by Paul Foster
However, during the last quarter of the 19th century, as archaeologists commenced large-scale excavations in Egypt and scholars began trawling through dusty library collections, long-buried and long-forgotten manuscripts started to emerge. The first discovery, made in 1885, was a relatively small scrap of six incomplete lines of text found amongst the papyrus collection of Archduke Rainer in Vienna. Whether this text is actually part of a separate, larger, previously unknown gospel, or is simply a variant reading of part of the Gospel of Mark, is contested. Nonetheless, it was the first window on the murky world of the transmission of ancient non-canonical Christian texts. A more substantial discovery was unearthed at an archaeological dig at Akhmîm in Upper Egypt during the winter season of 1886/7 by members of a French team. A small book, or codex, was exhumed from a monk’s grave and this contained 4 texts in its 66 pages. The first, ranging over 9 pages, was identified as a fragment of the lost text the Gospel of Peter, which had previously been known only by name, having been discussed by various early Christian writers. The rapid stream of discoveries continued through the last decade of the 19th century.
In 1897, two young Oxford scholars, B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, commenced an archaeological dig at an Egyptian village called el-Behesna, some 100 miles south of Cairo and 10 miles west of the Nile. The village name stems from the Arab period and did in fact represent the renaming of what had been a much larger city known as Oxyrhynchus. As is the case now, when Grenfell and Hunt arrived at Oxyrhynchus little remained of that ancient settlement apart from one stone column – and various rubbish heaps, each about 30 feet deep. The mixed debris of those rubbish heaps contained a vast number of papyrus fragments – basically what turned out to be the waste paper of the day. This contained a fascinating array of documents, including tax receipts, bills of sale, personal letters, and census records. Such finds were the so-called ‘documentary papyri’ that provide such vivid insights into the everyday lives of people from the various social strata of that ancient society. Combined, however, with such documents were literary texts. Fragments of Homer and schoolboy exercises in copying Euripides were found, along with various Christian texts. Apart from ecclesial texts and fragments of writings contained in the Bible, new texts were discovered that purported to record the actual words of Jesus or those of his followers. In fact, the very first text from the Oxyrhynchus trove to be published was entitled Sayings of Our Lord and contained both previously unattested sayings and versions of sayings that varied from the parallels in biblical texts. It would only later transpire that these fragments were part of a larger text known under the title of the Gospel of Thomas. However, what this series of early discoveries did was to open up the possibility that an alternative source of traditions about Jesus existed and that this might offer a radically different insight into the teachings and person of Jesus. From these early discoveries, scholars collected together these disparate texts and published collections of ‘apocryphal’, or ‘non-canonical’, gospel texts. They shared in common the fact that they were not included among the biblical writings. Thus a new sub-branch of investigation into early Christianity began to emerge – the study of the apocryphal New Testament.
1. This map shows the location of three important manuscript discoveries in Egypt: Akhmîm, Nag Hammadi, and Oxyrhynchus
The meaning of the term ‘apocryphal gospels’
The very title ‘apocryphal gospels’ is a highly contested label. Taking the word ‘gospel’ first, it may be thought that it is self-evident what this term means. Depending on the definition employed, the meaning of the word ‘gospel’ may appear obvious. A recent writer commenting on the Gospel of Judas stated that this work does not deserve the label ‘gospel’ since, according to the author in question, it says nothing about the ‘real’ Jesus. From this perspective, the definition of the term ‘gospel’ appears to become little more than a shorthand way of referring to writings about Jesus that were later deemed to be ‘orthodox’. In other words, the term is narrowly and exclusively defined as referring to one of the four gospels contained in the canonical New Testament. Such circular thinking automatically excludes from the discussion those texts which some early Christians may have considered authoritative, even of equal value alongside the ‘four Gospels’ that are instantly recognizable today. These additional texts need to be taken on their own terms and judged against the historical background in which they were written, rather than being excluded on the basis of anachronistic and theologically motivated criteria.
2. Oxyrhynchus – excavation of ‘rubbish’ mounds at this site led to the discovery of between a quarter to half a million papyrus fragments. Fewer than 6,000 of these have been published at the time of writing
3. An image of the original excavation at Oxyrhynchus. Children were often employed for the delicate work because of their more careful handling of the papyri, and their body-weight made less impact on the mounds
Returning to the term ‘gospel’, it is important to understand that this word had a range of meanings even before it came to be used as a term for designating written texts about Jesus. There are basically two sources of evidence which help to clarify the meaning of the Greek word group relating to ‘gospel’ (the noun, euangelion = ‘gospel’, and the verb euangeliz = ‘to announce glad tidings/to proclaim good news’) prior to its use to designate early Christian texts that employed the term as a title. The first comes from the Greek translation of the Old Testament scriptures known as the Septuagint. In that collection of texts, this word group refers to an oral proclamation or the announcement of some news. Often the news is a positive event (Isa. 52.7; Nah. 2.1). However, this is not uniformly the case. In one Old Testament story, a messenger thinking that he is bringing ‘good news’ to David of King Saul’s death soon learns that David does not consider this as glad tidings. The unfortunate herald pays the ultimate price for being unable to distinguish between good and bad news (2 Sam. 4.10)! The second source of evidence does not emerge from biblical material, but rather from the use of the term in association with the imperial cult. The Jewish historian Josephus, who skilfully advanced his own career by predicting Vespasian’s rise to imperial office, wrote of the effect of the proclamation of the new emperor taking office in AD 69 at the culmination of one of the most turbulent years in Roman history: ‘Every city kept festival for good news [euangelia] and offered sacrifices on his behalf’ (Jewish War IV.618). In the so-called Priene inscription. The laudatory language that describes Augustus refers to the consequences of his ascension and reign in the following manner; It is ‘resulting in signalling to the world through him the good news [euangelion] of the birthday of our god’ (lines 40–1).
Therefore, it is unsurprising that in the earliest stages of the Jesus movement, the term ‘gospel’ denoted an oral proclamation of some event of significance, usually with positive ramifications – such as the accession of a new emperor. Christian usage of ‘gospel’ language may have looked to the antecedents in the Old Testament, but would also have been attuned to the popular contemporary usage as part of the imperial cult, especially in the eastern Mediterranean where emperor veneration appeared to flourish. If this were the case, then Paul’s appropriation of ‘gospel’ language was far from a politically neutral manoeuvre. Rather, in a subversive and controversial manner the one who styled himself as ‘apostle to the gentiles’ intentionally took hold of the language of the imperial cult in order to claim that Christ, not Caesar, was the source of good news and the manifestation of divinity.
So if the term ‘gospel’ started its Christian phase as referring to oral announcements, why, how, and when did it come to be associated with written documents? Perhaps the first two aspects of the question are somewhat easier to answer – at least partially. As the numbers of first-generation followers of Jesus diminished, there was presumably a need to enshrine community tradition in order to preserve and communicate the message. It is almost certain that the content of early forms of written tradition was de
rived from oral proclamations known as ‘gospel’. The earliest of the canonical gospels, that written by Mark, opens with the words ‘Beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ …’ (Mark 1.1). So it appears that as early believers began to crystallize what had previously existed as an oral proclamation into a written form, the same term ‘gospel’ was used to describe the content of the written message. However, the title of this literary work, either simply ‘according to Mark’ or ‘the Gospel according to Mark’, was almost certainly not part of the text when it first circulated. It was, therefore, a striking change for a term that was used to describe oral proclamations to be applied as a description of a written work, especially given the presumably significant differences in content. So when did this relabelling first occur? Like many innovations, its originator and the specific circumstances that led to this daring use of terminology are unknown, but texts written by Christian figures in the 2nd century use the term ‘gospel’ to refer to written documents as though this terminology was widely understood and was a common way to refer to the type of documents under discussion.
The ‘hard evidence’ for the earliest demonstrable use of the term ‘gospel’ to designate a written form rather than an oral proclamation comes from two sources. First, the earliest manuscripts of the writings with titles using the term ‘gospel’ date to around the year AD 200 and the decades that follow. An early copy of the papyrus manuscript of the Gospel of John known as P66 dated at some point around the end of the 2nd century has the title ‘Gospel according to John’; the slightly later manuscript containing both Luke and John (P75) has a title at the end of Luke stating ‘Gospel according to Luke’ and then at the beginning of John, ‘Gospel according to John’. Thus, while there may not have been consensus even in the same manuscript concerning whether such titles belonged at the beginning or the end of the text, these writings were already being labelled as ‘gospels’.
The second piece of evidence is even earlier. Writing around AD 180, Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyon, in his work Adversus Haeresus (‘Against Heresies’) refers on multiple occasions to written documents using the term ‘gospel’. In book 3 of this work, he refers to the four evangelists issuing ‘gospels’ in different geographical locations – although the location of Luke’s Gospel is not specified (Ad. Haer. 3.1.1). Irenaeus uses the term ‘gospel’ to denote written documents unambiguously on many occasions and without explanation. The very fact that he offers no explanation leads to the supposition that he was not the innovator of this usage, and the natural way in which he uses such terminology suggests that ‘gospel’ as a designation for a written document had been established for some time. While certain scholars have argued for such usage stemming back to the beginning of the 2nd century, such a claim cannot be established with any certainty. Rather, it appears more accurate to state simply that by the second half of the 2nd century Christian writers could quite naturally speak of certain written documents as ‘gospels’.
The designation of those gospels outside the fourfold collection as ‘apocryphal’ is a description that originated with post-Enlightenment scholars. Although this remains a common way of referring to such texts, the term can carry negative associations. Thus it may be preferable to call such texts ‘non-canonical’, thereby simply distinguishing them from the four gospels that formed part of the canon of the New Testament at a later stage in history. It must be remembered that the distinction between ‘canonical’ and ‘non-canonical’ texts is anachronistic, in that it did not apply at the time when the texts were written. Such a separation was possible only a few centuries later when a fixed list of New Testament texts began to emerge. Although recognizing the limitations of terms such as ‘apocryphal’ or ‘non-canonical’, both these labels will be used to refer to the range of gospels under discussion. This approach recognizes the fact that this has become the common designation, but behind such shorthand labels it needs to be seen that these are imposed modern categories that were not used by Christians in the 2nd and 3rd centuries when many of these texts were being produced or circulated.
How many gospels are there?
Irenaeus not only provides the earliest certain usage of the term ‘gospel’ to refer to written documents, he also gives the first extant reference to the existence of a fourfold gospel collection. While he asserts that there is only one gospel (i.e. the central message of Christianity), he also declares that it is known and received in a fourfold form and he explicitly names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the authors of the four documents (Ad. Haer. 3.11.8). This may seem to settle the debate about the number of gospels. However, it is well known that the writing of history is dominated by the perspectives of those who are victorious in battles over territory or ideas. Irenaeus’ position anticipates what was to become the received orthodoxy of 4th-century Christianity, yet even his complex arguments against competing views subvert his claim that it is self-evident that there can be no more or no fewer than four gospels.
In the process of refuting the followers of Valentinus, Irenaeus accuses them of ‘possessing more gospels than there really are’ (Ad. Haer. 3.11.9). He goes on to name one such document, the ‘Gospel of Truth’, but argues that this is so discrepant from the four ‘received’ gospels that it should not be classed in the same way. Despite his protestations, this argument vividly betrays the fact that for other Christians in the 2nd century there were indeed other gospels than the four sanctioned by Irenaeus. For those who read such ‘alternative’ writings, these documents were not of a lesser standing, but could be read as authoritative texts disclosing divine revelation. Other early Church figures reveal knowledge of documents bearing the title ‘gospel’ which do not belong to the corpus of the fourfold gospel. For instance, the 4th-century Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea recounts the story of Serapion, bishop of Antioch, visiting the town of Rhossos in his diocese. While there, he became acquainted with a document known as the Gospel of Peter. Initially he stated no objection to this ‘gospel’ being read alongside the four received gospels. However, on his return to Antioch, advisors instructed him that some form of this text was used by a group known as the Docetics – deemed to be heretics. Consequently, Serapion wrote to the church in Rhossos rescinding his earlier permission to use this text (Eusebius, H.E. 6.12.1–6). In addition to numerous examples of early Christian writers mentioning the names of texts containing the word ‘gospel’ in the title, there are also manuscripts of non-canonical gospels that occur with titles bearing the term ‘gospel’. It is difficult to enumerate how many texts, disputed or otherwise, might be described as gospels since some are categorized because of their form rather than an explicit title, but recent attempts would perhaps list around 40 distinct ancient texts in this category.
Unless a restrictive canonical approach is adopted that allows only the fourfold collection to be labelled as ‘gospels’, there is obviously a greater number of texts that potentially could be included in this category. The problem arises in deciding what to include or exclude. Upon reading the text, it is perhaps possible to sympathize with Irenaeus’ refutation of the ‘Gospel of Truth’ as being a gospel. On the likely assumption that the text of the same title discovered at Nag Hammadi is the document to which Irenaeus refers, then it must be admitted that it does not read like one of the familiar four canonical texts. However, this text, like the Gospel of Mark, uses the term ‘gospel’ in its opening phrase, and this is no doubt intended as an important clue as to how its contents are to be understood. Presumably such a designation was not problematic for those early Christians who read it.
On the other hand, there are texts that, in the form in which they survive, do not bear the word ‘gospel’ in their title, such as the infancy account attributed to Thomas or the Gospel of Peter (although Christian writers refer to texts known by these titles), but nonetheless they do convey traditions and teachings of Jesus. Perhaps the best strategy is to investigate various texts as ‘gospel-type’ writings. These writings would include texts that
designate themselves as ‘gospels’ either through a title or description of contents. The selection also includes untitled writings that may be identified with titles of ‘gospel writings’ known by early Christian writers (an example would be the Gospel of Peter). Furthermore, it is helpful to consider those writings such as the Protevangelium of James, which has been labelled as a ‘gospel’ by scholarly convention rather than ancient attribution. Admittedly, this may cast a very wide net, and the grouping is functional rather than strictly defined, but the benefit in at least considering such a wide range of potential gospel texts is that it enriches the understanding of the diversity of this category in early Christianity and beyond, and seeks to ensure that texts are not excluded on the basis of preconceived theological boundaries.
It is therefore necessary to be aware of different types of gospel texts that circulated in the ancient world. As different texts are discussed here, some of these gospels will be seen to be narrative accounts, others will catalogue sayings of Jesus, while still other texts concern not the adult ministry of Jesus but his childhood or even his mother’s birth. At the other end of the chronological spectrum, a number of gospel texts purportedly record discourses that occurred after the resurrection with figures privileged to receive such revelatory instruction.
Gnosticism: misnomer or helpful category?
Many of the alternative gospels that have come to light in recent manuscript finds, or those documents named as gospels by early Christian writers, were labelled either descriptively or pejoratively as ‘Gnostic’. One trend in recent scholarship has been to question the utility of this term, arguing that it is both too broad and also repeatedly misused. It has been suggested that such labelling is not only unhelpful, but actually misleading. Consequently, the total abandonment of the term has been advocated. While some of the criticisms levelled against the use of this term are warranted, especially the labelling of any text with a mystic or cosmological interest as being ‘pre-’ or ‘proto-Gnostic’, to abandon the term altogether seems akin to throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater and in the process losing a helpful heuristic tool that is of value if correctly understood.