Why did the Church accept only the four Gospels as canonical rejecting even the Gospels under the names of Peter and Thomas and other Apostles? Here we come across the need to locate the criterion used by the Church to accept some and reject the others. The Church did not have to look elsewhere for the criterion used as the Gospels were themselves products of its own life for about 40 years before they were written down. Any written material, therefore, should have reflected its own image as in a mirror. Any failure to do so would be a good criterion to reject such texts as spurious. This is what we have seen in a previous post in the case of Marcion and the Christian Community in Rome in the case of the Gospel of Luke. The community as a whole took the decision to reject Marcion's proposal to modify Luke's Gospel as it already knew the real Gospel. The final decision of the Church leaders about the canonical Gospels was arrived at as late as the Council of Carthage in 392 A.D. although a beginning was made in the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. It was but a natural outcome of the sense of the Church as a whole and not the result of manipulations by any section of the Church. On the other hand, even the Gospel of Thomas discovered in 1945 does not help us in any way in quest for the historical Jesus as we have there only the sayings of Jesus. Some of those sayings are not in conformity with the Canonical Gospels, a reason good enough for the Gospel of Thomas to be branded as apocryphal. Th same may be said about the Gospel of Judas Iscariot, recently upheld as genuine by some, that was already in 180 branded as apocryphal by no less an authority in these matters as Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons in France.
Did we unwittingly play into the hands of those who oppose our views on the matter and assert that being the products of the first believing communities the Gospels were necessarily distorted versions of what really happened. According to this view, it would have to be admitted that any historical data get contaminated by the personal mode of thinking of the historians themselves and are thus distorted. The best remedy to avoid this pitfall is to dig out the data from the original witnesses whose very life forms are shaped by those historical events. This is what happened in the first Christian Communities where the believers heard the Gospel events directly from the Apostles and disciples who were constantly in the company of Jesus. They experienced them in hearing the Word of God, participating in the Eucharistic Liturgy and prayers that changed them into new persons. Thus they were at a vantage point to look back at the original events for the purpose of comparing their new state with the Gospel events. In this new perspective, the Evangelists recorded the events and sayings of Jesus after a period of 40 years. Was anything changed in this process? The change was only in better understanding the meaning and significance of events and sayings that were opaque to them earlier. This kind of understanding the meaning and significance of historical events in the context of revelation is called theology. Therefore, there was no distortion, but clarification that enhances the value of those historical events. Those who are uncomfortable with the involvement of the first believing communities should be reminded that according to Linguistic Analysis, no language is meaningful without being rooted in some kind of forms of life that generate the appropriate language games giving meaning to language itself. The Gospels are, therefore, well placed as historical records even within the parameters of the strict modern criteria of meaning as use of words and sentences in language. This process had the advantage of checks and balances of the original facts by a group of people instead of an individual or two with their own prejudices as happens in usual history writings.
Therefore, the presence of theological perspectives in the Bible in no way diminishes its historical value.
Some people argue that writings other than the 4 Gospels were weeded out as they supposedly contained certain secrets revealed by Jesus to his close circle of disciples. The only secrets alluded to by Jesus were the "Messianic Secret", referring to his own person as the expected Messiah, and the secrets of the Kingdom of God. Although the parables about the Kingdom of God were addressed to everyone, the general public did not have the time or inclination to be attuned to listen to them. The Apostles themselves were instructed by Jesus by explaining the meaning of the parables. The only other group to whom these types of secrets are revealed are children and that too directly by the Father Himself. For this reason, children are best suited to enter the Kingdom of God. Paul in his Letters tells us about the mystery God had kept in His mind from eternity and revealed gradually to us in fullness of time. This mystery is Jesus Christ himself in us (Col.1:25-27). These are the types of secrets we have in the Bible, unlike any in Gnosticism or other secret cults.The Bible is meant for revelation of God Himself and not for hiding things from our view and understanding!
Did we unwittingly play into the hands of those who oppose our views on the matter and assert that being the products of the first believing communities the Gospels were necessarily distorted versions of what really happened. According to this view, it would have to be admitted that any historical data get contaminated by the personal mode of thinking of the historians themselves and are thus distorted. The best remedy to avoid this pitfall is to dig out the data from the original witnesses whose very life forms are shaped by those historical events. This is what happened in the first Christian Communities where the believers heard the Gospel events directly from the Apostles and disciples who were constantly in the company of Jesus. They experienced them in hearing the Word of God, participating in the Eucharistic Liturgy and prayers that changed them into new persons. Thus they were at a vantage point to look back at the original events for the purpose of comparing their new state with the Gospel events. In this new perspective, the Evangelists recorded the events and sayings of Jesus after a period of 40 years. Was anything changed in this process? The change was only in better understanding the meaning and significance of events and sayings that were opaque to them earlier. This kind of understanding the meaning and significance of historical events in the context of revelation is called theology. Therefore, there was no distortion, but clarification that enhances the value of those historical events. Those who are uncomfortable with the involvement of the first believing communities should be reminded that according to Linguistic Analysis, no language is meaningful without being rooted in some kind of forms of life that generate the appropriate language games giving meaning to language itself. The Gospels are, therefore, well placed as historical records even within the parameters of the strict modern criteria of meaning as use of words and sentences in language. This process had the advantage of checks and balances of the original facts by a group of people instead of an individual or two with their own prejudices as happens in usual history writings.
Therefore, the presence of theological perspectives in the Bible in no way diminishes its historical value.
Some people argue that writings other than the 4 Gospels were weeded out as they supposedly contained certain secrets revealed by Jesus to his close circle of disciples. The only secrets alluded to by Jesus were the "Messianic Secret", referring to his own person as the expected Messiah, and the secrets of the Kingdom of God. Although the parables about the Kingdom of God were addressed to everyone, the general public did not have the time or inclination to be attuned to listen to them. The Apostles themselves were instructed by Jesus by explaining the meaning of the parables. The only other group to whom these types of secrets are revealed are children and that too directly by the Father Himself. For this reason, children are best suited to enter the Kingdom of God. Paul in his Letters tells us about the mystery God had kept in His mind from eternity and revealed gradually to us in fullness of time. This mystery is Jesus Christ himself in us (Col.1:25-27). These are the types of secrets we have in the Bible, unlike any in Gnosticism or other secret cults.The Bible is meant for revelation of God Himself and not for hiding things from our view and understanding!
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