OVERVIEW
Many people have speculated about how “lost” books of the Bible might radically transform the way we view Jesus and Christianity. Popular books like The Da Vinci Code argue that the creation of the Bible was political and that those in power purposely excluded certain books from the canon. Behind the ideas and questions in this chapter, one can discern the influence of Michel Foucault. Specifically, he says that we do not have knowledge per se—we have “power-knowledge”; that is, we have been conned by whatever authorities hold power. In other words, we have accepted a particular point of view based on what we think is reliable knowledge, but our beliefs consist of what is foisted upon us by those who hold power over public opinion. The argument of The Da Vinci Code about the Bible assumes that this political dynamic is the way beliefs develop and applies it to the history of Christianity.1
Is it true that there is no real orthodox Christianity, but just one type of Christianity that happened to win out over the others? Could we have a drastically different Christianity today had another sect won? Are there legitimate books that should be included in the canon but were deliberately omitted?
In his book Lost Christianities, agnostic New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman argues the following:
Virtually all forms of modern Christianity, whether they acknowledge it or not, go back to one form of Christianity that emerged as victorious from the conflicts of the second and third centuries. This one form of Christianity decided what was the “correct” Christian perspective; it decided who could exercise authority over Christian belief and practice; and it determined what forms of Christianity would be marginalized, set aside, destroyed. It also decided which books to canonize into Scripture and which books to set aside as “heretical,” teaching false ideas. (Ehrman, LC, 4)
Because of the importance of this charge, we need to examine whether we ought to trust our current Bible as the source of true Christianity.
Many of the noncanonical texts are categorized as—and were rejected for being—Gnostic. Scholars continue to debate the origins and definition of Gnosticism; many deny it ever existed as an ancient religion; instead, they say, it should be viewed as a perspective within a religion, similar to fundamentalist or progressive. Still, it is a useful category, as it enables us to distinguish between what has traditionally been held as orthodox and heretical. Broadly speaking, Gnosticism centered on knowledge (gnosis). A Gnostic was dedicated to searching for secret teachings and hidden wisdom, so Gnostic Christians may have focused less on Jesus as savior and more on Jesus as a teacher of wisdom. This is because a basic tenet of Gnosticism was matter-spirit dualism, meaning that matter is inherently evil—and so irredeemable. Only spirit can be redeemed. Thus, Gnostics denied a bodily resurrection; they held to a docetic view of Jesus—that, as God, Jesus did not really have a physical body but only seemed to be human.
Was orthodoxy established by the winners of ancient religious and political debates, as Ehrman asserts above? Esteemed historian Philip Jenkins says no:
Far from being the alternative voices of Jesus’ first followers, most of the lost gospels should rather be seen as the writings of much later dissidents who broke away from an already established orthodox church. This is not a particularly controversial statement, despite the impression that we may get from much recent writing on the historical Jesus.
Far from being the alternative voices of Jesus’ first followers, most of the lost gospels should rather be seen as the writings of much later dissidents who broke away from an already established orthodox church.
Philip Jenkins
But the institutional church was by no means an oppressive latecomer, and was rather a very early manifestation of the Jesus movement. We have a good number of genuinely early documents of Christian antiquity from before 125, long before the hidden gospels were composed, and these give us a pretty consistent picture of a church which is already hierarchical and liturgical, which possesses an organized clergy, and which is very sensitive to matters of doctrinal orthodoxy. Just as the canonical gospels were in existence before their heterodox counterparts, so the orthodox church did precede the heretics, and by a comfortable margin. (Jenkins, HG, 12–13)
Michael F. Bird says:
The rejection of “other” Gospels by the proto-orthodox and orthodox churches was neither arbitrary nor merely political. The reasons for rejecting them were cogent and compelling. Among the main criticisms raised against the “other” Gospels and their authors were that (1) the “Jesus” they set forth was not recognizable as the Jesus known in other sacred writings or congruent with apostolic tradition, (2) the “other” Gospels are often esoteric, elitist, or erroneous in what they affirm about God, creation, sin, holiness, ethics, and redemption, and (3) they do not properly have origins among Jesus’ earliest followers and are late and tendentious. (Bird, GL, 293)
Dating is key to determining the authenticity of extracanonical writings. New Testament scholar Craig Evans thinks “none of these extracanonical writings originated earlier than the middle of the second century” and since they are dated so late, “it is unlikely that they contain information that adds to our knowledge of Jesus.” (Evans, FJ, 52) The problem is not using extrabiblical sources to help inform our studies of the Bible but the “often uncritical acceptance of some of the extracanonical Gospels.” (Evans, FJ, 54)
Aside from dating problems, Catholic scholar John P. Meier thinks none of the extracanonical gospels
offer us reliable new information or authentic sayings that are independent of the NT. What we see in these later documents is rather the reaction to or reworking of NT writings by Jewish rabbis engaged in polemics, imaginative Christians reflecting popular piety and legend, and gnostic Christians developing a mystic speculative system. (Meier, MJ, 140)
But these are the views of modern scholars. In relation to the books that did make it into the canon, how were the “lost” gospels regarded in ancient times? In an appendix to the book The Canon Debate, Lee McDonald provides thirty lists of New Testament collections from the second to sixth century. The Gospel of Thomas is the only so-called gnostic gospel that appears in any of them, and only in one. (McDonald, LCNTC, 591–597) New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg says, “There is no indication that gnostics or any other sect tried to create a rival canon or even sought inclusion of extra books in the orthodox canon.” (Blomberg, CWSBB, 58) This shows that none of these “lost” gospels were ever considered to be on par with the rest of Scripture and that there was no conspiracy to exclude them.
It is important to understand the means by which scholars like the Jesus Seminar examine the Gospels, both canonical and noncanonical. They assume that because Jesus’ culture was an oral one and written records were secondary, any texts must then be stripped down to their primary, oral roots. This assumption occurs because these scholars were shaped by the prevailing dogma of literary criticism in the 1960s-80s, which declared that all writing is secondary to its original oral form of communication, and that all written texts are therefore to be approached with suspicion. Accordingly, they maintained that the original teachings of Jesus must be meticulously reconstructed by sifting out from the written texts only those words that probably were those spoken by Jesus.
Evans explains that sometimes scholars are able to extract earlier sources from extant (existing) texts. For example, since Matthew and Luke contain so many similar sayings that do not appear in Mark, scholars believe they shared a common source, which they call Q. But Evans differentiates between this and what scholars such as the Jesus Seminar do when they reconstruct hypothetical texts. He says writings such as the Gospel of Thomas and Gospel of Peter
drip with indications of lateness, yet some scholars hope to date forms of these writings to the first century. They do this by attempting to extract early, hypothetic forms of the text from the actual texts that we have. But they do this without any evidence. (Evans, FJ, 56)
New Testament scholar Ben Witherington also criticizes their methods:
The textual scholars are dealing with actual manuscripts and are trying to reconstruct the original text from objective data. The Jesus Seminar, however, . . . must engage in reconstruction before they can even consider the issues at hand. . . . There is furthermore no truly objective evidence whatsoever for supposing that Thomas and Peter are earlier documents, and/or that in almost all cases they preserve earlier traditions than does Mark. There is, however, the objective testimony of early church fathers such as Papias about the origins of Mark, however critically we must evaluate such testimonies. Such testimonies are nowhere found for Thomas, or Secret Mark, or the Gospel of Peter, or a variety of other documents on which Crossan and the Jesus Seminar rely so heavily. (Witherington, JQ, 78, emphasis in original)
Meier says “It is only natural for scholars—to say nothing of popularizers—to want more, to want other access roads to the historical Jesus” and that this “not always critical desire” is what leads to such a “high evaluation” of extracanonical writings. He adds, “For better or for worse, in our quest for the historical Jesus, we are largely confined to the canonical Gospels” and to include other gospels like Peter or Thomas with them “is to broaden out our pool of sources from the difficult to the incredible.” (Meier, MJ, 140–141)
Now we examine some of the most frequently cited and argued-for extracanonical writings to see why they should not be included in the canon.2
In 1945 a collection of codices written in the Coptic language was found in Egypt near Nag Hammadi. Among the discovered texts was the Gospel of Thomas. Upon its discovery, scholars realized three fragments of it in Greek had already been found in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, in the 1890s, with the earliest fragment being dated to around AD 200. Thomas is a collection of 114 sayings mostly attributed to Jesus. It presents a very different Jesus from those in the canonical Gospels. For instance, according to saying 114, “The female element must make itself male.” And sayings 2 and 3 state, “Seek until you find. The kingdom is within us.” The Jesus of Thomas provides secret truths only to those who are qualified to learn them. Unlike the biblical Gospels, there is no narrative and no discussion of Christ’s death and resurrection.
Thomas is the most hotly debated of all noncanonical gospels, with the Jesus Seminar going as far as to place it alongside Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in their book The Five Gospels. Is Thomas truly a lost gospel?
1. The Criterion of Independence from the Synoptic Gospels
A criterion that scholars employ when assessing the value of testimony is its status as an independent witness. Those who, like the Jesus Seminar, support The Gospel of Thomas as a valid witness to Jesus’ life therefore support its independence from the Synoptic Gospels. However, the wider community of scholars is divided as to the influence of the canonical Gospels on Thomas. New Testament scholar and historian of early Christianity John Dominic Crossan supports its independence. He states:
The Gospel of Thomas is a completely separate and parallel stream of the Jesus tradition. It is not dependent on the inner four and they are in no way dependent on it. They are parallel traditions. (Crossan, FOG, 183)
The following are some common arguments for Thomas’s independence, each followed by a response to the argument.
Argument 1: Genre
Thomas is a sayings source, similar to Q, with “no trace of the narrative framework into which the sayings are often embedded in the Gospels of the canon.” (Koester, ACG, 85) It is something utterly unlike the canonical gospels.
To give privileged importance to sayings rather than to narrative again reflects the intellectual climate shaping the method that theological criticism adopted from a dominant approach to literary criticism in the 1960s-80s, as noted above. New Testament expert Mark Goodacre of Duke University replies that we cannot automatically prioritize collections of sayings over narratives:
Neither has an obviously greater antiquity, and there is no reason to imagine that the earliest Christians began with sayings collections and only later moved on to narrative books. . . . [T]he argument for Thomas’s antiquity based on its supposed generic similarity to Q is not strong. This comparison between a hypothetical source and an extant text only works on a sketchy level, assuming an unproven greater antiquity for sayings books over narrative books that detracts attention from more fruitful parallels in the second century. (Goodacre, TG, 14)
Argument 2: Order
If Thomas used the canonical gospels as a source, parallel content should also share the same order. But Crossan says they share “absolutely no traces of common order.” (Crossan, FOG, 35)
Goodacre responds:
The argument from lack of common order . . . imposes an expectation derived from the sustained agreements in order among Matthew, Mark, and Luke, agreements that are unusually strong and result in part at least from their shared narrative structure. The self-consciously enigmatic nature of Thomas’s sayings collection precludes the likelihood of that kind of sustained logical sequence. (Goodacre, TG, 17)
In contrast to Crossan’s claim that the unique order followed by Thomas gives evidence of its independence and thus its value, Goodacre points to its content and tone as clues to a different purpose and resulting order: Without a narrative context, the collection of sayings generates mystery, ambiguity. It doesn’t make its appeal by chronological order.
Prominent New Testament scholar Simon Gathercole notes that there are in fact “several cases where adjacent sayings in Thomas are also juxtaposed in the Synoptics.” He remarks, “A number of scholars have described Thomas as a ‘list’, sentence-collection, or anthology, in which cases one would not expect order to be as important as it clearly is in a narrative,” and concludes, “the argument from lack of shared order is deeply flawed.” (Gathercole, CGT, 131–132)
Argument 3: Earlier Tradition
Helmut Koester, scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, argues that “in many cases a saying or parable, as it appears in the Gospel of Thomas, is preserved in a form that is more original than any of its canonical parallels.” (Koester, ACG, 85) Koester, presuming that Thomas holds the record of an earlier oral tradition, considers that where a saying in Thomas varies from its parallel in the canonical gospels, that variance in the wording appears because the writer of Thomas has used some other (and presumably earlier) source. But again, Goodacre argues that it may well differ because it comes later than the canonicals and edits them for its own purpose.
Goodacre counters:
It is in principle likely that in taking over source material, he [the author of Thomas] would not retain everything in the material he is using. Writers are not obliged to take over everything they find in their sources, and it is never surprising to see authors editing material to suit their needs. Indeed, one might expect the author of Thomas to edit source material in order to reflect his distinctive agenda, not least if the text is aiming to be enigmatic.
He continues:
We have little trouble in seeing Matthew and Luke redacting Mark without inheriting all of the tradition-historical baggage owned by the Markan text. Even a relatively short amount of time with a Gospel synopsis will provide the reader with plenty of examples of Matthew and Luke radically altering their source material . . . .
The situation is no different when it comes to sayings material. When one evangelist is working from a source, he may or may not carry over elements that illustrate that saying’s tradition history.
Goodacre concludes, “It is unrealistic to expect Thomas to have taken over all ‘the accumulated tradition-historical baggage’ from the Synoptics.” (Goodacre, TG, 18–19)
Argument 4: Verbatim agreement
According to this argument, Thomas does not have enough verbatim (word-for-word) correspondence with the Synoptics, so it must be an independent witness to the life of Jesus.
In responding, Gathercole and Goodacre both point out a false premise in the argument for independence: Has the criterion of “enough” verbatim correspondence (defined as what we see between the Synoptics) been misapplied to become a requirement for any text that might share their history or be dependent upon them? The problem is that the amount of verbatim agreement within the Synoptics can set the standard too high in assessing similarity between the Synoptics and Thomas. Gathercole says:
Some scholars are impressed by the level of agreement among the Synoptics and so adopt that level as a baseline of comparison. . . . By this standard, however, a great many cases of influence in ancient literature would fail. (Gathercole, CGT, 139)
Goodacre states what the true expectation should be: “In order for Thomas’s familiarity with the Synoptics to be established, one only requires knowledge of the Synoptics in certain places. It does not need to be a ‘consistent pattern.’ ” (Goodacre, TG, 46)
One of the many specific examples of verbatim agreement he provides is between Oxyrhynchus fragment P.Oxy 1.1–4 (Thomas 26), Matthew 7:5, and Luke 6:42. It is a thirteen-word agreement that he thinks “points to direct contact between the texts in question.” (Goodacre, TG, 31)
2. The Argument for its Dependence on the Synoptic Gospels
Although arguments in favor of Thomas’s independence have been refuted, do any arguments exist to show that the author of Thomas was in fact familiar with the Synoptics? As noted above, Thomas shares some verbatim agreement with them as well as common traditions. But this only displays mutual familiarity of content, perhaps through common sources or traditions. To prove Thomas is dependent on the Synoptics and therefore follows them but alters them, one must show that there are elements of Thomas that came directly from them, such as Matthean and Lukan redactions of Mark. However, Koester denies such dependence when he claims, “There is no evidence that Thomas knew any of the further redactions of the Markan passages by Matthew and/or Luke.” (Koester, ACG, 112) Koester’s claim supports the claim that Thomas has significance as a different, even a valid, account of the gospel.
But after analyzing the Greek fragments of Thomas and Greek versions of the Synoptics, Goodacre finds plenty of evidence that Thomas is dependent on them:
The diagnostic shards . . . that are provided by the presence, in Thomas, of Matthean redaction . . . and Lukan redaction . . . are telling. Thomas has parallels to places where Matthew and Luke are clearly redacting Markan material, as well as to material that is shot through with the thought and imagery that is characteristic of the evangelists. When Thomas uses the Synoptics, its author does not always do so in a coherent fashion, and there is a tendency to reproduce passages with their middles missing. (Goodacre, TG, 193–194)
After a similar analysis, Gathercole concludes:
There is in Thomas what one might term “significant” influence identifiable from Matthew and Luke. The influence is significant not because the redactional elements . . . which appear in Thomas are remarkably extensive in any particular places, but rather because these redactional traces appear in eleven out of twenty sayings in which they might be identified. (Gathercole, CGT, 223)
He further argues “that the Gospel of Thomas is aware of at least one Pauline epistle.” Again, this would make the author of Thomas dependent upon the apostolic tradition of writings that entered the canon and suggest that Thomas is put forward as an alternate view on that tradition. Gathercole thinks “The clearest sign of Pauline influence on Thomas is probably that of Romans 2.25–3.2 on GTh 53.” (Gathercole, CGT, 228–229) He also speculates influence from Hebrews and the hypothetical “Two Ways” tradition. (Gathercole, CGT, 250–62 and 263–66)
Evans finds even further NT influence on Thomas in its “quoting or alluding to more than half of the writings of the New Testament (that is, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1–2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, Hebrews, 1 John, Revelation).” (Evans, FJ, 68)
If The Gospel of Thomas relies on an awareness of the gospels and epistles that did enter the canon, then it is not independent (with value as an equivalent or even a better record of what Jesus said), but subordinate and possibly even subversive in what it teaches. That would explain why the Jesus Seminar scholars would include it in the canon and the church fathers did not.
3. The Syrian Theory
One noteworthy theory has been raised by Nicholas Perrin, the Franklin S. Dyrness Professor of Biblical Studies at Wheaton College. While Gathercole and Goodacre argue for a Greek origin to Thomas, Perrin argues that Thomas was written in Syria in the late second century AD. Initially, the text may appear to be a random collection of sayings with no order or structure, but when it is translated into Syrian it emerges as “a finely crafted Syriac text, completely knit together by catchwords,” which are words used to connect one line or phrase to the next. (Perrin, TT, 157) Perrin believes one of the author’s sources was Tatian’s Diatessaron as it “was the first gospel record in Syriac and Tatian’s was also the only Syriac gospel in existence in the second century.” (Perrin, TT, 183–184) Further evidence can be seen in the similarities Thomas and the Diatessaron have in theology and “textual peculiarities,” as well as their “shared sequence of sayings.” (Perrin, TT, 189) Since most scholars accept that the Diatessaron was written around 175 AD, Thomas must have been composed after that. (Perrin, TT, 193)
This research into the possible Syrian origin of Thomas gives an interesting historical context that suggests why it shows such textual and theological distinctiveness, which again could explain why it was not accounted worthy of inclusion in the canon.
4. The Attempt to Trace Its Composition
While the extant version of Thomas evidently depends on the Synoptics (at least), can we find any early, independent material embedded within it? We find this question much more difficult to answer. Various theories exist about the original language and method of composition of Thomas. Furthermore, were the sources for Thomas oral, textual, or a mixture of both?
Those who argue for an early core of Thomas do so according to form criticism and textual reconstruction, trying to find the “purest” version of Jesus’ sayings. Of course, all of this is impossible to know for certain. All we can do is reflect upon the methodology of such critics. Goodacre states:
The idea that Thomas features primitive sayings emerges from the legacy of classical form criticism of the Gospels, and it is an approach that is particularly well illustrated by the work of the Jesus Seminar. (Goodacre, TG, 145)
Goodacre criticizes the Jesus Seminar’s “Rules of Oral Evidence,” saying they are “form-critical assumptions that do not stand up to scrutiny,” with the most problematic being “the bogus ‘rule’ about simplicity.” He notes there is “no such rule as ‘the simpler, the earlier’ ” and that “ ‘simplicity’ is in the eye of the beholder.” He concludes:
In classroom sessions where lecturers have an hour to explain form criticism to new students, the tendencies approach offers the chance of illustrating an observable evolutionary model of early Christian tradition. But the model is wrong, and however great the apparent utility, it needs to be abandoned. (Goodacre, TG, 149–150)
Evans lays out a similar criticism, noting that attempts to
extract hypothetical early versions of Thomas from the Coptic and Greek texts that we possess today. . . . strike me as special pleading—that is, because the evidence that actually exists undermines the theory, appeals are made to hypothetical evidence more accommodating to the theory.
The problem here is that we do not know if there ever was an edition of the Gospel of Thomas substantially different from the Greek fragments of Oxyrhynchus or the later Coptic version from Nag Hammadi. Proposing an early form of Thomas, stripped of the embarrassing late and secondary features, is a gratuitous move. (Evans, FJ, 68)
5. The Influence of Gnosticism
Thomas claims to be a record of the “secret words” that Jesus taught, so it is not surprising to discover gnostic elements from the very beginning of the book. Evans says, “The private, esoteric orientation of the text is plainly evident. Unlike the canonical Gospels, these writings were for the spiritually elite, not common people . . . .Thomas places emphasis on knowledge and knowing.” (Evans, FJ, 64–65)
Meier states, “It is clear that the overarching intention of the redactor of the Gospel of Thomas is a gnostic one” and it therefore cannot be relied upon as a historical record: That is not even its own purpose, for what it does is reinterpret Christianity from a later perspective than what the historical gospels give us. He finds little likelihood of its reliability:
Since a gnostic world view of this sort was not employed to “reinterpret” Christianity in such a thorough-going way before sometime in the 2d century AD, there can be no question of the Gospel of Thomas as a whole, as it stands in the Coptic text, being a reliable reflection of the historical Jesus or of the earliest sources of 1st-century Christianity. . . . [I]t is somewhere in the 2d century that the composition we know as the Gospel of Thomas took shape as one expression of 2d-century gnostic Christianity. (Meier, MJ, 127)
6. Conclusion Regarding the Gospel of Thomas
Whether Thomas is a Syrian text that used Tatian’s Diatessaron as a source or a Greek text influenced by Greek versions of the Gospels, clearly Thomas depends on the canonical gospels. Such dependence—as well as gnostic elements present within the text—discounts it as being an early, reliable source of information about the historical Jesus. And though some want to theorize an earlier version of Thomas, there is no objective evidence of such an ancient core. We must rely on the extant texts for our studies.
Ancient Christian writers like Eusebius of Caesarea and Serapion, bishop of Antioch, knew of a supposed Gospel of Peter. In Akhmim, Egypt in the winter of 1886–1887, fragments of a gospel were found in a codex that has been attributed to Peter. In the 1970s and 80s more fragments were published, believed possibly to be portions of the Gospel of Peter.
1. Arguments for Its Independence
Koester thinks Peter is “the oldest writing under the authority of Peter himself.” He says, “In a number of instances the Gospel of Peter contains features that can be traced back to a stage in the development of the passion narrative and the story of the empty tomb which is older than that known by the canonical gospels.” (Koester, INT, 162–163) But he does think, “There are numerous features in these accounts which are obviously secondary.” (Koester, ACG, 217)
Crossan goes even further, arguing that within Peter lies an entire tradition, the Cross Gospel, which is “the single known source for the Passion and Resurrection narrative.” (Crossan, CTS, 404) He claims it is “earlier than and independent of the intracanonical gospels. Indeed, all four of them know of and use this source.” (Crossan, FOG, 184) He proposes three stages for the development of Peter: (1) the Cross Gospel, (2) its use by the canonical gospels as the sole source of the passion narrative, and (3) the integration of the Cross Gospel and details from the canonical gospels into the final Gospel of Peter. (Crossan, FOG, 16–30)
However, Koester finds “major problems” with Crossan’s hypothesis; for example, each gospel has differing stories regarding Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances. Why would each author select some details and not others? He concludes they “cannot derive from one single source. They are independent of one another. Each of the authors of the extant gospels and of their secondary endings drew these epiphany stories from their own particular tradition, not from a common source.” (Koester, ACG, 219–220) But Koester still thinks Peter, “as a whole, is not dependent upon any of the canonical gospels.” (Koester, ACG, 240)
New Testament scholar Paul Foster argues that the theory of Peter being “an independent and early witness to the events of the passion is incorrect.” (Foster, GP, 132) After examining the parallels Peter has with the Gospels, he offers two conclusions:
First, the Gospel of Peter appears to be posterior to the canonical gospels where there are parallel passages. In those case [sic] where there is unparalleled material, there is little reason to suppose that this is due to anything other than the author’s own creativity. Secondly, a strong case can be mounted for the literary dependence of the Gospel of Peter on all three of the synoptic accounts. (Foster, GP, 146)
2. Early or Late Date of Writing
Foster criticizes Crossan’s early dating of Peter, arguing that even if it does contain a Cross Gospel source that does not mean Peter must be dated to the first century. He goes on to say, “The majority of critical scholarship, despite the challenges raised by Crossan and [others], still prefers to locate the text in the second century.” Foster believes “a date of composition during the period 150–190 CE seems the most sensible suggestion.” He notes that “the apparent lack of knowledge of this text in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, or Melito of Sardis” makes it difficult to date it within the first half of the second century. (Foster, GP, 169–172)
Evans criticizes early dating of Peter due to ignorance of Jewish customs in the Akhmîm fragment:
According to 8.31 and 10.38 the Jewish elders and scribes camp out in the cemetery, as part of the guard keeping watch over the tomb of Jesus. Given Jewish views of corpse impurity, not to mention fear of cemeteries at night, the author of our fragment is unbelievably ignorant. Who could write such a story only twenty years after the death of Jesus? And if someone did at such an early time, can we really believe that the Evangelist Matthew, who was surely Jewish, would make use of such a poorly informed writing? One can scarcely credit this scenario. (Evans, FJ, 83)
3. Fantastic Elements
Peter contains fantastic elements, in comparison with the other four canonical Gospel accounts of the resurrection, such as giant angels escorting Jesus from the tomb along with a cross that speaks. Evans comments:
Can it be seriously maintained that the Akhmîm fragment’s resurrection account, complete with a talking cross and angels whose heads reach heaven, constitutes the most primitive account? Is this the account that the canonical Evangelists had before them? Or isn’t it more prudent to conclude that what we have here is still more evidence of the secondary, fanciful nature of this apocryphal writing? (Evans, FJ, 84)
However, Koester argues, “Even if a number of features in the Gospel of Peter may be due to later legendary growth of a text unprotected by canonical transmission, its basis must be an older text under the authority of Peter which was independent of the canonical gospels.” (Koester, INT, 163)
4. Conclusion Regarding the Gospel of Peter
Meier directs a sharp criticism at Crossan’s Cross Gospel theory: “Crossan has to spin a complicated and sometimes self-contradictory web as he assigns documents questionably early dates or unlikely lines of dependence.” He concludes Peter is “a 2d-century pastiche of traditions from the canonical Gospels, recycled through the memory and lively imagination of Christians who have heard the Gospels read and preached upon many a time. It provides no special access to early independent tradition about the historical Jesus.” (Meier, MJ, 116–118)
Evans concludes:
The evidence strongly suggests that the Akhmîm Gospel fragment is a late work, not an early work, even if we attempt to find an earlier substratum, gratuitously shorn of imagined late additions. . . . we have no solid evidence that allows us with any confidence to link the extant Akhmîm Gospel fragment with a second-century text, whether the Gospel of Peter mentioned by Bishop Serapion or some other writings from the late second century. Given its fantastic features and coherence with late traditions, it is not advisable to make use of this Gospel fragment for Jesus research. (Evans, FJ, 85)
Papyrus Egerton 2 (Egerton Gospel) consists of four fragments that were discovered in Egypt and delivered to scholars in 1934. The third and fourth fragments contain only a few words total while the first two fragments contain some stories that parallel the Synoptics and John. Again, Crossan and Koester claim that it presents a very early and independent tradition.
Crossan argues, “Egerton Papyrus 2 evinces a direct relationship with both John and Mark” and that “Mark is dependent on it directly.” He says it “shows a stage before the distinction of Johannine and Synoptic traditions was operative.” (Crossan, FOG, 183) Koester agrees that it “may well attest an earlier stage of the development in which pre-Johannine and pre-synoptic characteristics of language still existed side by side.” (Koester, ACG, 207) Thus, they both think Egerton is evidence of a tradition that existed alongside the canonical gospels. Furthermore, Koester finds it unlikely that someone would have “deliberately composed [it] by selecting sentences from three different gospel writings,” and that “to uphold the hypothesis of dependence upon written gospels, one would have to assume that [it] was written from memory.” (Koester, ACG, 215)
Evans offers three arguments against Crossan’s and Koester’s conclusions:
1. “Several times editorial improvements introduced by Matthew and Luke appear in Egerton” along with “other indications that the Egerton Papyrus is later than the canonical Gospels (for example, compare Egerton line 32 with Mk 1:40; Mt 8:2; Lk 5:12; or Egerton lines 39–41 with Mk 1:44; Mt 8:4; Lk 17:14).” (Evans, FJ, 89)
2. Countering Koester’s claim that someone would not have composed Egerton by picking and choosing from the Synoptics, Evans reflects on Justin Martyr’s harmony of the Synoptics and Tatian’s Diatessaron. He asks if they, “writing in the second century, can compose their respective harmonies through the selection of sentences and phrases from this Gospel and that Gospel, why couldn’t the author of the Egerton Papyrus do the same thing? Indeed, it is likely that this is the very thing he did.” (Evans, FJ, 89)
3. If this gospel is as primitive as Crossan and Koester suggest, “then we must wonder why we have no other fragment or any other evidence of the existence of this extraordinarily primitive Gospel. Why don’t we have other papyri, extracanonical Gospels or patristic quotations attesting this primitive pre-Synoptic, pre-Johannine unified tradition?” (Evans, FJ, 89–90)
The story of Jesus sowing seed on a river and it producing an abundance of fruit provides further evidence against the antiquity of Egerton, because of its similarity to a story contained in another extracanonical text, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Evans says it is “important to appreciate the presence of what appears to be a fanciful tale among the passages preserved by the Egerton Papyrus. The appearance of this tale, which is like those that are all too common among the later extracanonical Gospels, significantly increases the burden of proof for those who wish to argue that the Egerton traditions are primitive, even pre-Synoptic.” (Evans, FJ, 91–92).]
Evans concludes, “While the hypothesis of Crossan, Koester and others remains a theoretical possibility, the evidence available at this time favors the likelihood that Papyrus Egerton 2 (or the Egerton Gospel) represents a second-century combination of elements from the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John rather than primitive first-century material on which the canonical Gospels depended.” (Evans, FJ, 92)
A Coptic fragment of the Gospel of Mary was discovered in the late nineteenth century, with another two Greek fragments becoming known in the twentieth. There is no complete copy of Mary, and the three overlapping fragments comprise at most half of the gospel. It tells the story of Mary Magdalene recalling to the disciples teachings Jesus had given her. In this account, Andrew and Peter are highly skeptical as her teachings are at odds with what they have learned, which saddens her greatly. The fragmented story ends after Levi defends her and commands the disciples to continue proclaiming the gospel.
Karen L. King says that the Gospel of Mary
presents a radical interpretation of Jesus’ teachings as a path to inner spiritual knowledge; it rejects his suffering and death as the path to eternal life; it exposes the erroneous view that Mary of Magdala was a prostitute for what it is—a piece of theological fiction; it presents the most straightforward and convincing argument in any early Christian writing for the legitimacy of women’s leadership; it offers a sharp critique of illegitimate power and a utopian vision of spiritual perfection; it challenges our rather romantic views about the harmony and unanimity of the first Christians; and it asks us to rethink the basis for church authority. All written in the name of a woman. (King, GMM, 3–4)
She says scholars “assumed in advance that the Gospel of Mary is heretical” by comparing it anachronistically against “standard interpretations of the New Testament.” She claims “its position on women’s leadership is no doubt a factor in its being labeled heresy.” (King, GMM, 170–171)
King notes that Mary was not written by Mary Magdelene but was ascribed to her “to claim apostolic authority for its teachings.” (King, GMM, 184) It bears testament to the fact that “authority is vested not in a male hierarchy, but in the leadership of men and women who have attained strength of character and spiritual maturity.” (King, GMM, 189)
1. The Uncertainty of Its Dating
Bock, noting Mary’s fragmentary nature and how little of it has been recovered, comments that its “small size makes dating difficult.” (Bock, MG, 66) King dates Mary “to the first half of the second century” (King, GMM, 184), but Jenkins states this is “unusually early. As so often with these noncanonical works, we have no certain clues about dates, as the work is not quoted by external authorities. . . . A consensus of recent scholarship would place the writing of Mary not much before 180 or 200, about a hundred years later than King’s figure.” He continues: “One reason for suggesting a late date for Mary is that the work contains a kind of Gnostic mythologizing which is characteristic of the later second or early third century, and suggests the influence of Valentinus.” (Jenkins, HG, 139)
2. Dependence in Part upon the Synoptic Gospels
Biblical scholar and Anglican priest C. M. Tuckett examines the parallels the Gospel of Mary has with the New Testament and believes that many instances show redactional elements of the gospel writings. This means the common links with the NT are “with the finished versions of the gospels, not just with the traditions which lie behind the gospels and which are common stock for many Christians.” But the writer did not merely use the gospels as a source. “The author of the Gospel of Mary has claimed for him- or herself the right to develop the tradition far more freely and to rewrite and/ or rearrange many of the features of the story, at times quite radically.” This would be consistent with a second century dating of Mary. Tuckett concludes:
Given the nature of the parallels that seem to exist, and the fact that some of the parallels involve at times redactional elements on the side of the (later to become) canonical texts, it seems likely that the Gospel of Mary is primarily a witness to the later, developing tradition generated by these texts, and does not provide independent witness to early Jesus tradition itself. (Tuckett, GM, 73–74)
3. Were Jesus and Mary Lovers?
Some modern writings, such as The Da Vinci Code, speculate that Jesus and Mary were lovers. This idea is fueled in part by the Gospel of Mary, which says that Mary was “much loved by the Savior, as no other woman.” Ehrman counters:
It is clear that there are some who celebrate Christ’s love of the woman over that of the men, but it would probably be wrong to see his love for Mary as a different in kind from his love of his male disciples (i.e., it’s not romantic love); it is a difference instead of degree. (Ehrman, TFDVC, 179, emphasis in original)
He adds, “There have occasionally been historical scholars . . . who have claimed that it is likely that Jesus was married. But the vast majority of scholars of the New Testament and early Christianity have reached just the opposite conclusion.”
One of his strongest reasons is that
in none of our early Christian sources is there any reference to Jesus’ marriage or to his wife. This is true not only of the canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John but of all our other Gospels and all of our other early Christian writings put together. There is no allusion to Jesus as married in the writings of Paul, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of the Nazarenes, the Gospel of the Egyptians, the Gospel of the Ebionites—and on and on. List every ancient source we have for the historical Jesus, and in none of them is there mention of Jesus being married. (Ehrman, TFDVC, 153, emphasis in original)
In 1960 professor of ancient history at Columbia University Morton Smith announced to the Society of Biblical Literature that he had discovered part of a letter of Clement of Alexandria in the Mar Saba Monastery near Jerusalem while on sabbatical in 1958. It was written in Greek in eighteenth-century handwriting in the back of a 1646 edition of the letters of Ignatius. Most importantly, it quotes from a Secret Gospel of Mark, which contains passages that are not in the canonical Gospel of Mark. This Secret Gospel of Mark, quoted in Clement’s letter, contains a provocative story in which Jesus raises a boy from the dead and then teaches him about the kingdom of God naked.
Some scholars believe that Secret Mark is the earliest version of the canonical gospel of Mark, while others are highly skeptical. Crossan criticizes the handling of Secret Mark:
The authenticity of a text can only be established by the consensus of experts who have studied the original document under scientifically appropriate circumstances. Twenty-five years after the original discovery this has not happened and that casts a cloud over the entire proceedings . . . .
The essential problem, then, is the lack of several independent studies of the original document by experts on Greek handwriting . . . .
When one brings together a document neither verified nor available in its original rescription and a theory about Jesus as a possibly homosexual baptizer, the mixture is volatile enough for accusation and sensation . . . .
My own position is that independent study of the original manuscript is absolutely necessary for scholarly certitude. (Crossan, FOG, 100–103, emphasis in original)
But in spite of his reservations, Crossan says his “own procedure is to accept the document’s authenticity as a working hypothesis.” (Crossan, FOG, 103) He concludes that “canonical Mark is a very deliberate revision of Secret Mark.” (Crossan, FOG, 108) Crossan’s conclusion puts forward a strong claim, but research into it raises a number of questions.
Evans states that “from the start, scholars suspected that the text was a forgery and that Smith was himself the forger.” He echoes Crossan’s concern “that no one besides Smith has actually studied the physical document and that the paper and ink have never been subjected to the kinds of tests normally undertaken,” and then laments that many scholars have still accepted the authenticity of Secret Mark. He states outright, “The Clementine letter and the quotations of Secret Mark embedded within it are a modern hoax, and Morton Smith almost certainly is the perpetrator.” (Evans, FJ, 95)
In his book The Gospel Hoax, Stephen Carlson provides his reasoning for why Secret Mark is a forgery:
There are three main reasons why the manuscript is unlikely to have been penned by an eighteenth-century monk at Mar Saba. First, the execution of the script raises questions of forgery, including unnatural hesitations in the pen strokes, the “forger’s tremor,” and anomalies in the shape of the letters when compared with eighteenth-century manuscripts written at Mar Saba. Second, the manuscript’s provenance cannot be traced back before 1958, which means that the opportunity for a twentieth-century origin cannot be ruled out. Third, there is another, previously unnoticed manuscript at Mar Saba from the same hand, which Smith himself identified as belonging to a named twentieth-century individual. Additional samples of that individual’s Greek handwriting have been obtained and are found to account for the observed anomalies. (Carlson, GH, 25)
Carlson concludes that Smith himself perpetrated the hoax, as he “meets all three criteria” of “means, motive, and opportunity.” (Carlson, GH, 74)
Although Secret Mark has its proponents, it also has its many critics who reject it as a hoax. Therefore, as Evans says, “No research into the Gospels and the historical Jesus should take Smith’s document seriously.” (Evans, FJ, 97)
In AD 180, Irenaeus wrote Against Heresies to condemn the Cainites, a group of people who worshiped the “villains” of the Bible, such as Cain, Esau, and the men of Sodom. One of the heretical texts he mentions is the Gospel of Judas. In 2006 it was revealed that the text itself was supposedly discovered within a codex in Egypt in the late 1970s. The writing claims to contain the secret discussions Jesus had with Judas. It elevates Judas to the level of Jesus’ greatest disciple, instead of a traitor and a villain. Judas is the hero of Jesus’ crucifixion, assisting Jesus in completing his mission of salvation.
Irenaeus was right in condemning Judas as a gnostic text because it is full of gnostic themes such as hidden knowledge and a divine light within. More specifically, it can be traced to Sethian Gnosticism—a form of Gnosticism that venerates Adam and Eve’s third son, Seth, as a supposed divine incarnation—mostly because of an allusion to Barbelo, a prominent divine figure of Sethian writings. (Kasser, Meyer, and Wurst, GJ, 139–140)
Ehrman makes clear what the Gospel of Judas is not:
It is not a Gospel written by Judas, or one that even claims to be. It is a Gospel about Judas (and, of course, Jesus). It is not a Gospel written in Judas’s own time by someone who actually knew him or who had inside information concerning his inner motivations. It is not a historically accurate report about the man Judas himself. It is not as ancient as the four Gospels that made it into the New Testament. It is not even older than all of our other noncanonical Gospels. . . . The Gospel of Judas was written at least 100 or, more likely, 125 years after Judas’s death by someone who did not have independent access to historical records about the events he was narrating. It is not a book, therefore, that will provide us with additional information about what actually happened in Jesus’ lifetime, or even in his last days leading up to his death. (Ehrman, LGJI, 172–173, emphasis in original)
We have examined some of the most popular extracanonical gospels and shown why they do not belong in the New Testament. They show evidence of late dating, of dependence on the Gospels, and, in the case of the Secret Gospel of Mark, of being an outright hoax. This should give us confidence that there was no grand conspiracy or war of Christianities after which the victors determined the course of Christendom. Instead, the path of orthodoxy was set very early and the sects and texts that were excluded truly were heretical.
This chapter began with a quote by the agnostic historian and Bible scholar Bart Ehrman, and it is only fitting to end with one as well, one that verifies everything we have learned so far:
The oldest and best sources we have for knowing about the life of Jesus . . . are the four Gospels of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This is not simply the view of Christian historians who have a high opinion of the New Testament and its historical worth; it is the view of all serious historians of antiquity of every kind, from committed evangelical Christians to hardcore atheists. This view is not, in other words, a biased perspective of only a few naive wishful thinkers; it is the conclusion that has been reached by every one of the hundreds (thousands, even) of scholars who work on the problem of establishing what really happened in the life of the historical Jesus, scholars who . . . have learned Greek and Hebrew, the languages of the Bible, along with other related languages such as Latin, Syriac, and Coptic, scholars who read the ancient sources in the ancient languages and know them inside and out. We may wish there were older, more reliable sources, but ultimately it is the sources found within the canon that provide us with the most, and best, information. (Ehrman, TFDVC, 102–103)
Therefore, we should hold with confidence that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the only true gospels and that they give us accurate information about the life of Jesus Christ.
1. Michel Foucault has been a pivotal figure behind the shift to postmodern relativism, i.e., the loss of belief in objective truth. Postmodern academic culture is pervaded by claims that so-called knowledge is really indoctrination or oppression of one sort or another. Suspicion becomes the accepted way of thinking about truth-statements, along with the assumption that researching the history of a developing idea is like researching genealogy—it will reveal a history of interacting ideas in a power struggle, and the victorious idea will be received as what everyone agrees to be the case. Pervading popular culture and fueling political correctness, Foucault’s description of how cultures think asserts that our presumed truths have come to us from the winners of the struggle. Chapter 30 treats this important topic.
2. For an in-depth and careful analysis of the criteria utilized by the early church for inclusion in the canon, see Michael J. Kruger, The Question of Canon (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013). We agree with his assessment that the canonical books were written with divine authority, were recognized and used by early Christians as Scripture, and that the church subsequently reached a consensus about these books.