THE HOLY BIBLE

For Christians it is the New Testament that represents the primary and most important part of the Bible. Christians view the coming of Jesus Christ as a fulfilment of the entire Old Testament and of all the prophets. He is believed to be the long-awaited Messiah who was spoken of by Old Testament prophets.

Aside from these accepted books of the New Testament, there are other books that purport to contain authentic information about Jesus Christ and his teachings. And there are also other rejected books of the Old Testament.

OXYRHYNCHUS PAPYRUS
In 1897, Bernard P. Grenfeld and Arthur S. Hunt discovered some fragmentary sayings of Jesus Christ on parchment leaves, written on both sides, in extremely small text. These were discovered at a placed called Oxyrhynchus, now called Behnesa. These fragments contain some sayings from the The Gospel of Thomas and, as such, are considered apocryphal (i.e., of doubtful authenticity by Church authorities) because they do not conform to the generally accepted Gospel texts. Some suggest that the Gnostic Christians (see “Gnosticism and the Nag Hammadi Library” ) who hid these fragments did so for fear of persecution and that the authorities would destroy their texts.

Introduction | Dead Sea Scrolls | Conclusion