There were many
Gospels of Jesus in the early days of Christianity. In addition to Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John of the New Testament and the four Nag Hammadi Gospels, many
other documents have been referred to as ‘gospels’.
Although many of the
early Christian sects did not agree with the orthodox view that the scriptures
came directly from God, there was fairly general agreement at the time that
they had been written by people who were God-inspired.
In 302 Bishop
Damascus directed Jerome to write a Latin text to standardise the scriptures.
This came to be called the Latin Vulgate Bible and was used throughout the
Christian world as the standardised Church text for at least a thousand
years. Since it was in Latin, it
was up to the Church to ‘interpret’ it to their congregations, which was very
much part of their intention as it diminished the likelihood of heresies
arising.
Also in the fourth
century, Augustine declared that every part of the text had been chosen by God,
although written by various Christian writers. Although the Church fathers
superficially went along with this, many of them did not agree, as is clear
from some of their writings.
Somewhere around the
middle of the fourth century the New Testament as we know it began to be
collated, and in or about 367 AD Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria gathered
together a selection of writings that were approved first by the Council of
Hippo (393AD) and then by the Council of Carthage (397 AD).
Over the centuries,
these texts were further ‘edited’ and many important sections –
presumably those which the Church saw as undermining of its authority or likely
to cause dissension – were excluded.
Ten centuries after
the Vulgate had originally been accepted, the same old disagreements continued
to raise questions and cause dissension. Only in1546 were the four Gospels of
the New Testament approved by the Council of Trent… and that only because of
the threat to the Roman Catholic Church of the Protestant Reformation
Relating to
information about the ministry of Christ in the Nag Hammadi gospels, in an
interview published in the US News & World Report, Collector’s edition:
Secrets of the Da Vinci Code, James Robinson, general editor of The Nag Hammadi
Library, says that of the four Nag Hammadi codices, only the Gospel of Thomas
can really be regarded as a gospel because it is the only one that claims to quote
the actual words of Jesus. Other sources would regard this as a splitting of
hairs since the words of Jesus are reported in other Nag Hammadi gospels.
Nobody knows how
many Gospels there originally were, and it might be that some are yet to be
discovered. Hundreds of caves offer possible hiding-places.
Since we know that
the Four Gospels of the New Testament were selectively chosen and subsequently
much edited, adapted and reduced, and as we cannot know what ancient records
will still come to light, the issue of the Gospels as contributing to the
‘real’ history of Jesus remains an open question.
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the Da Vinci Code
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