Bible text alterations

[GrownUp]

The Bible has been changed more and more frequently ever since it was first posted on Critiques:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4887222.stm

[I, Brian]

Not sure that we've critiqued the Bible here.

But as the BBC article mentions, there were quite a lot of different manuscripts around before the Bible was canonised, all giving different interpretations of Christian belief and the life of Jesus - usually known as the Apocrypha or Pseudopigrapha.

I went around the internet a couple of years ago and created a library of all the ones I could trace which were translated to English and online:
http://www.comparative-religion.com/...ity/apocrypha/

[slan]

The recently re-discovered Gospel of Judas Ascariot should throw some fuel onto the religious fire. I can't wait for the arguments to start.

Being an athieist I can stand back and watch without fear of being condemned to eternal damnation.

[I, Brian]

Well, the apocrypha are already well documented - at least, the ones we still have - and they show that Christianity after the first couple of centuries was a pretty diversified belief system - everything from the Arians to the Athanasians to Donatists and others. That was a principle reason why Constantine sought to codify the religion under a single foundation.

I don't think that the Gospel of Judas is going to add much to our understanding of the Bible - but it will add to our understanding of the diversification of ideas within early Christianity.