GenesisNemesis

I was watching Banned from the Bible on the History channel, and I think they said that the early Christians wrote "fake" Gospels to draw in members. I was wondering if the ressurection story and stuff like that could also be parts of "fake" gospels?

David B

If not fake, then delusion, inductively

David B (has yet to see sufficient evidence to allow that anything supernatural happens)

Diogenes the Cynic

What would be the difference between a "fake" Gospel and an "authentic" one? The word really only describes a genre, If a book fits the genre then it's a real Gospel.

GenesisNemesis

I dunno, which is why I was thinking maybe they're all fake, and they just used stories to draw in members.

David B

I think most of us have come to that conclusion, insofar as supernatural claims go.

Some go further, and claim that there is no evidence that there was such an indigent, charismatic, possibly Koresh type person wandering around at the time.

I don't know that I'd totally go on with the 'just used' either, except perhaps in one sense. The people who exaggerate stories might be doing it cynically, to attract followers, but in my experience most people who do that are True Believers themselves.

But then, I see the Pope as as much victim as villain.

David B

Chris Weimer

I'd opt for "delusion" over fake. The resurrection was a very early tradition, with its ad quem being Paul. The birth stories, on the other hand, are largely "fake", with possible tradition in them.

David B

I opt for illusion, too, on inductive grounds from my own experience.

There was a time in my life when I believed in miraculous claims about Mararishi Mahesh Yogi. Not the sort of claims you read about in TM web sites - but stories which were rife among the core of the movement at the time I was involved in it.

Like the story of how he miraculously made clouds disappear in order for his helicopter to land.

David B

aa5874

I think those people have been truly deceived.

I am of the opinion the Pope knows that all the Gospels are fake.

Chris Weimer

At this point, I don't think anyone cares about your opinion. The evidence you have shown is as inspiring as a creationist's.

Roger Pearse

I'm afraid that you've been the victim of a fraud that seems to be going around in religious studies in the anglophone world. The swindle is to refer to groups which the early Christians rejected as "christian." This causes enormous category problems.

The fraud originates from religious studies where they need to study both the Christians and the heretics as part of "early Christian studies" and don't want to make judgements as to who is the real Christian; the upshot is that they make a decision that effectively there are none. Based on this you then get people from this background asserting that "early Christianity was diverse" (having already defined that early Christianity includes people that the early Christians reject, and knowing that the early Christians reject that statement too!).

What the authors of your programme should have said is that, from the second century onwards (up to our own day, actually) people have composed fictional biographies of the life of Christ or fictional 'teachings of Christ' which they have attributed to various prominent early Christians and into which they have introduced their own ideologies. The usual purpose of this was to subvert early Christians -- today this still can happen, but it is usually done to make money by stirring up a media frenzy.

The vast majority of these fakes -- for they were intended to deceive -- were made by paganising heretics known as gnostics. These drew their beliefs primarily from Greek philosophy (i.e. pop-paganism) but stirred in a mixture of new ideas as well to make their own special flavour (as people in the philosophical schools had always done), taken in this case from Christianity. They would then attempt to circulate them among Christians as if genuine in order to acquire members (e.g. the gospel of Peter, at Rhossus, as described by Serapion and quoted by Eusebius). This would particularly work at times of persecution, since most gnostic sects said that it was perfectly OK to sacrifice. (Tertullian records gnostics attempting this trick during a persecution, when he himself was being watched by the police, in Scorpiace).

Other second-century texts also existed. The Acts of Paul were composed by a presbyter in Asia, purely as a novel, but the author was caught and unfrocked anyway. This practise returned in the 4th century when the Roman empire was Christianised, and a lot of 'gospels' not intended as fakes were composed. But these don't really come into consideration.

(The whole definition of "New Testament Apocrypha" is actually very hard to do, since it includes so many different things -- pardon me if this is not a comprehensive essay).

Anyway, I hope that makes more sense of it all. It was definitely referring to gnostic heretical compositions, made and used for recruiting purposes, in the 2nd century.

All the best,

Roger Pearse