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Originally Posted by Calgaryborn
No scholar worth a salt would take the testimony of the Nag Hamadi manuscripts over the testimony of the church Fathers and the accepted canon. They're of late origin and come out of Egypt which was the center of gnosticism. As far as the Dead Sea scrolls go; I don't know what Barrie and Bart wrote but, they are a collection Jewish texts by a Jewish break away sect. They don't address Christian history at all.
Maybe Barrie and Bart would do better to read a little less pseudepigrapha and a bit more of the accepted canon. Paul did mention the meeting in Jerusalem. It's found in the second chapter of Galatians. Paul also mentions Luke as a companion in 2Tim 4:11. Paul never mentions a rift with the Jerusalem church.
What Paul doesn't do in his writings is address Gnostic heresy. That was addressed mainly by James,John and Jude when they wrote later in the first century. The latter half of the first century is when Gnostic heresy first became a problem in the earliy church. We know this from the writings of the church fathers and the subjects of the epistles. Paul's writings were prefered by Gnostics because firstly and foremostly they weren't written to refute them.
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Perhaps you would do better to maybe read something other than Christian apologetics and look at other viewpoints. You are very dismissive of books that you admit you know nothing about. I mentioned them as examples of historians and biblical scholars who counter the literalist orthodoxy - they are by no means the only ones out there. In the case of Bart Ehrman, he had a born-again experience in his teens and took up biblical studies as a result of this. He went into school as a biblical literalist, but that view changed with learning.