07 April 2006

The Ever-Reliable News Media Strikes Again

This time they're reporting -- unquestioningly -- the release of a fourth-century Coptic gospel with dualist assumptions as "one of the many gospels written in Greek around the year A.D. 150."


Several problems with this:

1.) They present it as a textually sound alternative to the biblical gospels declared canonical at the Council of Nicea

2.) They don't recognize or discuss the very problematic implications of dualism for Christian theology

3.) They unflinchingly use the National Geographic Society's dating for the text, even though its methods are questionable. There's no way of knowing that this is the same Gospel of Judas mentioned by Bishop Irenaeus; believe it or not, there may have been -- *shock* -- more than one apocryphal Gospel of Judas!


This is just one example of how our newsmill grinds out story after story on things that they don't particularly care to understand fully, thus feeding our culture of superficial knowledge. Huzzah.

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