The Lost Sayings of Jesus: Teachings from Ancient Christian, Jewish, Gnostic and Islamic Sources (SkyLight Illuminations)

As Described.

I read this with a small spiritual study group. We had no “Ah-ha!” in most of it; however, the Gnostic and Islamic records of Jesus’s sayings have a much more human twist to them than the Christian Bible sayings, and those parts made the book worth the time. This book is not for the Fundamental side of Christianity, but it is interesting for those looking for their own experience and definition of spiritual truth. Open minds will catch the nuances in tone and focus.

This book is my favorite extra-biblical collection of Jesus' sayings. I consider all these sayings authentic. The book is valuable in the sense that these words are little-known. I find Jesus' sayings brilliant in their wisdom. I -- who was a Religious Studies major in college and read many types of spiritual texts besides the Bible -- find this collection a bit difficult to read because the words are so powerful. But Jesus is our Teacher and Savior and those who are willing to listen to Him will benefit immensely by this collection.

A decent work, with fair documentation of quote sources. The author does a good job of trying to avoid his own bias in the commentary. Some connection with canonical scripture is made, but many are missed or not included. I annotated my own copy. For someone versed in Jesus in the gospels, this is an interesting read and what is revision of other beliefs or spurious is fairly easy to sort. However, it could be confusing and treacherous to someone who hasn't read enough to establish the authentic voice of Jesus in the Gospels for them self.

This is a very handy volume, having gathered a lot of Jesus quotes together in one place. Smith attempts to do for non-canonical sources what the Jesus Seminar attempted to do for the canonical gospels and Thomas in "The Five Gospels." Their books will sit beside each other in my reference library.That said, both texts fall short in one area that I feel is critical; we are given only the English translations, and not the original language. Robinson is a fine theologian, but he IS a theologian; thus, his translations are going to be biased in favor of his own perspectives. When I see a word like "tribulation" ("You must enter the Kingdom of Heaven through much tribulation"), I want to know what word was used originally so I can see what other meanings it might have. Typically, the Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic words are much more expanded than the Greek, Coptic or Latin, and the English translations are often more narrow than even the latter.As to the reviewer who discredits the book because it includes quotes from Islam, I would argue (despite claims to the contrary) s/he knows little about Islam and even less about exacting scholarship. To claim to be a complete compendium while ignoring a body of historical sources would be idiotic. If we prefer idiocy to scholarship, fine; but we should realize that "the problem," if any exists, lies with ourself.

This is a very interesting book about sayings of Jesus that were saved in sources that are non-canonical (that is to say not preserved in the Christian scriptures.) Many of these sources are Heretical, Gnostic sources, or from religions that were opposed to the Orthodox Christian view, those included here are Jewish and Muslim sayings of Jesus. These sayings are interesting, and in many cases not much different from the ones preserved in the Bible. Some seem entirely out of place in the mouth of Jesus. This book is thought provoking and I definitely recommend it as a book worthy of reading.

I believe that the author's knowledge of Islam is greatly lacking, for his citing of Islam as a source for the sayings of Jesus supports my criticism of him.The religion of Islam and its scripture contain nothing of any historical value. I know what I'm talking about, beause I have disected it to pieces and found nothing, even from the Quran, except crude plagiarism and tedious and ridiculous repetitions of historical accounts taken from the Bible and retold in twisted and distorted versions with full of errors. I know I have stepped on some toes, but the truth must be told. The Lost Sayings of Jesus: Teachings from Ancient Christian, Jewish, Gnostic And Islamic Sources--Annotated & Explained (SkyLight Illuminations)

Andrew Philip Smith's book gathers together a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus sourced from outside the New Testament canon, grouped as Christian, Jewish (a slightly disingenuous categorisation in my opinion as the tiny number of references to Jesus in genuine Jewish sources are negative and disparaging - the "Jewish" references here are mostly from lost Jewish-Christian gospels), Gnostic and Islamic, plus an end section on "other traditions" and somewhat bizarrely known forgeries and modern fictional works.The format is not entirely ideal to my mind - the right hand page displays the sayings, and the left hand page further explanation where necessary and it's not always easy to move right to left and back as the saying and its commentary are not always arranged on the same lines and you have to match a superscript number on the right at the end of each saying to a number on the left. A greater problem to my mind is that the sayings quoted are sometimes just the bare words of Jesus, and thus many of them completely lack proper context - the commentary may give some further explanation but does not always provide the full picture.There is a brief introduction considering scholarship, the question of authenticity, and the value of the sayings. Smith has a bit of a "generic spirituality" viewpoint in line with the outlook of these Skylight publications with a kind of mix-and-match, do-it-yourself approach to religion, but it should also be noted that Smith is a writer on Gnosticism and his 'favouritism' towards the gnostic sayings seems to shine through.