I have long worked on what we might call alternative Christianities and especially the scriptures they produced. In the modern world, we are well used to the idea of early systems that get labeled heresies, but which actually (many believe) conveyed many of the authentic teachings of the early church. As we known from the work of Elaine Pagels, Bart Ehrman, Karen King, and so many others, there were whole gospels that somehow got excluded from the emerging canon. Based on my own readings, I think that process of discovery started much earlier than we usually suppose, closer to 1900 than to 2000. But increasingly, I am finding much deeper roots, which are not well known or discussed. Today’s blog concerns what I find a startling wave of discoveries that happened still earlier, in the Enlightenment years around 1700, which look far more modern than we might ever have thought. Much of the main work came from clergy themselves, usually situated within the established churches. Even then, some people claimed to find whole new gospels.Johann Albert Fabricius and I go way back. We dedicated the 2013 MOTP1 volume to him and tho R. H. Charles on the respective three hundredth and one hundredth anniversaries of the publication of their Old Testament Pseudepigrapha collections.[...]
The post above is a continuation of Professor Jenkins's Lost and Found Scriptures series. For earlier posts, see here and links.
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