Apocrypha is a plural word that originally denoted hidden or secret writings, to be read only by initiates into a given Christian group. It comes from Greek and is formed from the combination of apo (away) and krytein. The word apocrypha, like many other words, has undergone a major change in meaning throughout the centuries. Concerning these ancient books, the word apocrypha originally meant a text too sacred and secret to be in everyone's hands. Christians today say that apocrypha are works, usually written, of unknown authorship or of doubtful origin. The word apocryphal (ἀπόκρυφος) was first applied to writings which were kept secret because they were the vehicles of esoteric knowledge considered too profound or too sacred to be disclosed to anyone other than the initiated. Apocrypha was applied to writings that were hidden not because of their divinity but because of their questionable value to the church. In general use, the word apocrypha came to mean "false, spurious, bad, or heretical."
The Gospel according to John is the fourth of the four canonical gospels. It contains a highly schematic account of the ministry of Jesus, with seven "signs" culminating in the raising of Lazarus and seven "I am" discourses culminating in Thomas's proclamation of the risen Jesus as "my Lord and my God"; the concluding verses set out its purpose, "that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name."
Gospel originally meant the Christian message, but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out; in this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth, culminating in his trial and death and concluding with various reports of his post-resurrection appearances. The four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John share the same basic outline: Jesus begins his public ministry in conjunction with that of John the Baptist, calls disciples, teaches and heals and confronts the Pharisees, dies on the cross, and is raised from the dead. Each has its own distinctive understanding of Jesus and his divine role: Mark never calls him "God", Luke follows Mark's plot more faithfully than does Matthew but expands on him while eliminating some passages entirely, and John, the most overtly theological, is the first to make Christological judgements outside the context of the narrative of Jesus's life. Their differences of detail are irreconcilable, and any attempt to harmonise them would only disrupt their distinct theological messages.
Matthew the Apostle, also known as Saint Matthew and as Levi, was, according to the New Testament, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus. According to Christian tradition, he was also one of the four Evangelists and thus is also known as Matthew the Evangelist.
The Gospel of Thomas is a non-canonical sayings gospel. It was discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945 among a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library. Scholars speculate that the works were buried in response to a letter from Bishop Athanasius declaring a strict canon of Christian scripture. Scholars have proposed dates of composition as early as AD 60 and as late as AD 140.
The four tables give the most commonly accepted dates or ranges of dates for the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, the deuterocanonical books and the New Testament, including, where possible, hypotheses about their formation-history.
The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) is an English translation of the Bible published in 1989 by the National Council of Churches. It is a revision of the Revised Standard Version, which was itself an update of the American Standard Version. The NRSV was intended as a translation to serve devotional, liturgical and scholarly needs of the broadest possible range of religious adherents. The full translation includes the books of the standard Protestant canon as well as the Deuterocanonical books traditionally included in the canons of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
Elaine Pagels, née Hiesey, is an American religious historian. She is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Pagels has conducted extensive research into early Christianity and Gnosticism.
The Gospel of Philip is one of the Gnostic Gospels, a text of New Testament apocrypha, dated to around the 3rd century but lost in medieval times until rediscovered by accident, buried with other texts near Nag Hammadi in Egypt, in 1945.
The Syriac Infancy Gospel, also known as the Arabic Infancy Gospel, is a New Testament apocryphal writing concerning the infancy of Jesus. It may have been compiled as early as the sixth century, and was partly based on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and Protevangelium of James. There are only two surviving manuscripts dating from 1299 AD and the 15th/16th century in Arabic. They were copied in the area of northern Iraq and show influence from the Quran.
The New Testament apocrypha are a number of writings by early Christians that give accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives. Some of these writings have been cited as scripture by early Christians, but since the fifth century a widespread consensus has emerged limiting the New Testament to the 27 books of the modern canon. Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant churches generally do not view these New Testament apocrypha as part of the Bible.
Bruce Manning Metzger (1914–2007) was an American biblical scholar, Bible translator and textual critic who was a longtime professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and Bible editor who served on the board of the American Bible Society and United Bible Societies. He was a scholar of Greek, New Testament, and New Testament textual criticism, and wrote prolifically on these subjects. Metzger was one of the most influential New Testament scholars of the 20th century.
Edwin Masao Yamauchi is a Japanese-American historian, (Protestant) Christian apologist, editor and academic. He is Professor Emeritus of History at Miami University, where he taught from 1969 until 2005. He is married to Kimie Honda.
Matthew 6:18 is the eighteenth verse of the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament and is part of the Sermon on the Mount. This verse concludes the discussion of fasting.
Criticism of the Bible is an interdisciplinary field of study concerning the factual accuracy of the claims and the moral tenability of the commandments made in the Bible, the holy book of Christianity. Long considered to be the perfect word of God by devout Christians, scholars and scientists have endeavored for centuries to scrutinise the texts to establish their origins and validity. In addition to concerns about ethics in the Bible, biblical inerrancy, or the historicity of the Bible there remain some questions of authorship and what material should be included in the biblical canon.
The Jewish–Christian Gospels were gospels of a Jewish Christian character quoted by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius, Jerome and probably Didymus the Blind. Most modern scholars have concluded that there was one gospel in Aramaic/Hebrew and at least two in Greek, although a minority argue that there were only two, Aramaic/Hebrew and Greek.
Robert E. Van Voorst is an American theologian and educator.
Pheme Perkins is a Professor of Theology at Boston College, where she has been teaching since 1972. She is a nationally recognized expert on the Greco-Roman cultural setting of early Christianity, as well as the Pauline Epistles and Gnosticism.
2 Timothy 2 is the second chapter of the Second Epistle to Timothy in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The letter has been traditionally attributed to Paul the Apostle, the last one written in Rome before his death, addressed to Timothy. There are charges that it is the work of an anonymous follower, after Paul's death in the first century AD. This chapter contains the charge to Timothy, to pass on what has been entrusted to him to those who will teach others, to use the message of the gospel to contradict the opponent's teaching, and to counter heterodoxy.
Infancy gospels are a genre of religious texts that arose in the 2nd century. They are part of New Testament apocrypha, and provide accounts of the birth and early life of Jesus. The texts are of various and uncertain origin, and are generally non-canonical in major modern branches of Christianity. They include the Gospel of James, which introduces the concept of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, both of which cover many miraculous incidents from the life of Mary and the childhood of Jesus that are not included in the canonical gospels. Although the Life of John the Baptist focuses on John the Baptist rather than Jesus or his immediate family, it is also included in the genre as its events would be contemporary with Jesus's early life.
