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Modern Scholars Examine Ancient Texts

It is remarkable that many of the ancient Christian and Gnostic writings have survived centuries of assault from weather (temperature fluctuations and humidity), mishandling, and deterioration from exposure to insects, mildew, and rot. A few survived in decent shape and relative completeness while others exist in only fragments. Scholars have reconstructed some texts using a variety of methods, including sorting and reassembling fragments, making educated guesses about missing words, and cross-referencing against other copies or translations. Their monumental efforts have contributed greatly to the scholarship on early Christianity.

The Original Sacred Documents

Biblical scholars who worked on the Nag Hammadi library have mentioned in their commentaries the language used to write each copy of the sacred manuscripts. Most often the work was a Coptic translation from the original Greek. That raises the obvious question: if the discovery was of copies, where are the originals? Many things could have happened to them. Not only ancient writings of the Gnostics, but writings of philosophers and religious texts were lost, destroyed, or fell into disuse and, therefore, were no longer copied, circulated, or passed down. Some ancient manuscripts written in Greek only exist today as fragile bits of papyri or scroll.

Today, the Nag Hammadi treasures are safely protected in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, Egypt, after spending centuries tucked away in a jar buried in the Egyptian desert. The Berlin Codex (also known as the Akhmim Codex or Berolinensis Gnosticus 8502), which included a fragmentary copy of The Gospel of Mary as well as The Apocryphon of John, The Sophia of Jesus Christ, and an epitome of The Act of Peter, had been wrapped, according to one story, in feathers until it was discovered at a Christian burial site in a wall niche in 1896. The Dead Sea Scrolls dating to the first century B.C. were stashed in an earthenware jar in the valley of Qumran near the Dead Sea where there once stood a settlement of the Essenes. Today four scrolls are housed in The Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem.

Interestingly, the book of Jeremiah, found in the Hebrew scriptures in a passage about deeds of purchase for land, told the ancients how to store such important documents — in earthenware jars.

Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Take these evidences, this evidence of the purchase, both which is sealed, and this evidence which is open; and put them in an earthen vessel, that they may continue many days. — Jeremiah 32:14

Many of the Gnostic works are copies from the Greek, translated into the Egyptian Coptic script. With regard to the Nag Hammadi texts, the monks living in St. Pachomius Monastery near Nag Hammadi possibly copied and later hid the codices in the desert at a time when such writings were denounced as heresy. But no one really knows for certain who copied the texts. Scholars can only make educated guesses based on clues. James Robinson, editor of The Nag Hammadi Library , asserts that the Nag Hammadi texts have a resonance with ascetics of all times. Robinson also states that Christians composed many of the works in their original forms and that the individuals who collected the Nag Hammadi library were also Christians. So putting the two comments together, it would appear that Christian ascetics are the most likely persons to have copied and buried the texts. This again suggests the monks.

Manipulation of the Copies and Translations

How can modern readers be sure that the works they are reading have remained faithful to the original composition when numerous translators and copyists likely participated in the creation of new transmissions of the texts? That question seems particularly significant in respect to works of antiquity, especially the Bible. To answer the question, it may be helpful to first know that the Hebrew scriptures or books of the Old Testament were composed in Hebrew, with some portions in Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Greek.

Pope Damasus commissioned a standardized version of the Bible known as the Latin Vulgate when he became totally exasperated by Latin versions of biblical texts that were rife with errors. The word “Bible” derives from the Greek word biblia, meaning books. Jerome, a highly regarded scholar, did the work on the Latin Vulgate version.

Modern translators possess varying skill levels. So, too, in ancient times was a work necessarily at the mercy of some who may have rendered exceptional translations while others produced poor-quality works, missing sublime profundity and nuance, obscuring or, perhaps even worse, simply not understanding the meaning of passages, esoteric or otherwise. They may have introduced new errors or repeated errors in the copies from which they worked. They could have missed lines or repeated lines or words. These are just a few of the things scholars look for when they have a good control copy with which to compare a manuscript. But without the original composition or good copy of the original or other sources for comparison (the early church fathers sometimes copied an opponent's complete document to refute it) it would be difficult to know how well any ancient text has been translated, edited, or redacted.

Reasons for Alterations

It should seem obvious that if opposing groups desired to use the same sacred text but with different understandings of the work, they could modify the text to reflect their bias and further their agenda. For example, if a text contained a word or a line considered offensive or suggestive of something in conflict with a particular group's doctrine, the text could be rejected outright. In primitive Christianity, orthodox fathers could label it as heresy. Or the Gnostics could determine that the “real” interpretation was too esoteric for the orthodox and the masses and therefore keep it secret. An offending line could be changed or deleted. On a larger scale, a new beginning could be tacked on or a different ending given, pronouns could change, and other manipulations could be done. Of course, unintentional error was a possibility as well. Evidence of alterations of texts has been observed in the Gnostic texts as well as the New Testament writings.

Documents Surviving in Epitome

Epitome means a shortening of a text into a summary or miniaturized form. Some works of the ancient Greco-Roman world exist today only in the form of the epitome, or a kind of synopsis. Large works lost to antiquity would at a later time be re-created in the form of an epitome by writers attempting to stay close to the point of view and spirit of the original work. In this way, some semblance of the work continued. Here again, the writer could stay close to the original author's intent and composition, or introduce a bias not found in the original. Epitomes, in some cases, are all that the modern world has of certain lost works such as the precis (written by John Xiphilinus) for the History of Rome by Cassius Dio and the epitome of the Act of Peter.

The epitome of the Act of Peter is a Christian manuscript found in the Berlin Codex 8502. It details the story of Peter's beautiful virgin daughter who is paralyzed on one side. A rich man named Ptolemy observed Peter's ten-year-old daughter bathing with her mother and desired her for his wife. The manuscript then has missing text, but when it resumes, Peter must have agreed to allow Ptolemy to have his daughter because the servants are depositing the girl at Ptolemy's house. There she praises the Lord for allowing her to escape defilement. Ptolemy then has a vision in which God tells him he should not defile the girl and instead see her as his sister. God declares he is the one Spirit for both of them. Ptolemy bequeaths a piece of land to Peter's daughter. Because of her, he believed in God and was “saved.” The story ends with Peter selling the land and giving the money to the poor.

Why Mary Magdalene Is Missing

Some feminist theologians have suggested that Mary Magdalene posed a problem for the emerging church. The fledgling Christian church survived through unification and organization based on a hierarchy of male clergy who wielded ecclesiastical power to varying degrees. Because of her role as eyewitness to the risen Jesus, so central to Christian doctrine, Mary Magdalene was too important and well known to be completely edited out of the canonical gospels. However, the writers and possibly later editors or scribes may have marginalized her story to serve the patriarchal orthodox bias, according to some religious scholars.

In the Gnostic Gospel of Mary, the Savior warns his disciples to be on their guard for error and to know that he is within them. It seems that they must first understand those important ideas before he will commission them to preach the good news.

It is unlikely that a faith with a woman at the center (as its founding mother) would have appealed to the patriarchal religious men of that time, and it might have posed a problem for recruiting new converts. Mary Magdalene's story was further shifted in an erroneous portrait painted by Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century as a penitent prostitute. From that time on, she embodied the “fallen woman” with its resonance back to Eve and the Original Sin.

Mary Magdalene in the Canon

The canonical gospels mention Mary Magdalene a total of fourteen times, mostly as a name in a list. When she is included in lists of other women, her name often appears at the beginning of the list, or behind Mother Mary, an indication of her stature and importance. Those texts also say that Jesus healed her by casting out seven devils. She became his faithful follower and with other women provided for him and his entourage, out of her means. She stood at the base of his cross with his mother Mary. She and some of the other women followers went to the tomb to anoint Jesus' body with spices and found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. Mary Magdalene witnessed the transcendent form of Jesus and bore testimony to it. She obeyed Jesus' commission to find the other disciples and tell them the good news. Following that, she disappears from the New Testament.

Mary Magdalene in the Gnostic Gospels

The Gnostic Gospels reveal that Mary Magdalene was recognized as the closest female disciple to Jesus, his companion and confidante. Jesus praised her brilliant understanding of his teachings and told her he would “complete her” in the mysteries of the Divine. He defended her when Peter asked that she be made to leave them because she was a woman. Jesus loved her more than all the other women (according to Peter in the Gospel of Mary), and kissed her often, much to the consternation of the other disciples (according to the Gospel of Philip). After the Resurrection, Mary shared a secret vision with the Peter and the others in which she saw Jesus, who praised her for not being afraid and explained how it was possible for her to see him. She did not back down as Peter challenged her secret teaching. She had proximity to the Savior, a reputation for understanding his teachings, and an ability to eloquently articulate his ideas, and she proclaimed the good news in integrity and boldness. Many would naturally flock to her after Jesus' death. Some may have considered her Jesus' heir apparent and mother of the church, an assertion that most assuredly would have been hotly disputed by the dominant orthodox branch of Christians.

The word presbytera has been found on some ancient tomb inscriptions. Since a presbyter in early Christianity was the term used for priest, some say this proves that the tombs belonged to female priests. However, others point out that the term was also used to designate an office bearer such as an administrator or teacher. In later centuries, it meant a priest's wife or an abbess.

Mary Magdalene's tradition survived centuries, emerging especially in places where Gnosticism flourished. Although she embodied the perfect apostle, the writers of the New Testament gospels did not call her one. Today, however, the Roman Catholic Church refers to Mary Magdalene as “Apostle to the Apostles” and the Greek Orthodox Church calls her “Equal Unto the Apostles.” Modern Gnostics continue to revere her, and many modern women and men see in her the perfect spiritual exemplar. There is a speculation, although it is highly disputed, that she may have been the Beloved Disciple and perhaps wrote or served as the eyewitness source for the Gospel of John.

Redaction of the Gospel of John

The Gospel of John, also called the fourth gospel of the New Testament because of its order in sequence, differs greatly from the synoptic Gospels. However, that reason alone is not why religious scholars think that the gospel had a little redaction. The Gospel of John contains sayings of Jesus and some of the events in his ministry such as the feeding of the multitudes, the marriage at Cana, and the raising of Lazarus from the dead, among others. However, some biblical scholars have questioned the authorship of the Gospel of John and have suggested that the present version shows work on the text that must have come at a time later than the original composition.

What is redaction?

Redaction means to edit, revise, or manipulate written material in order to position it in a suitable literary form. Ways in which something could be redacted include shifting the sequence of the order of things, inserting a new beginning, rearranging material, weaving new words into a document, affixing a different ending or conclusion, or framing a text in a certain way.

The suggestion of tampering with the Gospel of John prior to its inclusion into the canon comes from Greek language peculiarities found within the composition. There are breaks in odd places, repetitions in dialogue or sections of discourse, and passages of text that appear in the wrong place for the context. Biblical scholars assert that after the gospel was completed, chapter 21 was tacked on because the Greek style for that chapter differs from the rest of the gospel. John 14:31 and John 18:1 show two different endings to the Last Supper discourse of Jesus in the Upper Room. The magnificent prologue contains a hymn to open the work, but was most likely added later to open the piece and lengthen the work. The entire narrative of the gospel seems to have been arranged and adapted in a way to serve the author's theological agenda. For example, John seems to show through the writing of the gospel an opposition to the followers of John the Baptist in order to exalt Jesus, perhaps to emphasize a belief in Jesus' divinity, and to advocate the need for all Christians to be anchored in that belief. There is a touch of polemic in the narrative as well, showing the synagogue and the church at opposite poles and with references to Sadducees and Pharisees who harshly treated Jesus being referred to as “the Jews.”

Marcion eviscerated the Gospel of Luke and edited out some of the letters of Paul (the pastoral Epistles) to create a canon for use in his churches. Marcion felt the God of Israel was an inferior god, subordinate to the higher God whom Jesus Christ revealed. His movement rivaled the traditional church in the early centuries. In 144 A.D., the Roman church excommunicated Marcion.

All these observations of redaction of the Gospel of John are not new. Scholars began doing the research on the inconsistencies in the 1800s. In fact, redaction criticism is now a scholarly discipline in which the expert scrutinizes the material to determine the theological agenda or bias of the author or editor. There are three things in particular that critics can search for to determine editing. They look for themes that seem to be hit upon repetitively. They compare two versions of the work to see if the latter piece has omissions or additions. Finally, the experts study the words to figure out the words that the author commonly used; if there are words the author would never use, it suggests the work of an editor on the piece. From studying a manuscript that way, experts can determine the theological leanings of the writer and editor.

Why are Bibles revised?

The scriptures are timeless, but cultural changes and an explosion of biblical studies account for some of the reasons why Bibles are revised. New translations and explanations are necessary to adjust the materials to keep up with biblical scholarship and new understandings.

The Gospel of Mark stands apart from the other texts of the canon as having verifiable evidence indicating revisions of the text. Scholars know about at least four endings to that gospel and believe they were created in the earliest centuries of the church. Twelve new verses were added onto a Greek copy known as the Codex Washingtonianus. Those twelve verses cannot be found in the oldest version of that gospel. Even the early church fathers like Clement of Alexandria and Origen did not know about those verses. Scholars believe they were the work of a later editor or scribe.

Forgeries and Falsifications Exposed

Sacred theology, some say, begins and ends on the written word of God. But forgeries of texts thought to be sacred, authentic, and inspired have surfaced from time to time — not only in the modern world, where manuscripts dating to antiquity are priceless, but in ancient times as well. Before the New Testament writings, there existed the oral tradition. The ancient Hebrews lived in a heightened sensitivity of the divine presence in their lives and relied on both oral and written tradition. In the first and second centuries, there were many claiming to be messiahs and prophets with personal revelations and apocalyptic visions. The scriptures reveal that the Apostles of Jesus were empowered by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Some of the Gnostic sects found visions and inspired revelation to be divine blessings upon the spiritually advanced or mature, and their sacred texts boldly declare their beliefs. Inherent, however, in any spoken teaching or text is the possibility of deception. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians to beware of ministers of Satan and false apostles.

For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works. — 2 Corinthians 11:13–15

Many works of antiquity must be scrutinized by academics in a variety of fields to determine if the material is a forgery or has been falsified. One such work in dispute is the Mar Saba letter, alleged by some to be a modern forgery. The work was unknown to religious and historical scholars until it was discovered by Morton Smith, who published a book in 1973 about a letter supposedly written by Clement of Alexandria that Smith had discovered when he was cataloging documents at the Mar Saba monastery in 1958. He claimed that endpapers in a printed edition of Ignatius of Antioch (from the seventeenth century) contain the letter's text. Smith took some photographs of the letter after his discovery of it. In the letter, Clement writes to Theodore, the intended recipient of the letter, that Mark, author of the Gospel of Mark, wrote a second, more mystical and secret gospel that contained falsehoods, added by the Carpocratians. But Clement emphasized that Theodore was to deny ever knowing that such a gospel existed even if he were sworn to an oath. Clement references two sections of the secret gospel that have to do with Jesus spending the night with a rich young man (wearing only a linen cloth) as he teaches the youth about the kingdom of God, perhaps some kind of mystical or metaphysical initiation.

The Carpocratians were Gnostics who believed that Jesus was not divine but that his soul was pure and that he could remember the sphere of the unbegotten God from which he came. The Carpocratians were not bound by rules of morality or Mosaic Law because they believed both belonged to the powers of the material world.

Three years after Smith's book came out, four scholars visited the monastery to have a look at the letter and to take some photographs. Then one year after that, the volume with the letter was transferred to the Patriarchate library in Jerusalem. The librarian removed the manuscript pages, had them photographed, and, in 2000, the photographs were published. Since then, scholars have not been able to view the manuscript. No other copy of the secret gospel exists with which to compare the brief references in Clement's letter. The veracity of the letter as well as the secret gospel is being disputed.

The recent finding of a gospel bearing the name of the most reviled of Jesus' followers has also stirred controversy and raised questions of authenticity. Some Christians have opined that the Gospel of Judas, which was only recently made available to the world to read, is a forgery. They note that it offends Christian sensibility because of its revelation that Jesus understood that Judas had to betray him, that Judas was loyal to Jesus and carried out the action as necessary, and that Jesus encouraged him to do it. Further, the Gospel of Judas, like so many of the Gnostic gospels written about in this book, points to salvation through knowledge rather than through the death and resurrection of Jesus. Those claiming the text is a fraud assert that Christians should heed the Apostle Paul's warning to the Galatians of certain persons preaching a different Christ. They noted that they did not recognize the Christ in the Gospel of Judas and emphasized that the gospel simply does not stand up to scholarly scrutiny or have any credibility as a historical document because its language places it in the wrong language at the wrong time.

The Apocryphon of James had expanded versions of sayings found in the New Testament gospels, and it made reference to other secret texts used by the spiritually advanced. Modern scholars are aware of more than fifty Christian gospels and secret writings that circulated among Christian sects in the first century.

But there are those on the other side of the argument who believe the text is genuine. For example, James Robinson, editor of The Nag Hammadi Library and professor emeritus of religion at Claremont Graduate University, was quoted in the Boston Globe as saying he was convinced that the document was not a forgery. No one likes to be duped, but everyone enjoys a good mystery.

Any text bearing the name of a famous person or sect of antiquity should be critically examined, scrutinized by scholars, and tested in every way possible to determine the truth. Otherwise, there is simply mystery, wild speculation, controversy, and dissenting opinion. The Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, illustrate the necessity for tests. Discovered in eleven caves near Khirbet Qumran, the scrolls were believed to date from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D. Professor Solomon Zeitlin at Philadelphia's Dropsie University argued vigorously to reject the antiquity of the Dead Sea Scrolls, based on philological assessment (the classical scholarship of words and their meanings). However, carbon-14 dating proved that the linen wrappers of the scrolls dated to the late Second Temple Period. The tests confirmed that the scrolls were genuine.