O Wow! They’ve Discovered Another New Gospel-- Put It There On The Pile With All The Others

Easter must be approaching: flowers are blooming, birds are chirping and media hype is spreading doubts about the resurrection of Christ again.

Happens every year about this time.

Sure as Spring weather generates tornados every year, about this time as Easter approaches, somebody somewhere releases a new film or book or song or tv show to prove that Jesus is not who He was, that He never did what He did, or that He never said what He said.

Astounding “new” information appears annually to reveal that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a torrid affair, that Judas was a hero, that crucifixion didn’t kill Christ, that the dead body of Jesus is hidden in a bank vault, that Saucer People took Jesus to the Mother Ship, that Jesus and Judas planned to come out of the closet, that Jesus and Elvis live in a trailer park in Phoenix, that this year there will be a jellybean shortage so you’d better stock up now…

Well, we’ve all heard all this stuff before

Every year, sure as fireants in the lawn, startling new information says the same old thing — that jesus christ rotted.

Well, He rose or rotted.

No other alternatives.

If he rotted then nothing he said or did matters; if He rose, then nothing else matters.

Anyhow, next phase of the Easter cycle is that some folks get all aflutter and pushed out of shape. Accusations and counter accusations will appear on tv news shows. Protesters will march with signs. Conservative scholars will huff. Liberal scholars will puff. Media will enjoy a field day until another politician does something stupid and the news moves on.

What’s all the excitement about?

So another old book comes to light. Big deal.

This is a surprise? It shouldn’t be.

Remember the last sentence in John’s Gospel?

“There are many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.”

Old books about Jesus have been around for ages and ages. We’ve all seen ads in the tabloids for reprintings of “Hidden Secret Books Of The Bible”.

Bible scholars call such writings by names such as apocrypha, pseudepigrapha, extra canonical, deutero-canonical, Gnostic Gospels, and National Inquirer Geographic.

Other early related versions include the Diatessaron, the Peshitta, the Bohairic, Armenian, and the Georgian with a text known as Caesarean.

(And yes, I looked those names up because although I’ve know about them for 50 years or so, I couldn’t spell any of them. I’m by no means a biblical scholar).

But my point is that “new” books of the Bible are nothing new.

Among the 50 or so “new” old books which are not found in the Bible are such titles as:

• The Acts of Pilate
• Gospel of Nicodemus
• Protoevangelium of James
• Gospel According to the Hebrews
• Jesus and Salome
• Gospel of Peter
• Gospel of Thomas
• The Ararus Letters
• Didache
• The Sibylline Oracles (written in Maccabean times and not to be confused with the Roman Oracles of Sibyl)
• 
  

And the list goes on and on with other names I can’t spell and I’m too lazy to look up.

Now the news announces — with fanfare — the Gospel of Judas.
Big deal.
Put it on the pile until you’ve read the Four Gospels in your own Bible first.

And be sure to stock up on jellybeans; Wal Mart is running out…

You know, sometimes I wonder if we Christians don’t get upset over the wrong things. O well, by their fruits shall ye know them…