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Flames? MOI?! On the contrary, Robin, this is very helpful, and you clearly know your stuff. Your post-Pauline reminder is right in line with my sense of early Christianity as very much a political movement, and I can't help but think of Matthew (post-Pasaolini) as the great proto-Marxist among the Godspellers! I'd quibble with you on the question of suppressing the childhood-of-Jesus texts purely on grounds of taste (which would also be censorship, no?) because those too seem likely to have struck the NT authors, who were making every effort to advance their candidate's qualifications for Messiahship, as political dynamite. How could they have viewed those disturbing anecdotes about what Jesus did to kids who wouldn't play with him as anything but? Thanks for setting me straight on the Septuagint--Candice > Candice: > > With reservations, as this isn't my area ... > > >> The authors of the NT didn't really have the OT, as such, did >> they? > > The Septuagint was compiled/translated in 250 BC, which means well before > the NT is written, there's a (relatively) fixed OT canon, roughly equivalent > to the one we have today. > >> They and their legatees were also perhaps our >> first religious censors to the extent that they actively suppressed the >> Apocrypha from the work which became the New Testament because it diverged >> at so many points from the party line on Jesus they were proselytizing. > > Depends +which+ Apochrypha -- if it's the Gnostic Gospels (Thomas, Truth, > etc.) I'd agree, but if we're talking about the Childhood of Jesus gospels, > I'd have to say they were right on grounds of taste alone. > > And obviously, the Gospels-as-we-know-them are post-Pauline. James, pushing > for a Judaic-centred version of "Christianity" lost out to the proselytising > preach-to-the-Romans P(S)aul [the hatchetman of the Sanhedrin before he > threw an epileptic fit on the way to Damascus]. Isn't there an argument > that the Gnostic versions reflect James? > > [Sorry, Candice, I'm wittering a bit, and you'll probably cut me (rightly) > down in flames.] > > Robin