Posted by PS on February 19, 2003 at 10:40:56:
In Reply to: Re: there are many more like this..... posted by Ken on February 19, 2003 at 05:32:35:
: I read in The Enquire once about the Lost Books of The Bible. One of them was the Gospel According To St. Thomas. According to the Book of Thomas (The Doubter) Jesus faked his death on the cross and later died a natural death in Japan.
Not exactly. The Enquirer is not a trustworthy source for anything, except as a gauge of how much people will pay to read trash.
The Gospel of Thomas is a Gnostic-styled gospel. Gnostics taught that Jesus was an illusion, the Logos of God appearing in a human form, but never really having a fleshly body. Gnostics believed matter was evil, and a holy God wouold never defile himself by taking on a material body. The man who died on the cross is often thought to have been Simon who carried Jesus' cross, transformed to look like Jesus. Gnostics believe that Jesus never died any death at all, nor suffered, as the divine cannot suffer nor die.