The 'Missing' Apostles

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Originally posted by DaveF:
Can anyone explain why only select members of the Twelve Apostles have Gospels?

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Politics. What other driving force is there in mankind?

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I'm curious as to why the Council of Carthage choose to exclude the Gospels of Thomas, Philip etc when compiling the NT - yet do include the Gospels of Luke and Mark, who were only companions of Saint Paul.

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Sincerely, politics. The council of Carthage was a couple of hundred years after the fact and there were a lot of squabbling sects. The ones who won the public relations campaign got to choose whose books were cannonized. Carthage isn't the only council by the way.The best synopsis of this process that I have found is by Scott Bidstrup. He gives a lot of names and dates so you can check up on anything you doubt. No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.bidstrup.com/bible.htm

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As Paul (afaik) never met Christ, Luke and Mark would seem to have far less validity then any member of the Twelve.

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No one of the Twelve wrote a book that is included in the Bible. Mark was written first around 70 ad. Matthew was next and is largely based upon Mark and perhaps a book of quotations that has not survived. Luke also based his work on Mark but wrote for a Greek audience. Then there is John who wrote nearly a hundred years after Christ's death.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

Several things strike me as being incorrect about your post. I hope you won't take offence.

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it is because Paul was known as a major, or the major, approved apostle; approved by the twelve.

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I am not aware of any evidence that Paul met any of the twelve apostles, though he would have been alive at the time.This is not exactly on target but it is related and you might find it interesting: No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.apostolicfathering.org/ncsm/paul_among_the_12_apostles.htm

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The churches that are the ancestors of large-scale Christianity today did not have many canons. A few books were in question, but the canon in those churches did not vary much at all.

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This is just wrong, my friend. There are/were hundreds of apocryphal books and just as many cannons, if you want to call them that. There was no cannon until until one was created by Constantine. The leaders who met to form the cannon fought viciously and then went home and essentially ignored the new cannon. It was many years before A cannon caught on and it caught on largely due to military action against 'heretics.' The various churches kept their own collections of documents. I imagine, even, that the idea of A Cannon was a bit foreign.

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I do know that by the time any major councils were held, the canon was quite set already.

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I'd like to see evidence for this.

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The churches I've mentioned and was talking about were basically agreed on the canon from at least around AD 160, where the Muratorian canon matches modern ones pretty closely.

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You mean this?

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The Muratorian Canon

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It leaves out a few books. At any rate, it was compiled some 130 years after the foundation of the church-- that is much too late a date for my way of thinking.Consider this: ------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

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When you have a situation like that, you have a varying canon, not many canons.

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What is the difference between varying canons and differing canons? Differing canons are DIFFERENT canons. You can't call two lists of books the same list, if the lists are different. You appear to be arguing that there was one Canon but that somehow had different incarnations. That just doesn't make any sense. Put it in perspective. If you gathered a dozen grocery lists from your friends, chances are that the lists would be similar, but would you really call them the SAME list?It is obvious that people considered certain books to have authority, and that not everyone agreed what those books were. You said so yourself. This, pretty much by definition, means that there were multiple canons. That's what a canon is-- a collection of books believed to have special authority.

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I am astounded by your assertion that this is too late to matter, since you asked about the decision of the Council of Carthage, of which there were seven, but the one you are referring to is the 3rd, and it occurred in AD 397, over two centuries after the Muratorian canon.

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I didn't ask about the Council of Carthage. That was someone else.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

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You asked what the difference is between a varying canon (not varying canons) and differing canons. The difference is that one is a group of people deciding on which of a certain pool of books will end up being in the final canon. That process took time, partly because it took time for books to become that important to the church.

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Then you are considering all of the books in circulation prior to the emergence of a formal Canon, as the same canon? I suppose this works from a modern Christian perspective but consider that the various churches of the first few centuries kept their own collections of sacred books. Do you think that they would agree that it is all the same canon? Nope. They wouldn't. How do I know? Because they didn't. They fought bitterly while the formal canons were being created.At a glance: No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.ntcanon.org/table.shtmlYou can't tell me this is a single canon. Major authorities are in significant disagreement for centuries. No webpage found at provided URL: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~gavinru/canon.htm

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I don't know exactly the point, but I know it has to do with some view you have of what the early church was.

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You make having an opinion sound so distasteful.

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The original issue of this thread, which I have not left, nor am willing to leave, was how the canon developed and why other Gospels like Thomas were left out.

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Indeed. Is this not what we are discussing?

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I believe you are saying it was many canons, so you can suggest that it was some random, chance, or faulty reason that left out books like Thomas or who knows what else.

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Please stop second guessing my 'agenda.' If I wanted to say that there was faulty reasoning, I'd say so. I wouldn't use any of the terms you used. I also wouldn't place the Canon on a pedastal the way most Christians do. You seem to lean this direction but I am not sure. What I object to is the treatment of the NT canon as if it were somehow always there-- created ex nihilo and intact via direct dictation from God, and without the influence of human foible.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

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I do not treat the NT canon as if it were somehow always there--created ex nihilo and intace via direct dictation from God.

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Yes. I'd already figured that out. You are an atypical christian as per my experience, which why it has been interesting to talk with you. At least, it was interesting until I met a sudden burst of hostility in this and, mostly, in another thread. Now, all I feel is disgust. You keep defending your tendency to guess at agendas, but really, it just jumping the gun. It is nothing but pretending to read minds. I have better things to do than play that game.Impatience is not a virtue.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com[This message has been edited by John, 02-19-2003]