In Easter week of 2002, the magazine published season, once again, a story about Jesus, entitled "Jesus in the mouth of the people" (Time, 1. In April 2002, pp. 77-83). The article, signed by Antonio Goncalves Filho, questions the portrait of Jesus that is offered in the canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) is growing and states that the portrait of another Jesus, painted in the apocryphal Gospels, written by the people simple, which are narrated details and facts of Jesus' life as a child, adolescent and young. Many books have been published about these gospels, and of course the evangelicals have become confused.
The apocryphal gospels are coarse imitations of the Gospels, written about centuries of II to IV, which contains amazing stories and legends about Jesus, and seek to imitate the authentic gospels we have in our Bible. We hear of about fifty of these gospels, some preserved in pieces, others in their entirety, and others only know the name. Those who have been preserved and can be read today are few, and among them are The Proto-Gospel of James, Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Gospel of the Nativity of Mary, History of Joseph the Carpenter, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Nicodemus ; Gospel of Philip, and Gospel of the Egyptians.Early Christian Church rejected these works because they did not meet the criterion of canonicity were not written by apostles or by someone close to them, contradicted Christian doctrine had examples and recommendations unsavory moral and ethical, and falsely attributed to its authors authorship to the Apostles, for example, the Gospel of Thomas Moreover, their fantastic stories about Christ clearly revealed his speculative and superstitious, unlike the sobriety and seriousness of the biblical Gospels.But the provocation of Epoch is not new, nor confined here in Brazil. During Easter 1996, three major American magazines published cover stories on the latest developments of the last and newest phase of academic research on the "real" Jesus, especially enterprise carried on by scholars of liberal line. At that time, Jesus walked with magazine cover here in Brazil, in articles that followed the same line, in general terms.In a sense, the project is not original. In a book published in 1906, an epoch in the academic study of the Gospels, Albert Schweitzer described and analyzed what he called "the search for the historical Jesus." In this book (The Quest for theHistorical Jesus), Schweitzer examines the efforts to reconstruct the life of Jesus made by critical researchers beginning of the seventeenth century.The critical scholars justify their search of the "historical Jesus" saying that the Christian Church, by its dogmas and decrees of the deity of Jesus, obscured his human figure, and made it impossible for a long time, a historical reconstruction of his life. This failure, they argue, has become even more severe after the Reformation, when the exegesis of the Gospels and New Testament in general is now controlled by the confessions of faith and theology. They argue that, so you can make a reconstruction of the historical Jesus is therefore necessary to leave behind the dogmas and theology, and try to understand and reconstruct the Jesus of history.For two centuries, two continents scholars attempted to reconstruct the Jesus of history on the basis that the account of the gospels in the Bible is wrong, but without many positive results. The Jesus reconstructed by liberals seemed more the result of the obstinacy of them than a serious scientific research. The work of R. Bultmann and K. Barth put an honorable end to the "Search" agonizing and declared it a pointless endeavor. The lack of consensus among scholars, the highly speculative nature of their methods and the inability to prove the hypotheses put forward to explain the appearance of the story of the Gospels, it would end the search.But the idea lives on. We are today witnessing another attempt by those who do not believe in the historicity of the Gospels, to find the "truth" behind these reports. The article is just another season speculative article in this sense, it tries to make caricatures of Jesus, so blatant, that were never accepted by Christians in all ages as authentic accounts of his life.An inexcusable failure reports as the season - understandable because they were written by journalists, not by experts in historical criticism of the New Testament - that is not consulted the opinion of researchers conservative biblical convictions. The most cited, such as Leonardo Boff (Liberal Catholic), Geza Vermes (Jewish), Fernando Altemeyer (former Catholic priest) and Frei Betto (Catholic) do not represent the thinking of the wider international academic community, both Catholic and Protestant. They are unilateral and biased reporting, in a sense.Some criticism can be made to the design of the search for the historical Jesus through the apocryphal gospels. First, the assumption of the search controller is distrust of the Christian Church, purposely hid the truth about Jesus, in rejecting the apocryphal gospels.This distrust, however, still without firm foundation. If anyone wants to see for yourself why these apocryphal gospels were rejected, just read them and compare them with the biblical gospels. Secondly, we see the highly speculative assumptions and ideas raised.Thirdly, there is no consensus among the current advocates of the "new Jesus". Precisely because of the high level of speculation, the Jesus reconstructed by them remains less than compelling. They have no Jesus who is really plausible and to explain the emergence of the Christian Church.The search for the "real Jesus" taken by speculators and aficionados of the Apocrypha continue. But we need not be prophets to predict that they shall not find. He is already before our eyes, in the pages of the biblical gospels, but their prejudice and unbelief prevent us from seeing him.Rev. Augustus Nicodemus Lopes
This is a text of a servant of Almighty God,a study that will make a big difference in our lives!Phillipe Cunha
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