Syncretistic Evidence
Recent blockbuster works of fiction like The Da Vinci Code have misled many readers because of fictitious claims that “all descriptions of ancient documents are accurate.”40 As a result, countless people around the world now believe that various non-canonical documents present an alternate story of Christian origins that has a greater historical likelihood of being reliable. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Particularly intriguing to many have been the Gnostic Gospels, so we will deal with them first and then turn to other post-New Testament apocryphal documents.
The Gnostic Gospels
Just after World War II, a cache of codices was unearthed in Egypt at a site known as Nag Hammadi. Ranging from the second to the sixth centuries in origin, a sizeable majority of these books reflected elaborate Gnostic reflection. Gnosticism was a collection of loosely related religious movements that combined significant elements of Greek philosophy and ritual with Christian characters and themes to create a hybrid, syncretistic mythology. At the heart of these various movements lay the conviction that matter is inherently evil and, thus, that only the spirit can be redeemed. Redemption, it was often believed, came through Jesus, but not through his atoning death and bodily resurrection. Rather salvation came by knowledge—esoteric knowledge, to be more precise. Humans who recognized the spark of divinity deeply embedded in themselves and who fanned it into flame could then become initiates into a Gnostic sect, living as already somewhat free from the shackles of the body and the material world while looking forward to escaping this world and their bodies altogether upon death. Most Gnostics, therefore, were ascetics, trying to deny themselves normal bodily appetites, although a few swung the pendulum to the opposite extreme and became hedonists, indulging the body since they would soon be rid of it anyway. Most Gnosticism was anti-Semitic, rejecting the God of Israel as evil and the laws of the Israelites as perverse. It was also elitist, believing that no one in whom the gods had not already planted the spark of divinity could ever be saved.41
The Gospel of Thomas
If there is any Gnostic Gospel likely to preserve historical information about Jesus outside of texts that simply repeat information already found in the canonical Gospels, it is the so-called Coptic Gospel of Thomas. Though fourth century in origin in its Nag Hammadi form, second-century Greek fragments of it had already been discovered in nineteenth-century archaeological excavations at Oxyrhynchus. Thomas is not a connected narrative biography but a collection of 114 mostly independent sayings attributed to Jesus. A little over a third find some reasonably discernible parallel in the canonical texts, roughly another third seem fairly clearly Gnostic in meaning, and the remaining sayings are those that often fascinate scholars the most. Might there be authentic teachings of Jesus in this mix not preserved elsewhere? There certainly could be, but how would one ever discern which ones they are? After all, presumably all of Thomas’ sayings could be interpreted in a Gnostic fashion, so it would be hard to develop foolproof criteria for sifting the authentic from the inauthentic. Those who have made educated guesses as to which passages might go back to Jesus often include sayings 82 (“He who is near me is near the fire, and he who is far from me is far from the kingdom”) and 77b (“Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there”) or the little parables of the woman carrying a jar of meal (Thos. 97) and the man who stuck his sword into the wall (Thos. 98). They read, respectively,
(97) Jesus said, “The kingdom of the [Father] is like a certain woman who was carrying a jar full of meal. While she was walking [on] a road, still some distance from home, the handle of the jar broke and the meal emptied out behind her on the road. She did not realize it, she had noticed no accident. When she reached her house, she set the jar down and found it empty.”
(98) Jesus said, “The kingdom of the Father is like a certain man who wanted to kill a powerful man. In his own house he drew his sword and stuck it into the wall in order to find out whether his hand could carry through. Then he slew the powerful man.”
Accepting a few such sayings, however, hardly revolutionizes our portrait of Jesus. To argue that Gnosticism (or any other form of heterodoxy) actually predates orthodox, apostolic Christianity, requires dating Thomas (or other documents) into the mid-first century without any actual documentary evidence or external testimony supporting such a date. In fact, Nicholas Perrin has shown that the structure of Thomas, based on catchwords linking each saying to the next, appears most clearly in its Syriac form, which is dependent on a harmony of the Gospels written by a Syrian named Tatian in about 180 CE. So Thomas may well not date to any earlier a date than this.42 Even if it does, the fact that it contains parallels to every one of the four canonical Gospels and all of the putative sources and layers of editing that scholars typically identify behind them strongly suggests that Thomas was not composed until the second century, by which time all four canonical texts were complete and had begun to circulate widely.
Scholars like Elaine Pagels, Karen King and others often support a Thomasine and/or Gnostic form of Christianity over traditional forms because they believe that such religion proves more affirming of women.43 Some texts do appear to promote a form of egalitarianism based on the belief that we will one day all become androgynous as we were, so it is asserted, in the beginning of human history. But this supports only the feminism of a generation ago, which blurred the distinctions between male and female in the name of equal opportunity, rather than the currently dominant form that insists on equality within difference. Moreover, one has to read the Gnostic literature very selectively to get even a partial egalitarianism. Consider, for example, the final saying in Thomas: “Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.’ Jesus said, ‘I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven” (Thos. 114). The vast majority of women in any age do not consider this an attractive option!
Other Gnostic Gospels
Very few other Nag Hammadi documents even overlap in contents with the canonical texts at all. Those that are called Gospels are usually collections of lengthy, esoteric monologues attributed to Jesus after the resurrection in secret conversation with one or more of the disciples about the nature of heavenly beings and entities far removed from the down-to-earth practical ethics of Jesus of Nazareth. In keeping with Gnosticism’s rejection of the full humanity of Jesus, little interest in his earthly life appears. Instead, the documents that are falsely ascribed to such writers as Philip, Mary, James, and others devote almost all their attention to speculation about Jesus’ heavenly origins and relationships, the nature of humanity in its fallenness and in redemption, parallel realities between earth and heaven, and the like.44
A partial exception is the more recently discovered and quite recently published Gospel of Judas. It actually does appear in narrative form, though in its fragmentary condition it covers only select events from the last week of Jesus’ life and, as we already knew from the writings of Irenaeus (the bishop of Lyons, France at the end of the second century), it makes Judas the hero rather than the villain in betraying Christ. Despite his ignominious end on earth, he will be exalted in heaven, since someone had to turn Jesus over to the authorities so that he could atone for the sins of the world. Of course, the logic is flawed; there are countless ways Jesus could have been put to death. And it represents a tiny minority viewpoint even among ancient Gnostics. Despite the surprisingly sensationalized and occasionally inaccurate presentation of the contents of this Gospel by the National Geographic Society in 2006,45 even very liberal and non-Christian biblical scholars quickly concede there is no chance that this reflects the original version of events.46
Other Apocryphal Gospels
From the mid-second century of Christianity onward, other “Gospels” appeared as well. Many of these have survived, some only in partial form, while others are known only because various early Christian writers, or occasionally their opponents, make mention of them. Most of these appear to respond to the natural curiosity of readers of the New Testament about the “gaps” in the gospel record. What was Jesus like as a child? The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, not to be confused with the Coptic Gospel of the same name discussed above, portrays him as a “boy wonder,” fashioning birds out of clay and breathing into them the breath of life so that they might fly away or, more ominously, withering up a playmate who refused to stop taunting him. The Protevangelium of James describes Mary’s “immaculate conception”—that is, the belief that her parents were completely free from lust when they conceived her, enabling her to become sinless. They also describe a truly virgin birth—even after Jesus came out of Mary’s womb, the midwives confirmed that her hymen remained unbroken! At the other end of Jesus’ life, the Gospel of Nicodemus contains a narrative of Christ’s descent into hell, while the Gospel of Peter embellishes the resurrection account, with Christ emerging from the tomb accompanied by two angels, one on either side of him, whose heads reached up to the heavens, while Christ’s even went through the heavens! Almost no true historians give these documents any chance to come from the people to whom they are ascribed or to reflect genuine, historical events not found in the New Testament.47
Still other documents are sometimes falsely put forward as being of ancient pedigree when in fact they were written in the Middle Ages or even more recently. The Gospel of Barnabas is a medieval Muslim composition that teaches explicitly Islamic doctrine and even contradicts the Qur’an in places (e.g., in denying Christ’s Messiahship).48 More orthodox Christian texts purport to disclose never-before-seen documents written by Jewish and Roman leaders who participated in the proceedings against Jesus (most notably in a nineteenth-century composition called the Archko Volume, which is sheer modern fiction). The Book of Mormon addresses a particularly troubling theological issue of the early nineteenth century—the fate of the American Indians before their evangelization by European settlers—by claiming to be the long hidden account of the exploits of Jews and their descendants who migrated to the Americas centuries before Christ and containing the story of the supposed appearance of Jesus to people on this continent not long after his death and resurrection in Israel. Per Beskow discusses the true origins of many of these and similar stories.49 At the very least, we may insist that those who are inclined to be suspicious of portions of the New Testament Gospels have no historical reason for placing any confidence in these extra-canonical sources.
A quick exercise comparing the New Testament and Gnostic/apocryphal Gospels, using a number of standard historical criteria, proves remarkably telling. The canonical texts are all first-century in origin, no more than two generations removed from the eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life; no other Gospel can be demonstrated to be earlier than the mid-second century at least two generations later. Most are one to five centuries later! The literary genres of the canonical Gospels closely resemble ancient historiography and biography, while not one of the Gnostic texts contains more than short bits of narrative in it, and most do not have any. The apocryphal texts are typically written in connected prose, but none purports to cover more than a tiny slice of Jesus’ life or ministry. Except for some elements in the Gospel of Thomas, there are no problems of harmonization because the kinds of things that Jesus says or does in the apocrypha are so unlike the canonical Jesus that one must choose which one to accept (if either)—they cannot both be right! The canonical Gospels leave no doubt that Jesus of Nazareth was a human being; the issue his followers struggled with was how to account for his teachings and miracles, and they were increasingly compelled to use the language of deity. The Gnostic and at least some of the apocryphal Gospels have absolutely no question about the deity of a spirit-being called Christ, but whether that spirit ever was (or could have been) fully human is very much open to question. There is no archaeological corroboration for any distinctive parts of the Gnostic or apocryphal Gospels because, for the most part, their contents do not include events or sayings tied to any particular place. There is no testimony from non-Christian sources to support them, not least because they were not well enough known to command others’ attention.50 All of these observations prove crucial as we turn to two key remaining objections that often prove to be stumbling blocks for people in accepting the New Testament message.
Remaining Issues
Considerations of Text and Canon
One often encounters questions along the following lines: How do we even know that we have what the authors of the canonical Gospels first wrote? Haven’t the texts been copied so many times, with so many errors having crept in, that what Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John first wrote might have been quite different? Add to that all the different translations, especially in English, from the ancient Greek, and surely even more corruption has intruded, hasn’t it? And even if this first cluster of questions can be dealt with, isn’t it the case that the Gospels included in the New Testament canon are simply the product of ecclesiastical politics? Only because orthodoxy ultimately won out over Gnosticism do we have the Bible we have instead of a very different one. So how can anyone claim that these are uniquely inspired and authoritative sources for belief and behavior? The first of these clusters of questions deals with issues of text and translation; the second, with the formation of the canon. We shall consider each, briefly, in turn.