I never claimed to be unbiased. Everyone has biases, including me. And certainly you exhibit yours, especially with the pronouncement about no one would want to read my Islam Webinar, and I’m perfectly well aware of those other Gospels. You, however, are not aware nor inclined, it would seem, to become aware of why the current canon was formed nor do you seem terribly interested. You’re here, by your own admission, to propagandize for your version of Islam. And while we’re at it, I note that you did not cite ANYONE within any recognizable Christian tradition, Gnostic or otherwise, in support of your implied interpretation of calling no one Good but God. Good day.
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I didn’t state that anyone wouldn’t want to read your islam webinar, I said that nobody would read my reply if I wrote it in comments and especially not you, since it’s an old webinar.
About the canonizations of the gospels, pope Irineus made perfectly clear with his book against the heresies why the gnostics were outlawed. Constantine did the same with Aerius in Nicea.
And I didn’t cite anyone because this OP originally never meant to be an academic discussion about gnostic or christian traditions.
But we can for sure talk about that to present our point of view, but…it has to do with mentioning Prophet Muhammad pbuhahf, because these things are interconnected. So if you’re a priori forbidding me to have an opinion from my point of view because mentioning of islam has become taboo, then I can’t speak freely and there’s no point to have further discussion.
And let me be even more clear, when you say above, “First of all, I’m not in any way promoting islam as a traditional religion as you know it. I have also watched your seminars about how Prophet Muhammad pbuhahf didn’t exist and how the whole religion of islam is a hoax. I meant to write my looks about it in the comments, but I saw no point, since it’s an old webinar and no one would read it,” you make assumptions about the value and worth of the webinar to other people. IN short, you’re basically telling people “don’t watch it; it’s superfluous.” That is honestly insulting to me, so please, kindly LEAVE in peace. If you are going to cite Christian scripture, then you MUST cite SOMEONE from that tradition, hopefully from, say, the first four or five hundred years, in support of your interpretation, and since we’re talking about BIAS, you must also cite someone from the Christian tradition from that period who DISAGREES with your interpretation, and THEN you must argue your conclusion. Until you do so, sir, do NOT lecture me about biases and “neutrality.”
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Irenaeus was NOT a pope…good grief.
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Well he was a sort of inquisitor whose works Church used to exterminate heretics.
As for the biases, I’m open to different views, be it christian, islamic, jewish, hindu, buddhist or any other religious view, you on the other hand, respected professor, are cleary not. And I didn’t mean in any way to defame the value of your webinar. I just didn’t see any point to write a lenghty comment under it for which I presumed I would get no reply to. Geez, all of a suddenly I’m in a defamation mode.
And why would I need to cite works of the scholars who disagree with me in a forum topic? You can’t even agree to disagree per say for that point.
OK that’s it anti-mason. You came here to PREACH. Irenaeus did not anywhere advocate the extermination of heretics. That occurred after the east-west schism, and if his works were thus used as a justification, he was HIMSELF never an “inquisitor.” Your lack of ability to understand historical nuance and so on, is BREATHTAKING, and whether you MEANT things or not is clearly not my point: your language could certainly be CONSTRUED that way, because you were here to preach, because the LENGTH of your initial posts indicates that. So, having invoked LENGTH, why did you not take the time to BACK UP your interpretations, and to DEMONSTRATE your “neutrality” by citing sources CONTRARY to the interpretation you’re PUSHING? I have tolerated atheists here, agnostics, and pretty much everything. What I will NOT tolerate is someone claiming to be what they are not: namely, unbiased, “openness to different views”, when they do not and will not admit they took NO time, while gathering their bible verses to prove their point, to cite anyone from that early period in demonstration that their interpretation is manifest in a particular course of performance! If you come here to preach, then you must back it up. You came here, not to engage in a discussion, antimason. You came here to push a sect of Islam, to defame me while pretending to hide behind peace, to argue a point and then take exception to me when I ask you to back up your interpretations, and to acknowledge that their are other interpretations of the very passages you cite.
The fact that you want to continue to argue, without arguing, and cannot even acknowledge that your wording with respect to the webinar can be taken in any number of ways, indicates to me that, again, you’re simply here to preach. And that AFTER I’ve asked you to leave in peace. I’ve given you chance after chance, and you have refused each and every one.
You’re gone.
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About time somebody called it!!! 
We don’t even know if Jesus was really crucified or if it was a tale made up by Josephus or someone else!! It was a great shock to me at age 70, after being in the Religious Right for a life time, to begin to question if The Bible might just be one of the greatest tools in The Toolbox of The Controllers!!! Why did we never question where it came from???
@Morrisville
Nothing to be called out when not able to engage due to not have sifted thru all the source material, which is massive by the way. That is why very few do but take “critique” exerpts cobbled together by others, that is calling out nothing but regurgitating someone else opinion! Then hiding behind “religeous intolerance” isn’t going to cut it.
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May I suggest Joseph Atwill’s book, “Caesar’s Messiah”? We need to take into consideration the true history of what was happening during the times these writings were being written & exactly who decided which writings were “o.k.” for us to read. At age 79 I am just trying to bring together the “dots” of a lifetime to get answers to questions I never asked before! One conclusion I came to was the Belief System I had been raised in was, indeed, “Pauline Christianity”…not really trying to prove any point, just try to keep learning. 
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I watched the ‘hijacker’ piece. What occurred to me is that yes, Paul probably hijacked Christianity. But where is the ‘other’ version today? Gone as far as I can see. Is there any legacy from a Christianity taught by the ‘real’ apostles? Where are the Christian Jewish churches? I am not judging whether Paul’s actions were good or bad, I’m just observing. Most of the arguments of Pauline Christianity seem to me to be marketing ploys to sell to unsophisticated minds. So it seems to me that in a way Paul ‘saved’ Christianity from fizzling out into nothing as his version is the only thing that has survived.
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The only thing hijacked was the human mind.
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Hear, hear. The Jordan Peterson school of “Who? Me? Never!” barely even works for Peterson, let alone some half-baked random who hasn’t cultivated the same (essential) home-turf immunity from scrutiny. This is to philosophy (or religion, or apologetics, or whatever it was he was trying) what an artist friend of mine refers to as ‘dipsh*ts with paintbrushes’ trying to make art. It makes me feel queasy.
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This thread inspired us to look for your 7-part webinar on the history of Islam, a topic about which we know very little. We’re viewing it, and it reinforces how much we don’t know about very many things in this world. Thank you for putting that together.
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I, too, have questions, Morrisville, about many things in life, including Paul’s influence on Christianity. I wish there were more surviving records by, and about, the earliest Christians, those closest to Jesus, his family and his disciples, the ones directly preceding and following his time. That makes it so very challenging, plus the time lapse between then and now, in finding insights to a few particular questions that interest me.
What is it that you found most stood out for you in Atwill’s book? Does it have a good bibliography, in your estimation?
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BINGO! Bill … beginning with the process of Abduction - a term coined by C.S. Peirce to define a kind of non-deductive inference different from the known inductive types. Abduction is that process from which our initial guesses (which he pointed out that are for no apparent reason usually more often correct than not) concerning hypotheses are made. Control the abductive process and the rest will follow. Hmmmm, given that we appear to be witnessing an usual amount of aberrant behavior it may be that the corruption of the abductive process is already more widely spread than we imagine … and what better way to spread such a contagion than through our so called “culture”.
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… another book along the lines of this thread is Hyam Maccoby’s (1924-2004) The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity. If one chooses to read this book it must be read with MANY caveats.
Opinion of Maccoby was quite divided in his lifetime and remains so. And have no doubt that this work is a polemic and he is most definitely a polemicist. He has also been ascribed as being “idiosyncratic", and “tendentious”. His communication style is, shall we say, “combative”. Many who reviewed this work (including a number of Jewish reviewers) also claimed that the view of Christian history and doctrine in this book were at best “misrepresentations”.
If one wishes milder material on this subject see the work of Geza Vermes, Samuel Sandmel and Joseph Klausner.
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Hi Scarmoge. Is gnosticism/nominalism the prime corrupter of the abduction process in your opinion?
… in the way in which you pose the question I would answer Yes. Are there other contributors to this corruption? I would also answer Yes.
Nominalism certainly plays a major role in that it is a denial of Realism (that there is a World that is what it is regardless of any whim, wish, will, or desire on my part or that of any individual). Nominalism at its start has given up on the hope of knowledge acquisition. Having no hope of acquiring knowledge is a rough presupposition to begin with in whatever passes for Nominalist “inquiry”.
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… see my response below your question. For some reason it did not link as a reply to your question. Cheers.