Christian Wiccans/Christian Witches: A new Bible

[MorningDove030202]

While I'm definatly not a Christian, I would say that I admire Jesus. As a UU Wiccan, I do get to see alot of positive liberal Jesus "input" at my local Fellowship. At the UU, I have discovered that there were gosples of Jesus that were left out of the bible, and that the standard bible as we have now is mostly a work of propaganda.The early Christian Church left it out alot of writings if it didn't fit with their dogma. So, why haven't the liberal Jesus Followers, Unitarian, UU, Wicca, Witch, or Pagan, assembled their own Bible? Same goes for Jews who belive that Jesus is the son of Yahway: Why would Jews today use a text created by the early Christian Church?

Maybe there is such a book, but I don't know about it.....any comments?

I feel a new "Jesus Text" that included things left out by the early church, would help liberal "Jesus Follower-ism" develope into an "Alturnative Chistianity" that might become more mainstream.

Dove

[LadyCelt]

where can I find these extra gospels? do they have extra parabells?


Maybe you'd include part of the gospels or all of them since they deal with Christ plust whatever else and the extra gospels you describe.

[equinox2]

LadyCelt wrote:

where can I find these extra gospels?

Many of them can be read for free online here :abanana: :

www.earlychristianwritings.com (www.earlychristianwritings.com)

In particular, the Gospels of Thomas, Mary, Truth, and Philip are available. Many other Gospels we know about only because early Christian Popes or others wrote about how evil they were, but all we have is their mention of them. For instance, Charles W. Hedrick (a Bible scholar) writes in the Bible Review ("The 34 Gospels: Diversity and Division Among the Earliest Christians"):


In sum, in addition to the four canonical gospels, we have four complete noncanonicals, seven fragmentary, four known from quotations and two hypothetically recovered for a total of 21 gospels from the first two centuries, and we know that others existed in the early period. I am confident more of them will be found. For example, I have seen photos of several pages from a Coptic text entitled "The Gospel of Judas" that recently surfaced on the antiquities market.

It’s amazing to me how many people (Christians in particular) don’t know this. The dozens of other forms of Christianity were all (mostly) eradicated by the Roman church by around 400 CE. They all had their own Bibles and all believed to have had their churches started by Jesus & his apostles. For instance, the Gnostics believe Jesus taught his apostles, and they taught Paul, who taught Theudas, who taught Valentinus, etc. The Catholics believed it went Jesus-Peter-Linus-Cletus-Clement….. The Ebionites had yet another line. Because only the Catholic church won, Christians today almost all just follow the Catholic gospels/teaching. Even protestants don’t look at any of the early diversity of Christianity, and mostly just follow the early catholics. If you’d like to learn about those other Christianities, I recommend ordering these lectures:

http://www.teach12.com/ttc/assets/coursedescriptions/6593.asp (http://www.teach12.com/ttc/assets/coursedescriptions/6593.asp)
(audio form)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195141830/qid=1085748569/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-6867012-7485562?v=glance&s=books (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195141830//ref=nosim/mysticwickson-20) (book form, $20)

If you get them on audio tape they are just $35, the same you probably spend every month on cable. Which will stoke your mind more, a month of cable or learning about these other Christianities? I found that listening to them in my car on my commute worked great.

Of course, scholarly research suggests that many of these other gospels (such as Philip), were not actually written by an eyewitness, but are later books written by later Christians based on hearsay or their own religious views. This seems to be (usually) true. However, that’s also true of the four gospels in the Bible (Mark, Mat. Luke, John) – all of those were clearly written decades later by some Christian (not Mark, Mat. Luke, John), who was just writing down hearsay along with his own religious opinions. So either way, a Christian who cares about the truth can glean a bit about Jesus from them, but shouldn’t treat any of them as, shall we say, gospel.

Take care-

[Djinn]

I highly recommend Elaine Pagel's Gnostic Gospels and her Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas. They are both written for a general audience and cover the basics of non-canonical gospels.

[TarotCanada]

These texts are available as the Pseudopigrapha and the Apocrypha.

Cheryl

[Morr]

While I'm definatly not a Christian, I would say that I admire Jesus. As a UU Wiccan, I do get to see alot of positive liberal Jesus "input" at my local Fellowship. At the UU, I have discovered that there were gosples of Jesus that were left out of the bible, and that the standard bible as we have now is mostly a work of proPeopleda.The early Christian Church left it out alot of writings if it didn't fit with their dogma. So, why haven't the liberal Jesus Followers, Unitarian, UU, Wicca, Witch, or People, assembled their own Bible? Same goes for Jews who belive that Jesus is the son of Yahway: Why would Jews today use a text created by the early Christian Church?

Maybe there is such a book, but I don't know about it.....any comments?

I feel a new "Jesus Text" that included things left out by the early church, would help liberal "Jesus Follower-ism" develope into an "Alturnative Chistianity" that might become more mainstream.

Dove


There is nothing that makes these outside writings and the Apocraphya more valid than the writings assembled by the early chuch as the canonized writings. At least in my humble opinion.

We have no proof that Jesus oversaw any of these writings. Gospel of Thomas says that the sayings within it were written while Jesus spoke those words. But that can be validated just as much as Jesus walking on water can be validated. In other words -- It cannot.

Its all a matter of belief, when it boils down to it.

Yes, the Church most likely has used specific writings for its own propeganda and use, and to emphisis its own path. But what if things were the other way around? What if there was a different Church using the writings of the Apocraphya as canonized gospels, and the current canonized gospels as outside writings?

Also, you need to seperate the canonized writings from the Church's Dogma. These writings were written 2000 years ago, for a group of readers living in areas of the Middle East and parts of Southern Europe as well as North Africa -- Whom lived according to the Social values of a world socity living 2000 years ago, in a Roman controled environment.

None of us can know what these writers of the gospels were thinking while they were writing their stories and accounts of Jesus. Whether these gospels are canonized or not today -- What we have today, the Chuch's teachings and dogma are mostly based on the Fathers of the Church's interpertations and translations OF these old records and writings.

[Kaylara]

There is a lot of that to be found within the 'New Age' movement. Alternative Christianity is responsible for the vast majority of New Agers from what I understand, and have been told by the few practicioners that I know.

(And yes I make a distinction between New Agers and Pagans... Just for the record. ;))

[CleftOfLight]

Well before we start including all the Gnostic groups let us remember that they were a very diverse group.Meaning not all Gnostics believed in the same thing.Also some Gnostics viewed Jesus as a savior from Jehova because to them Jehova and this world was evil and false.Infact Jehova in some Gnostic Gopels was Satan.The secret book of John being one of them.

Unless you are going to find a certain Gnostic teacher or school to stick with you might find it hard to piece these Gospels together in one book.

I would recamend if Christain witches were to have there own Bible is to keep the four Gospels and if you were to add any text I would say The secret book of James,The Gospel of Thomas and The book of Thomas.

Another thing that was baned by the church was universal salvation.I would employ everyone to read On First Principle.Though there are Universalists this might help.

[Cyzarine]

What about the Book of Enoch? I was supposed to be a part of the Bible that was cut out by the eary Christian leaders because it did not fit to their liking. I'm not 100% sure though. Me, I'm a Catholic Witch...but as far as most of the Bible, it has been sliced and diced and you must carefully think about what is truth and what is just written as an ideal.

The secret book of James,The Gospel of Thomas and The book of Thomas (like CleftOfLight pointed out) are worth adding.

[BlueMoon13]

I've discussed things along these lines with folks, and many I've spoken with (other witches, that is) view Jesus himself as a witch. Turning water into wine,walking on water,multiplying food,healing via touch-sounds like the most spectacular manipulations of energy that I've heard of. As far as all the rest, son of God and so on, I don't know, so I can't speak to that. It would be interesting to see a Christian witch's bible.

[CleftOfLight]

Even if we did come up with a new bible,most likely by taking polls,how could we get such a thing published?

[Cyzarine]

Even if we did come up with a new bible,most likely by taking polls,how could we get such a thing published?

You could publish it under a publisher that was willing to publish it.

[Athene]

I agree with others that have said that putting something like that together would ultimately be a matter of opinion.

I personally don't have a need for such a book - the books and writings are available.

If a group puts such a Bible together, they are claiming divine knowledge/wisdom. Who would be right in what they wanted to include? But aside from this logistic problem, theologically and spiritually, all books and Christian writings have value. To reject one book because we don't like what it has to say about divination, for example, is a worrying practice. We're ignoring the value from reading alternative, complex, and contradictory (at least seemingly) messages.
Additionally, writings found much later are a couple of hundred years away from a parallel understanding to the current OT and NT books. As another member pointed out, Gnostics, for example, were varied in their beliefs.

I think we end up with a pick-and-mix situation that adds little to our spiritual growth. imho

I do think it's important that Christopagans are aware of other Christian writings and the 'Christian' history.

Our heritage is complex and complicated - I don't mind that. :)

[AussiePagan]

How about a bible that is a collection of the holy texts with a prelogue at the start of each explaining where it came from, who uses it, how it was translated, etc. You don't pass judgement, you just present the facts and let the reader decide

[LostSheep]

I like this idea. It always seems to me that the Bible is a compilation really, of a whole series of basically unrelated books, from all different authors, with like a general theme of 'God' (which started out in Genesis as one god among many, and a few books in had become the one and only God). So why not treat it as a compilation instead of a book that tells a story from beginning to end and which is all true? I'd like to see something that boils down what Jesus was actually about - obviously the gospels would be the starting point, but even there there's different versions of events and different slants that the different writers put on things.

Let's have a book just about Jesus, that's what i say.

[DoktorSick]

where can I find these extra gospels? do they have extra parabells?


Maybe you'd include part of the gospels or all of them since they deal with Christ plust whatever else and the extra gospels you describe.
There's a book called the other bible which as contains all the books left out
of the traditional bible.

[Cyzarine]

The Nag Hammadi Library is something you should look into LadyCelt.

Hypertext Bible (http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/index.htm)

If you scroll down to the hypertext version of the Bible it lists all of the KJV scriptures, the Apocrypha, the Vulgate, The Septuagint, GNT, The Tanakh, and the JPS.

http://www.carm.org/lostbooks.htm

This site has a list of the Lost Books but they claim that they really weren't lost, just written around the same time as the bible.