Rating: 
Summary: Nice collection, but not anything you can't find elsewhere
Review: The book contains a nice variety of works from early Christianity and to some extent the old testament era. If you are a beginer of the study of such works this is a nice starting book as you can see a small sampling of each of the many types of works that were written and the very different messages these books sometimes gave (part of why they aren't widely studied today in Churchs). However, every book contained in this work is to be found in other collections and I know of single collective books that contain most of these works and more with better translations. A nice starting point but not something that is really valuable to someone who has been already been studying other works from the time of the formation of the cannon.
Rating: 
Summary: Wow! The Forgotten Books of Eden are incredible.
Review: The story of Adam and Eve makes one wonder if they weren't actually real people. This book answers many questions one has after reading the official biblical account.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Lost But Left Out
Review: These "books" were left out of the cannon for a reason; they are not actual, true books of the Bible. One example of how they conflict with scripture is the Book of Mary in "The Lost Books." The Book of Mary tells us that she was raised up special by her parents after being told she would be the mother of the Messiah. Historical fact tells us that her parents were not foretold that she would be the mother of the Messiah. In the Book of Luke in the real Bible, when the Angel Gabriel appears to announce to Mary that she is going to conceive by the power of the Holy Spirit it is obvious that she is very surprised and not expecting such a visitation or such an announcement. She even asks the angel how this can be so when she "knows not a man." This makes it very obvious that she did not have prior knowledge of being chosen by God to bear His Son. The books in "The Lost Books" are similar to the ideas and false inspirations behind the Divinci Code. Anyone can write anything contradictory, blasphemous, and untrue about biblical fact and history, but it doesn't change that fact and history, nor make it less true. These books were never "lost," they were left out of the cannon on purpose, because they did not qualify as the Word of God because they are not true books that were inspired by God through the person of the Holy Spirit as God's Word is. Man-inspired text and God-inspired text...huge world of difference.
Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking
Review: This book contains insight into the minds of the people of the early Christian church and earlier. Although not accepted as Scripture it serves to give you an idea of how people thought about things back then.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant but, you must understand the Bible first
Review: This book helped give me a better understanding of the Lord. It explained to me interpretations that were not evident in the bible. I mean this they were probaly evident in the Bible however, I could not see them. This book helped explain and to my mind the (1) one thing was UNITY both with yourself and your family and the Holy Ghost.
Rating:
Summary: To Go A Step Beyond
Review: This book is a good choice to begin to learn about the amazing history of the Christian Church.
Especially Gnosticism and the early Christian Church, and especially the creation of the New Testament Bible. For a different review....here is my review of books that build on these interests, especially the "lost" books of the New Testament Bible and the concepts of Gnosticism.
Nearly all knowledgeable Biblical scholars realize there have been a wide range of writings attributed to Jesus and his Apostles..... and that some of these were selected for compilation into the book that became known as the Bible.....and that some books have been removed from some versions of the Bible and others have been re-discovered in modern times.
The attention focused on Gnosticism by Dan Brown's DaVinci Code may be debatable, but the fact is that increased attention on academics tends to be predominately positive, so I welcome those with first-time or renewed interest. At least first-timers to Gnosticism are not pursuing the oh-so-popular legends of the Holy Grail, Bloodline of Christ, and Mary Magdalene.
This is great......I seldom quote other reviewers, but there is one reviewer of Pagels' books who confided that he had been a Jesuit candidate and had been required to study a wide range of texts but was never was told about the Nag Hamadi texts. He said:
"Now I know why. The Gospel of Thomas lays waste to the notion that Jesus was `the only begotten Son of God' and obviates the need for a formalized church when he says, `When your leaders tell you that God is in heaven, say rather, God is within you, and without you.' No wonder they suppressed this stuff! The Roman Catholic Church hasn't maintained itself as the oldest institution in the world by allowing individuals to have a clear channel to see the divinity within all of us: they need to put God in a bottle, label the bottle, put that bottle on an altar, build a church around that altar, put a sign over the door, and create rubricks and rituals to keep out the dis-believing riff-raff. Real `Us' versus `them' stuff, the polar opposite from `God is within You.' `My God is bigger than your God' the church(s)seem to say. And you can only get there through "my" door/denomination. But Jesus according to Thomas had it right: just keep it simple, and discover the indwelling Divinity `within you and without you.'"
Here are quickie reviews of what is being bought these days on the Gnostic Gospels and the lost books of the Bible in general:
The Lost Books of the Bible (0517277956) includes 26 apocryphal books from the first 400 years that were not included in the New Testament.
Marvin Meyers' The Secret Teachings of Jesus : Four Gnostic Gospels (0394744330 ) is a new translation without commentary of The Secret Book of James, The Gospel of Thomas, The Book of Thomas, and The Secret Book of John.
James M. Robinson's The Nag Hammadi Library in English : Revised Edition (0060669357) has been around 25 years now and is in 2nd edition. It has introductions to each of the 13 Nag Hammadi Codices and the Papyrus Berioinensis 8502.
The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (0140278079) by Geza Vermes has selected works....a complete work is more difficult to achieve than the publisher's marketing concept indicates. His commentary generates strong reactions.
Elaine Pagels has 2 books (The Gnostic Gospels 0679724532 and Beyond Belief : The Secret Gospel of Thomas 0375501568) that have received considerable attention lately. For many, her work is controversial in that it is written for popular consumption and there is a strong modern interpretation. She does attempt to reinterpret ancient gender relationships in the light of modern feminist thinking. While this is a useful (and entertaining) aspect of college women's studies programs, it is not as unethical as some critics claim. As hard as they may try, all historians interpret the past in the context of the present. Obviously there is value in our attempts to re-interpret the past in the light of our own time.
If you want the full scholarly work it is W. Schneemelcher's 2 volume New Testament Apocrypha.
Also, to understand the Cathars......try Barbara Tuckman's Distant Mirror for an incredible historical commentary on how the Christian Church has handled other points of view
Rating:
Summary: Shouldn't be that controversial
Review: This book is actually quite interesting. There is really no reason why it should be controversial.Sure, there are those of the fundamentalist/evangelical view who have been taught that to even look at something like this will make one hellbound, but that's malarkey in my opinion. Many of these stories actually make for good reading. The Adam and Eve tale is fascinating excercise in religious fiction which proports to explain where cain got his wife, what happened to Adam and Eve after they left the Garden of Eden, etc. The Infancy Gospel is a bizzare tale of a wayward young Jesus before he learned to use his powers wisely. The letter of Pilate gives the Roman leader's feelings after the crucifixion, etc. Among the best is the Story of Ahikar, which is somewhat of an ancient Hebrew mix of the Arabian Nights and Aesop's Fables. The Secrets of Enoch (not to be confused with the Book of Enoch) tells of Enoch's adventures in heaven. As long as this book is taken for what it actually is, which is a collection of entertaining ancient "what if" stories and nothing more, no one should have any problem with it. A good read on a spare evening
Rating:
Summary: Not what you perhaps think it is
Review: This book makes no particular impression on me. It's really just another collection, in stilted translationese, of more religious hocus pocus and dolt mysticism, prefaced with screeds by old professors who probably were dead several weeks before anybody noticed. However, I've gotten the impression that addicts of that form of mental scleroderma known as "Afro-centrism" think that there is something African or Black about this garbage, and that it will afford fodder for their loose cannoning at White or European or Christian civilization or whatever they're currently yelling about. No, "brothers". It's just more Eurocentric borrowing of Near Eastern babbldigook. Just like Christianity, Islam and the rest of that ill-tempered nonsense all of you people use to justify your clownish assaults on each other. No conspiricies here.
Rating:
Summary: A Treasure Chest for the Insightful
Review: This is a great book which gives readers who have an interest in history and Scripture a chance to enrich their knowledge of the past. It also gives readers a chance to further appreciate the sincerity and wisdom of the Church Fathers who had to evaluate many, many gospels and other writings before they compiled the Canon. I like the book especially because it provided me with a chance to recognize why these books do not belong as part of the canonical collection. And I like it because it also enhanced my knowledge of how writers have a tendency to embellish history with legend, myth and conjecture to make their point. But these apocryphal and pseudepigraphic writings, while very misleading and sometimes outright false, do on occasion offer additional perspectives on the Cannon, for the canonical authors we are so familiar with were men of very few words.
Rating:
Summary: The Lost Books of the Bible/Forgotten Books of Eden
Review: This is a magpies' nest of documents the editors were too stupid to know how to evaluate. L B's of the B: all the books are garbage except Clement, Barbabus, Hermas and the Apostolic Fathers. Outdated translations from the 18th Century. F B's of Eden:Translations from the turn of the 20th Century by JR Harris and RH Charles. Mediocre stuff based on older sources, except the Odes and Psalms, and, to some extent, the Slavonic Enoch.These are worth reading, if you know what you're looking at, which most people don't. If you're not a scholar of the pseudepigrapha, skip this stuff and stick to the Bible, because you won't know how to evaluate this material. Rutherford Platt and J. Alden Brett were two of the stupidest editors ever to hit print, based on their editoral asides in this book.
|
