Yes, various groups had various texts which the literate rabbis/preisthood kept around. After making them up.
A problem comes in with quoting things not very elegantly (Matthew seems to take the two donkeys thing literally instead of realizing the quoted text was nearly certainly doing parallelism, essentially a form of poetically reinforcing an idea), or citing texts that … are now considered apocryphal, or non canon.
Then youve got all the different sects that just have different canon (Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Bibles have or do not have different books in them) and/or use substantially different translations. Or something like the end of Mark which is slowly beginning to be noted as a forgery in many modern Bibles, though this is still divisive amongst many.
Try to get a Christian to explain why, exactly, something like the Gospel of Thomas or Judas is apocryphal, and they’ll basically have to admit that at some point, it just comes down to you or some past person or group’s personal interpretation.
But at the same time for many, the Bible is the unerring, non contradicting perfect word of God, written by the inspired.
And thus either an apologist is born, or maybe a proto atheist/agnostic.
This is sort of true.
Yes, various groups had various texts which the literate rabbis/preisthood kept around. After making them up.
A problem comes in with quoting things not very elegantly (Matthew seems to take the two donkeys thing literally instead of realizing the quoted text was nearly certainly doing parallelism, essentially a form of poetically reinforcing an idea), or citing texts that … are now considered apocryphal, or non canon.
Then youve got all the different sects that just have different canon (Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Bibles have or do not have different books in them) and/or use substantially different translations. Or something like the end of Mark which is slowly beginning to be noted as a forgery in many modern Bibles, though this is still divisive amongst many.
Try to get a Christian to explain why, exactly, something like the Gospel of Thomas or Judas is apocryphal, and they’ll basically have to admit that at some point, it just comes down to you or some past person or group’s personal interpretation.
But at the same time for many, the Bible is the unerring, non contradicting perfect word of God, written by the inspired.
And thus either an apologist is born, or maybe a proto atheist/agnostic.
I am starting to come along to the viewpoint that Gospel of Thomas predates at least John maybe even Matthew.