"Many of the gnostic gospels were pretty clearly written earlier"
Says you. The textual evidence says otherwise. The gospel of Judas for example has a sole surviving copy dated ~300AD. Irenaeus mentions it around 180AD as being the usual gnostic load of shite. So we don't even know whether we have the original text. It's about as reliable as my personal eyewitness account of the French Revolution that I wrote last week, that is to say, not at all. The gospel of Thomas leaves an equally pathetic mark on history and was only discovered in the 1940s. Clearly a divine text for the ages! Or perhaps not.
"by people closer to Jesus."
History seems to be silent on who these people actually were. Any ideas? In fact, history seems to be really, really quiet on the gnostics in general. They clearly scuttled away and didn't say much when their faith was challenged.
"Why were they excluded, while all of Paul's crap thrown in? Politics."
No, because they weren't eyewitnesses, clearly borrowed FROM the canonical gospels and not the other way around, and have nothing new to add that isn't the moronic mystical mutterings of idle urbanites.
"His was a vision of Christianity suitable to those in power in 367CE."
Gnonsense. There was no "vision" of Christianity when Paul was around - it was a very simple call to worship the resurrected man Jesus and obey what he commanded. How did it grow from twelve followers to become the official religion of Rome in just a few hundred years? The article deliberately avoids the real reason: early believers were convinced that their teacher had risen from the dead and could prove it. If not, Christianity would not have survived a few months, let alone become one of the foundations of Western civilization on Earth.
"Again, instead of violating the rules by calling people stupid, please learn the actual facts."
Point me at the two thousand years of gnostic-driven civilization, science and culture and I'll think about it although I see you've carefully not answered my earlier points so my hopes aren't high.
Says you. The textual evidence says otherwise. The gospel of Judas for example has a sole surviving copy dated ~300AD. Irenaeus mentions it around 180AD as being the usual gnostic load of shite. So we don't even know whether we have the original text. It's about as reliable as my personal eyewitness account of the French Revolution that I wrote last week, that is to say, not at all. The gospel of Thomas leaves an equally pathetic mark on history and was only discovered in the 1940s. Clearly a divine text for the ages! Or perhaps not.
"by people closer to Jesus."
History seems to be silent on who these people actually were. Any ideas? In fact, history seems to be really, really quiet on the gnostics in general. They clearly scuttled away and didn't say much when their faith was challenged.
"Why were they excluded, while all of Paul's crap thrown in? Politics."
No, because they weren't eyewitnesses, clearly borrowed FROM the canonical gospels and not the other way around, and have nothing new to add that isn't the moronic mystical mutterings of idle urbanites.
"His was a vision of Christianity suitable to those in power in 367CE."
Gnonsense. There was no "vision" of Christianity when Paul was around - it was a very simple call to worship the resurrected man Jesus and obey what he commanded. How did it grow from twelve followers to become the official religion of Rome in just a few hundred years? The article deliberately avoids the real reason: early believers were convinced that their teacher had risen from the dead and could prove it. If not, Christianity would not have survived a few months, let alone become one of the foundations of Western civilization on Earth.
"Again, instead of violating the rules by calling people stupid, please learn the actual facts."
Point me at the two thousand years of gnostic-driven civilization, science and culture and I'll think about it although I see you've carefully not answered my earlier points so my hopes aren't high.