Offshoot discussion of "what religion are you" thread

[Elfhelm]

Yes, but here is what some of it really is, despite what some distort it to be. When Babylon took over Israel and there began what is known as the Babylonian Captivity, scribes of Israel collected together many great books into a single place. Some were histories, some were myths, some were prayers, some were love poems, some were collections of sayings, and some were prophetic in nature. Since then people have added and removed from that Book. The removed material is called the Apocrypha. Some people consider the Songs of Solomon to be apocryphal. Some people consider the entire New Testament to be apochryphal.

42 books that were removed from the New Testament surfaced about a hundred years ago called the Dead Sea Scrolls. We know why they were excised from the Book, because they deal with Gnostic soul-travel fantasies and were the victims of a schism between those who believed in a unitarian and those who believed in a trinitarian God. But included among them is a gospel of Thomas that coincides with many of the teachings of the gospels that are not considered apochryphal. So why was it tossed out? Because it isn't synoptic. Well I recommend that people check out the gospel of Thomas. You might be surprised to see that religious leaders from previous centuries were just as ignorant as they are in the present day.

(31) Jesus said, "No prophet is accepted in his own village; no physician heals those who know him."

hehehe so if a thing should be seen for what it is, what about what it has been? If it said not to change a word of the book, then these people did, so does that mean we should put this old weird stuff back in?