The Great Dialogue

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Good Morning   I have been thinking about how the way a culture views things may have something to say about its spiritual practices...for example, are collectivist societies different qualitatively from more individualistic societies?  In the West we tend to more of an individualistic viewpoint--and maybe that contributes to our infighting in Christianity and even in other Western-adopted spiritual viewpoints? Is Buddhism more amendable to a collectivist worldview? These are the questions I have been pondering - complicating this is that Jesus did exhort us to love our neighbor, and the Bible is full of references to God loving the whole world/all nations, etc., and the apostles tell us to strive to live at peace with all mankind...this sounds collectivistic, sort of like Buddhism's practice of loving kindness for all living things, etc...or, consider Hinduism and how there exists a harmony amongst ALL things...maybe this collectivist/individualist dimension explains some of the k

Steve/James   All good points...I am liking the progress we are making!   I would remind the readers that Jesus [not only his disciples]  is recorded as having spoken about his divinity and his impending death and Resurrection...I have read portions of apocrypha and find them much as Jim describes...I was raised catholic and the Apocrypha are valued by them for some functions...it also helps to recall that the story of Hanukkah is recorded in one of the Apocryphal Maccabees texts...I think of it this way: if I authored a work, and then someone wrote a similar work, how would I protect the original work? how would I protect the names and terms associated with it? In religious circles, orthodoxy seems to be useful, in that copyrights and other protections do not exist...without some efforts in the  direction of protecting the Word anyone and everyone can author alternative accounts, leave out important things for their own purposes and basically liable-lize what was original...if the ori

I'm not sure it's accurate that the alternative gospels have been "unearthed." We've known about them all along (as far as I know) but have basically ignored them. The reason is that the pre-Nicene Church was already beginning to think they weren't terribly authoritative; Nicaea just made that point of view official. Have you read any of them? It's not too hard to see why they came to be regarded as of minor significance. There are notable exceptions. The Catholic concept of Hell's Harrowing comes not from the canon but the Gospel of Nicodemus. But then again, when you realize that the Harrowing of Hell depends on a very earth-centered (perhaps I should say "physical-universe-centered") view of time, you begin to see that however Christocentric it is, the myth (and I don't use it here to mean something false) the concept is flawed. When you know how the Church developed its view of scriptural authority, you tend to be a little more flexib

Regarding:   "I would love to see some passages from "alternative gospels," ...I'd be interested to know what other qualities they share."       That would be quite a study! LOTS of work in that...

   Thank you, everyone, for the comments...I think the following verses will be instructive, too: 2 Peter 1:16 For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. 17 For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory:"This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."18 And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. 19 And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, a which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts; 20 knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, a 21 for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God a spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.     I value the written testimony of the "eyewitnesses," and

Good Morning,    This morning [on Elaine Pagel's Birthday] I am thinking about the varied alternative gospels that have been unearthed, and how people often react to their existence...my main question is, what do you think the value of these is, if any? From where I stand, if the people who are the founding members of a religion exclude alternative writings, and have detailed in their own works what the tenets of the religion are to be, I cannot see how it becomes allowable for ANY alternative document to supplant the "authorized" works...for example, "Jesus died and rose from the dead" is a primary belief of the original Christian church...should an alternative view [Jesus was only a man...alternative gospels suggest this is true]be allowed to be called "Christian?"