Epigraph:
“And We caused Jesus, son of Mary, to follow in their footsteps, fulfilling that which was revealed before him in the Torah; and We gave him the Gospel which contained guidance and light, fulfilling that which was revealed before it in the Torah, and a guidance and an admonition for the God-fearing.” (Al Quran 5:47)
This documentary presented by Anglican priest Pete Owen Jones which explores the huge number of ancient Christian texts that didn’t make it into the New Testament. Shocking and challenging, these were works in which Jesus didn’t die, took revenge on his enemies and kissed Mary Magdalene on the mouth – a Jesus unrecognisable from that found in the traditional books of the New Testament.
Pete travels through Egypt and the former Roman Empire looking at the emerging evidence of a Christian world that’s very different to the one we know, and discovers that aside from the gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, there were over seventy gospels, acts, letters and apocalypses, all circulating in the early Church.
Through these lost Gospels, Pete reconstructs the intense intellectual and political struggles for orthodoxy that was fought in the early centuries of Christianity, a battle involving different Christian sects, each convinced that their gospels were true and sacred.
The New Testament consists of 27 books, 13 of which are letters by St. Paul. The Holy Quran, recognizes in principle, the revelations given to Jesus, may peace be on him, but, makes no mention of St. Paul or his letters.
The letters of St. Paul according to the Holy Quran, do not belong in Scriptures, as these are not endorsed at all by revelations to the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, may peace be on him.
The modern university based scholarship about the New Testament is confirming the Quranic paradigm, in some respect. I am going to borrow some details from Wikipedia.
The Pauline epistles, Epistles of Paul, or Letters of Paul, are the thirteen New Testament books which have the name Paul (Παῦλος) as the first word, hence claiming authorship by Paul the Apostle. Among these letters are some of the earliest extant Christian documents. They provide an insight into the beliefs and controversies of early Christianity and, as part of the canon of the New Testament, they have also been, and continue to be, foundational to Christian theology and Christian ethics. The Epistle to the Hebrews was also anciently attributed to Paul, but does not bear his name.
Several of the letters are thought by most modern scholars to be pseudepigraphic, that is, not actually written by Paul of Tarsus even if attributed to him within the letters themselves, or, arguably, even forgeries intended to justify certain later beliefs. Details of the arguments regarding this issue are addressed more specifically in the articles about each epistle.
These are the 7 letters (with consensus dates)[3] considered genuine by most scholars (see main article Authorship of the Pauline epistles: section The undisputed epistles):
- First Thessalonians (ca. 51 AD)
- Philippians (ca. 52-54 AD)
- Philemon (ca. 52-54 AD)
- First Corinthians (ca. 53-54 AD)
- Galatians (ca. 55 AD)
- Second Corinthians (ca. 55-56 AD)
- Romans (ca. 55-58 AD)
The letters thought to be pseudepigraphic by the majority of modern scholars include:[4]
The letters on which modern scholars are about evenly divided are:[4]
An anonymous text that nearly all modern scholars agree was probably not written by Paulis:
Additional readings
New Testament Scholars Establishing Quranic Vision of the Bible
Where is the Injil: is it the Q document or ‘Q?’
Categories: Bible, Highlight, New Testament, Video
“The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.”
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814
Peter Owen-Jones (born 1957), the narrator of the above documentary is an English Anglican clergyman, author and television presenter.
Owen Jones dropped out of public school at the age of 16 and went to Australia to make his fortune. Back in Britain, he began his working life as a farm labourer in South Eastern England and then ran a mobile disco before moving to London where he started in advertising as a messenger boy and worked his way up to creative director. In his late 20s and with a wife and two children, he gave up his commercial life to follow a calling to the Anglican ministry by enrolling at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. In early 1996 he gained notoriety when he conducted a service for the Newbury bypass protestors.[1]
In 1998, he ran three parishes in Cambridgeshire as the Rector of Haslingfield (Harlton, Great Eversden and Little Eversden), before resigning from his post in 2005, to relocate to the benefice of Glynde, West Firle and Beddingham. He was recruited by the BBC to front a series of religious television programmes looking at different aspects of Christianity and other faiths.
He is married to Jac and as of May 2010 has four children.[2]
In his BBC documentary How to Live a Simple Life (2009),[3] Owen-Jones tried to live a life without money, in the footsteps of Saint Francis of Assisi. His 2010 documentary, The Lost Gospels, discussed the Apocryphal Gospels which were omitted from the canon of the New Testament, and Owen-Jones considers how their contents might have altered Christian theology if they had not been suppressed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Owen-Jones