What is the difference between the Holy Bible and the Gnostic
Bible?
The
Bible is a collection of books (Latin: biblia). Those
books were written over a period of more than one thousand years,
primarily by people associated with Judaism and the early phases
of the Jesus movement. The Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, covers
the period up to the Christian era. The New Testament covers the
life of Jesus and the first decades of the Christian experience.
The
books take several forms: pre-history, law, history, prophecy,
apocalyptic writings, wisdom, poetry or song, legends, “lives”
(tales of heroic persons), gospels and letters. Each form has
certain conventions and exists to serve certain purposes. Taken
together, the books convey a certain people’s experiences
of God. The books use many images and tell many stories, some
of which contradict one another. Those contradictions and different
accounts aren’t unexpected in what was originally oral tradition.
The
Bible we receive was put together by religious leaders. Certain
books were excluded from the “canon” of Scripture,
because they were deemed to lack a certain authority or, as in
the case of the Gnostic books, because they contained ways of
understanding God that the dominant group found offensive and
threatening.
