Posted on 07/27/2011 2:57:13 PM PDT by TaraP
These guys:
do
Those are guys? Barf.
Yes, well, the Christians handsomely repaid whatever "violence" the Gnostics gave them, now didn't they? What the Pope and the King of France did to the Cathars in Languedoc made Satan blanch. But hey, it got the job done - every last man, woman and child put to the sword in the entirety of mid to south western France.
And then mercilessly slandered and mocked in memory forever after.
But it was their own fault. Heresy is heresy. You choose to be a heretic, you pay the price. Right?
I hadn’t known that the 2nd Century Gnostic movement, present during the time Christianity was a badly persecuted illegal religion, had anything at all do do with the late medieval Roman Catholicism’s persecution of the Cathars 1,000+ years later...
What possible relationship do the Gnostics have with the Cathars?
Roman Catholic monarchs in France also murdered orthodox Christian Calvinists in the 1570s by the tens of thousands...
How does (really) bad behavior by persons calling themselves Christians prove there is no such thing as heresy or orthodoxy?
Just to be clear, I don’t know of any responsible Christian alive today who supports the suppression or persecution of non-Christians. However, the Christian virtue of tolerance doesn’t mean that one cannot distinguish between Christian orthodoxy and heresy.
The use of the word “heretic” or “heresy” in no way implies approval of the history of the Crusades, the Inquisition, persecution of minority religions, or other oppressive, persecuting, tyrannical policies.
It is interesting to me though, that the very fact we can discuss such things openly, and without fear or repercussions...is a product of the values of a people historically, overwhelmingly, Christian.
In certain places of “liberal” (secular) western Europe for example....I may well be accused of “hate crimes” for posting these things...
The largest increase in our knowledge of gnosticism came from the discovery at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in the 1940s of a cache of gnostic texts.
EXACTLY.
And Gnosticism was a competitor and opponent to the belief system we know now as Christianity. To believe that Christians then paid attention to the tales--written 100+ years AFTER the real history was written--of the Gnostics, is like saying that Christians today pay attention to the "history" in the Book of the Mormon.
Sorry, it just doesn't happen.
>>>One discovery made so far, as noted on Oxford Universitys Oxyrhynchus Online website, reveals an inquiry as to whether the number of the beast referred to in Revelation 13:18 is actually 616 or 665 as opposed to the wildly-popular 666. <<<
A quote of the actually translation [of this inquiry] would have been helpful. Perhaps "wildly popular" *is* part of the text? :-)
Obama Nero must have had plenty of fans, even back then.
actually = actual
I don’t think the early Christians paid attention to the gnostic writings to learn anything new that had been left out of the accepted gospels, but some Christian leaders had to pay some attention to the gnostics to be able to warn the faithful not to be led astray.
There were actually quite a few gospels floating around — like the gospel of Thomas, the gospel of Judas. This may be one of them..
there always were many “gospels” floating around — most were spurious, gnostic texts. The canon as defined by the Church was and IS, thanks to God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit acting through men in council, correct
LOL, here come the satanic verses.
If it was written between 500 and 1000, what qualifies it as a lost ‘gospel’ versus any other book? Hundreds of books were written with stories of Jesus’ life that aren’t gospels.
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