Word: gnostics
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...important to New Testament studies that it was released simultaneously in Europe and the U.S. in five languages and six editions. Scholars have been waiting for it since 1946, when word went through the learned world that jars containing 13 leather-bound papyrus manuscripts-part of a 4th century Gnostic library-had been found in a sand-covered tomb in Upper Egypt. Laymen had been waiting for the book since last spring, when Swiss Theologian Oscar Cullmann, in a lecture at Manhattan's Union Theological Seminary, quoted some tantalizing excerpts from the "sayings of Jesus" contained...
Unknown & Genuine. Will the newly found "Gospel" (scheduled to be published soon by Professor Henri-Charles Puech of the College de France, and colleagues) affect the New Testament? No, answers Theologian Cullmann: The collection "was rightly not included in the New Testament." His reason: It includes "obviously Gnostic material," and apparently was compiled by a Gnostic who arbitrarily put the collection under the authority of the Apostle Thomas.-* Says Cullmann: "Our four canonical Gospels are the only ones on which we can rely. Again and again we must marvel at the fact that from the large number of primitive Christian...
...Doubting Thomas, the disciple who is best known for his verification of Jesus' resurrection by touching the wounds in his hands (John 20: 25-28) was a favorite of Gnostic writers, who attributed to him extensive missionary journeys in Persia and India. The Mar Thoma Church in southern India claims him as its founder...
...than Bultmann the revolutionary; lucidly and briefly he takes them through the Old Testament background, 1st century Judaism, the Greek influences on the early church. But in the last section of the book, dealing directly with primitive Christianity, demythologization is seen at work. Again and again Bultmann attributes to Gnostic influences what orthodox interpreters assign to essential Christian teaching. The problem of the future and the end of the world, which has come in for so much theological attention of late, seems to Bultmann to be swallowed up in the Christian present...
Professor Taubes is represented by a lecture, "The Gnostic Idea of Man," taken down by students in his course, "Freedom and the Spirit of Heresy." Although his thesis necessarily appears in highly condensed and incomplete form, we cannot but be grateful for this fascinating document. Gnosis in the early Christian era was "a secret learning necessary for man's salvation." With what justification Professor Taubes calls it "the emergence of man's self as a general human experience . . . the axis of our history," is of course the central problem arising out of his lecture...