Flaming Moe

Hi,

I was hoping someone might be able to shed some light on why the writers of the Gospels chose to leave such a gap in the life of Jesus and not include incidents from the Gnostic Gospels that dealt with his years from 12 onwards.
Was it purely that the people who compiled the books felt that these stories brought nothing new, didn't follow a possible doctrine direction or did followers of Christianity, even at Nicea, believe that the Gnostic gospels were much later.
I would have thought that even by including some 'legends' it might have stopped a lot of questions about why and how Jesus could have vanished for so long and avoided the usual life of a young Jewish man.
Thanks.

dog-on

The most likely reason for the gap is that "Mark" didn't write about it, in his novel, to begin with.

Roger Pearse

The gnostic gospels were not written until after the canonical gospels were complete, and indeed mostly well after. Their content reflects the Greek philosophical preoccupations of their composers, rather than anything to do with a Jewish rabbi of the preceding century.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

juergen

These are just my 2 (uninformed) cents - each author had a specific purpose for writing what they wrote, for which reason they included certain information they claimed to know about Jesus' life.

When people stop thinking that the gospels are supposed to be a collective documentary on the entire life of Jesus, it doesn't seem strange that things might have been 'left out' anymore.

gstafleu

The reason there are no (or few) stories of Jesus' youth is probably because these were not of interest to the mythology. For the mythology what counted was his sacrifice, and the circumstances surrounding it. I don't think this is unusual. Are there many stories about the youth of Herakles, Achilles, Odysseus...? We have the story of Herakles birth, just as we have Jesus birth, but I don't think there are many stories of his youth.

Can anyone comment on the prevalence of youth stories of central mythological characters in general?

Gerard Stafleu

xaxxat

Well, you asked for it...


(spoken)
Jesus.... the missing years

It was raining. It was cold
West Bethlehem was no place for a twelve year old
So he packed his bags and he headed out
To find out what the world's about
He went to France. He went to Spain
He found love. He found pain.
He found stores so he started to shop
...

<snip for copyright>

- John Prine

:Cheeky:


mod note:
Lyrics - see copyright notice

Flaming Moe

:Cheeky:

Well, apart from the last reply...!...I can see reasons for the gap in the answers. I appreciate the fact that the Gnostic Gospels might not have the life of a Jewish rabbi as their main concern but I suppose I'm still confused as to how questions regarding his willing (I presume) exclusion from rites and a life that would have been expected of him were able to go unasked.

Was there any kind of pressure on the writers, and finally, the compilers of the Gospels to give Jesus a similar background to men of his time or was it a case that the people they (the gospel writers) were trying to convert wouldn't be aware of what lifestyle would have been expected of a Jewish man?

Thank you all, once again.

Toto

From the mythicist point of view, in the original story in Mark, Jesus descended from heaven at the age of 30 and spent a year on earth. Later, when he was historicized into an actual person, a story of his miraculous birth was added by Matt; Luke riffed on that, changed a few details, and added the scene at the Temple at age 12. It was only later that imaginative Christians added some childhood scenes, but by then, it was much too late to pretend that these tales came from the original disciples.

Ben C Smith

Out of curiosity, approximately how late was too late, in your judgment, to pretend that such tales came from the original disciples?

Ben.

Toto

Probably sometime in the mid to late second century, which is when the Protevangelium of James is dated. This assumes that there were some versions of the gospels, including Matthew and Luke's birth scenes, around the middle of the second century when Justin Martyr wrote.