/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

>>728656

Okay so the first thing you should know is that the person you met is not a perfect Muslim. His beliefs are not fully inline with the Koran. Here's what the Koran says about the apostles:

>Said the disciples: "We are God's helpers [anṣāru llāhi]: We believe in God, and do thou bear witness that we are Muslims [wa-ishhad bi-'anna muslimuna]. Our LORD! we believe in what Thou hast revealed, and we follow the Messenger (Jesus); then write us down among those who bear witness."

This crap about Judas is later fanfiction that has nothing to do with Islam. In fact, Islam teaches that Saint Peter the Apostle was the first Imam. Recently, a lot of Muslims have taken gnostic anti-Christian stuff and re-appropriated it to be about Islam, even though gnostic anti-Christian stuff is 100% fake and about 90% of it contradicts Islam.

Now for the other stuff: Jesus was crucified and that's one of the most attested to events in history. In fact, his crucifixion story is not relegated to the four gospels, it's also in all epistles, the ancient writings of Jewish and Roman historians, New Testament apocryphal texts, and even the bulk of those gnostic gospels that Muslims love to say prove the Bible is corrupted. As for the gospel of Barnabas, that appeared in the 1500s, and it was clearly made by someone with neither knowledge of Greek or Hebrew (Jesus is referred to in the gospel of Barnabas as "Jesus Christ," but he denies being the Messiah, saying Muhammad will be the Messiah. Christ is Greek for Messiah.) The Gospel of Judas was written in the third century; it's a polytheistic text that says that Jesus was crucified, so it directly contradicts Islamic theology.

As for why those books aren't in the Bible, the reason is because they were written later by heretical groups and don't conform to the rest of the Bible. The four gospels were circulating together by 180 at the latest, and were written much earlier (the final gospel, the Gospel of John was finished at 110 at the latest). The gnostic gospels generally date far after this time. People were trying to add on to a finished collection.

The Gospel of Barnabas is an extremely late forgery that was "discovered" by the Muslims and even mentions Muhammad by name. As for the other "hidden" gospels, all of them are dated later than the official gospels except MAYBE (it's debated academically) the gospel of Thomas which MIGHT have been written around the same time (consensus for when the gospels were composed is between 50-80AD). If you really want to get into these gospels, also known as the "gnostic gospels", Michael Heiser has a six hour long lecture about them and it's very good.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the four earliest gospel accounts (as well as what scholars call the "Q" source, which may be a written gospel used as a basis for Matthew, Mark, and Luke, or it could be oral tradition). Every other gospel out there was written in the middle of the 2nd century at the absolute earliest (scholars were unsure about the gospel of Thomas before but now most agree it's not an early text either). And most of these gospels are explicitly written as polemics against the mainline Church.

These books aren't in the Bible because orthodox Christians did not recognize them as expressing the apostolic faith they had inherited, and there was no liturgical use for them. And again, some of them were written specifically to attack and mock orthodox doctrine.

They were deliberately hidden from the faithful because there were 3 categories of texts: canonical (inspired and used liturgically and to express doctrine), ecclesiastical (inspired but not part of the "foundation" of the faith, rather they were suggested for new converts to read by themselves), and apocryphal (hidden, meaning that they were most likely not inspired and the confusing or outright heretical garbage in them could easily confuse laypeople and make them deviate from the faith). A canonical text would for instance be the gospel of Matthew. An ecclesiastical text would for instance be the Wisdom of Solomon. And an apocryphal text would for instance be the infancy gospel of James.

>Because they really seem to support Islam over Christianity as we know it. What's the deal?

Funny you say that, because the gospel of Banabas was written by Muslims centuries after Jesus. And its theology and understanding of geography are ridiculously whacky. In particular the author doesn't even realize that Christ and Messiah are the same word.

So Muslims are willing to believe in the demiurge, later writings and duality, just because they want to accuse Christians of being wrong?

Why doesn't this surprise me?

If you're interested about what Gnosticism is and how it influenced Christian history, feel free to listen to this

https://www.sermonaudio.com/playpopup.asp?SID=65161738506

>>728680

>>728944

It's not that Muslims have decided to become gnostic, what's happening is they believe the "gospel" mentioned in the Quran (which it says was given to Jesus by Allah) is not a written book, but is just the words/teaching/example of Jesus. They then say that the true gospel was recorded poorly by a variety of writers. The gnostic gospels give them an out, so they can say "see! There are other sources of Jesus you reject, even though they contain a few things you'd agree with, it's just that most of it is corrupted." Then the Quran+Sufi Jesus literature contains the REAL Jesus.

Of course, that's bs. Some guy writing something in the fourth century that isn't in the Bible doesn't mean I should accepted some 7th century revision