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Ill probably be blocked finally for this


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13 minutes ago, mthor said:

Books.

There were a bunch of infancy gospels, none of which were ever considered canon.

Yah...ancient censorship if u ask me and isnt just convenient theres no better stories which would drive home the point that Thomas is a lie. But there isn't..the bible just skips most of jesus's life

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The apocryphal scriptures you are referring to are of dubious authenticity for anyone who's not a follower of Gnostic teachings. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is the more plausible of the two which primarily deal with a supposed record of Jesus' childhood. The latter is almost certainly not authentic as it dates to the middle ages, whereas The Gospel of Thomas is thought to be from the 1st or 2nd century AD which is also where most of the canonical scriptures fall.

That said no one who is a modern day Christian would ever consider these to be anything but heresy as they were likely written by Gnostics, whose entire version of Christianity is extremely different from Catholicism, Orthodoxism, Protestantism, or Reformationism which all share varying but mostly similiar precepts.

Gnostics believed that the material world was either inherently evil or inherently flawed (depending on the tradition since there were several forms of Gnosticism). This was a much more literal version of the "sins of the flesh" idea present in mainstream Christianity. Where normal Christians believed and focused on overcoming the temptations of the world in which the body resides, Gnostics believed that spirits are essentially trapped here and that nothing here is "sinful" because this entire layer of reality is evil or flawed.

The Gnostic version of salvation was a form of eastern like enlightenment, in which adherents must reach Gnosis (secret knowledge of the reality of the universe). Reaching Gnosis enables the spirit to escape the bodily cage and return to the Plorema from which it was "stolen" by the Demiurge. Their concept of God was entirely different as well because the Demiurge was the physical creator of the world and either evil or flawed himself, and had essentially stolen the spark of  human life/consciousness from a heaven like realm known as the Plorema which is where the true God, the Monad, resides. The Monad emanates lower semi-devine beings known as Aeons, such as the Demiurge, as a matter of it's nature. Most forms of Gnosticism regarded the Demiurge as the canonical Jewish God of the Old Testament/Torah, which is entirely separate from Jesus' "Father" the Monad.

They believed that Jesus teachings were actually about delivering this Gnosis so that those that believed and followed him could essentially decipher the true meaning of life and reality and transcend their physical bodies to a pure spiritual form returning to the Plorema their true origin. So taking this into consideration it makes sense that The Infancy Gospel of Thomas essentially recounts a tale of Jesus defying all aspects of the material world, to the Gnostics this was not evil because their religion did not deal with "Sin" like modern Christians do.

Edited by Sandstone
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A Bonus bit of trivia for those that are a fan of the Netflix show The OA, this is a very small spoiler for season 2 that doesn't really reveal the plot it's just about something that is present in a couple of the episodes.

Spoiler

For those that have seen or will watch season 2, there is a reference to a Gnostic concept about Aeons which were believed to be sent in pairs as a male and female energy. This pairing was known to the Gnostics as a Syzygy. If you've seen the show you will know what this refers to.

 

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Just now, Sandstone said:

A Bonus bit of trivia for those that are a fan of the Netflix show The OA, this is a very small spoiler for season 2 that doesn't really reveal the plot it's just about something that is present in a couple of the episodes.

  Reveal hidden contents

For those that have seen or will watch season 2, there is a reference to a Gnostic concept about Aeons which were believed to be sent in pairs as a male and female energy. This pairing was known to the Gnostics as a Syzygy. If you've seen the show you will know what this refers to.

 

Super interesting!

And super fits with The OA and the concept of the show in general.

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1 minute ago, Mewn said:

Super interesting!

And super fits with The OA and the concept of the show in general.

I actually think there is a bunch of references to Gnostic Christianity in that show, but going into detail about it would take a while and I don't want to accidentally spoil it cause season 2 just released last month. A deeper analysis would involve massive spoilers.

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Actually doing a rudimentary google search, it seems I'm not the only one familiar enough with this to have noticed that The OA is likely based on Gnosticism (particularly the Valentianist tradition). This looks like a very well thought out post on the topic which is inline with my thinking from the looks of it (warning contains spoilers for those that have not watched season 2):

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheOA/comments/b95kcl/is_this_a_neognostic_tale_does_the_oa_represent/

 

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