Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: mmh@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: What's the difference? Message-ID: Date: 8 Jul 90 04:01:47 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Computer Science Dept, QMW, University of London, UK. Lines: 21 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article howard@53iss6.waterloo.ncr.com (Howard Steel) writes: >Since the first major split in Christianity (Romans vs Gnostics; final score >1 - 0 Romans, Gnostic >writings were removed from the bible) the reasons have in >most cases been an attempt to gain power by specific individuals. There has been a lot of this recently. Since little is known about the Gnostics, they have been idealised by modern writers. What people say about the Gnostics usually has more to do with themselves than what the Gnostics actually were. The Gnostic writings are much later than the standard canonical parts of the Bible, and do not reflect the Jesus we know through the Bible. They are an attempt to graft various ideas current at the time onto Christianity. They were not removed from the Bible, they were never added to it because it was obvious at the time that they weren't genuinely Christian, but attempts to work Gnosticism into Christianity by putting Gnostic words into Jesus' mouth. Matthew Huntbach