided. Later references by Hippolytus of Rome and Origen of Alexandria to a Gospel of Thomas are more likely to be referring to this Infancy Gospel than to the wholly different Gospel of Thomas with which it is sometimes confused. Some of the episodes from the Infancy Gospel were topics of mediaeval art.
[edit] Proto-Gospel of James
The Gospel of James, also sometimes known as the Infancy Gospel of James or the Protoevangelium of James, is an apocryphal Gospel probably written about AD 150. The Gospel of James may be the earliest surviving document attesting the veneration of Mary by stating her perpetual virginity (19-20) and presenting her as the New Eve (13).
[edit] The Gnostic Scriptures of Nag Hammadi
Found in a jar in a cave by a peasant while searching the hills near Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945, the Nag Hammadi library contains 52 texts written by a group of early Christians that were considered heretics by the early church fathers. The Gnostics believed that the physical world was a cosmic mistake created by an evil or lesser god. Salvation comes from an inner knowledge (gnosis) not of the evil creator god but of the transcendent realm of light and truth. People had to wake up the god within.
[edit] The Gospel of Mary
One of the texts found at Nag Hammadi, Mary Magdalene is portrayed as a full apostle in this book where she is given special teachings from Jesus. Some of those teachings, such as “Where the mind is, there is the treasure” (Mary 10:14-16) and “He does not see through the soul nor through the spirit, but the mind which is between the two” (Mary 10: 20-22), were purely Gnostic in nature. As such, it found little favor among the orthodox church fathers. Furthermore, the concept of Mary being so close to Jesus raises the possibility of an independent female voice within the church that was anathema to the 4th century church leaders.
While comprising his list of acceptable scripture for the forthcoming Bible, Bishop Athanasius also comprised a list of texts that were to be excluded and the Gospel of Mary was one of them. Upon receiving such news, Gnostic monk decided it best to bury this and other books at Nag Hammadi.
[edit] The Gospel of Nicodemus
Believed to have been written in the 3rd or 4th century due to the testimonies of the early church fathers, this is a story of Jesus’s trial, execution and brief descent into Hell. Hell in this book is a place where everyone is destined to go and Jesus ventures there to free many of the early church patriarchs and martyrs.
Many scholars, as well as early church leaders[who?], feel it’s a forgery to gain converts by impressing upon an individual the Savior’s power over Satan. Others see it as a redundant compilation of all other stories previously written. Finally, many of the early church fathers deemed its description of the underworld as too speculative because they viewed Hell as a state of mind and not a physical place.[citation needed]
Although banned, it is noteworthy that it was a very popular book that was in circulation as recently as the 1500s[citation needed]. Martin Luther and other early Protestant leaders forbade their followers to read it.
The first half of the book is purported to be an eyewitness account of Jesus' trial and execution and is the only source which mentions that Jesus saw his mother while proceeding to his crucifixion. Some scholars feel this text was a catalyst for the Catholic Stations of the Cross processional.[who?]
[edit] The Apocalypse of Peter
A contender with the Revelation of John, this work fell out of favor with the early leaders as they doubted its authorship and the fact that Revelation was better written.
During the time of the Christian persecutions, many apocalyptic literature was in circulation to console the faithful that the evil empire (Rome) was going to have justice served on it.
This book gives a gruesome detailed account of what Hell is like. It also suggests a way out of Hell for evildoers. If a consensus of heavenly angels decide to beseech the Lord to forgive their sins, they can escape. Church leaders were opposed to such a concept because that would mean that anyone can sin all they wanted because ultimately all will be saved.
[edit] Second Apocalypse of Peter
The Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter, not to be confused with the Apocalypse of Peter, is a text found amongst the Nag Hammadi library, and part of the New Testament apocrypha. Like the vast majority of texts in the Nag Hammadi collection, it is heavily gnostic. It was probably written around 100-200 A.D. Since the surviving text, although likely to have been translated from an original Greek version, is in Coptic, it is also known as the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter.
The text takes gnostic interpretations of the crucifixion to the extreme, picturing Jesus as laughing and warning against people who cleave to the name of a dead man, thinking they shall become pure. The text disagrees with the Orthodox Church's doctrine of Salvation. According to this text:
"He whom you saw on the tree, glad and laughing, this is the living Jesus. But this one into whose hands and feet they drive the nails is his fleshly part, which is the substitute being put to shame, the one who came into being in his likeness. But look at him and me."
It is unclear whether this text advocates an adoptionist or docetist christology, but based on its literary parallels with the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, it may well subscribe to the latter.
[edit] See also
- Biblical canon
- Apocrypha
- Banned from the Bible II - a continuation of the original special
[edit] Notes
- ^ IMDB listing
- ^ George Fox University library catalog
- ^ There are two other books named "Enoch": 2 Enoch, surviving only in Old Slavonic (Eng. trans. by R. H. Charles 1896) and 3 Enoch (surviving in Hebrew, c. 5th to 6th century AD).
- ^ E. Isaac 1 Enoch, a new Translation and Introduction in ed. James Charlesworth The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Vol 1 ISBN 0385096305 (1983)
- ^ Wossenie Yifru, 1990 Henok Metsiet, Vol. I, Ethiopian Research Council
- ^ Fahlbusch E., Bromiley G.W. The Encyclopedia of Christianity: P-Sh pag 411, ISBN 0802824161 (2004)
- ^ "Apocalyptic Literature" (column 220), Encyclopedia Biblica
