Another Big Big Thread of Religious Discussion

[Sithdarth]

What I can say however is that what I did accurately do in my previous post was essentially disprove that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were "unreliable representations of Jesus' true teachings." You can say that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John may not convey the full story and of course you'd be right. You can say that critical elements may be missing because other gospels or accounts of Jesus' life were dismissed -- sins of "omission," if you will -- and since my specialty area in my religious studies hasn't centered around the gnostics I personally cannot disprove your point.

Which was precisely my point.

And new non-canon material -- the gospel of Judas being a most recent example -- is being uncovered all the time. Again, the church can't cover it up. The evidence of the non-canon material is there for all eyes to see, which would seem to me to discredit any argument that Christianity is terribly threatened by it. The worst case scenairo that can be argued is that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John paint a picture for the majority of christian believers that may be incomplete. But Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are certainly more than enough to define my faith and I've never felt shortchanged by not having twenty other gospels to read.

Which again was the point. You can point to the bible and say this is something akin to original Christianity and it has good points. What you can't do is point to it and say that this is exactly what Jesus taught because so little of the material was used.