I am not driven by people’ s praise and I am not slowed down by people’ s criticism.
You only live once. But if you live it right, once is enough. Wrong. We only die once, we live every day!
Make poverty history.
Gnosticism is an ancient philosophy. It states that the world was created by an imperfect god, called the Demiurge, and that it is inherently flawed/bad/corrupt. People have in them divine essence, which "wants" to be free from their corrupt, material bodies and rejoin God (not the Demiurge)/Heaven/something like that, but which is trapped on earth. When you die, your divine essence is just trapped in another body; what you want to do is free it. Freedom comes from knowledge (I think gnosticism is either Greek for knowledge or derived from the Greek word, in fact). But there were a lot of schools of gnosticism, having widely different beliefs, so that's just a summary.
__________________ "Men curse the Communist Party, but eventually it may release them. If hell were endless, then God would be worse than our Secret Police."--Pastor Valentin
Last edited by Gregory on Jan 7th, 2005 at 12:32 AM
it derives from the Greek word Gnosis which menas knowledge.
The gnostics wrote gospels as well but most of them were burnt destroyed or lost, much because of favor of the orthodox writtings of the 4 gospels included in the NT
Gnostic writings are "The gospel of Thomas", "The secret book of James", "The gospel of Mary", "Marcion", "Basilides", I cant remember any more have too look it up if I should mention the lot...oooh of course "Ptolemy"
Gnosis, or knowlege, is defined as the intuitive comprehension of higher spiritual truth. Gnosticism is believed to have developed in pre-Christian times, a syncretic blend of Platonic philosophy and Pagan mystery religion that believed the creation of matter to be flawed, and the creator to be an evil force.
Gnostics believe that Christ was not truly human, but a messenger who only had the appearance of humanity.
*nods*
In the twentieth century, dozens of Gnostic scriptures were discovered buried in a jar in the desert at Nag Hammadi. These included the Gospel of Thomas and The Thunder, perfect mind.
__________________
I am not driven by people’ s praise and I am not slowed down by people’ s criticism.
You only live once. But if you live it right, once is enough. Wrong. We only die once, we live every day!
Make poverty history.
I am interested in the gnostics, they had a some ancient wisdom that may be useful in understanding the cannonized version of the bible. http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html
__________________ Beam me up scotty, there is no intelligent life on this planet.
The gnostic gospels are no longer a good source to use. Since they were created much, much later than the originel gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They are not authentic compared to the four gospels.
The NT was only pieces of fragments.....The New Testament has even fewer surviving texts. Scholars think that not until years after Jesus' alleged death that its authors wrote the Gospels. There exists no evidence that the New Testament came from the purported original apostles or anyone else that had seen the alleged Jesus. Although the oldest surviving Christian texts came from Paul, he had never seen the earthly Jesus. There occurs nothing in Paul's letters that either hints at the existence of the Gospels or even of a need for such memoirs of Jesus Christ. The oldest copy of the New Testament yet found consists of a tiny fragment from the Gospel of John. Scholars dated the little flake of papyrus from the period style of its handwriting to around the first half of the 2nd century C.E. The language of most of the new testament consists of old Greek. http://www.nobeliefs.com/DarkBible/darkbible2.htm
^ shows the fragment text.
Thus Matt., Mark, Luke, and John, are no longer a good source to use.
DJ,sometimes I just want to give up.People will never learn will they?
At least you know.If you know someone else is bound to know.Where's shakyamunsion at?He had the right idea too.
^I think Shaky is off in Buddhaville...nah just kidding...He's off with his music recordings or something like that....And yes, wouldn't it be great if people really looked at their roots and saw what really happened and what was really meant by some teachings...."Christ being in you" as opposed to following an outside set of rules and hoping to get that connection..
KMC Community Forums
Jan 6th, 2005 03:22 AM
