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Comment by lotharbot | Hacker News Reader

Gnostic and other "non-canonical" writings are also of interest. www.earlychristianwritings.com/ is another quite fascinating source, with lots of letters and such. (Neither site seems to have manuscript scans, unfortunately.)

I would love to see a good source on the "circulating around the time of Jesus" claim. I've never been able to track down anything credible on that front.

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/Pagels-Gnostic-Gospels.html notes the existing manuscripts date to 350-400, that "some" must date to somewhat prior to 180 AD because Irenaeus speaks of "other gospels", and cites a Harvard professor who speculates that the Gospel of Thomas "may include some traditions even older" than the official gospels. Those are fairly weak claims; do you have support for your stronger claim?

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To be honest, I think that claim is from The DaVinci Code, which also confuses the dead sea scrolls with gnostic writings. That book is in turn inspired by new age theories that the gnostic gospels are a more original account of Christ, while the canonical gospels have been corrupted by the dogmatic church.

This view is not scientifically supported though.

> I would love to see a good source on the "circulating around the time of Jesus" claim. I've never been able to track down anything credible on that front.

Me too. The earliest writings I know of are Paul's letters and possibly the Didache, and neither of them were written until a couple of decades after Jesus' ministry.

I thought Mark was written around 40 years after Jesus.

Mark was written about AD 50, so about ~16 ish years after Jesus.

I believe the general consensus is that Mark were written around AD 70, making it closer to 40 years after Jesus.

There's some disagreement. Some date Mark to around 50 AD; others to between 65 and 72 AD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament#Dates_of_composit...

> Gnostic and other "non-canonical" writings are also of interest. www.earlychristianwritings.com/

Is there any tl;dr versions of the above? I have curiousity about noncanonical writings, but don't have the time or inclination to go out and become a scholar of such things in order to sift wheat from chaff.

I've read a few non-canonical writings from that time (I'm a Christian). The most interesting orthodox writings are probably the Didache and the Shepherd of Hermas. Among the unorthodox writings, probably the Gospel of Thomas and the Sophia of Jesus Christ. The Sophia of Jesus Christ being particularly, erm, "interesting".

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