The Gospel of the Seventy

was known to the Manichaeans as "The Gospel of Mani", so it is entirely possible that this is simply an alternative name for the same, or should we say "equally lost", text.

And it may not have been called "The Gospel of the Seventy" either, because 70 may have been a significant number in Jesus' Jewish world, but down there in Egypt, where Decans determined numbering, rather than the Sexigesimal system of the Babylonian that we still employ today for anything to do with circles (60 seconds and minutes, 360 degrees, 360 days to the unintercalated year, etc), the mystico-magical number was not 70, but 72; and probably the disagreement here is precisely the same as the disagreement over whether there were 70 or 72 scholars involved in the creation of the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Tanach as translated in Egyptian Alexandria around the end of the 2nd century BCE.

And it may not have been 72 either, but 71. Because there is also the statement in Luke 10:2, relating to the dispatching of the first group of evangelical Christians, that "He told them, 'The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field", which doesn't actually state that the ones who were sent were necessarily disciples, let alone how many they were, though this is how (click here) Christianity has long interpreted it; and the reason, and indeed the number, comes from the Sanhedrin, the body that ruled the Jewish world, and which was comprised of seventy-one, its Nasi or leader in the Jesus role, and seventy "disciples", or Rabbis anyway, filling the other seats.

And beyond this there is nothing to be said about "The Gospel of the Seventy", because it is completely lost - or if it is in fact "The Gospel of Mani", then you can read about it there.





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