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John

What's up with the Gospel of John? It doesn't fit in. Why do certain texts align more with Gnostic Christian ones found in the Nag Hammadi library, that aren't Canon? Why did Paul mention the Pleroma? Why did you build your religion on burnt books? Why do you purposefully keep people in shadows? Why do you continue to lie to this day? Why are you not actually interested in the life of Jesus, and only in the heritage of your blood sucking, greedy church? Do you know what Baptism is? Do you know John?

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What are you talking about

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im talkin john bro

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Yeah but like why do you think John doesn't fit in? What do you think should be there?

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I don't know what should be there instead, it's just significantly different from Matthew, Mark, and Luke and uses terms that have much in common with early Gnostic Christian writings.

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What sort of terms? Like β€œlife-light”? Maybe the gnostic implications are why it's my favorite of the gospels πŸ€”

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas

If you are curious about it, read into something like this and why it wasn't included in the New Testament (the early Church quite literally burned all texts like this one). I'm of the opinion that they purposefully excluded anything that would point towards individual salvation rather than through the Church, and only included the Gospel of John as a sort of peace offering to the early Gnostics as it generally aligns with their world view, or possibly to "get ahead" of them. Anyway, I'm no scholar on it; I just find it interesting to read about.

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I mean if you're open to the idea that the bible we have now is corrupted / subject to human error why believe it at all?

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It isn't a question of whether or not I personally believe it. I'm just pointing out that there was MUCH more work surrounding Jesus than just what is present in the Bible, and it is mostly ignored by the Church despite being quite interesting/relevant. I would think anyone who took a scholarly interest, Christian or not, in the life of Jesus would be interested in them, but they are never brought up. The Gospel of Thomas that I linked above is probably the closest thing we have to the "Q Source". It is quite literally a sayings Gospel, with some slight Gnostic leanings peppered in. The entire Gnostic Christian movement itself was more or less buried, Irenaeus calling it a heretical movement is basically the only mention of it until the Nag Hammadi library was found in 1945. I guarantee you that the Catholic Church has ALL of those documents in their library, and more, they just don't share them.

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Mentioning Logos (Greek word, not necessarily Gnostic but an indicator) as God and Jesus, and as you said the focus on light, and distinctions between the physical and spiritual realm. It is the only one that explicitly says that only through Jesus can you reach salvation, and focuses on the idea that Jesus can save you from ignorance. This is very similar to Gnostic thought. None of the other Gospels encroach on these ideas whatsoever.

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Interesting, from a meta perspective it is commonly agreed that John came from an entirely different source than the other three and was written some 80 years after the events described IIRC

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Whoops just sent another comment, but all four Gospels are understood to be written ~40-70 years after the crucifixion. John is the latest one, all within 30 years of each other. It's pretty hard to date stuff that old, though.

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