I think the grail is a metaphor for the true, inner and secret teachings of Jesus, with would have been considered heresy even by some of his own disciples, which is why he gave them to "the disciple whom Jesus loved", Thomas. Discovered among the Nag Hamadi texts in 1948, and only recently revealed by biblical historian, Elaine Pagels, The Gospel of Thomas paints a very different picture of early Christianity which, if believed, would have toppled the monopoly of the bishops as sole authority to interpret scripture.
*************
M*W: This article provides the truth about how the NT was compiled, who compiled it, and why some writings were purposefully left out. It's rather long, but it is informative:
"I have been reviewing early Christian history, and present to you this article on the early formation of both the Christian bible and Christian religion. This article uses many sources, some have simply been cut and pasted for expediency, however, the questions raised and conclusions reached are solely mine."
"The Christian Bible: Contrary to common belief, there was never a one-time, truly universal decision as to which books should be included in the Bible. It took over a century of the proliferation of numerous writings before anyone even bothered to start picking and choosing, and then it was largely a cumulative, individual and happenstance event, guided by chance and prejudice more than objective and scholarly research, until priests and academics began pronouncing what was authoritative and holy, and even they were not unanimous. Every church had its favored books, and since there was nothing like a clearly-defined orthodoxy until the 4th century, there were in fact many simultaneous literary traditions. The illusion that it was otherwise is created by the fact that the church that came out
on top simply preserved texts in its favor and destroyed or let
vanish opposing documents. Hence what we call "orthodoxy" is
simply "the church that won."
"Here is something else to think about, the missing books of the New Testament. There are four basic groupings of books that early Christianity rejected from their canon. They are Gospels, Acts, Writings, and Apocalypses. And I am leaving out all the Christian Gnostic works since the Gnostics weren't really a Christian sect. This list has been compiled from various sources both printed and online."
"GOSPELS
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas [Greek Text A]
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas [Greek Text B]
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas [Latin Text]
A 5th Century Compilation of the Thomas Texts
An Arabic Infancy Gospel
The Gospel of James
The Gospel of the Nativity of Mary
The Gospel of Mary [Magdalene]
The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew
The Gospel of Nicodemus [Acts of Pilate]
The Gospel of Bartholomew
The Gospel of Peter
The Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel of Philip
The Gospel of the Lord [by Marcion]
The Secret Gospel of Mark"
"ACTS
The Acts of Andrew
The Acts and Martyrdom of Andrew
The Acts of Andrew and Matthew
The Acts of Barnabas
Martyrdom of Bartholomew
The Acts of John
The Acts of John the Theologian
The History of Joseph the Carpenter
The Book of John Concerning the Death of Mary
The Passing of Mary
The Acts and Martyrdom of Matthew
The Martyrdom of Matthew
The Acts of Paul
The Acts of Paul and Thecla
The Acts of Peter
The Acts of Peter and Andrew
The Acts of Peter and Paul
The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles
The Acts of Philip
The Report of Pontius Pilate to Tiberius
The Giving Up of Pontius Pilate
The Death of Pilate
The Acts of Thaddaeus
The Acts of Thomas
The Book of Thomas the Contender
The Consummation of Thomas"
"WRITINGS
The Teachings of Addeus the Apostle
The Epistle of the Apostles
Community Rule
The Apocryphon of James
The Correspondence of Jesus and Abgar
The Sophia of Jesus Christ
John the Evangelist
The Apocryphon of John
The Narrative of Joseph of Arimathaea
The Epistle to the Laodiceans
The Correspondence of Paul and Seneca
The Prayer of the Apostle Paul
The Letter of Peter to Philip
The Letter of Pontius Pilate to the Roman Emperor
The Report of Pilate to Caesar
The Report of Pilate to Tiberius
Excerpts from Pistis Sophia
The Avenging of the Saviour
The Three Steles of Seth
The Book of Thomas the Contender"
"APOCALYPSES
The Apocalypse of Adam
The Revelation of Esdras
The First Apocalypse of James
The Second Apocalypse of James
The Revelation of John the Theologian
The Revelation of Moses
The Apocalypse of Paul
Fragments-The Apocalypse of Paul
The Revelation of Paul
The Apocalypse of Peter
The Vision of Paul
The Revelation of Peter
Fragments-The Apocalypse of Peter"
"Why were they all left out of the New Testament? Perhaps they told that Jesus was just a simple man, acting upon himself to warn the Jewish people to return to G-d."
"OR perhaps, all those writings did not agree with what the Early Church Fathers wanted Christianity to believe."
"Think about it! Just who were those Early Church Fathers? Did any of them go to any seminary schools¯at least, in Judaism¯where other rabbis have taught all the rabbis, from the time of Moses. Who exactly taught the Early Church Fathers?"
"What you do know about them is they were once ex-pagans and from the views and writings in the Christian bible that they canonized, they carried over their concepts of so many pagan
myths."
"Astonishingly, the story isn't even that simple: for the Catholic church centered in Rome never had any extensive control over the Eastern churches, which were in turn divided even among themselves, with Ethiopian and Coptic and Syrian and Byzantine and Armenian canons all riding side-by-side with each other and with the Western Catholic canon, which itself was never perfectly settled until the 15th century at the earliest, although it was essentially established by the middle of the 4th century. Indeed, the current Catholic Bible is largely accepted as canonical from fatigue: the details are so ancient and convoluted that it is easier to simply accept an ancient and enduring tradition than to bother actually questioning its merit. This is further secured by the fact that the long habit of time has dictated the status of the texts: favored books have been more scrupulously preserved and survive in more copies than unfavored books, such that even if some unfavored books should happen to be earlier and more authoritative, in many cases we
are no longer able to reconstruct them with any accuracy. To make matters worse, we know of some very early books that simply did not survive at all (the most astonishing example is Paul's earlier Epistle to the Colossians, cf. Col. 4:16), and have recently discovered the very ancient fragments of others that we never knew existed, because no one had even mentioned them."
"Rabbinical scholar Alan Cecil once said, 'The truth is, with over five thousand ancient Greek New Testament manuscripts, no two copies of any of the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament are in complete agreement. Even the most ancient, most accurate, closest-to-the-original manuscripts have considerable amounts of textual changes, doctoring, and errors. Again, this is not theoretical conjecture, but an empirical fact which Christianity has gone to great lengths to deny, downplay, and hide from its followers."
Fundamentalist apologists make much of the large body of manuscripts of the New Testament. Compared to many other ancient works, such as Josephus' Antiquities, Tacitus' Annals, or Homer's Iliad, for example, we do have huge bodies of manuscripts. However, it is obvious that this proves precisely nothing except that many people were interested in preserving it. If, for example, Iliad-ism had been the official state religion of Europe for the better part of the last two millenia, we would undoubtedly have such attestation for the Iliad. Or, as G.A. Wells pointed out, if there were Tacitus clubs in every town of the western world for the past two millenia, we would not be missing sections of the Annals."
"Of these 'many' manuscripts, only a literal handful date to within a few centuries of the after the work's original composition (with John's gospel, attested almost in toto by manuscripts dating within one century of its authorship, providing a clear exception). None of the autograph manuscripts survive, and indeed no manuscripts from the first century survive. For the second and third centuries, there exists only a handful of manuscript fragments:
"Gospel manuscripts from the second century are very scarce, with only two fragments of John's gospel definitely written before A.D. 200 (i.e. P52 and P90)... of all the synoptic manuscripts which can be dated to the fourth century or earlier, only two (P45 and P75, both of the third century) contain more than a chapter" ('Novum testamentum,' p.111)."
"It might also be mentioned that we have only 35 manuscripts dating from before 400CE, only four of which were at any time complete, and only 80 manuscripts dating from before 800CE."
"The following two paragraphs are encouraging examples that there are at least some Christians who are honest enough to admit that the case for the New Testament does not adhere to accepted standards of modern historiographical research:
"We have to accept somewhat looser standards. In the legal
profession, to convict the defendant of a crime, you need proof
beyond a reasonable doubt. In civil cases, a preponderance of the evidence is sufficient. When dealing with the Bible or any ancient source, we have to loosen up a little; otherwise, we can't really say anything." --David Noel Freedman, General editor of the Anchor Bible Series, discussing Biblical interpretation and the use of ancient texts and historical sources (Bible Review magazine, Dec. 1993, pg.34)"
"When it comes to the historical question about the Gospels, I adopt a mediating position--that is, these are religious records, close to the sources, but they are not in accordance with modern historiographic requirements or professional standards." --David Noel Freedman (Bible Review magazine, Jan. 1994, pg. 34)"
"Christians often mention some writings of Josephus and a group of various Roman historians. The most that Christians can hope for regarding the topic of historians is that they will convince some people of a historical Jesus, but a resurrected Jesus is quite another matter. If Josephus and the group of Roman historians were reputable historians, and rejected Christianity, then some Christians are attempting to agree with what they view are the historians' validations of a historical Jesus, only to later find fault with the historians' failure to claim that Jesus was the unique, divine Son of the G-d of the Bible and had the power to one day determine who would end up in heaven and who would end up in hell."
"The Growth of the Christian church. Christianity offers the claim of a G-d taking human form, suffering as humans do and eventually paying the ultimate price by sacrificing his life for mankind's sake, in other words, personalizing a lofty, unseen God in the form of a human being. Such a claim, even if false, would have seduced many people, especially after the deaths of the supposed still-living eyewitnesses."
"Rodney Stark, Ph.D., sociology, wrote a book titled `The Rise of Christianity.' Stark is a prolific writer and has 50 publications listed at Barnes and Noble Book Store. In addition, he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize."
"In `The Rise of Christianity,' among other estimates Stark estimated the size of the Christian Church in 100 A.D. as comprising 7,530 believers. As good as Stark's research is, I don't need to refer to him as a source of authority. If Christians cannot produce credible evidence of their own regarding the size of the early Christian Church, and if in fact the early Christian Church in 100 A.D. was in fact relatively quite small, otherwise stated anywhere near Stark's estimate of 7,530 believers, then skeptics can fairly claim that there is a reasonable possibility that the stories of the feeding of the 5,000, the feeding of the 4,000, the 3,000 people that became
Christians after hearing a sermon by Peter, the entire town that
became Christians after hearing teachings by Peter and John, the
many Syrians that Jesus healed, and the 500 eyewitnesses, were
false."
"The following quotes show that the success of early Christianity was to a large extent wrongfully achieved by what I call "The truth of the sword."
"Elaine Pagels: "For nearly 2,000 years, Christian tradition has
preserved and revered orthodox writings that denounce the gnostics, while suppressing - and virtually destroying - the Gnostic writings themselves. Now, for the first time, certain texts discovered at Nag Hammadi reveal the other side of the coin: how gnostics denounced the orthodox. The `Second Treatise of the Great Seth' polemicizes against orthodox Christianity, contrasting it with the `true church' of the gnostics. Speaking for those he calls the sons of light, the author says: `....we were hated and persecuted, not only by those who are ignorant (pagans), but also by those think they are advancing the name of Christ, since they were unknowingly empty, not knowing who they are, like dumb animals.'"
"Tom Harpur: "To make sure this story stuck, all Pagan opposition was quelled with an unequalled fury. Mystery schools and philosophical academies were closed down, libraries of books were burned, and anathemas were hurled at all who dared to raise objections. Those who risked everything by pointing out that the Christians had taken over all the old Pagan myths, rites, and ceremonies but transformed them by literalizing everything were either banished or killed."
"Richard Carrier: "All other religions but Judaism were outlawed
under pain of death throughout the Mediterranean and Europe by 395 AD."
"Larry Taylor: "How does this apply to the story of Jesus? Simply that all of the early critics are dead. Skeptical opinions were banned. Christian opinions, other than those of the establishment, were banned. Books were destroyed, and later, heretics were burned."
"Another favorite ploy of Christians when trying to substantiate the truth of their faith is to introduce the martyrs of the Church saying they would not have given their lives for something they knew was false."
"Christian Martyrs. Consider the following web sites that offer proof enough that martyrdom is not unique to Christianity:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/sipa/PUBS/SLANT/SPRING98/article5.html,
http://bahai-library.com/personal/jw/my.papers/jihad.html,
http://www.reformation.org/chapter14.html,
http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/daily/history/people/joseph_smith/
Martyrdom_Joseph_Hyrum.htm, and
http://deseretbook.com/mormon-
life/news/story?story_id=775.
"Joseph McCabe was an atheist (I am Jewish) and a prolific author. Following are excerpts from some of his writings on Christian martyrs that appear at the Secular Web:
"The first of three sections is titled `Discovery of the Fraud.'"
"From the second (or end of the first) century onward, therefore, the new religion was confessedly nourished on spurious literature. And the beginning of persecution opened to the forgers a new and magnificent field. Very rightly and naturally the early Christians treasured the memory and the remains of the few priests and many simple-minded maids and matrons who had died rather than forswear what they believed to be the truth. A particular church became--naturally again--proud of the number of its martyrs, of the beauty of their lives, of their `miracles,' even of their noble birth or high position. And we have seen enough about this myth-making ancient world, from Judea onward, to find it just as natural that a legendary and utterly mendacious literature grew up to meet the Christian sentiment. If a church had no martyrs, it made them."
"The spurious literature that existed in the fourth century is a
mere trifle in comparison with the river of forgeries of the early Middle Ages. But it was serious enough to bring discredit on the Church. The `infidels,' says the decree, are laughing at the Christians because their stories of martyrs are full of historical errors and patent absurdities. The Pope names, in particular, the accounts of St. George (who is still treasured by British Catholics), St. Quiricus, and St. Julitta, and says that they were probably written by heretics. He specifies a large number of spurious works, and he gives a general caution that many others are in circulation."
"Incidentally, let us notice that the Pope includes in this
first "index of prohibited books" that famous forgery, the letters of `King Abgar' to Jesus and of Jesus to King Abgar. And only a few years ago a priest of the Church of England had the effrontery to try to impose these spurious letters on his ignorant congregation as a recent discovery!"
"At last, when the darkness of the ages of faith began to be
relieved by the slow dawn of modern knowledge, the Church got a few historical scholars; and the moment they turned their scholarship upon the stories of the early saints and martyrs, even the most Catholic of them put their fingers to their nostrils and closed them. There was Cardinal Baronius, Librarian of the Vatican Library, almost elected Pope, who in the year 1600 published an ecclesiastical history (`Annales Ecclesiastici') in thirteen folio volumes. It is by no means critical; it is intensely Roman Catholic. Yet when the learned Cesare had to weave the stories of the martyrs into the web of his history and came to examine the legends closely, his scholarly feelings revolted. A hundred years later, Father Pagi,
a learned Franciscan friar, revised Baronius; and his pen itched
even more than that of the Cardinal had done."
"But the great slaughterer of the martyrs in those early days was M. Le Nain de Tillemont, a French priest of the second half of the seventeenth century. Tillemont was a good Catholic, but he was a good man and a very learned man. Moreover, the world had won a little freedom, and Tillemont was no ordinary priest, but a wealthy man, living on his estates, going from library to library to compare editions and manuscripts. Even Catholic scholars have now gone a long way beyond Tillemont in criticizing the legends, but he did grand work for his age. Strictly orthodox, of the Puritanical Jansenist school, he had, nevertheless, a tinge of Voltairean humor and satire; and his criticisms of the stories of martyrs, though discreet, for he dreaded the censor, read entertainingly today. In fact, his `Memoirs to Assist the Ecclesiastical History of the Six First Centuries' (a curious slip, that, for a great scholar) appeared mainly after his death (1698). The work had just reached the age of the martyrs (Volume V) when he died. The remaining twelve
volumes--I have just run through a beautiful old edition of them--cut the poor martyrs to bits once more, boiled them in oil, and
buried the fragments."
"Even the most orthodox reader will recognize the force of the
modern criticism of martyr-legends when so retrograde a work as
the `Catholic Encyclopedia' is compelled to admit it. Usually its writers deny the most certain facts of science or history with an ease that must command the envy of a politician."
"The second section is titled `The Genuine Persecutions.'"
"A number of competent modern scholars doubt if there ever was a
persecution under Nero. We have serious reasons to think that there was. The passage in which the Roman historian Tacitus describes the persecution half a century later is strongly suspected of Christian adulteration. It speaks, not only of Jesus being crucified under Pontius Pilate, but of the martyrdom of `an immense multitude' of Christians at Rome. There were only a few thousand (as we shall see) two centuries later, so the phrase is very doubtful. But the style generally of the long passage, the fearful hatred of Nero that spread through the Church, the red glow of some persecution in Revelation, the early claim that Paul (the martyrdom of Peter is generally rejected, and is not claimed until about 170) was beheaded at Rome, all point to a severe persecution. Let us take the familiar story. Nero, who was of unbalanced mind, was suspected of setting fire to Rome, so as to have the glory of rebuilding it. He turned the blame on the Christians and mercilessly punished them. But we have no reason whatever to think that he persecuted them outside Rome."
"Nero's persecution in Rome, if we admit it, was the work of a man whom all historians now regard as more or less insane; and Tacitus implies that it was not liked by the Romans themselves. Moreover, it is too often forgotten that `an immense number' of good pagans met their death under Nero. A later pagan writer composed a `martyrology' of the men and women who were victims of Nero's insanity; and it has been suggested that the Christians borrowed this model, if not many of the pagan names in the book."
"The last section is titled `The Manufacture of Martyrs.'"
"In slaying the martyrs these modern historians have destroyed one f the time-honored arguments for the supernatural origin of
Christianity, and in exposing this prodigious volume of untruthful literature they have given us proof of a tendency of the new religion which is far from complimentary to its ethic. Let me, as usual, first put before the reader as many facts as can be conveniently packed within narrow space. And, again in harmony with my usual procedure, I do not turn to extreme Rationalists or mythologists or psychoanalysts for my `facts.' I am going almost entirely to rely on Catholic writers; and the little that I shall borrow from Protestants is endorsed by Catholic writers. Indeed, as I have already observed, the results of this modern criticism are so certain that even the very conservative `Catholic Encyclopedia' reduces hundreds of the more famous saints and martyrs of old to a mere formula and rejects the most treasured legends of popular Catholic literature."
"The study of the lives or legends of saints and martyrs is now a science, hagiography (from hagios, or saint). It has engaged the labors of hundreds of first-class scholars for the last hundred years, and only a small minority of these have been Rationalists. Leading Catholic scholars like Mgr. Duchesne, leading Protestant scholars like Harnack, and scores of less prominent though more concentrated workers have joined in the search."
"The conditions of modern life have made the task easier than it was in the days of Tillemont. One does not now lumber in a stage-coach from Tours to Paris to consult a library, or brave the terrors of the Macedonian hills or the Syrian deserts to see a manuscript that lies in the dust of an ancient monastery. Modern transport takes the martyr-slayer over the whole field in a month; and he then prints the new manuscript he has discovered in some sleepy Greek or Syrian monastery, and a hundred experts get to work on it."
"The result may be seen in such a work as Dr. Albert Ehrhard's `Die altchristliche Literature' Ehrhard is a Catholic, but he summarizes and entirely endorses the work of the critics. He gives the authors and titles of more than a hundred books and essays dealing critically with the martyrs. Neumann, he tells you, has made a special study of all the legends of martyrs under the Emperor Commodus, and has found the whole of them spurious except two or three. Fuhrer has thoroughly studied what was thought to be the sound story of St. Felicitas and her seven sons, and has shown that two quite different legends have been blended, so that the saint really only got her `seven sons' in the Middle Ages. Delehaye, a Jesuit, has made a special study of the martyrs of the Roman Church and has found that all the `Acts' of them--including such treasured memories as St. Agnes and St. Cecilia--are late compilations which do not even profess to quote earlier authorities."
"Let me note here one particular result of this criticism which will amuse the reader. So deep-rooted is the belief that Christian martyrs were exposed to the lions in the Amphitheater (now called the Coliseum) of ancient Rome that even Bernard Shaw built upon the legend one of those plays ("Androcles and the Lion") in which he teaches us how to write history. It appears that twenty years before Mr. Shaw took up the theme, Father Delehaye had proved in his book `L'amphitheatre Flavien et ses environs' (1897) that no Christian was ever exposed to the lions in the Coliseum! I have not been able to consult the book, but the Catholic Dr. Ehrhard tells us this. The `acts of the martyrs' of the Roman Church in particular are amongst the most spurious of all. Yet Catholic writers continue to tell Catholic readers how Gelasius (or Damasus) warned the faithful not to read spurious books, and ask them to believe that the authorities of the Church were ever on the watch. On the
contrary, as we shall see, Rome was the main center of the
manufacture of spurious documents."
"Regarding the topic of martyrs, McCabe discussed some of the
differences among honest and dishonest Roman Catholics. The honest Roman Catholics admitted that claims regarding martyrs were fraudulent, at least for the most part. The dishonest Roman
Catholics came up with fanciful and unsupported claims that were
contested by the honest Roman Catholics."
"One actual historic fact that most Christians tend to ignore, and it is this simple fact that not only spread the religion but has kept it a predominant one world-wide, is that the religion based on the Jesus story, be it history or myth, which is irrelevant, was spread at the point of a sword. Don't believe me, what about the crusades, the inquisition, and the pogroms and in the 20th century the Holocaust, the streets have run red with the blood of non-Christians for centuries. The fact the crusaders butchered men women and children in the name of Christ is even glorified in the movies."
"The born again and fundie Christians react sometimes with violence when someone doubts their interpretation of history particularly when it comes to the late JC. I have lost count of the number of times I have been told that I'm headed straight for hell because I do not believe their version of history."
"To many people--believers, non-believers, and those in between--
Christianity is a conundrum. Christian teachings and behavior are riddled with contradictions. Acts of supreme self-sacrifice to ice cold hate have been undertaken in the name of Christianity. From its inception Christians have been arguing and even fighting among themselves over the meaning of their religion. Look at any book on the history of Christian theology or thought and you will find a plethora of interpretations of Christians. There is no general agreement. At times "Christians" used to kill fellow Christians who had a differing interpretation of doctrines. How can we make sense of this?"
Shalom
Peter
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DebatesOnJesus/
