Apocrypha discussion

Discussion in 'Sacred Scripture' started by Jeffg, Jun 16, 2019.

  1. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    That is correct. So it starts out as a fragment of an apparently larger book, and the intact portion describes the Passion of our Lord in an unusually detailed and vivid way, but then when it comes to the Resurrection, its a bit like whoever wrote that so-called Gospel momentarily took an interlude for purposes of LSD consumption, because everything goes utterly wacky. Not, strange, different and wonderful, in the manner of the canonical Gospels, but just bizarre, almost weird for the sake of weirdness; its like the first part of the fragment could be authentic, but then David Lynch took over the writing. And then the fragment ends abruptly, leaving us in the lurch, in a Lynchian manner. So we have no idea whether or not the ancient text normalized the story a bit and whether or not it had a section preceding the Passion narrative that also followed the canonical Gospel narratives.

    It does not claim to be Gnostic by the way, and I read somewhere that some churches in the Middle East were using it in the early fourth century, until the local bishop (it might have been St. Serapion of Thmuis, I cannot recall) found out, and he made a point of removing the book from each parish in his diocese where it was found, similar to how the Syriac churches swiftly replaced Tatian’s lousy Diatessaron with the beautiful Peshitta when the latter translation was completed in the fourth century.

    The work is not as offensive or blasphemous as much of the Gnostic corpus, for example, the sickening Protoevangelion of Thomas, or the Gospel of Judas, or the Gospel of Philip.