Did the Church destroy gnostic "gospels"?

[Atlantic]

Hi, I’m new here, and I was wondering if anyone here could help me. I’ve been having an online conversation with…well, he describes himself as a “liberal Christian”, but we’re already up to the claims of the Church destroying all the gnostic “gospels” and the Library at Alexandria.

I can deal with the claims that various Apostles actually wrote the gnostic “gospels” that bear their name, but I was wondering if anyone had a good, comprehensive account, with historical backing, of what writings the Church (or Christian rulers, for that matter), actually ordered destroyed - in particular gnostic writings in the first few centuries AD.

Re the alleged burning of gnostic “gospels” I can’t find anything that seems to have good scholarly backing – it’s repeated all over the place by atheist/agnostic/pagan websites, but the closest I can find so far to a source is Elaine Pagels’s assertion re the Nag Hammadi scrolls, which is supposedly based on the letter of Athanasius with his list of the canon, but AFAICS she’s reading something into it that simply isn’t there.

Also, is there any scholarly consensus on the fate of Library at Alexandria?

 

[Catholic_Dude]

Hi, I’m new here, and I was wondering if anyone here could help me. I’ve been having an online conversation with…well, he describes himself as a “liberal Christian”, but we’re already up to the claims of the Church destroying all the gnostic “gospels” and the Library at Alexandria.

I can deal with the claims that various Apostles actually wrote the gnostic “gospels” that bear their name, but I was wondering if anyone had a good, comprehensive account, with historical backing, of what writings the Church (or Christian rulers, for that matter), actually ordered destroyed - in particular gnostic writings in the first few centuries AD.

Re the alleged burning of gnostic “gospels” I can’t find anything that seems to have good scholarly backing – it’s repeated all over the place by atheist/agnostic/pagan websites, but the closest I can find so far to a source is Elaine Pagels’s assertion re the Nag Hammadi scrolls, which is supposedly based on the letter of Athanasius with his list of the canon, but AFAICS she’s reading something into it that simply isn’t there.

Also, is there any scholarly consensus on the fate of Library at Alexandria?

-] I dont know much about this, but I thought the grand Alexandria Library was burned down by the Muslims after he conquered. …anyone else know?/-]

EDIT…I just looked at newadvent.com (Catholic Encyclopedia)
newadvent.org/cathen/01303a.htm
and it says the story of the Muslims burning it was most likely false.

 

[porthos11]

Take a look under the Fathers section of the New Advent site. At the bottom of the list are several “Gospels” with Gnostic influences.

Many apologetics books and volumes, such as the Faith of the Early Fathers, retains Gnostic writings, if only to show us what an utterly alien religious philosophy it is. So much so that it doesn’t even qualify as a Christian heresy. In fact, Gnosticism is so bizzare it makes Islam look so much closer to Christianity.