(January 30, 2015 at 6:14 am)robvalue Wrote: For me, the inclusion in the bible of just one obviously copied story from a previous mythology would be enough to make me seriously doubt the integrity of the whole book. If I was the kind of person who might mostly take things at face value, but not entirely gullible.
A Christian would just see this as evidence that those dastardly gnostic heretics were composing fraudulent gospels.
What I find interesting is that scholars think these works were hidden by a nearby Christian Pachomian monastery - that's St. Pachomius a contemporary of St. Anthony. In other words, these works are associated with the Desert Fathers who most Christians admire.
So why were these monks putting ideas from a non-Christian work into the mouth of Jesus? It makes me wonder if early Christians felt that Jesus was a mythical person just like the original Greek writer "Eugnostos" was a mythical person. The fact that there were so many weird gospels so early in Christian history makes me suspicious.
