The proto-Gospel of James (Jesus, virginity, translation, myth, dogmas)

[doppelgänger]

Originally Posted by angellous_evangellous

Yes! Content has always been up for grabs. Possibly the advent of the printing press slowed this down a bit.

Which is why the Memory Hole has to work overtime in "faith communities" (especially the modern GOP).

[angellous_evangellous]

Originally Posted by doppelgänger

Which is why the Memory Hole has to work overtime in "faith communities" (especially the modern GOP).

Help me with this dopp. I haven't had all my requisite coffee yet.

[doppelgänger]

Originally Posted by angellous_evangellous

Help me with this dopp. I haven't had all my requisite coffee yet.

The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihililated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed - if all records told the same tale - then the lie passed into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who control the present controls the past." And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting.

-George Orwell, 1984

The Memory Hole is where old details that once were fact or history but are currently not useful to the ruling party's ideology are placed to make them disappear.

[MidnightBlue]

I first read the Protoevangelion when I was in elementary school. My grandmother was very interested in apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, and I grew up reading that stuff. I was more familiar with the epistles of Barnabas and Ignatius than with the epistles of Paul. Not that my grandmother thought any scripture, canonical or otherwise, was the "word of God;" she was just endlessly curious, and encouraged me to be, too.

The Protevangelion was and still is one of my favorite works of extracanonical scripture, though I always thought the bit about Salome probing Mary to see if she was really a virgin was a little creepy.