[Magdalen] Salve Regina.

[Simon Kershaw]

It's true that the canon was not finally established until Nicaea. But 
it wasn't all that fluid beforehand I think. It was pretty well 
established which books were reputable and which weren't. It's pretty 
obvious that some of the NT apocrypha are just pious fiction.

simon

On 2019-08-21 18:31, Jay Weigel wrote:
> The "canonical New Testament" as we know it now was not accepted until 
> 367
> AD, well after the time of Jesus, by which time what you are calling
> "legend" (and what we Orthodox call tradition) was pretty firmly 
> accepted
> by many Christians. Debates over what was and is important continue 
> into
> the present day, in light of comparatively recent discovery of ancient
> texts (Nag Hammadi, etc.) and re-interpretation of gnostic Gospels. So
> there's that.
> 
> On Wed, Aug 21, 2019 at 5:52 AM Simon Kershaw <simon at kershaw.org.uk> 
> wrote:
> 
>> Fine -- but we should recognize that these are just legends, pious
>> legends maybe, but legendary all the same.
>> 
>> Mary's role in the story of Jesus is clear -- she was his mother, who
>> gave him birth ad raised him to adulthood. She seems to have not
>> entirely agreed with his preaching and healing ministry, but she was
>> present at his death.
>> 
>> And that's about it. Everything else is legend and later invention, or
>> else was considered so unimportant that it was not recorded in the
>> canonical New Testament.


-- 
Simon Kershaw
simon at kershaw.org.uk
St Ives, Cambridgeshire