If I may butt in. Imaginary as in myth, yes. Myths are not meaningless. Myths usually have great messages but literal reading of myths tend to have the reader miss the message entirely. Jews for instance us Midrash to try to glean the deeper messages within the myths while Christians do not use logic and reason to try to dither out those universal and deeper meanings. That is how Christians end in adoring a genocidal son murdering prick of a God. Regards DL
You also have pseudepigraphal writings as well like testament of the twelve patriarchs, assumption of Moses, zosimus the blessed etc. And on the subject of canon, I think it was Marcion of sinope who created the first canon by excluding the Old Testament books and having a revised version of Luke as the only synoptic gospel ( I could be wrong, it's been awhile since I read about early Christianities). It's interesting that many Christians today somehow believe that 66 just happened to be the magic number in gods head, when really it was just a concerted effort by Athanasius and others to combat marcionism and the Gnostics.
That's not true. The Apocrypha was deleted from the Bible only 132 years ago, in 1885. Two English guys decided to toss it and they convinced everyone except the Catholics, who kept all of the books that had comprised all of the Bible versions until that time.
In Post #53 the comment was: "It's interesting that many Christians today somehow believe that 66 just happened to be the magic number in gods head, when really it was just a concerted effort by Athanasius and others to combat marcionism and the Gnostics." Athanasius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius_of_Alexandria had nothing to do with deleting the Apocrypha. http://rockingodshouse.com/why-were-14-books-apocrypha-removed-from-the-bible-in-1881/
Any number of things. http://www.bible.literarystructure.info/bible/43_John_pericope_e.html http://village.hcc-nd.edu/hodonnell/JohnTEACH.htm ... and much more. And, these parallels will refer back to old testament writings as well. The new testament, and much of the old testament, is written in four genres, mixed together for added complexities.
It is an important discussion, which among other things illustrates the wide divergence between various people and religions concerning matters of faith. This is quite counter intuitive since I would expect that god would be capable of providing is words in an unambiguous rendering. It is one thing for god to give us his words and expect us to adhere to those words. But our challenge seems inexplicably more complex. We have to discern which are his words, and then divine the here in illustrated debatable meaning of these words. The very human constitution is more clear than the "words of god"
The books use at least four different genres of writing, and they're mixed together in many parts of it, so it's a matter of learning how to read it; it's not a set of writings meant for any layman to interpret and comprehend, it's written as teaching texts for the most part, not as a popular novel.
You're welcome. Now go forth and start a library of the many many excellent scholars out there writing up exegeses of the various writings, and their contexts. Nobody is going to type out 10's of thousands of words on internetz message boards for you. As for the Pharisees, many have a false impression of their legalism; many of them became Christians, like Paul, and of course John was obviously a Pharisee as well. They were the Jewish sect most likely to produce Christian converts, given their history as a sect.
Ah, so you prefer fake history, biased innuendo, and completely made up or slanted crap that only take up a few sentences on some web page rather than genuine scholarship and study. No surprise. So why are you annoying people with idiotic posts? Just make up your fantasy versions, like 'Wyrd of Gawd' and the other whining trolls do.