Why the 'Lost Gospels' Lost Out

Christianity Today ^ | June 2004 | Ben Witherington III

[dangus]

I would just love for anyone who buys into the DaVinci code to read about gnostics cults. Far from the libertine lifestyle that the DaVinci implicitly endorses, the gnostics who used the Gospel of Thomas were ultra-ascetics who refrained from sex altogether, and were pagan in ways that neo-pagans and New Agers would blanche at.

[dangus]

I can confirm that "Wisdom" has been called the "the Wisdom of Solomon." In the research I have done about the canonicity of the deuterocanonicals (what the Protesants incorrectly call the apocrypha*), I have not read specific debate over the Wisdom of Solomon, so I can't be sure this does refer to the same work, even though they both have the same title.

For instance: The Council of Nicea (I think that's the one) explicitly condemned the wicked heresies of "The Gospel of Thomas." It was long thought that a book, now referred to as "the Infancy Narrative of Thomas" was condemned, until the gnostic-pagan laugh-fest so beloved by the authors of the Five Gospels and the Historical Jesus movement was discovered.

[redgolum]

The stuff in the Da Vinci code is nothing but old heresy's from the first century rehashed. What is worrisome is so many are taking it as fact.

[WriteOn]

"But was there really no such thing as "orthodoxy" before the fourth century? Is it really the case that Gnosticism was harshly suppressed without being given a fair trial?"



lol. Gnosticism wouldn't have been harshly suppressed if there weren't orthodoxy. I love when arguments contain the seeds of their own deconstruction.

[LiteKeeper]

AMEN

[Conservative til I die]

It seems rather less-than-honest to continually attempt to weave tripe live the Da Vinci Code into the work of an actual scholar like Pagels

LOL....scholar...Pagels....heh.