Keith&Co.

No, i don't mean the Matthew reference.
I thought later in Isaiah there was a forecast of light death with zombies running around frightening the populace.
I think that's where the author of Matthew cribbed his instance from.

Chocky

Ah, OK. I'm pretty sure the Ezekiel, Daniel and Isaiah passages are the only references to the return of the living dead in the OT, but if anyone else can shed any light on this, great.

mountainman

Is this necessarily the explanation? The short answer must be they were banned and damned by the "Early Church Heresiologists", and that we do not yet have before us an unbiased history of their appearance, and their authors, and their chronology.


This may be a false comparison, since we know the history of these modern phenomena you mention above, but do not as yet know the political context of the appearance of the noncanonical books of the NT. For example, the Nag Hammadi Codices were not prepared in Coptic from the Greek and painstakingly manufactured by Pachomian scribes devoid of intellectual merits.


But what about Peter's ability in the "Acts of Peter and Andrew" to pass a camel through the eye of a needle (twice). The entire episode is constructed so as to narrate that one thousand souls were baptized on that occassion on account of the fact that they thought they were receiving the power to be able to pass a camel through the eye of a needle.

This is not a text for example which seeks to convert people to orthodox christianity.
It seems to me to be some form of satire, and send up - a mockumentary of the canon.




I agree. I have examined over one hundred of these acts and gospels etc and have prepared a simple table of the results.



Perhaps you would be able to advise me how Bremmer deals with the legend of the traditionally attributed author Leucius Charinus to these main acts. As I understand it, Leucius as the pseudonymous author of the main non canonical acts is rarely mentioned by academics and scholars anymore, and I suspect that this theory of authorship (for the main acts) is now not being pursued. Would this be correct?

Chocky

Well, I'm not sure how this relates to the original question. Noncanonical works may have been condemned by the Fathers, but they were still read, otherwise said Fathers wouldn't have kept condemning them.

That is a minor text separate from the "big five" apocryphal acts. It seems to be a set of miracles without pushing a theological agenda, which makes it different from the others. Are you suggesting that the others are also satire?

That's right, and as Bremmer says the Leucius legend has long since been rejected, mainly because arguing that one person wrote all the major apocryphal acts just falls at the first hurdle of historical-critical scholarship - the acts have very different and incompatible theological concerns from each other (docetic/Gnostic, encratite, and vaguely proto-orthodox). It would be as bizarre as trying to demonstrate that the same person wrote all of the canonical gospels...

mountainman

Hi Philosopher Jay,

After reading through a reference on another thread to this page FWIW there may be another instance at I Samuel 28:3-15 where a female sorceror brings the ghost of Samuel back from the dead.

It seems clear that the NT canonical authors drew Zombies from the Greek LXX, and that the Gnostic authors drew Zombies from the NT. The two zombie-scribes, authors of "The Acts of Pilate", Leucius and Charinus, apprehended by the authorities while wandered about downtown Jerusalem after the mass resurrection event, are drawn from - the many bodies of the saints (Gospel of Matthew, 27).

The body count is still impressively in favor of the Gnostic corpus.

Best wishes


Pete

mountainman

It really cant be denied that the Bible has alot of underworld nature to it.
There is some degree of merit in seeing an early christian poker association ...