Reddit mentions of Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament

The Gospel of Judas gets a good deal of action in academic circles devoted to the study of ancient Christianity, as /u/anoldhope mentions. (Take a look around JSTOR or Google Scholar, for instance.) In fact, it gets just as much scholarly attention as any of the many other ancient, non-canonical gospels.

As for GosJudas' lack of "impact" in modern religious practice, that depends on several factors. (N.B.: I am a Christianity scholar, so I will limit my discussion to modern Christianity.)

In Christianity, the focus has historically been placed on the canonical New Testament, and any books outside that canon were treated with scorn and condemnation.

Many modern Christians (specifically those from conservative traditions) maintain the same scorn towards these other Christian texts. Other modern Christians (usually, those who are more progressive) do not actually feel any animosity towards ancient, non-canonical Christian literature, but still neglect it, because of the longstanding focus on the canonical NT. Finally, a somewhat smaller portion of modern Christianity actively embraces non-canonical literature (as exemplified by the New New Testament.)

Further reading:

-On the varieties of ancient Christianity, see Bart Ehrman's books Lost Christianities and Lost Scriptures.

-For a conservative Christian reaction to the Gospel of Judas, which typifies the tradition's views on non-canonical gospels in general, see Albert Mohler's blog post, "From Traitor to Hero? Responding to 'The Gospel of Judas.'"

EDIT: Fixed a typo.

Oh man, I hope you're in for a mind-fuck.

The Apocrypha are a collection of books that didn't make it into the official Bible. Essentially, they were books and gospels that were left out for social, political, or dubious-authorship issues when the Bible was "finalized" (a long process) in like 300 CE or something.

Joseph Smith owned and was familiar with the Apocrypha. Some BoM names are found in the Apocrypha, and there are some story parallels. There are also "idea" parallels, for example in the Books of Enoch.

If this is your first time hearing about this, I cannot recommend Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament, by Bart Erhman, enough. Erhman is a biblical scholar that has written a number of books that have a good layman's introduction into what biblical scholars have known about the Bible for almost 200 years.

For example, did you know that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were almost certainly not written by the claimed authors? Similarly, the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, and the Book of Isaiah was probably written by 3 groups of people over literally hundreds of years.

> Also my history background on the Church is probably way to weak to even pose this question, but were there any books rejected from the canon by the "Church" (what exactly is meant by that, the Catholic church?). If so, was there ever subsequent debate on those decisions, especially during the development of protestantism etc? I do have some very cursory knowledge of The Apocrypha, but not much else in that realm.

Yes, there were many books in circulation in ancient times that were regarded by some people as sacred. Two very early books which are appealed to by some Church Fathers as authorities, and which are included in Codex Sinaiticus (one of the oldest surviving manuscripts of the Bible), are the Epistle of Barnabas and The Shepherd of Hermas. There were apocryphal gospels in circulation in antiquity, such as the Gospel of Thomas that was discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945, there were apocryphal acts like the once very popular Acts of Paul and Thecla, there were apocryphal epistles like Paul's supposed correspondence with the Roman philosopher Seneca, and there were apocryphal apocalypses like the Apocalypse of Peter, where Peter is shown visions of heaven and hell. Sometimes, these books come with stories to explain why they were unknown until now, like "a man who lived in Tarsus was ordered by an angel to dig under his house, and he discovered this letter by Paul..." Many of these are collected by Bart Ehrman in his book Lost Scriptures.

When I say the Church, I recognise that people have different opinions about things like whether the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church is to be identified with the unified Church of the 4th Century, or whether institutional continuity is essential to the Church. But the Church, or the assembly of believers, is such an important concept in the New Testament that all Christians need to have some concept of the one Church. I would suggest that wherever people believe the Church is found, they should agree its acceptance of the canon is important.

The canon developed gradually through the use of these books in the liturgy. The first person to list all 27 books of our New Testament and say that only these books should be used is St Athanasius of Alexandria in Letter 39. Thirty years later, it was this New Testament canon that was accepted as authoritative by the Third Council of Carthage in 397. Although no ecumenical council necessarily decided the issue definitively for the entire Church (until the Catholic Council of Trent in 1546), the canon was stable by the 5th Century.

There was some questioning of the New Testament canon early in the Reformation. Martin Luther held a very low view not only of the Old Testament Apocrypha (or deuterocanon), but of Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. When he published his German translation of the New Testament, he placed these books apart at the end, with prefaces denying their divine inspiration. They ultimately survived in Protestant Bibles, though.

maybe this book?

> I haven't had much luck, except Elaine Pagels,

If you have read her, surely you've read Bart Ehrman. He's technically an atheist, but his "attacks" are really against the mainstream church. He does a nice job of expanding on the gnostics and heretical sects that the mainstream tried to kill. If you haven't read him before and you're only interested in gnsotics, then you can start here: https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Scriptures-Books-that-Testament/dp/0195182502

You'll probably also enjoy Walter Veith, so start here with him: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL95B1BB23B7A3C795

If you're interested in a hardcopy version, Bart Ehrman's collected a number of early texts in very readable translations in Lost Scriptures. Be aware that this stuff runs the gamut from very respectable to basically being Jesus fanfic, but a lot of it is interesting to read anyway.

If you are interested enough to delve into this topic, and other ephemera of early Christianity, Ehrman's Lost Scriptures and Lost Christianities are good sources that cover a wide range of topics, but especially focusing on early Christian Gnosticism.

Something interesting on this topic.

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Scriptures-Books-that-Testament/dp/0195182502/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1549921924&sr=1-1&keywords=lost+scriptures+books

I haven't read these books, but I like their author, Bart Ehrman. I have heard several interviews with him.
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament