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But various differing denominations have changed the Bible to suit themselves, who is to say what the originally should say.
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Textual critics
I don't believe I follow any denomination.
The cannon was actually the product of Athanasius of Alexandria, who laid out the cannon in a letter to other bishops nearly thirty years before the Synod of Hippo based on the Codex Vaticanus from AD 340. Pope Damasus I's Council of Rome approved the same cannon as Athanasius 10 years before the Synod of Hippo. The Latin Vulgate was issued a year later, complete with all of the books that would be approved by the councils that followed. I don't think the councils that followed tried to add gnostic gospels, but they did talk of taking some out, like the Gospel of John because it seemed a bit too gnostic for some of the bishops there. In the end, the councils simply approved what was already laid out by Athanasius years before. It was almost a forgone conclusion before they even had these councils.
I read the Apocrypha books a good bit too.
I've read most of the Gnostic Gospels as well. I think they are what they are. Gnostic. I'm not Gnostic, and I don't see anything inspirational in that kind of literature.
I know Noah may have borrowed a good deal from Utnapishtim’s flood. I don't think it is so much evolving oral tradition as it is applying a certain myth to a different theology. They are similar but have completely different meaning.
There is also a possibility that the Noah myth is older, written for people who had just come out of Egypt, but there is no physical evidence of that, so it's a pointless possibility. So I will go with the scholarly view that believes it is the younger of the two myths.
So tell me. how does a Christian counter fellow Christians who preach a Jesus of hatefulness without some sort of Bible that we all agree on somewhat? Where do we show the followers of a crazed charismatic why he is so crazy. I'm talking about Christian to Christian? People are sometimes gullible and will follow a charismatic leader into all sorts of things.
Blessings