When the Romans were deciding what the official version of Christianity were going to be around 200AD they went through the different existing books and texts and through some out and kept others. These were some they kept out and actually outlawed and the official religious priests banned them and people were punished for having them. They were supposed to be destroyed. Instead one apparent Monk buried his copies in a clay jar in a cave where they lay hidden and preserved for 1600 years until discovered in the 1900s.
Interesting discussions between Jesus and James and others. Also apparently mentions of archons and others.
Nope. They're pushing Gnosticism. It's very much the Albigensian heresy back again. That was some dick who said he got it from a rabbi. They were a suicide cult. Life sucks, don't have sex, don't have children, and don't eat.
The Church mounted a crusade against them and took their lands and redistributed it. They were easy to crusade against because like the peace and love bitches they thought no self defence was morally superior. For the short witted the reason the Church did that was because anybody would and they'd have to contend with whatever jackholes did who had bad intent
When they find these "lost" Christian manuscripts, they're digging up Piltdown man.
[ - ] CHIRO 1 point 9 monthsAug 21, 2023 11:56:10 ago (+1/-0)
There's too much to get into here. Needless to say, OP's short take on this is not nearly sufficient, and I'm not just saying this to be a prick. The whole 'Dan Brown take', i.e., that Catholic bishops went through and 'built' a Bible is ridiculous. A good deal of the apocrypha were declared as such because they were Gnostic heresies (not just inconveiences, but actually heretical to Tradition). Nor do I think that means the Catholics were 'only good', either. History is more complicated than that.
In Nag Hamadi, you've got the seedlings of Valentinian and Thomasene forms of Gnosticism as well as some Hermetic texts. The trouble is that, in the ancient world, Christianity was a large spoon in a big ass theo-cultural cauldron. Greco-Roman mythic substrate was encountering Egyptian, Hebrew and Persian thought, and the dividing lines were chaotic. As you would expect, you get local admixtures of ideas. Today's historians try to put various data into distinct bins, but this is a bit like dropping a colored solute into a cup of clear water and trying to tell a history of the material: the point of equilibrium is kind of like the 'steady state' we have today re: religious orthodoxy, but the first microseconds after the introduction of the material to the water are virtually impossible to know. The level of variation will go as far as to the atomic level, so whatever the stories are that you get, they're reductive as hell. The 'Da Vinci Code' story that the Catholics buried 'real' Christianity (the real teachings of Jesus) is just ludicrous.
If I had to describe the whole mess in a nutshell, it would be something like the collision of polytheism (which wasn't realy that poly) and monotheism (which wasn't always that mono), and various regionally-influenced attempts to reconcile these. In the Greco-Roman thread, for example, you had what were actually two threads (i) a mode of signification for the various ways God interacts with the world that is mythical (God takes on many personas) and (ii) the association of these personas (as causes) with the celestial causes, i.e. planets. Simply, it was common to view the natural world as governed by 'high level' causes that determine your fate, so the associated 'fates' determine your lot, giving you a clear antagonism against which to work for your freedom.
Combine that with monotheism and a doctrine of incarnation (Jesus), and it's not surprising that you get a hodgepodge of different religions. Jesus becomes the Son of the 'Good' God who liberates you from the Matrix, in one way or another. You could view the Gnostic cosmology related to Sophia as an attempt to merge the polytheistic framework with Genesis: the feminine is ultimately going to take the fall for introducing multiplicity into the world, by giving birth to the archons who control your fate.
To get a sense for what the Catholic Church had on its shoulders at that time, imagine trying to unify the 'conservative party' of the West into a single, coherent spear-point at the height of Q-tardation, in which every person with a mouth could pontificate their own theory by pulling from all available sources, until you have 'infinite loops' of incoherent self-referencing. As far as the different theological sources available in the 1st century Roman empire, they were diverse.
What frustrates most people today is that there's really no satisfying way of getting back to 'originality' or 'truth' in the sense we'd prefer. The yarn of history has already been spun. There isn't going to be a 'secret text discovery' that lays bare what Jesus taught, or who He was with any certainty. At some point, you're just going to have to rely on tradition, or on yourself. . .whichever you feel safer doing.
[ + ] yesiknow
[ - ] yesiknow 2 points 9 monthsAug 21, 2023 11:10:05 ago (+3/-1)*
The Church mounted a crusade against them and took their lands and redistributed it. They were easy to crusade against because like the peace and love bitches they thought no self defence was morally superior. For the short witted the reason the Church did that was because anybody would and they'd have to contend with whatever jackholes did who had bad intent
When they find these "lost" Christian manuscripts, they're digging up Piltdown man.
[ + ] PhantomXLII
[ - ] PhantomXLII 0 points 9 monthsAug 21, 2023 11:38:12 ago (+0/-0)
I mean, all of those hold true and/or virtuous apart from the last.
Lmao stupid faggots.
[ + ] CHIRO
[ - ] CHIRO 1 point 9 monthsAug 21, 2023 11:56:10 ago (+1/-0)
In Nag Hamadi, you've got the seedlings of Valentinian and Thomasene forms of Gnosticism as well as some Hermetic texts. The trouble is that, in the ancient world, Christianity was a large spoon in a big ass theo-cultural cauldron. Greco-Roman mythic substrate was encountering Egyptian, Hebrew and Persian thought, and the dividing lines were chaotic. As you would expect, you get local admixtures of ideas. Today's historians try to put various data into distinct bins, but this is a bit like dropping a colored solute into a cup of clear water and trying to tell a history of the material: the point of equilibrium is kind of like the 'steady state' we have today re: religious orthodoxy, but the first microseconds after the introduction of the material to the water are virtually impossible to know. The level of variation will go as far as to the atomic level, so whatever the stories are that you get, they're reductive as hell. The 'Da Vinci Code' story that the Catholics buried 'real' Christianity (the real teachings of Jesus) is just ludicrous.
If I had to describe the whole mess in a nutshell, it would be something like the collision of polytheism (which wasn't realy that poly) and monotheism (which wasn't always that mono), and various regionally-influenced attempts to reconcile these. In the Greco-Roman thread, for example, you had what were actually two threads (i) a mode of signification for the various ways God interacts with the world that is mythical (God takes on many personas) and (ii) the association of these personas (as causes) with the celestial causes, i.e. planets. Simply, it was common to view the natural world as governed by 'high level' causes that determine your fate, so the associated 'fates' determine your lot, giving you a clear antagonism against which to work for your freedom.
Combine that with monotheism and a doctrine of incarnation (Jesus), and it's not surprising that you get a hodgepodge of different religions. Jesus becomes the Son of the 'Good' God who liberates you from the Matrix, in one way or another. You could view the Gnostic cosmology related to Sophia as an attempt to merge the polytheistic framework with Genesis: the feminine is ultimately going to take the fall for introducing multiplicity into the world, by giving birth to the archons who control your fate.
To get a sense for what the Catholic Church had on its shoulders at that time, imagine trying to unify the 'conservative party' of the West into a single, coherent spear-point at the height of Q-tardation, in which every person with a mouth could pontificate their own theory by pulling from all available sources, until you have 'infinite loops' of incoherent self-referencing. As far as the different theological sources available in the 1st century Roman empire, they were diverse.
What frustrates most people today is that there's really no satisfying way of getting back to 'originality' or 'truth' in the sense we'd prefer. The yarn of history has already been spun. There isn't going to be a 'secret text discovery' that lays bare what Jesus taught, or who He was with any certainty. At some point, you're just going to have to rely on tradition, or on yourself. . .whichever you feel safer doing.
[ + ] Spaceman84
[ - ] Spaceman84 -2 points 9 monthsAug 21, 2023 11:12:54 ago (+0/-2)*
[ + ] yesiknow
[ - ] yesiknow 2 points 9 monthsAug 21, 2023 11:15:50 ago (+2/-0)
jews are rabidly against Christianity, so it's a good thing.
[ + ] Spaceman84
[ - ] Spaceman84 -1 points 9 monthsAug 21, 2023 11:45:00 ago (+0/-1)