JÖRG FREY
FROM the earliest collections of Early Christian Apocrypha or ‘New Testament Apocrypha’ (on the history of such collections, see Markschies 2012a: 91–104), extra-canonical material about Jesus, or ‘apocryphal gospels’, have strongly fascinated not only scholars but also a wider public. More than other non-canonical texts, such as apocryphal acts of various apostles, pseudonymous apostolic epistles, church orders, or visionary and apocalyptic texts, the traditions concerning Jesus could be considered as a possible source for the very origins of Christianity, the life and teaching of its foundational figure, and thus providing a supposedly more original view of the truths and claims of Christianity. Since the Enlightenment, critics of Christian dogma have raised the suspicion that in the canonical Gospels, as collected, canonized, and transmitted by the church, the truth, most clearly seen in the original message of Jesus, was already contaminated by secondary elements, so that the pure truth had to be searched for behind or beyond the canon.
Good examples that illustrate the search for a more original truth ‘beyond’ the traditions and doctrines of the church include the speculations about a more original and non-Trinitarian ‘Nazarene’ Christianity in the works of the Deist John Toland (Toland 1718) and the more precise suggestion of a ‘Nazarene source’ behind the canonical Gospels in the writings of the Enlightenment theologian and philosopher Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (Lessing 1777/8), one of the pioneers of modern gospel research. Lessing could refer to the opaque tradition from Papias (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.39.16) that Matthew had originally written his gospel ‘in the Hebrew “dialect”’, a tradition that has strongly stimulated (and also confused) the debate on Jewish–Christian gospel traditions. Thus Jewish–Christian testimonies in particular were often supposed to be less influenced by later church dogmatics and to represent a more original type of Christianity. In the late nineteenth century, collections of non-canonical sayings of Jesus were assembled with the underlying idea of reconstructing a more original gospel (Resch 1889: 40–75) or even a less Jewish image of Jesus (Chamberlain 1901). This was the scholarly context in which the first fragments from the papyrus treasures of Oxyrhynchus (P. Oxy. 1, 654 and 655, now considered manuscripts of the Gospel of Thomas) were first published and discussed. The discovery of the Coptic version of the Gospel of Thomas in Codex II from Nag Hammadi in 1945 gave a strong stimulus to the hope of discovering a more original image of Jesus; this was especially influenced by the fact that the Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas seems to represent a different concept of Christianity, which is less dogmatic and less eschatological than that of the canonical Gospels, which lacks their focus on Jesus’ death and resurrection, and which does not contain miracle stories, but presents a more individualistic or even ‘esoteric’ message. The hope for such a ‘new’ and ‘different’ image of Jesus, or even a new possibility for reconstructing a different ‘historical Jesus’ on the basis of these ‘other gospels’ (cf. Cameron 1982; Crossan 1985 and 1991), has also accompanied the discovery, publication and discussion of numerous other apocryphal Jesus traditions, e.g. the Gospel of Peter, the Secret Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Mary, the fragment from Papyrus Egerton 2, the ‘Unknown Berlin Gospel Fragment’ P. Berol. 22200, or, most recently, the Gospel of Judas. But contrary to the anti-dogmatic ‘hidden agenda’ of modern public debate and the provocative claims of some scholars (e.g. from the so-called ‘Jesus Seminar’) addressing present religious debates, especially in North America, scholarship has in most cases questioned the suggested early dates of these works and has cautioned against premature hopes for a ‘revolutionary’ discovery of the ‘true’ Jesus. Apart from a few exceptions, these apocryphal texts at best demonstrate the variety of perspectives on Jesus within early Christianity of the second and third centuries, the multifaceted reception of the figure of Jesus, and the tendencies in piety and theology of different groups of Jesus’ followers in their different ethnic, social, regional, and doctrinal settings. Only in very few instances can we reasonably discuss whether there is some additional information about the historical Jesus or even possibly authentic testimony to his sayings to be found in any of these texts.
In published collections of ‘New Testament Apocrypha’, texts are usually grouped according to the genres of the writings of the New Testament: (a) gospels, (b) ‘apostolic’ material (epistles and acts of different apostles), (c) apocalypses, and (possibly as a further category, though not contained in the New Testament) (d) church orders. Such a distinction presupposes a clear idea about the genre ‘gospel’. The ancient use of the term, however, shows great diversity and appears to have developed over time, so that the question ‘What is a gospel?’ has been the subject of intense debates. Some of the non-canonical texts called ‘gospel’ in the second or third century, or in later lists of ‘disputed’ texts, differ widely from the form of the four canonical ‘gospels’ or from their earliest example, Mark. On the other hand, other texts closely related to gospel materials were not called a ‘gospel’. Thus, the genre ‘gospel’ cannot be defined formally from the ancient usage of the term, but is rather a modern scholarly concept, and the range of ‘texts about Jesus’ goes beyond what people in antiquity, or indeed modern scholars, call a ‘gospel’.
How do ‘gospels’ fit into the range of ancient literature? Classical form criticism considered the canonical Gospels to be totally unliterary writings. Other scholars have studied the relationship between them (or primarily Mark) and other ancient literary genres, such as biblical and Hellenistic-Jewish historiography, so-called ‘aretalogies’ (accounts of the deeds of ‘divine men’), Hellenistic novels such as the widespread story of Alexander the Great, and biographies of philosophers (cf. Lucian’s Demonax or Philostratos’ Life of Apollonius) or other figures. At present, scholars see the closest analogies in the Graeco–Roman bios, e.g. in Plutarch’s or Suetonius’ biographies (cf. Burridge 2004: 212); but they also point to the fact that Mark actually combines in a creative manner narrative, biographical, historical, and even dramatic elements with a kerygmatic intention, thus creating a new genre of its own. Matthew in his expansion of Mark, Luke in extending the story by a second volume, and John by inserting more dialogical and dramatic elements, generally follow the genre pattern originally established by Mark and also the range of his story, from Jesus’ encounter with John the Baptist until his death and resurrection (with Matthew and Luke adding birth stories and genealogies, and John adding a ‘prologue’). From the non-canonical gospels, as far as we can see, only a very limited number consists of a similar narrative of Jesus’ (life and) ministry: the majority seem to differ from the genre of the canonical Gospels and represent different kinds of ‘gospels’.
From the second century onwards, the term euaggelion is used with reference to quite different types of texts: not only ‘narrative gospels’ (such as the canonical Gospels) but also collections of sayings (Gos. Thom.; Gos. Phil.), dialogues between Jesus (esp. the exalted one) and some disciples (Gos. Mary; Gos. Judas, etc.), and other texts somehow related with Jesus could be called a ‘gospel’. Scholars have discussed whether these different ‘gospel genres’ already originated in the first century, even before the redaction of the canonical Gospels (Robinson and Koester 1971) or whether they actually represent a later development of the gospel genre and terminology. These debates are linked with the issue of the date of composition of some non-canonical gospels (especially the Gos. Thom.), and with the question whether apocryphal texts such as the Gos. Thom. can be assembled with pre-canonical sources (such as the Sayings Source Q) for reconstructing the genre of a collection of sayings or ‘Sayings Gospel’ as another original gospel genre that lacks narrative elements and thus especially the passion narrative. Some scholars have speculated even more daringly about early sources behind some non-canonical gospels (Gos. Pet.; Dial. Sav.), which were supposed to pre-date even the redactional stage of the canonical Gospels (Crossan 1985). But given the relatively late date of the preserved manuscripts, the assumption of first-century sources behind these texts is rather improbable. The gospel genre seems to originate in the composition of Mark’s narrative, whereas the sources of the canonical Gospels (Q and possible early collections of miracles or an early account of the passion) cannot be called ‘gospels’ in the sense of the genre created by Mark.
The inscriptions or titles of the canonical Gospels (‘according to [Greek kata] Mark/Luke/Matthew/John’) still point to the fact that originally the term ‘gospel’ (Greek to euaggelion) was not used to refer to a book but to the content of the message of salvation, the ‘good news’ about the God’s eschatological salvation (thus, e.g., in Paul: Rom 1.16–17). This means that there was not a plurality of ‘gospels’, but only one gospel (about, or of, Jesus Christ), which was then presented according to the testimony of different authors, as the later gospel titles phrase it. Mark 1.1 (‘The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ …’) still preserves the original meaning of ‘gospel’ as message of salvation but probably implies a double reference to the message (about or preached by Jesus Christ) and the book that begins with this verse and communicates the salvific message. Thus Mark 1.1 is the point of departure for the use of the word euaggelion to refer to a ‘book’ containing ‘the’ gospel or (later) also more generally to material about Jesus.
The subscriptions and inscriptions ‘euaggelion kata Markon’ etc. or simply ‘kata Markon’ etc. were probably added later to the original text. At the end of the second century, e.g. in Irenaeus, these titles are already well known, and slightly later, around 200 CE, the subscription of Luke occurs together with the inscription of John in a manuscript, the Bodmer Papyrus P75. Hengel (1985) argues that the gospel titles should not be dated too late, because some kind of ‘inscription’ was required as soon as there were different gospels in the ‘shrine’ of a community. Thus the inscriptions probably originated in the early second century. Their form (‘the gospel according to …’, not ‘the gospel of …’) still preserves the idea of one gospel according to different witnesses. Even when these texts were collected in the second century, the gospel was still considered one. It is significant that, when Irenaeus refers to non-canonical gospels, he uses the genitive ‘the gospel of …’, not the form ‘the gospel according to’ (cf. Aune 2013: 19).
The range of non-canonical ‘gospels’, mentioned in patristic authors or in lists of accepted and rejected works, is very wide. The titles of works mentioned include gospels attributed to various apostles (Peter, Thomas, Bartholomew), to all of them collectively (Gospel of the Twelve), or to other early witnesses (Gos. Mary; Gos. Judas). Other references point to gospels attributed to particular groups (e.g. Gospel according to the Hebrews; Gospel of the Egyptians), or mention gospel writings supposedly used, or even forged, by deviant groups (e.g. Ebionites) or under the name of a certain teacher or heretic (e.g. the Gospel of Basilides, mentioned by Origen). Other titles express a particular claim (e.g. Gospel of Truth; also by use of the word apokryphos in the Apocryphon of John). From some works, only the title is known; other preserved titles have been linked with texts or fragments discovered from ancient manuscripts (such as Gos. Thom., Gos. Judas, and Gos. Pet.).
The material is difficult to classify, and the editions and selections of texts follow different criteria. Traditionally scholarship distinguishes between a number of corpora or (somewhat arbitrary) collections, such as ‘New Testament Apocrypha’, ‘Apostolic Fathers’, Early Christian Apologists, and Patristic Literature. Often the corpus from Nag Hammadi is also considered separately, although some of the Nag Hammadi texts (e.g. Gos. Thom.; Gos. Phil.) are usually also included in collections of the New Testament Apocrypha or the apocryphal gospels. The earlier definition of ‘New Testament Apocrypha’ has been increasingly questioned in scholarship. In his update of Hennecke’s collection, Schneemelcher (1987: 1) still kept the traditional criteria: ‘New Testament Apocrypha’ are writings of an early date (second/third century CE) before the supposed closure of the New Testament canon that maintain the form and genre of New Testament writings. The completely new edition of ‘Ancient Christian Apocrypha’ by Markschies and Schröter practically abandoned these criteria (cf. Markschies 1998 and 2012a: 2–9): with regard to genre and contents, the diversity among the non-canonical ‘texts about Jesus’ is acknowledged, and in view of the continuing tradition and the late date of most of the manuscripts, it is often impossible to establish the date of a particular text in the second or third century, or to set a chronological limit at any point in this period. With respect to many of these ‘apocryphal’ texts, it would be quite odd to assume that they were originally intended to be accepted for public reading in the church, or that they were thought to become part of a collection of ‘canonical’ writings. Some of them were simply written for ‘entertainment’ or as ‘literature for the soul’ (cf. Bovon 2013), and many simply mirror the piety of the average church rather than that of marginal or deviant groups (cf. Markschies 2013) whereas others do represent a particular ideological viewpoint. In view of these observations, any definition or limitation of the collection according to corpora, genre, or date is thus somewhat arbitrary.
Within the framework of a handbook on Early Christian Apocrypha, a survey on ‘texts about Jesus’ can omit the classical non-Christian testimonies about Jesus (cf. Evans 1994; Gemeinhardt 2012), and for practical reasons I will include only a small selection of texts from Nag Hammadi (cf. Franzmann 1996). With regard to genre, I will adopt the basic distinction between narrative gospels, dialogue gospels, and sayings collections, but take into consideration that there is much variety within these groups of texts, and that the ‘related literature’ has to be included as far as possible. With regard to contents it is quite interesting that only a few narrative texts apparently cover the whole range of Jesus’ ministry (as do the canonical Gospels), whereas others focus on filling particular lacunae in the tradition, e.g. Jesus’ ancestry, infancy stories, particular aspects of the crucifixion, or discourses or dialogues of the risen Jesus. The latter often focus on a reinterpretation of Jesus’ earthly appearance, thus representing a particular theological (sometimes ‘gnostic’) viewpoint. With regard to the ideological framework of the text, scholars have often singled out ‘Jewish–Christian’ and ‘gnostic’ gospels, although both categories are strongly debated and the particular viewpoint has to be discussed separately for any given text. With regard to the form of preservation, we have to consider material of very different character: scattered sayings from patristic authors and texts or from particular gospel manuscripts (the so-called agrapha), fragmentary texts from quotations or references in patristic authors and texts, fragmentary texts from ancient papyri and parchment codices discovered in modern times, and rather few ‘complete’ texts in some stage of the (more or less fluid) textual development.
The following presentation will combine some of the aspects mentioned above. Starting with the scattered sayings of Jesus and the fragmentary ‘gospels’ on newly discovered papyri, the relevant texts will be grouped according to genre, contents, and particular viewpoints. Extensive information and discussion together with presentation of the texts can be found in the most recent and comprehensive work, Antike Christliche Apokryphen vol. 1, edited by Markschies and Schröter (in German), which replaces the earlier vol. 1 of the fifth/sixth edition of Hennecke and Schneemelcher’s standard work (Schneemelcher 1987), which is also available in an English translation (Schneemelcher 1991). Other English translations, with some introduction and commentary, may be found in the work of Elliott (1993) and more briefly in Ehrman and Pleše (2011). Other standard collections include the French edition by Bovon and Geoltrain (1997) and the very comprehensive Spanish edition by de Santos Otero (2006), which also includes some original texts.
One category of the apocryphal Jesus tradition consists of the large number of scattered sayings attributed to Jesus in texts other than the canonical Gospels. They are called ‘agrapha’, ‘unwritten (sayings)’ (cf. Schröter 2013: 32–8), although they are not taken from an unwritten, oral tradition but mostly from other literary contexts. Although the distinction is not always clear, scholars usually include only sayings attributed to the earthly Jesus in this category: words of the risen or heavenly Jesus are usually excluded.
In an early collection of these sayings, Resch (1889) brought together 194 examples from New Testament manuscripts or patristic texts, thereby hoping to reconstruct an ‘original gospel’ from these sayings. The collection was extended by others, including a collection of numerous sayings of Jesus in Arabic from later Muslim authors (Asín y Palacios 1919, 1926; cf. Eißler 2012). Some of the sayings assembled by Resch were later identified as part of newly discovered gospels such as the Gos. Thom. (e.g. the saying about the fire, Gos. Thom. 82).
The wide range of the agrapha shows the distribution of Jesus tradition all over late antiquity. However the category is somewhat unclear, since it encompasses sayings from very different sources: not only from biblical texts (e.g. Acts 20.35) and manuscript variations (cf. Luke 6.5 Codex D), non-canonical gospel fragments, ‘apostolic’ texts, liturgies, and church orders, but also from Manichaean and Mandean writings, Rabbinic and other Jewish traditions, the Koran, and later Muslim texts. Using various criteria for authenticity, some scholars have critically reduced the collection to a very small number of possibly early and authentic sayings (Jeremias 1963; Hofius 2012), whereas others present the whole range of sayings without regard to their date. As a consequence, the collections differ between minimalist (Hofius 2012: seven sayings) and maximalist (Stroker 1989: 266 sayings; Berger and Nord 1999: 1112–62: 270 sayings) approaches.
Among the agrapha we find, e.g., a variation of the Golden Rule (1 Clem. 13.2), the prophecy of schisms and heresies in the end time (Justin, Dial. 35.3), an apocalyptic teaching of eschatological fertility (Irenaeus, Haer. 5.33.3–4), the metaphorical exhortation to be good money-changers (Origen, Comm. Jo. 19.7.2; Ps.-Clem. Hom. II 51:1), and the philosophical saying about the world as a bridge (transmitted as an inscription at a mosque in India). Many of the sayings are transformations of earlier (canonical) material. The sayings demonstrate the variety in the reception of the figure of Jesus and his teaching in different contexts and the ‘productivity’ of even later communities. Some sayings were probably transmitted independently, without being related to Jesus’ appearance and history, as scattered sayings for meditation, like other ‘classical’ sayings of wise men, desert fathers, and spiritual teachers. With a literary context lacking, the interpretation of many sayings remains somewhat obscure. It seems unwise, however, to limit the presentation according to the issue of authenticity. Although most agrapha do not contribute anything to the image of the Jesus of history, they offer fascinating perspectives on the reception of Jesus and the sayings tradition in a wide range of texts and contexts.
Interpreters are in only a slightly better situation in relation to works fragmentarily transmitted on papyrus or parchment manuscripts discovered since the late nineteenth century. Time and again, new papyri with canonical or possibly non-canonical gospel texts are discovered, sometimes in storage boxes from purchases decades ago (thus P. Berol. 22200), others are released after a long ‘rest’ in the anonymity of a bank safe (thus Codex Tchacos with the Gos. Judas). So the material has grown considerably and is still growing. Most of the texts are extant in only one (fragmentary) copy, and from the codicological evidence we can get some insight about the manner in which the text was used and about its status in a given community. But often the fragmentary state of preservation precludes any clear decision about the literary character of the work. Some works discovered on papyrus fragments have later been identified with works known from other ancient sources or canon lists, thus Gos. Pet. (fragmentarily preserved in P. Cair. 10759), Gos. Thom. (with three fragmentary Greek papyrus manuscripts P. Oxy. 1, 654, and 655, and the Coptic version from Nag Hammadi), Gos. Mary (P. Ryl. 463 and P. Oxy. 3525). In some cases, there is an open discussion whether other papyri can be linked with a known text. Thus, for example, P. Oxy. 2949 and 4009 have been proposed as comprising parts of the Gos. Pet. This may be true for P. Oxy 2949 where there are some textual overlaps with the text of Gos. Pet. 3–5 (from the later Akhmim Codex), whereas the suggestion remains quite speculative for P. Oxy. 4009. Thus, most of the papyrus manuscripts listed in this category are the only and quite fragmentary remains of otherwise unknown writings. The literary character of those works is therefore quite difficult to determine.
(a) P. Oxy. 840 (Kruger 2005 and 2009; Nicklas 2012), edited in 1908 by Grenfell and Hunt, is a parchment sheet with a miniature writing (fourth or fifth century) on both sides, and some characters in red ink (therefore it was supposed that it was used as an amulet). The otherwise unknown text is possibly part of a narrative text of unknown length and structure. It contains the end of a section of teaching by Jesus and a subsequent scene with Jesus taking his disciples into the temple and debating with a leading priest about purity rites: Jesus (always called σωτήρ, ‘saviour’) and his disciples do not need to undergo purification rites when entering the sanctuary because they are pure (through baptism?), in contrast with the Pharisees and priests who are called blind (cf. John 9.39–41) and accused of practising merely external purity while being morally impure. Drawing on the use of σωτήρ, Kruger (2005) called the text ‘Gospel of the Savior’, thus providing confusion, as a different text preserved in Coptic in P. Berol. 22220 (the ‘Berlin Gospel Fragment’) had been given the same title by its first editors (Hedrick and Mirecki 1999). The frequent use of the title σωτήρ for Jesus, however, merely reflects the language in some Christian communities since the second century, but it is not specific enough to provide the name for a particular text.
The text on P. Oxy. 840 shows detailed knowledge of purity rites around the temple, but presupposes that Jesus’ followers did not practise them, due to a metaphorical understanding of purity. While the canonical Gospels remain silent about Jesus’ own practice of purity when visiting the temple, although pointing to his free attitude concerning table fellowship and food purity (cf. Mark 7.1–23), the present text is the earliest explicit testimony that Jesus did not practise purity rites when entering the temple. The theme and some phrases are paralleled in the canonical Gospels and fragments of Gos. Heb., but it is hardly possible to prove any direct dependence. The polemics against temple purity might still suggest a Jewish–Christian milieu. The predominant christological title soter points to a date no earlier than the second century. But in spite of that, the text could be one of the earliest extant non-canonical gospels (Schröter 2013: 44–9). But there is another possibility that should be considered: the text could also represent a discussion between later different early Christian groups (cf. Bovon 2000), addressing debates on Christian initiation (Buchinger and Hernitscheck 2014), and in that case the text is not necessarily part of a narrative gospel. The fragmentary character does not allow any further conclusions, and the example shows how uncertain our speculations actually are.
(b) P. Egerton 2 (Nicklas 2009; Porter 2012a), first published by Bell and Skeat in 1935, consists of four papyrus sheets written in the second half of the second century with some particular short forms for sacred names. The same text is also apparently attested in P. Cologne 255. The extant text contains parts of an unknown narrative gospel (sometimes called the ‘Egerton Gospel’) of unknown structure with several episodes paralleled by Synoptic and Johannine passages: a debate about Moses and the law (cf. John 5.39, 45), followed by the attempt of the Jewish leaders to arrest Jesus (with the significant note that the ‘hour’ of his deliverance had not yet come; cf. John 7.30, 8.20), the healing of a leper, a debate on taxes, and a miracle performed near the Jordan. There has been extensive debate whether the text is independent of the canonical Gospels or even provides a source of John, or whether it is dependent on the Synoptics and on John. As usual in the second century, canonical texts are not yet formally quoted, but there is strong reason to assume that the author knew and used them, especially John (Zelyck 2013).
(c) The difficulties are more evident when we consider the state of preservation of other texts:
P. Berol. 11710 (Kraus 2009: 228–39) consists of two papyrus sheets written sloppily on both sides (with a Coptic text on the back of the second sheet) and was possibly used as an amulet. The Greek text is part of a dialogue between Jesus and Nathanael, alluding to John 1.49 and 1.29, but unlike in John, Nathanael addresses Jesus as Rabbi, and John 1.29 is apparently part of the dialogue with Nathanael as well. The text might have been taken from an apocryphal gospel or represent another free form of reception of John 1, but the small fragments do not allow any further conclusions regarding date and text type.
P. Vindob. G. 2325, the ‘Fayum Fragment’ (Kraus 2009: 219–27), written in the third century on only one side, gives a brief dialogue between Jesus and Peter, paralleled with Mark 14.26–30 or Matt. 26.30–4, but it is unclear whether it is an excerpt, a paraphrase, or a part of an unknown gospel.
P. Oxy. 210 (first edited by Grenfell and Hunt in 1899) is a papyrus leaf written on both sides in the third century and was first supposed to represent a part of the Gospel of the Egyptians. The fragmentary narrative text provides a dialogue between Jesus and some others, drawing on the canonical Gospels and other biblical traditions (cf. Porter 2012b).
P. Oxy. 1224 comprises two papyrus fragments written in the fourth century on both sides. Page numbers indicate that the sheets were part of a larger codex. The text contains variations of Synoptic sayings, apparently in a narrative context, but any further conclusions are impossible due to the brevity and fragmentary character of the text.
P. Merton II 51 is a very fragmentary papyrus sheet from the third century with a text paralleled by Synoptic sayings from an unknown gospel text or a sermon.
P. Cair. Cat. 10735, a papyrus sheet written on both sides in the sixth or seventh century, contains text related to Jesus’ birth, the flight to Egypt (Matt. 2.13), and the annunciation (Luke 1.36), but it remains uncertain whether it is part of a gospel or rather part of a sermon or commentary.
(d) Some other papyrus fragments (P. Ryl. 464, PSI XI 1200, and others) are too small and too fragmentary to allow for any clear conclusions.
The next group of testimonies poses quite different problems, because they are almost entirely taken from quotations and references in patristic authors, not directly from any ancient manuscript of these gospels. Church authors from the late second until the fifth century CE refer to a Gospel according to/of the Hebrews (‘Hebrews’ probably as a term for ‘Jewish Christians’ outside of Palestine) or other texts said to be used by Jewish–Christian groups, such as Ebionites or Nazarenes/Nazoreans, and in some cases it is explicitly noted that the text is written in Hebrew letters or in the ‘Hebrew’ (which often means Aramaic) language. Especially Jerome, who was eagerly looking for the hebraica veritas, presents quotations or variant readings from such sources. The introductory remarks vary, but generally Jerome gives the impression that there was only one Jewish–Christian gospel writing which he calls the gospel ‘of the Hebrews’, ‘used by the Nazoreans’. He even considers that work to be the original Hebrew Gospel of Matthew (as authors assumed from Papias’ note in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.39.16). It is uncertain, however, how much of these text(s) Jerome actually knew. His later references are more cautious, possibly due to a growing awareness of the differences with canonical Matthew and also between the sources to which he was referring (Frey 2012a: 581–7).
While Jerome’s views were the source for medieval and early modern authors, including Lessing’s reference to the ‘Nazarene’ original gospel as the source of the Synoptics, critical scholarship in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries came to the conclusion that things are more complicated and that there was not only one Jewish–Christian gospel text. At first, Epiphanius’ quotations from a gospel writing used by fourth-century Ebionites were distinguished from quotations from other sources and are today usually assembled under the title Gospel of the Ebionites. Furthermore, scholars felt the need to distinguish between the quotations Jerome apparently took from Origen who had attributed them to the (Greek) Gospel of the Hebrews and other quotations apparently taken from a Semitic source or giving variant readings from Aramaic. Due to Eusebius’ note that already the Jewish Christian teacher Hegesippus quoted from the Gospel of the Hebrews and from the ‘Syriac’ (which probably means Aramaic) Gospel, the majority of scholars also distinguish between a Greek Gospel of the Hebrews (as quoted by Clement, Origen, and Didymus) and an Aramaic gospel writing that might have existed already in the late second century (so used by Hegesippus) and was then accessible (at least in parts) to Jerome and Eusebius in the fourth century, although we cannot be certain about the textual status of those traditions which were possibly never definitely ‘edited’ but were rather fluid and variable from community to community (Frey 2010). Thus the testimonies about ancient Jewish–Christian gospel texts come from between the late second century (Clement) and the fifth century (Latin version of Origen’s commentary on Matthew). Later and medieval notes can be left aside because they are dependent on the earlier references, especially on Jerome, and do not show any first-hand knowledge of the Jewish–Christian groups and their texts.
It follows therefore that we have to distinguish between at least three ‘works’, with considerable uncertainty whether the different authors referring to the same work really had access to the same textual form (cf. Frey 2012a: 593–660):
(a) A Gospel of (or according to) the Hebrews, quoted by authors from Egypt (Clement, Origen, Didymus) since the late second century, mentioned by Eusebius in his list of disputed texts, and also quoted by Jerome, who adopts some of Origen’s quotations but probably presents quotations from another source under the same label. The title Gospel according to/of the Hebrews is the only title of a Jewish–Christian gospel preserved from antiquity (the other titles are medieval or modern). Its name may point to its original use among Jewish Christians, possibly in Egypt. The lost work is the only Jewish–Christian gospel writing we can safely date to the second century. From Clement and Origen, we can conclude that its text was Greek and that at least some of their readers had some knowledge of the work and did not reject it, so that it could be used at least as a secondary testimony in their argument.
Only very few of the fragments to be attributed to this work are paralleled in the canonical Gospels, and even those differ widely from their parallels. Thus the lost gospel was quite different from the canonical Gospels, even if the church fathers probably selected primarily deviant traditions for their quotations of it. The fragments include a subtly shaped saying on the way to ruling and rest; a fragment on Jesus’ baptism with the Spirit longing for ‘rest’ upon Jesus and addressing him as ‘my Son’; a fragment about Jesus’ rapture to Mount Tabor (by ‘his mother, the Spirit’); a possible reference to the story of the calling of Matthew/Levi; and a fragment of a legendary account of the risen Christ appearing first to his brother James (which would rival the tradition in 1 Cor. 15.7 that Jesus appeared to James only after he had appeared to Peter and to many others). Didymus also mentions the story of a sinful woman, which may be a tradition parallel to John 7.53–8.11. The work was thus probably a narrative gospel, encompassing Jesus’ baptism and temptation, parts of his ministry, and also his (passion and) resurrection, with a story covering roughly the same range as the canonical Gospel story, but told quite differently and with non-Synoptic material. Not all traditions are visibly shaped from a Jewish–Christian perspective, but the first resurrection appearance to James, influences from Jewish wisdom theology, and the idea of the Spirit as Jesus’ ‘mother’ might be significant for Jewish–Christian circles, especially in Egypt. After the crisis of Egyptian Judaism and the disappearance of Jewish–Christian circles in Egypt, the Gos. Heb. was probably lost.
(b) From the quotations of the gospel writing used by the Ebionites in Epiphanius’ chapter on that Jewish–Christian group (Pan. 30), scholars have inferred a Gospel of the Ebionites. There is no reason to connect the seven fragments with fragments quoted elsewhere, so Epiphanius is our only testimony for this work. It is, unclear, however, how the Ebionites described by Epiphanius in the fourth century are related to the Ebionites described (in various ways) by earlier authors such as Irenaeus (who said they only used the Gospel of Matthew) and Origen. The fragments that Epiphanius presents include two pieces on Jesus’ baptism, and some sayings, one of which is a command to cease from sacrificing. One (possibly opening) passage narrates (in the first-person singular of Matthew) the calling of the disciples in which Matthew is commissioned to narrate the gospel and the disciples are called to be ‘twelve apostles for a testimony unto Israel’. Ephiphanius is particularly eager to demonstrate the forgeries of the Ebionites, who are accused of subtle alterations in the wording of the gospels in order to create scriptural legitimation for vegetarianism (as widely practised by Jewish Christians). Thus, according to the Ebionites’ gospel, John the Baptist did not eat locusts but cake, and Jesus did not eat from the Passover lamb.
If these changes in relation to the canonical Gospels are reported correctly, the work was clearly a Greek composition, with a clear Jewish–Christian perspective, which is confirmed by the discussion about sacrifices and the topic of the testimony for Israel. The fragments presuppose canonical Matthew and Luke, and the fragment on Jesus’ baptism seems to harmonize all three Synoptic accounts so that the work can be characterized as a harmony of the Synoptics which is now attributed to the ‘eyewitness’ Matthew. This might point to an origin within the second century, before Tatian, but uncertainties remain.
(c) The so-called Gospel of the Nazarenes/Nazoreans—a title only used in medieval sources—is generally considered a gospel written in Aramaic, used by Jewish Christians at the time of Jerome, who frequently quotes it (but unfortunately mixes it up with the Gospel of the Hebrews and the ‘original Hebrew Matthew’). Probably the same work is also cited in two fragments by Eusebius. There might be an early trace of this writing when Hegesippus is said to quote from a ‘Syriac’ gospel, but this is uncertain. We do not really know how the fourth-century Nazoreans are related to other Jewish–Christian groups described earlier by second- and third-century authors, nor do we know when the traditions were translated and how they were transmitted. But the idea (which was maintained avidly by scholars ranging from Jerome to Lessing) that the Nazarene gospel traditions provide access to the earliest Jesus tradition is clearly an illusion.
It is disputed which fragments can be attributed to this work, and some scholars (Mimouni 2012; Luomanen 2012) generally reject the distinction between the Gos. Heb. and the Gos. Naz., thus reconstructing only one Gospel of the Hebrews; but in spite of the difficulties, the question cannot be dismissed which fragments or quotations may reasonably go back to a Semitic version or tradition. There are also a number of marginal glosses in some NT minuscule manuscripts which point to a ‘Ioudaikon’ (= ‘Jewish Gospel’) and were confidently attributed by some scholars to the Gos. Naz., but this attribution (still present in Hennecke and Schneemelcher 1963 and 1987 and Elliott 1993: 13–14) cannot be maintained (cf. Frey 2003 and 2012a: 655–60), and the variants are of no help in reconstructing the Gos. Naz. The remaining fragments include different versions of the parable of the talents (where it is not the servant who hid the talent who is rebuked but another servant who spent his talent on whores and flute players), of the rich young man (who is exhorted to help the poor sons of Abraham), and of the healing of the man with the withered hand (who is explained to be a mason who wants to work, rather than needing shamefully to beg). Furthermore, there are a number of otherwise unknown sayings: an alternative tradition about the sign at the moment of Jesus’ death, and some variants and explanations from Aramaic, most importantly the petition for bread in the Lord’s Prayer as ‘our bread for tomorrow’. Not all of the fragments or references are ideologically Jewish–Christian, some of them rather point to a marginalized social milieu. The majority are paralleled in the Synoptic gospels (although some are mentioned only because they provide a varying tradition), but others are unknown from the canonical Gospels. The work was probably a narrative gospel: it contained Jesus’ baptism and death and possibly a large part of his ministry in between these two events, but its narrative sequence and structure remain unclear. It was probably dependent on Matthew, but certainly not simply a targumic version of canonical Matthew. It is uncertain whether there was ever an edited version or only a rather fluid textual tradition. It is also unclear whether it was only translated late (as the translation of the gospels into Syriac) or whether it is based on a continuous Aramaic tradition in Aramaic (or Syriac) that goes back to the second (but probably not to the first) century.
Some analogous problems are posed with the Gospel of the Egyptians which is also preserved only in testimonies and fragments from patristic authors (see Markschies 2012b). In a list of apocryphal gospels, Origen mentions a ‘Gospel according to the Egyptians’ (Hom. Luc. 1.2), but gives no further information. The work is further mentioned with brief (polemical) descriptions of its contents by the heresiologists Hippolytus (Haer. 5.7.8–9) and Epiphanius (Pan. 67.2.4–5) who link it with heretical groups, the gnostic Naasenes (Hippolytus) and the Sabbelians (Epiphanius), who are each said to use it. Our only real source is Origen’s teacher Clement who provides eight citations, but even those are not from first-hand reading, so the work was probably already difficult to access in Alexandria as early as the end of the second century. It should be noted that the text has nothing in common with a Coptic text from Nag Hammadi (NHC III.2 and IV.2) which is sometimes also called ‘Gospel of the Egyptians’ (Plisch 2012).
The eight fragments are found in the third book of Clement’s Stromata where Clement is in debate with advocates of asceticism and encratism. Presupposing that the gospel is used by the encratites, he at least partly quotes from their usage, admitting once that he only thinks that the phrase is part of that work (Strom. 3.61.1–2). So the precise text of the gospel remains unclear even in view of the fragments. All quotations are linked and point to a dialogue between Jesus and Salome (for reconstructions, see Petersen 1999: 209 and Markschies 2012b: 673) about death, sin, and redemption, with the core saying ‘I have come to destroy the works of the female’, and another saying about the end of sexual distinctions: ‘When you have trampled on the garment of shame, and when the two become one and the male with the female, to be neither male nor female’. The second saying is also paralleled in 2 Clem. 12.1–2, Gos. Thom. 22, and some other texts. From the very scarce sources we can only say that there was a work in second-century Egypt (Alexandria) with the title ‘Gospel according to the Egyptians’. The title (like ‘Gospel according to the Hebrews’) probably points to the circle in which the gospel was known, here to Egyptian Gentile Christians. It is hardly possible to determine its further contents and whether it was merely a ‘dialogue gospel’ or included other narrative or discourse parts. If the present passage is characteristic, the choice of Salome, who was among the women under the cross and at the empty tomb (Mark 15.40; 16.1) and the idea of the eschatological abolition of sexual distinction rather point to a gnostic text (Markschies 2012b: 681), composed in Egypt at some point in the second century.
One of the most fertile fields for the production of apocryphal texts was that of Jesus’ birth, his family, Mary and her parents, and also Joseph and his role (on which see also Chapter 3), and his infancy up to the age of twelve. In order to fill the lacunae left in the birth stories of Matthew and Luke, and also due to the interest in Jesus’ mother and her purity, texts were composed, combined, and spread in numerous languages and countless manuscripts through the Middle Ages, with great influence on Christian art and piety. We can only briefly characterize the most important texts, the Protevangelium of James and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and provide some information as to the further development (cf. Pellegrini 2012a).
(a) Probably the earliest text is the narrative called the Protevangelium of James, with ‘protevangelium’ in the sense that it tells the story before the gospel story. In ancient manuscripts, it was entitled ‘Birth of Mary, Revelation of James’ (thus, e.g., in P. Bodmer V) or similar, pointing to the birth of the mother of Jesus (cf. Pellegrini 2012b). Two thirds of the work (chs 1–16) is about Mary’s life: her parents Joachim and the infertile Anna, her birth, the purity of the child at home and her upbringing in the temple, the miraculous divine election of the widower Joseph as husband to protect her, Mary’s participation in weaving the temple curtain and the annunciation by the angel, her pregnancy that causes Joseph to abandon her, the accusation of the priests against Joseph, and the testing of both by the water of the ordeal. A brief second part (chs 17–20) is about Mary’s giving birth in a cave, the testimony of the midwife and the unbelief of Salome who investigates Mary’s virginity, but is immediately punished: her hand is consumed by fire and only healed when she stretches out to touch Jesus. The final part (chs 21–4) then tells of the visit of the Magi and the murder of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, who dies to protect his son. In the end, James the (step)brother of Jesus presents himself as the author, so that the narrative appears as family tradition that provides the prehistory of the canonical birth story. Even in the second part, where Jesus’ birth is narrated, the christological interest is very limited. Jewish piety and purity concerns are strongly present, yet Mary herself functions as a symbolic temple sacrifice (Vuong 2011). Numerous biblical references shape the narrative, cf. e.g. the parallel between Anna and biblical Hannah (1 Sam. 1), but there is also a ‘doubling’ of Jesus’ miraculous birth by an earlier miraculous (though not explicitly ‘virgin’) birth of his mother.
The text is preserved in numerous manuscripts and later translations and expansions. It was already known (at least in its first two parts) to Origen and was probably composed in Greek in the last quarter of the second century. Important motifs, such as Jesus’ birth in a cave, the virginity test, and the ‘brothers’ of Jesus as stepbrothers, were adopted by early church fathers. Although the work was often attributed to a Jewish Christian author, the text shows little knowledge of Palestinian Jewish practice and can be sufficiently explained from a good knowledge of the Old Testament and the canonical birth stories, so that a composition in Syria or Egypt is more plausible. The text became very popular and was widely received (and incorporated into larger compositions) in the Christian East, so that it became influential for liturgy and Mariology (Van Oyen 2013: 298–302; see also Chapter 3). In the West, instead, it was rejected due to the debates about the status of Jesus’ ‘brothers’. Their interpretation as stepbrothers (i.e. sons of the widower Joseph from an earlier marriage) was later contested by Jerome (who interpreted them as merely cousins), so that the Protevangelium was condemned in the Decretum Gelasianum (cf. Markschies 2012a: 133–8). Yet in spite of that condemnation, its motifs strongly influenced later piety, and through a reworked version in the Infancy Gospel of (Ps.-)Matthew, which was also adopted in the collection of the Golden Legend, the story also became the legendary basis of the nativity cycle in the West (and in Western art).
(b) A very different text is the so-called Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a sequence of episodes about the child Jesus until the age of twelve from the later perspective of his ministry and divine identity (see Aasgaard 2009; Kaiser 2011). The text is transmitted in numerous languages and recensions, with a complicated textual history. The narrative is attributed to ‘Thomas’ who is sometimes called ‘the Israelite’ or ‘the Apostle’, but there are no close links with other works of the Thomasine tradition, and the text has nothing in common with the Gos. Thom. from Nag Hammadi and the Oxyrhynchus fragments (discussed later: see ‘Sayings Gospels’, section (a)). The text, which was written originally in Greek, was probably composed not earlier than the fifth century, although church fathers such as John Chrysostom polemicize against stories of miracles of the child Jesus before that date (Kaiser and Tropper 2012: 936). Filling the lacuna in Luke between Jesus’ birth and his presentation in the Temple, and drawing on numerous other biblical traditions (Van Oyen 2011), the text presents anecdotes about the child Jesus and his miraculous power that are arranged in a loose structure. The miracles are related to the works or sayings of the adult Jesus according to the Synoptics: at the age of five, he makes a model of twelve sparrows from clay, but it is the Sabbath; therefore when Joseph is informed about this incident he rebukes him, but Jesus claps his hands, and the sparrows fly away, so that the Jews are amazed. This well-known episode not only gives a reason why the divine child is allowed to violate Sabbath laws, but also shows that even as a child Jesus had the power of the creator. Furthermore, it symbolically prefigures the commission of the twelve apostles. The child Jesus is helpful to his parents. At the age of six he fetches water for his mother, and when the pitcher breaks, he spreads out his garment, fills it and brings the water home safely. Likewise he assists his father Joseph who has to make a bed for a rich man, but one piece of wood is too short. So the boy Jesus stretches the shorter piece of wood to make it fit, so that Joseph can finish the furniture. But the image of the miracle-working child is also problematic, e.g. when Joseph’s attempts to educate him are openly rejected, or when Jesus ridicules a teacher who wants to teach him the alphabet, telling him that he does not know anything about the first letter. Even more so in the episode when the boy plays in the sand with the son of a certain Annas who scatters Jesus’ gathered water, so that Jesus makes him wither like a tree for punishment. In another episode a child dashes against his shoulder, and upon Jesus’ curse, the child falls down and dies. With these punitive miracles, the Jesus of the Inf. Gos. Thom. strongly differs from the canonical image of Jesus.
(c) In later traditions, the Inf. Gos. Thom. was often combined with the Protevangelium of James and other material to form larger compositions in various languages.
A large compilation of material of the Prot. Jas. and the Inf. Gos. Thom. with numerous other miracles and legends, especially from the journey of the holy family to Egypt, is the Arabic Infancy Gospel, which was composed, probably from an earlier stage (partly from the Syriac tradition) in the fifth or sixth century, i.e. in pre-Islamic times (Josua and Eißler 2012; Horn 2010: 597–602). Here, the miracles of the child during the flight of the holy family to Egypt and after their return are extensively narrated. The body of the child Jesus, and even his bathwater, has healing power, and a number of figures of the later story of Jesus appear already in his childhood. For instance, the three-year old child already meets the two criminals who would later be crucified with him. Another interesting tradition is the Armenian Infancy Gospel from the seventh century (cf. Dorfmann-Lazarev 2010) in which the traditional material is further expanded, e.g. with names of the three Magi as royal brothers, Melqon, king of Persia, Balthasar, king of India, and Gaspar, king of Arabia. Perhaps the most influential compilation was the Infancy Gospel of (Ps.-)Matthew, which was called ‘The Book about the Origin of the Blessed Mary and the Childhood of the Saviour’. Composed rather late, probably in the seventh or even eighth century, it was spread with the fiction that Jerome had translated a writing of the apostle Matthew. Actually, the work is a combination of an edited version of the Prot. Jas., an account of the flight to Egypt, and a freely edited version of the Inf. Gos. Thom., now integrated together with other canonical and legendary material into one comprehensive story. Included in the Golden Legend, the work influenced pious imagination surrounding the nativity, and also the pictorial cycles of the Life of Mary (cf. Cartlidge and Elliott 2001: 32). Here, we find the source for the widespread image of an ox and an ass at the manger, worshipping the child, but also the legends about the child in Egypt with lions and leopards accompanying the holy family in the desert and the palm tree bending down its branches. The three-year-old child Mary is depicted as an ideal monastic ascetic, studying the law, and the child Jesus is described as a perfect, wise, and almighty being. The traditions about Jesus’ birth in a cave and in a stable are combined here by a transfer from cave to stable.
Another field for additions and expansions of the canonical tradition was Jesus’ passion and resurrection. Whereas the Gospel of Peter was probably a larger narrative work, which preserved only a fragment on Jesus’ passion, other works focused particularly on expanding the last part of the Jesus story and especially speculations about the underworld, based on the narration of Jesus’ descent to Hades.
The Gospel of Peter is one of the most vividly discussed apocryphal gospels (cf. Foster 2010; Frey 2013), although the textual basis is slim. Although mentioned by Origen (Comm. Matt. 10.17), known to some later fathers, and discussed in a letter by Bishop Serapion of Antioch about 200 CE (in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.12.2–6), the work is preserved only in fragmentary form in a papyrus codex (P. Cair. 10759) from the sixth century, found in a monk’s tomb, where a the text is bound together with fragments of 1 Enoch and the Apocalypse of Peter (Kraus and Nicklas 2004). Attempts to identify some fragments from Oxyrhynchus with the Gospel of Peter (Lührmann 2000: 72–95) have been critically discussed, and at least one papyrus manuscript (P. Oxy. 2949) might testify to the existence of the Gos. Pet. in second/third-century Egypt (Kraus and Nicklas 2004: 55–8). It is uncertain, however, how far the sixth-century text resembles the text known and discussed in the second/third century. The preserved fragment only includes parts of the passion and resurrection narrative, narrated in the first-person singular (of Peter), but the text begins and ends in the middle of a sentence, so it was copied either from a fragmentary manuscript or without attention to the contents of the passage. That the work was probably not very widespread or well known around 200 CE is suggested by the letter of Serapion which shows that the bishop of Antioch did not know the text but only took the opportunity to read it when the community at Rhossus asked him for permission to use it, and then gave the advice not to read it because he had learnt that it was used by some ‘docetists’.
Although some scholars have suggested the independence of the work or its sources (Crossan 1985: 125–81), recent research has established the view that it presupposes the Synoptics and John (Foster 2010) and ‘rewrites’ their material quite freely (Henderson 2011) for particular purposes. According to the ending of the text, the narrative is told from the perspective of Peter as an eyewitness (although Peter also narrates scenes where he could not be present), but it is rather unlikely that the author had any first-hand knowledge of the Palestinian Jewish situation.
The tendencies of the Gos. Pet. have been noticed and discussed extensively. There is first the tendency to blame the Jews for all hostility against Jesus and to exculpate the Romans: contrary to all canonical Gospels (and to the legal situation) Jesus is sentenced not by Pilate, but by ‘King’ Herod (Gos. Pet. 2; it is unclear which Herod is actually in mind); the Jews do not wash their hands (as Pilate did in Matthew), i.e. they are guilty of Jesus’ death; and finally Jesus is mistreated and crucified by Jews, not by Roman soldiers. After his death, ‘the Jews, elders and priests’ acknowledge their responsibility and mourn, but without further consequences. A second aspect is the elaborated resurrection account with Roman soldiers and Jewish elders and scribes as eyewitnesses, camping in front of the sealed tomb of Jesus. At night, a heavenly voice goes forth, the heavens open, two men in shining garments descend, the stone moves aside, the tomb opens, and three men come out, with their heads touching the heaven, but the middle one is taller than the other two. A cross follows, and upon the question from heaven ‘Did you preach to the deceased?’, the cross answers ‘Yes!’ This is probably the first fictional eyewitness account of the resurrection as such, with the cross speaking as if it was as a living being, and with Jewish and Roman eyewitnesses who utter the confession of the centurion from Mark 15.39, though this does not mean that they come to faith. The obvious tendency here is to present an ‘objective’ account of the resurrection as a miracle, with ‘neutral’ witnesses (but no women) at the tomb. Probably the episode was followed by another scene of Jesus’ appearance to his disciples in Galilee. A much-discussed aspect is whether Gos. Pet. is ‘docetic’ (as suggested by Serapion’s epistle) or not. The fact that Jesus (also called kyrios and soter) is silent, ‘as if he felt no pain’ (Gos. Pet. 10), and that his last word on the cross is ‘my strength (dynamis), my strength you have left me’ (Gos. Pet. 19) could point either in that direction, or towards a concept according to which the Spirit or ‘the Christ’ leaves Jesus before his death. On the other hand, Jesus’ dead body touching the earth causes an earthquake (Gos. Pet. 21), and even Jesus’ resurrection is conceptualized in a quite bodily manner, so Gos. Pet. appears not very consistent in its christology, and the label ‘docetic’ cannot be applied without further qualification.
For the history of ‘gospels’, the work shows how the gospel story could be freely narrated afresh in a ‘popular’ manner in the second half of the second century. Our inclusion of this text in the chapter on apocryphal passion traditions is only due to its fragmentary state of preservation. Other works or traditions actually focused on the end of the Jesus story and intended to fill its lacunae.
A complicated tradition, focused only on Jesus’ death and resurrection, is preserved in the so-called Gospel of Nicodemus or the Acts of Pilate. Already in early Christian apologetic literature, there are some references to documents about Jesus’ trial (Justin, Apology 1.35.9; 48.3; Tertullian, Apol. 21.24; Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 2.2.1), but it is not clear which work they actually refer to. Possibly these references might have contributed to the development of the tradition (cf. Schärtl 2012: 234–5). Another reason for the composition might have been the need to answer to a pagan version of Pilate’s account circulated under the emperor Maximian. This points to a process of composition of the text in the fourth or fifth century. Scholars have identified a first recension (Greek A) and a later second one (Greek B) that includes an extensive account of Jesus’ descent into Hades. A later recension (Latin A), now entitled the ‘Gospel of Nicodemus’ was then widespread in the Middle Ages, part of the Golden Legend and translated into all popular languages.
The work claims to tell the truth about Jesus’ trial, taken from official Roman records, and composed in Hebrew by Nicodemus (cf. John 3.1–2 and 19.39) who serves as the eyewitness. The text is obviously dependent on all four canonical Gospels, but fills numerous gaps and lacunae in the earlier accounts. The argument between Jesus’ accusers and Pilate (John 18.28–19.18) is broadly elaborated, numerous figures are now given names, so the other high priests and scribes, Pilate’s wife (Procla/Procula), the two criminals crucified with him (Dysmas and Gestas), the woman healed from the flow of blood (Berenike, later Veronika), and the soldier piercing Jesus’ side (Longinus). Jesus is accused of being born from fornication, and against that supporters such as Lazarus declare that they were present at the wedding of Joseph and Mary. Miracles confirm Jesus’ dignity, so the Roman standards bow and worship him. Nicodemus, the paralytic healed in John 5, the blind man healed in Mark 10.46–52, and Berenike testify to Jesus’ works. Joseph of Arimathea is seized by the Jews for burying Jesus, but in jail he has a vision of the risen Jesus, and three Jews from Galilee testify to Jesus’ appearance and ascension. The account closes with the whole people praising God.
A later recension adds a long report about Hades, attributed to the two men (later called Karinus and Leucius), who were raised from the dead at the time of Jesus’ death. They describe the underworld, with the patriarchs and prophets, John the Baptist teaching, and Seth proclaiming the healing of Adam, while Satan and Hades discuss how they can keep Jesus firmly with them. Then Jesus enters, defeats Satan, hands him over to Hades and liberates the prophets, patriarchs, Adam, the one crucified with him, and also the two brothers giving testimony after their resurrection.
The fact that there was a first-hand account about Jesus’ trial, witnessing his divine dignity, and even more a first-hand account of the underworld, confirming the reality of redemption, explains the wide reception of the tradition. The great interest in the figure and fate of Pilate created a large number of additions or separate works related to Pilate (cf. Klauck 2003: 96–8; Ehrman and Pleše 2011: 491–568), including letters to Claudius (!), Tiberius, and Herod, his defence in Rome before the emperor (with strong anti-Jewish accents), or his final suicide (in the Death of Pilate). In the Vengeance of the Saviour a Roman soldier named Volosianus gets the portrait of Jesus from Veronika (= Berenike), the woman healed from the flow of blood, takes it to Rome, and the emperor Tiberius is healed when worshipping the image (cf. Ehrman and Pleše 2011: 491–568).
(c) Other traditions about Jesus’ death and resurrection are linked with the name of Bartholomew (cf. Markschies 2012c). Although a ‘Gospel of Bartholomew’, as mentioned by Jerome and in the Decretum Gelasianum, is not preserved, we have the ‘Questions of Bartholomew’, a fluid tradition, preserved in various recensions, of uncertain date (Markschies et al. 2012d: 709: after the fourth century), which already comes close to the ‘dialogue gospels’ (see later discussion), and the Book of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The ‘Questions’ comprise a conversation of the disciples with Jesus, and Bartholomew (= Nathanael) is the one who poses the decisive questions. In fulfilment of John 1.51, he sees the angels descending at the time of the crucifixion, one of them splitting the temple curtain. He asks Jesus about what happened in the underworld at that time, and (in contrast with the Acts of Pilate) it is now Jesus himself who reports about his descent (from the cross, before the resurrection), and the defeat of Hades and Beliar (= the devil), before he departs for paradise. Bartholomew asks Jesus’ mother about the virginal conception, and the answer adopts elements from the infancy gospel tradition. A last, and in some versions expanded, part is about Beliar, who is described in size (1600 × 40 cubits) and appearance, and who then explains how he, the first of the angels, became what he now is, because he did not accept and venerate Adam as the image of God. Here, the devil gives extensive information about angels and the underworld, and in one version he narrates all his evil deeds of deception and affliction, including the confession that he deceived Eve by stimulating her fleshly desire. The Book of the Resurrection (Westerhoff 1999; Schenke 2012a), preserved in different Coptic manuscripts and fragments, contains numerous traditions about elements and figures of the gospel story (scenes in the underworld, a sermon of Jesus to Judas after his suicide, nine women at the tomb) and encounters with the risen Christ. Mary is identified with Mary Magdalene and presented as Mother of God (theotokos), Jesus’ death brings universal forgiveness with three individual exceptions: Cain, Judas, and Herod. In one fragment a cock that is slaughtered for the meal of Jesus and the disciples, is raised from the dead, in order to be able to crow at Peter’s denial. Bartholomew appears as eyewitness, ascends to the seventh heaven, and follows the heavenly liturgy. Here we can see how Jesus traditions are continued as traditions about particular apostles.
(d) Another complex of (late) traditions is attributed to Gamaliel. Being more of a ‘gospel meditation’ than a ‘gospel’ (Markschies 2012e; Schenke 2012b), the Gospel of Gamaliel is preserved in Coptic fragments and in Arabic and Ethiopic texts. Expanding the lament of the mother of Jesus, the text aims at excusing Pilate and blaming the Jews and especially Herod for Jesus’ death (cf. also Gos. Pet.).
In recent research, non-narrative gospels, composed mostly from mere sayings (or small dialogue scenes) of Jesus, are considered a subgenre of the gospel genre, although it is still open to discussion whether this is one of several ‘primitive’ gospel genres from the first century (thus Robinson and Koester 1971) or a later development, deliberately selecting and arranging sayings. The issue is whether the Synoptic sayings source (Q) and the Gospel of Thomas represent the same genre and, if so, whether the shape of a ‘Sayings Gospel’ can support a very early date of the Gospel of Thomas.
A ‘Gospel of Thomas’ is mentioned in patristic texts dating from the early third century (Hippolytus, Haer. 5.7.20; Origen, Hom. Luc. 1.2), and already the first references to it consider it heretical, either because of its contents or—as often—due to its use by heretics, e.g. Manichaeans. Its contents and text were unknown until the discovery of three fragmentary Greek Papyri from Oxyrhynchus with unknown ‘Sayings of Jesus’ (P. Oxy. 1, 654 and 655), published in 1897 and 1904, but in the early discussion it was still unclear where those ‘Agrapha’ belonged (Frey 2008: 124–7). Only since the discovery of a complete Coptic version in Codex II from Nag Hammadi in 1945 has the attribution of the Greek fragments as parts of the Gos. Thom. been deemed certain. Based on the Coptic text, its literary character and, even more, its relationship with the Synoptic Gospels and its value as a source of possibly independent, early Jesus tradition have been fiercely debated. The views vary between a late (mid or late second-century) gnostic transformation of canonical traditions (Schrage 1964; Perrin 2002; Popkes 2007), and an independent witness of the earliest (mid first-century) period (Koester 1990: 75–128) that allows glimpses at the ‘real’ Jesus (Patterson 1993; DeConick 2005). The debate is obviously influenced by ‘dogmatic’ interests on both sides: one faction seeks to confirm the legacy of the traditional image of Jesus or the priority of canonical text; the other is interested in a ‘different’ (non-apocalyptic, sapiential, mystic) image of Jesus.
Methodological discussions have led more recent scholarship to a number of cautious observations: the Coptic text (from the fourth century) differs from the Greek fragments from the early third century, and in view of the changes here, it seems quite daring to draw conclusions about the textual form in the early period (Frey 2008; Schröter and Bethge 2012: 488–92). The lack of a narrative or redactional framework makes it difficult to identify overall tendencies but also to isolate ‘traditional’ material, and there is the question how such a form can be explained or whether it is an intentional reduction or selection (Popkes 2007; Goodacre 2012). The text is most probably a composition in Greek, while alleged Semitisms cannot stand as an argument for an early composition (Gathercole 2012). Recent research has made a detailed case for the dependence of the work on the Synoptics (Gathercole 2012; Goodacre 2012), although this does not preclude that some traditions may represent a more original form than the canonical Gospels.
The work is a collection of 114 units or ‘sayings’, mostly introduced by the phrase ‘Jesus says’. The opening calls them the ‘hidden words’ (logoi apokryphoi) of Jesus, ‘the living one’, and points to the process of meditation and interpretation that is required in order ‘not to taste death’. Here the term ‘apocryphal’ is used in a positive sense (secret = deeper, more spiritual), so that the work rather appears as a (deliberate) ‘mystification’ in contrast with the ‘open’ word of Jesus. The implied author is Judas Thomas, called Didymus (‘twin’), as frequent in the Syriac tradition (Frenschkowski 2013), who is also prominent in some dialogue scenes (Gos. Thom. 13). The units are pure sayings, small dialogues, or apoththegms and parables, but no narrative elements (as e.g. miracle stories)—the majority of ‘sayings’ paralleled in the Synoptics (and some also in John). But in contrast with the canonical Gospels, Jesus’ passion and resurrection are almost completely passed over in silence, even in the sayings (Popkes 2005), and where the kingdom of God (here only ‘the kingdom’) is mentioned, it is purely present and internal or non-local. The idea of the community is replaced by the ideal of the single ones (monachoi) who are praised in Gos. Thom. 49 (Popkes 2007). The readers are called to deny the world, leave behind sexuality, and in the end there is a rather harsh word about women (Gos. Thom. 114). So it is not only the image of Jesus but also anthropology and eschatology that differ markedly from the canonical Gospels, and the debate is whether this can be considered ‘encratite’, ‘mystical’, or to a certain degree gnostic (although the gnostic myth is not narrated here). The incipit, however, suggests that the collection is a deliberate selection of the gospel material, making it mysterious and enigmatic. The suggestion by the members of the North American ‘Jesus Seminar’ (cf. Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar 1993; Patterson 1993; also DeConick 2005), that Gos. Thom. might serve as a primary source for the historical Jesus (i.e. for an originally non-eschatological, non-miraculous, and non-dogmatic Jesus), appears unsubstantiated.
Another non-narrative gospel is the Gos. Phil., preserved (only) in Coptic in Nag Hammadi Codex II, just after the Gos. Thom. When the church fathers mention a Gos. Phil. (thus Epiphanius, Pan. 6.13.2–3), they quote sayings that are not contained in the Nag Hammadi text, but this may be due to the fluidity of the tradition rather than the existence of another Gos. Phil. (Schenke 2012c: 529–30). Philip is the only apostle mentioned in the text (Gos. Phil. 73.8). The Coptic is translated from the original Greek. With regard to genre, the text is not a mere sayings gospel but a kind of florilegium or anthology (Schenke 2012c: 532) of 127 independent units (aphorisms, parables, brief polemics, narrative dialogues, exegeses, etc.). Some of them are linked by link words or common aspects, but as in the Gos. Thom., the composition is often unclear. A few sayings correspond to or reflect sayings of Jesus from the canonical Gospels, while other sayings, introduced by an introductory formula, are rather enigmatic and represent a gnostic perspective. The text mirrors a Valentinian viewpoint, as is obvious in the teaching about the Saviour as bridegroom of the lower Sophia, and in the recurring idea of the mystery of the bridal chamber (Schenke 2012c: 535). It was probably composed in Syria in the late second or third century.
Prominent themes of the sayings and reflections are the sacraments of baptism, chrism, eucharist, redemption, and the mystery of the bridal chamber (cf. Schmid 2007). Their mutual relationship, however, is unclear: are they distinct acts or simply steps of a single initiation? Especially the image of the bridal chamber seems to be a metaphor for the unity between God and humankind or the individual soul with Christ. In an interesting interpretation, the most important effect of Jesus’ death is considered the tearing of the temple curtain (which is taken as a symbol of the heavenly temple, or bridal chamber, or pleroma; Schenke 2012c: 536). One (rather minor) element that has found particular interest in public discussion: the prominence of Mary Magdalene as a kind of ‘beloved disciple’. In Gos. Phil. 19, there is mention of three Marys who walked with Jesus (his mother, her sister, and Mary Magdalene; cf. John 19.25), and the latter is called his companion. In Gos. Phil. 55b, it is even said that he loved Mary more than all the disciples, and that he kissed her. In the text it is unclear where he kissed her: on her hand, mouth, or feet. Furthermore, it is probable that this expression should not be understood naively in an erotic sense (contrary to popular speculations about Mary as Jesus’ ‘wife’; cf. Brown 2003), but is embedded in the imagery of the bridal chamber, spiritual unity, revelation, and understanding. Thus, apart from the interesting fact that Mary appears here more prominently than all (male) apostles, the text provides no basis for the novelistic speculation about Jesus’ sexual life.
A particular genre of gospel material are those texts that contain neither narratives, nor just sayings, but dialogues between the disciples and the risen Jesus. Prefigured in canonical discourses (e.g. John 13–17; but there the dialogues take place before the resurrection) and in textual expansions of canonical texts (e.g. the Freer Logion in Mark 16.14–15 Codex W; cf. Frey 2012b), these texts present instructions or additional revelations of Jesus situated in the period after Easter. Such a setting was particularly appropriate for gnostic circles that sought to give an explanation of the ‘true’ value of Jesus’ earthly appearance (Hartenstein 2012a), beyond the canonical tradition. It is significant which apostles (Mary Magdalene, James, Judas) are given prominence in those dialogues.
(a) An important non-gnostic example is the Epistula Apostolorum (Müller 2012; Klauck 2003: 152–60), preserved partly in Coptic and in a fuller Ethiopic version, which includes a letter of the eleven apostles (with John mentioned in the first place) to the churches in the whole world and a subsequent dialogue in which the Saviour answers to the apostles’ questions. The form of a revelatory dialogue is utilized here for refuting gnosticizing views, probably in adoption of a literary form that had already been introduced among Gnostics. From the date of the end of the world 120 years after Pentecost (Ep. Ap. 17), a composition shortly before 150 CE is implied (with a later revision).
The work uses all four canonical Gospels and Acts. In the opening epistle, the apostles confirm their testimony about Jesus as God, his incarnation, miracles, cross, and bodily resurrection. Against Cerinthus and Simon (Magus) the human suffering of the Son of God is stressed. The risen one is touched by all, not only by Thomas. In the following revelatory dialogue, Jesus explains his descent in the likeness of an archangel, he talks about the Passover as remembrance of his death, and, asked about his final coming, Jesus’ descent to the heroes of the Old Testament is explicitly mentioned, and the resurrection of the flesh is emphasized again. When talking about the mission of the apostles, Jesus also mentions Paul who is thus confirmed as a legitimate apostle. After the dialogue, Jesus ascends to heaven, accompanied by signs such as thunder and earthquakes.
(b) Some gnostic texts present revelations to a plurality of the apostles: the Wisdom of Jesus Christ (Hartenstein 2012b), preserved in two Coptic versions (NHC III.4/BG 3) and composed in the late second century, already adopts the Platonic (?) Epistle of Eugnostos (NHC III.3 and V.1) from the mid second century (Wurst 2007). It includes an appearance of the risen Jesus and a dialogue with twelve male and seven female apostles, teachings about the heavenly world, and the gnostic myth of the Sophia, before Jesus disappears and the apostles begin to preach. The Dialogue of the Saviour (NHC III.5), probably also from the second century (Petersen and Bethge 2012) is a post-Easter dialogue of Jesus with his disciples (Matthew, Judas, Mary), that adopts elements from John and Matthew and provides a gnostic teaching about the archontes as hostile powers, the strife for redemption, the role of insight, and the role of women. The phrase ‘destroy the works of womanhood’ (Dial. Sav. 92) aims at the refusal of human reproduction which grants redemption from the structure of the world.
(c) A number of dialogue gospels are attributed to James, the hero of Jewish Christianity (who is also prominent in the Gos. Thom.). The First Apocalypse of James (cf. Funk 2012a), in Coptic translation preserved in two slightly different versions (NHC V.3 and Codex Tchacos 2), was possibly composed in the late second century, and presents a special revelation of Jesus to James, with a first dialogue before the passion and a second after the resurrection, when the risen Lord first appears to James ‘the Just’ (cf. Gos. Heb.). In the post-Easter setting, Jesus explains that he actually did not suffer, nor die (NHC V 31,18–20). The main topic of the work is redemption in terms of the liberation of the gnostic from the earthly sphere, with ‘passwords’ and formulae for the ascent. The text ends with the martyrdom of James. The Second Apocalypse of James (Funk 2012b), only preserved in one Nag Hammadi version (NHC V.4), presents a discourse of James (recorded by a certain Mariam), in which James—as a prototype of the gnostic—narrates the appearance of the risen Lord with an embedded revelatory discourse of Jesus, and finally the martyrdom of James and a last prayer. The Letter of James (NHC I.2) describes in an epistolary framework an appearance of Jesus after his resurrection, in which Peter and James receive special instructions. The writing from the end of the second century is explicitly designed as ‘secret’ teaching (apokryphon), to be given only to few people. Gnostic mythological views are presupposed but not presented here.
(d) In the Book of Thomas, preserved in Coptic (NHC II.7) and possibly composed in Greek in the third century in Syria, Judas Thomas is the dialogue partner of the risen Jesus. The dialogue about ethical and eschatological questions, however, leads to a monologue of Jesus and a collection of sayings. As in the Syriac tradition, Thomas is Jesus ‘twin’ and only true friend, but in spite of that, he severely misunderstands Jesus’ words, in this rather obscure text.
(e) The Apocryphon of John, preserved in two versions (long and short) in four Coptic manuscripts, develops the Johannine tradition where John is the ‘beloved disciple’, who is in dialogue with the revealer, but the dialogue framework is probably a later addition to mythological treatise on the creation account. The short version might be composed around 200 CE, the long version somewhat later (Klauck 2003: 169–75). In the narrative framework, John the son of Zebedee is the protagonist: he is asked by a Pharisee where his teacher has gone, and in his grief he goes to a mountain where he receives the appearance of Christ (‘polymorphic’, first as a child, then as an old man). Then, the revelatory discourse gives teaching about the pleroma, ‘Jaldabaoth’ (a gnostic malapropism of Jahwe Zebaoth) and the gnostic myth of the creation of humans. In further dialogues, John is informed about the true meaning of the story of Gen. 1–7, before he is commissioned to write down the secret for those who are of the same spirit. The work is one of the main sources for the gnostic (more precisely, Sethian) myth with the distinction between the demiurge and the true transcendent God, but the negative exegesis of Genesis and the reception of the Wisdom myth also point back to a Hellenistic-Jewish milieu. It is questionable, thus, how far Ap. John is a ‘tradition about Jesus’ or rather a gnostic reading of the Old Testament adopting the authority of the Johannine tradition.
(f) Mary Magdalene is the ‘beloved disciple’ in the Gospel of Mary (cf. Hartenstein 2012c) which is fragmentarily preserved in a Coptic codex (BG 1) and two even more fragmentary Greek papyri. It may be asked whether the second-century work is gnostic or rather Platonic or merely ‘esoteric’ (King 2003; De Boer 2004). The beginning is lost. In the preserved part, probably situated in the period after Easter, Jesus responds to philosophical questions of his disciples, and thereafter they discuss the issues among each other. Here, Mary, most probably Mary Magdalene, of whom it is said that the Saviour loved her more than all others (cf. Gos. Phil.), takes a prominent role: she comforts the disciples and is asked by Peter to share the special teaching she has received. She recounts her vision and her dialogue with Jesus. In the end she is attacked by Andrew and Peter who doubt that the Lord actually said these things and are offended that he should have talked to her secretly. So the text openly addresses not only the issue of the validity of visions but also debates about the position of women in the church and a struggle between orthodoxy (represented by Peter and Andrew) and esoteric revelations. Mary’s position as ‘beloved disciple’ rivals similar claims for Peter (1 Cor. 15.5), John (John 13.23), or James (Gos. Heb.).
(g) The most recent ‘sensation’ in the field has been the Gospel of Judas (cf. Wurst 2012; Popkes and Wurst 2012). A Coptic version of the work, which is already mentioned by Irenaeus (Haer. 1.31.1), is preserved in Codex Tchacos, and its publication in 2006/7 and further fragments (Wurst 2010) have caused lively debates. Here, it is Judas Iscariot who receives a special revelation (in contrast with his very negative or even diabolic characterization in the New Testament). It is debated whether Judas is actually a positive figure (who alone knows Jesus’ true origins), or whether he is still regarded as a severe sinner. The text is introduced as a ‘secret’ (apokryphos) revelation to Judas, which is, of course, situated before Jesus’ (and Judas’) death. The other disciples as a group are described negatively as followers of the Jewish cult, which might suggest a critique of the majority church and also of particular views on the Eucharist. Due to the latter, the present textual form might originate rather in the third than in the second century.
According to the earliest Jesus tradition, Jesus did not write. Only in the secondary tradition of the story of the woman taken in adultery, he writes some cryptic letters in the sand (John 8.6). In Eusebius’ Church History (1.13 and 2.1.6–8), however, there is the tale of King Abgar of Edessa and his exchange of letters with Jesus (Horn and Phenix 2009; Wasmuth 2012). Having heard of Jesus’ miraculous power, Abgar sends a letter to Jesus, asking him for healing, and Jesus answers also in a letter, telling Abgar that he himself is not able to come but that he will send his servant to heal him and bring him life. After Jesus’ ascension, Judas Thomas (who is considered as a ‘double’ of Jesus in some Syriac traditions) sends the disciple who heals the king and many others in Edessa and forcefully preaches the gospel. According to Eusebius, the account is based on documents from the archive of Edessa. A similar tale of the mission in Edessa is presented in the Syriac Doctrina Addai. Here, Jesus’ answer is transmitted only orally, and the disciple is called Addai. But there is also mention of a portrait of Jesus painted by the messenger Ananias and the discovery of the cross of Jesus by Protonike, the wife of the Emperor Claudius. These legendary elements show that the Doctrina Addai in its present form is a recension of the early fifth century, but there was probably a common Syriac source of the recensions given in Eusebius and in the Doctrina Addai (Wasmuth 2012: 223–4). The legend of Abgar was translated into many languages and most prominently adopted in the Armenian national history. In the West, Rufinus’s Latin translation of Eusebius made the legend well known. Jesus’ letter was also copied as a single document, without the whole story, and as such it is already mentioned in Egeria’s pilgrim account.
The motif of the image of Jesus is further developed in the late Acts of Thaddaeus: here, Ananias is unable to paint a true image of Jesus, so that Jesus takes a piece of cloth and puts it upon his face, so that his image (which is then said to be made not by a human hand) can be brought to Edessa (Wasmuth 2012: 227).
One of the fiercest and most hostile debates in scholarship has taken place over the so-called Secret Gospel of Mark. The circumstances of its ‘discovery’ are as strange as are the hypotheses of its supporters and the suspicions of its adversaries, and it is almost impossible to take a ‘neutral’ position. The text was first presented in 1973 by Morton Smith (1973). In that book Smith claimed that in 1958, when working in the library of Mar Saba monastery, he had discovered on the last pages of an edition of Ignatius’ works from 1646 the handwritten fragmentary copy of a letter of Clement of Alexandria in which this author acknowledged the existence of a longer ‘spiritual’ version of the Gospel of Mark and gave some quotations. Smith presented black and white photographs of the letter, and coloured photographs from a later time were presented in 2000, without providing improved evidence. It is reported that the two relevant pages were cut out from the volume in order to be photographed, but were then lost, hidden, or even destroyed for unknown reasons (cf. Rau 2009a: 145–6). At present, the volume seems to be lost as well. Apparently no scholar apart from Smith had the opportunity to work with the original.
In his editio princeps, Smith added a philological analysis and commentary of the letter to demonstrate the (Clementine) authenticity. But suspicions were raised early by numerous historians, partly on philological grounds, partly due to the use made of the so-called ‘Secret Gospel of Mark’ among the public and to the consequences drawn by Smith and others from that text. The doubts whether the letter is an authentic work of Clement (based on certain contradictions with Clement’s other works) led to the question of its true origin and, finally, to the idea that it might actually be a forgery, ancient, early modern, or modern, possibly even by Smith himself. Here, scholarship turns into criminological investigations to the effect that other scholars emphatically deny the possibility of such a ‘scandal’ among scholars and accuse the critics of extreme malevolence (Rau 2009a): what is at stake here is not only issues of the hermeneutics of apocryphal writings and their reception among a wider public but also issues of scholarly envy or rivalry and the psychology of scholarship. The recent debate about forged archaeological artefacts from Palestine has at least shown that the possibility cannot totally be denied.
The contents of Clement’s letter, if authentic, provide complicated problems as well. Clement writes to an otherwise unknown Theodore who is in dispute with the Carpocratians, a gnostic group, who refer in support of their libertine views to an altered version of the Gospel of Mark. He explains to his addressee that there is in fact a second version of Mark created by the evangelist in Alexandria after he had originally written the (canonical version of the) gospel in Rome for catechumens. The existence of a more spiritual or mystical version should, however, remain secret, so that it is only read to those who will be introduced into the ‘great Mysteries’. Only by enslaving a presbyter could Carpocrates get a hold of that version which was further extended and falsified according to his heresies. In defence of the true doctrine, genuine Christians should therefore deny the existence of the true spiritual gospel, even by oath. Then the author gives an example of the ‘spiritual’ gospel of Mark, which appears to be a mixture of the scene of the ‘rich young man’ (Mark 10) and ‘Lazarus’ (John 11): in Bethany (cf. Mark 8.22 Cod. D and especially John 11–12), a woman pleads for the resurrection of her brother. Jesus raises him, the young man ‘loves him’ (Mark 10.21) and asks him to stay with him. Jesus enters his house, commissions him after six days, and in the evening, the young man comes to him, only with the shirt on his naked body (Mark 14.51). ‘And he stayed with him that night’ (cf. John 1.39), ‘because Jesus taught him the secret of the kingdom of God’. Having narrated the scene, the author states that the phrase ‘a naked with a naked one’, spread by the Carpocratians was not part of the ‘real’ secret gospel of Mark.
In his commentary, Smith suggested that Mark and John had a common Aramaic source, and while canonical Mark omitted parts of that source, Secret Mark added those elements. Thus, he claimed, the additions were rather old and could shed light on the historical Jesus and his rites, among them also a secret initiation rite, possibly including homosexual practices. This bold speculation fits within Smith’s larger hypothesis that Jesus was actually a magician and that the gospel authors tried to conceal this in their works: Smith held a very negative view of the historical value of the canonical Gospels while being prepared to develop daring hypotheses about the ‘historical’ truth behind the texts. Thus, as a historian of early Christianity, he was an isolated figure. The question was, then, whether he had the skills to introduce such a subtle forgery, and what motive could explain such an act. Did he want to mock scholarship or to influence contemporary society, precisely with a ‘source’ for Jesus being homosexual? Is the ‘insight’ to be gained through Secret Mark a contribution to liberalizing society, and is the battle against that text merely an attempt to oppress such insights? Severe suspicions were also raised by his student, the famous Rabbinic scholar Jacob Neusner, who called Secret Mark ‘the forgery of the century’ (Neusner 1994: 115), albeit in an article full of personal attacks against his former teacher who had died in 1991. Recently, the criticisms have gathered force, with a book-length ‘forensic’ analysis resulting in the view that the text is a hoax (Carlson 2005), also an explanation of the ‘invention’ of Secret Mark from the context of the debates of contemporary American society (Jeffery 2007), and an increasing number of scholars consider the text a modern forgery (Watson 2010). On the other hand, the analysis of the photographs by graphologists has not led to a unanimous result, so that the issue is still undecided.
Scholars who have accepted the antiquity of ‘Secret Mark’ have made various suggestions how to explain the text within the history of early Christian literature. Whereas Crossan and Koester interpreted canonical Mark as a secondary revision of the earlier Secret Mark (Crossan 1985: 108; Koester 1990: 295–302), some authors have taken the text as an intermediate stage between Mark and John and as a source for John’s figure of the Lazarus who is then considered the ‘Beloved Disciple’ (Nordsieck 1998), whereas others have seen Secret Mark as dependent on the Synoptics and on John. More recently, Rau (2003 and 2009b) has tried to explain the text as a product of Alexandrian Christianity in the early second century. Due to the still uncertain issue of whether the text is authentic or a forgery, it seems unwise to put forward too many assumptions based on such an uncertain construction. From the debate, we can rather see how closely ideological and public interests are linked with the evaluation and interpretation of non-canonical texts about Jesus.
Things became even more difficult, with economic interests involved, as can be seen in the publication story of the Gospel of Judas and also in the brief media excitement when Karen King, a well-respected expert in Gnosticism from Harvard, presented in 2012 a Coptic papyrus with Jesus purportedly speaking of his ‘wife’ (called ‘The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife’). But immediately after, scholars adduced evidence that the text had been composed on the basis of sayings from the Coptic Gos. Thom. from Nag Hammadi, i.e. the text of the so-called ‘Gospel of Jesus’ Wife’ is probably a modern forgery (Watson 2012). Any publication of new fragments today is embedded in a complex set of legal issues (claims of property or national heritage), economic interests (to make money with sensations or to launch the media interest with overstatements), personal interests of scholars (regarding their own careers or scholarly reputations), and dogmatic or anti-dogmatic interests (to use a new discovery to discuss the validity of canonical texts or the traditional or scholarly image of Jesus). Scholarship has to be aware of these issues and hold on to the cautious and methodologically responsible approaches that have been developed in the course of the last hundred years of research on apocryphal gospels.
For extensive information and discussion and for a presentation of the texts (in translation), the most recent and comprehensive work is by Markschies and Schröter (in German), replacing the earlier vol. 1 of the fifth/sixth edition of Hennecke and Schneemelcher (and the English translation edited by McL. Wilson); cf. also other English works by Elliott (1993) and by Ehrman and Pleše (2011). Useful introductions are those by Klauck (2003) and Foster (2008).
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