God Never Said The Canon Is Closed
For the last year or so I've had a growing obsession with the Gnostic Gospels and various other ancient texts that were used or referred to in various Early Christianities only to be deemed heretical by powerful church fathers and sentenced to be destroyed so as to be wiped from the face of the earth forever.
The Gospel of Thomas.
The Gospel of Mary.
The Gospel of Truth.
You and I were never supposed to get our hands on these texts. Way back when long before you and I were ever thought of, there was a maddening conspiracy put into place to eliminate these texts, demonize everyone who held them dearly, and severely punish anyone who did not comply.
NOW.
I'm by no means an expert and don't really even have a vocabulary to adequately explain the details of these things, but bear with me as I try to lay some (somewhat accurate?) groundwork for what I want to share.
Eh.
Let's just go to one of the experts, Bart Ehrman. In his book "Lost Christianities" he says this ...
"Ancient Christians knew of far more Gospels than the four that eventually came to be included in the New Testament. The Christians who read, preserved, and cherished these other Gospels understood them to be sacred texts. The Christians who rejected them argued that they were heretical (promoting false teachings) and in many instances, forged. The Christians who won the early conflicts and established their views as dominant by the 4th century not only gave us the creeds that have been handed down from antiquity, they also decided which books would belong to the Scriptures. Once their battles had been won, they succeeded in labeling themselves 'orthodox' and marginalized their opponents as 'heretics".
The point is that in the decades following the death of Jesus Christianity didn't take root as much as ChristianITIES took root. What I mean by that is that there were ...
A VARIETY of people.
Who thought about Jesus in a VARIETY of different ways.
Who understood God in a VARIETY of different ways.
Who held close to their hearts a VARIETY of stories about Jesus.
Who cherished a VARIETY of Scriptures that aren't in our Bibles.
... The problem, though, is that these early Christianities with their various beliefs and various thinkings and various Scriptures were destroyed by the Christians in power who declared their own versions to be orthodox and all others heretical.
The Good News (I think) is that there were some Christians who bucked the system, stuck it to the man, and hid their sacred documents for safe keeping and over the last century those texts have been discovered, translated, and made available to you and me and everyone else.
On top of that, we have incredible scholars like ...
... And many, many others who are dedicating their lives to studying these texts, studying their origins, and giving us a small glimpse into these ancient Christians who were demonized, outcast, oppressed, and ridiculed by those in power.
We also have pastors who are willing to engage these things from the pulpit. My friend Shawn Garan, for example, is a pastor at Second Congregational Church in Greenwich, CT and he recently did a whole sermon series on the Gospel of Thomas and just started one on the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.
For all of my academic career I was told that these texts are weird, dangerous, and full of lies. I was told that they were deceitful and were created to lead people astray, that they were tools of Satan to lead people into delusional thinking and away from the true Gospel of Jesus. I steered clear of them for a while but after I interviewed Elizabeth Schrader on the podcast last year and heard her speak about Mary Magadalene and some of these texts ... I've been hooked ever since.
And yeah - some of them are super weird. No doubt. But within the weirdness there are some interesting truths that ring deep in my heart and are covered with the whispers of the Christ.
Perhaps we'll do a series on them one day. Who knows. That may or may not be in the works. I'll never tell. HA! For now, though, and for the sake of this blog series, I wanted to throw out there the obvious (I think it's obvious, anyways) - no where in the 66 books of the Biblical canon does God say that those 66 books are the only 66 books allowed to be included in the Bible.
It doesn't.
Oh, it does?
Show me.
(It doesn't.)
In other words, nowhere did God say that the canon is "closed" and that other texts such as the ones mentioned above aren't allowed to be included or don't possess within themselves the exact same inspiration as the others.
I'm grateful for people like my friends Shawn and Elizabeth and writers like Bart Ehrman and others who are dragging these Scriptures into the light at the risk of being outcast and shamed like those who came before them.
These texts are important.
They have important things to say.
And some people somewhere in history saw them as important enough to risk everything by hiding them so that you and I could have them on our shelf today.
I hope to add my voice into the mix of bringing those people at least a small amount of honor by reading these texts, studying them, and sharing the wonderful pearls of truth that I discover. Heck, sometimes I read from the Gnostic texts in the morning instead of my Bible and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal something to me that has been (literally) buried for centuries … and he/she does.
Interested? Check these out ...
Lost Christianities by Bart Ehrman
The Other Gospels by Bart Ehrman
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels
... Happy reading!
Peace.