I wrote my paper on the evolution of the four-gospel canon and had such fun reading papers and books on canonical and apocryphal gospels, Marcion, Tatian and the Diatessaron, Irenaeus, and Athanasius' Thirty-ninth Festal Letter. Did you know that there were three main categories of apocryphal writings and that the third, Supplementary Gospels, is made up of mostly Infancy Gospels? Starting in about the 4th and 5th centuries, people were fascinated with the childhood of Christ and made up the most fantastical narratives about it. Did you know that the first major attempt at creating an official canon was by Marcion, who denied the concept of the Hebrew God and therefore cut out huge portions of the Gospel of Luke and denied the validity of all the other gospels?
I know, fascinating stuff.
While I was on my mission and was only allowed to read certain books, I became quite interested in the early church after reading James E. Talmage's Jesus the Christ. When I found out that the university was offering a course on early Christian history, I had to take it. Overall, it's been one of the best and most interesting classes I've ever taken.
2 comments:
It is fascinating stuff. The apostasy can break your heart, but the Christian courage some of these followers had, even with an imperfect access to truth, is truly inspiring.
I remember the first research paper I did in college:the translation of the Bible into English up to the King James version.
I'd originally set out to discuss apostasy and corruption in translation, but found myself so touched by the courage of such humble men and women, that I focused my essay on that instead.
The realization that people devoted their lives to making the Bible accessible to the poorest and meanest of society, that people knowingly risked their lives to have so little as even a few pages of scripture in a language they could understand was a profound eye opener. It made me appreciate my scriptures that much more.
"When I found out that the university was offering a course on early Christian history, I had to take it. Overall, it's been one of the best and most interesting classes I've ever taken."
I'm not so sure I'd agree with that. I thought that it was poorly organized and her attempts to contextualize the Mediterranean world usually ended in failure. And what about the councils, canons and creeds? And what about post-400 AD? With such a title and date, it is setting itself up for a course about the definition of orthodoxy, but that never came about. Or maybe I'm just overcritical, having studied a lot of late antiquity with the Dark Lord, whose standards are very high.
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