The Apocryphal Gospels_A Very Short Introduction

by Paul Foster

  1) a number of themes recur almost like a refrain throughout the text;

  2) the writer’s point is often less than obvious and the very esoteric metaphors seem to be designed for those already ‘in the know’;

  3) a number of sections describe the actual cultic practices of group members.

  When reading the Gospel of Philip, three features quickly become apparent:

  The bridal chamber

  Without doubt, the bridal chamber ritual was one of the central liturgical and sacramental practices for Valentinian Christians. This ritual was closely linked to the understanding of the plight of the soul – the eternal aspect of a being that was now trapped in a binding material form. The bridal chamber appears to have been an actual place where a ceremony of reunification, purification, and dedication to a spiritual marriage took place. There was a belief that the material human form was the result of a rupture of the true spiritual being that led to a gender-based separation of being into two parts: the male aspect that had ‘fallen’ to earth, and become combined and tainted with physical matter; and the female part that was contained in a being’s angel and inhabited a higher cosmic level. The soteriological scheme of the Gospel of Philip promised the prospect of repairing this gender-based fracturing. One of the key descriptions of the purpose of the bridal chamber ritual clearly shows that its primary concern was the reunification of the female spiritual part of the being with the entrapped male part.

  If the woman had not separated from the man, she should not die with the man. His separation became the beginning of death. Because of this, Christ came to repair the separation, which was from the beginning, and again unite the two, and to give life to those who died as a result of the separation, and unite them. But the woman is united to her husband in the bridal chamber. Indeed, those who have united in the bridal chamber will no longer be separated. Thus Eve separated from Adam because it was not in the bridal chamber that she united with him.

  (Gos. Phil. 70.9–22)

  It has been suggested that the Gospel of Philip offers two differing sequential patterns of initiation involving the bridal chamber. In the first of these typological descriptions, a comparison of the soul’s spiritual journey is based upon the physical progression into the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple. Describing the three buildings or areas of the temple, the author states, ‘baptism is the holy building; redemption is the Holy of the Holy; the Holy of Holies is the bridal chamber’ (69.22–25). The second pattern (see 70.34–71.10) also involves a progression of soteriological rituals, but encompasses some additional stages and different language to describe such rites. The stages involved are described as rebirth, anointing, redemption, and the bridal chamber. As the rebirth of Jesus is closely linked with him being ‘revealed in the Jordan’ (70.34), it appears that this rebirth equates to baptism. This is a lower stage of the initiation process than the anointing. This point is made explicitly in the text when the author declares ‘the chrism is superior to baptism, for it is from the word chrism that we have been called Christians, certainly not because of the word baptism’(74.12–15). Leaving aside the dubious etymology employed here, it appears that the author is arguing that adherents to the form of Christianity promoted in the Gospel of Philip have experienced a higher level of spiritual participation than those who stop at the basic baptismal ritual.

  Bridal chamber theology, although not systematically explained, is the culmination of the sequential initiation process. Redemption may in fact not be a discrete stage, but something than occurs through undergoing the bridal chamber rite. The ‘marriage’ envisaged is the reunification of the initiate (the male) with his angel (the female). Having undergone this process, the reconstituted being must no longer be involved with physical sexual practices. In a broken passage, it appears that those who undergo this ritual are seen as being divinized in some sense, and consequently are known as ‘sons of the bridal chamber’ (76.3–5). It is interesting to note that baptism, while not totally disparaged, is seen as only the first phase of Christian initiation. There appears to be an implicit criticism of emergent orthodoxy’s position that baptism was the only entrance rite required to become a Christian.

  Jesus kisses Mary Magdalene

  One aspect of the Gospel of Philip that has been unduly sensationalized is the scene where Jesus kisses Mary. This broken passage can be translated into English in the following manner to highlight the gaps in the text:

  And the companion of the […] Mary Magdalene. [… loved] her more than [all] the disciples [and used to] kiss her [often] on her […]. The rest of [the disciples …]. They said to him ‘Why do you love her more than all of us?’

  (Gos. Phil. 63.30–64.5)

  Despite these gaps in the manuscript, it is obvious that from the perspective of the text, it describes the privileged role of Mary Magdalene and that she enjoys an obvious degree of intimacy in her relationship with Jesus. However, various reconstructions of the text have tried to make the type of relationship more explicit bysexualizing the level of intimacy and describing the kiss as one that is given on the mouth. Typical among the reconstructions is the following:

  And the consort of [Christ is] Mary Magdalene. [The Lord loved Mary] more than [all] the disciples, and kissed her often on her [mouth]. The others too […] they said to him ‘Why do you love her more than all of us?’

  (Gos. Phil. 63.30–64.5)

  Too often this is interpreted by conspiracy theorists or the writers of popular literature as providing a window into Jesus’ physical relationship with Mary Magdalene and revealing ‘a truth’ that the institutionalized church has suppressed. The reality is far less exciting. The practice of exchanging kisses among fellow Christian believers is known from the pages of the New Testament. Paul tells the addressees of his Epistle to the Romans to ‘greet one another with a holy kiss’ (Rom. 16.16). In the wider culture, kisses were a common way of greeting family members and did not carry the same overtones that have become attached to this practice in a highly sexualized modern society. Since many who followed Jesus became ostracized from their families, like many new religious movements Christian literature presented a fictive kinship whereby the replacement family of believers becomes the authentic locus for the use of signs of familial affection. The second factor that needs to be recognized is that in a number of non-canonical gospels Mary becomes a subversive authority figure for the marginalized groups that read these texts. She is presented as a significant figure because of the quality of her insight and discipleship, thereby critiquing the forms of Christianity that centred upon the more structured and hierarchical leadership of figures such as Peter.

  The Jesus tradition in the Gospel of Philip

  Only occasionally does the Gospel of Philip present a saying of Jesus. To be precise, in this long text there are only 17 instances of this phenomenon, and 9 of these are citations or modifications of Jesus’ words as already found in the canonical gospels. The remaining 8, which are introduced with typical introductory formulae (‘the Lord said’, ‘the Saviour said’, or ‘he said’), place enigmatic sayings on the lips of Jesus which resonate with Valentinian theology. A few examples illustrate this tendency. In line with the salvific hopes of this form of Christianity, Jesus addresses his disciples saying ‘You who have joined the perfect light with the Holy Spirit, unite the angels with us also, as being the images’ (Gos. Phil.58.10–14).Here, the doctrine of reunification with the angelic part of one’s being is advocated by Jesus, as is the acknowledgement that the earthly part is just the ‘image’ of a transcendent reality. A fresh Son of Man statement compares Jesus with a dyer.

  The Lord went into the dye works of Levi. He took seventy-two different colours and threw them into the vat. He took them out all white. And he said, ‘Even so has the Son of Man come as a dyer.’

  (Gos. Phil. 63.29–30)

  Interestingly, a related version of this story is to be found in some manuscripts of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The imagery of the ‘
dyer’ also occurs earlier in the Gospel of Philip (61.12–20). God is called a dyer, since he dips things in water to make them become immortal. This seems to be an image that is used to describe baptism, the fact that the mixture of 72 colours is transformed to white may be a further allusion to the purification of baptism.

  Another enigmatic saying placed on the lips of Jesus which reflects Valentinian cosmology occurs when the Lord said, ‘Blessed is he who is before he came into being. For he who is, has been and shall be’ (Gos. Phil. 64.10–12). Here the emphasis is on the pre-existence of the true ‘Gnostic’ believer who has the prospect of existing again in that reunified state.

  There are almost certainly no additional independent sayings of Jesus contained in the Gospel of Philip which derive from the historical Jesus. As a means of understanding the message of the actual person Jesus who taught in 1st-century Galilee, this apocryphal gospel offers nothing. However, as an insight into how 2nd- and 3rd-century Christians in one section of the Jesus movement understood the foundational figure of their faith, there is much that can be learned.

  The ‘value’ of the Gospel of Philip is not easy to assess, for it depends on what is being valued. As mentioned above, as a means of gaining insight into the historical Jesus the text could be classed as worthless. However, other historical insights can be gained from this text, especially concerning the type of Christianity practised by a group with a highly mythical and esoteric understanding of salvation. Such perspectives need to be recognized as historically significant, but their historical value stems from understanding the actual contemporary situation from which they emerged and the form of spirituality they promoted. Moreover, such traditions offer the potential to trace an early phase of the reception of the Jesus tradition amongst one small branch of the larger movement that claimed adherence to his teachings. For those interested in the larger history of Christianity and who wish to hear the voices suppressed by the dominant groups that emerged, the Gospel of Philip is an invaluable resource.

  The Gospel of Truth

  Unlike the previous two gospels treated in this section, the third text to be considered is not associated with an individual authority figure, such as Thomas or Philip. The Gospel of Truth takes its name from the opening clause of the long introductory sentence that commences this work: ‘The gospel of truth is joy for those who have received from the Father of truth the grace of knowing him…’. Furthermore, Irenaeus in his heresiological work Adversus Haereses (3.11.9) knows of a Valentinian work circulating under the title of ‘Gospel of Truth’. Unfortunately he does not cite the work or discuss its contents at length, so it is impossible to be certain that these two texts are identical, but the evidence is certainly suggestive. If that is the case, then the Gospel of Truth found at Nag Hammadi is likely to have been written between AD 140 (the start of Valentinus’ career) and AD 180 (the date of composition of Irenaeus’ Adversus Haereses). This would mean that the Gospel of Truth would be one of the earliest surviving Valentinian texts.

  Two copies of this text are found among the Nag Hammadi codices. It is the third work in codex I, and the second work in codex XII. Due to the highly fragmentary nature of that second witness to the text, that copy is used chiefly to corroborate readings found in the more complete form which is treated as the base text for most modern editions. Like the Gospel of Philip, the work is seen as Valentinian in character, but it may represent an earlier phase of that school of thought. It has been suggested that this work may have functioned as an introduction to Valentinian thought. The intended audience may have been members of the wider Church who had not previously been exposed to the type of elevated philosophical speculations contained in this elitist branch of Christianity. Furthermore, because of the similarities between the ideas in the Gospel of Truth and those fragments of Valentinus’ own writings preserved by certain early Christian writers, some have suggested that Valentinus himself was the author of this work. Its stylistic flourishes and less developed theological system lends weight to this suggestion, but while it is an attractive proposal, ultimately it remains unprovable.

  The Gospel of Truth is perhaps not the kind of text that would usually be classed as a ‘gospel’. Jesus does not speak, none of his earthly deeds are recorded, and no additional biographical information is provided. Yet for the author of this text in a very real sense this was ‘the gospel’ since it clearly set out the good news of the restoration of entrapped beings from ‘the fog of error’. Whereas certain other ‘Gnostic’ texts present a radical disjunction between the supreme God who cannot be tainted by the material realm and the host of lower beings who function as intermediaries with the physical world, such a separation is not as convoluted in the Gospel of Truth. Admittedly, the material creation is ‘the substitute for truth’, but through the Word and the Holy Spirit the Father intervenes in a less distant manner. This treatise on salvation outlines ‘the Word that came forth from the pleroma, the one who is in the thought and the mind of the Father’ (Gos. Truth 16.35–36).

  The concept of the ‘pleroma’ is highly significant in Gnostic thought – although the exact meaning of the term is somewhat of a ‘moving target’. In wider Greek literature the basic meaning of the term is that of ‘fulness’. However, in Christian texts this concept of ‘fulness’ has a narrower field of reference. It is something that belongs to the Supreme Deity and represents a spiritual sphere that can be inhabited by the perfect ‘Gnostic’ disciple at the highest level of upward cosmic ascent. Embryonic ideas about the pleroma can be found within the pages of the New Testament. In the prologue to John’s Gospel, which was so influential upon Gnostic thinking, the author declares that ‘from his [the Word’s] fulness we have all received’ (John 1.16). According to Colossians, the fulness dwelt within the Son (Col. 1.19, 2.9), and through the participation of believers in the Son they become partakers of this fulness. Such ideas become vastly expanded and developed in numerous Gnostic texts, where often the pleroma becomes the goal of spiritual journey. In this sense, the pleroma is like a nirvanic state of perfect spiritual consciousness, when the deity is purely contemplated and the distractions of material existence have been totally stripped away.

  Thus for the author of the Gospel of Truth, since the Word comes forth from this realm, there is the possibility of communication between the perfect spiritual realm and the corrupted earthly existence. Moreover, the Word comes forth from the mind and thought of the Father as the medium of communication and vehicle for restoration. The relationship of the Father to the Son was to become the central question in the Christological controversies of the 3rd and 4th centuries. The so-called Logos (or ‘Word’) Christology of the 2nd century was a key aspect of Justin’s thought. In his First Apology, he stated that those who lived in accordance with the Logos (here playing with the double meaning of the term both as a philosophical technical term for rationality and also as a title for Jesus) are the true followers of God. He goes on to stress that in Jesus the Logos has become fully revealed. At this point, the thinking of the ‘orthodox’ Justin is remarkably close to that found in the Gospel of Truth, although the latter offers a more developed cosmology of the relationship of the Word to the Father. Likewise the Holy Spirit is presented as having an extremely close relationship with the Father. The Gospel of Truth can describe the Spirit both as the bosom of the Father (Gos. Truth 24.10–11) and also as the tongue within the Father’s mouth (Gos. Truth 26.35–36). This bodily imagery which sees the mouth as belonging to the Father, the Spirit being the tongue in the mouth, and the Word being uttered forth from that vocal organ describes three tightly related entities. Unsurprisingly, the imagery used to describe the relationship of Father, Word, and Spirit is susceptible to the later charge of modalism – which was seen as defective since it basically confused the three persons of the Trinity by saying that God was not in essence Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – but could choose to appear in one of these modes as either whim or necessity demanded. However, it is anachronistic
to judge 2nd-century writers by the standards of 4th-century debates. Instead, what is important is to note how in the Gospel of Truth the assumed relationship between Father, Word, and Spirit sits comfortably in the wider thought on this issue in the mid-2nd century.

  There is a tendency when discussing Gnostic texts to make the generalized classification that they have a ‘docetic’ understanding of Jesus. The term ‘docetic’ describes the view that Jesus’ humanity was not real, but simply the way he appeared to those who did not have a true perception of his being. In such texts, the true nature of the divine Logos that inhabits the shell of the human form becomes apparent at some stage during the Passion. The divine being usually leaves the outer shell, since it belongs to a higher realm that cannot be tainted by human suffering, or ‘passibility’. While a number of Gnostic texts promulgate such an understanding, the Gospel of Truth is not one of these. Rather, it describes and celebrates the way in which the death of Jesus communicates the message of the Father through the medium of the cross.

  For this reason Jesus appeared; he put on that book; he was nailed to a tree; he published the edict of the Father on the cross. O such great teaching! He draws himself down to death though life eternal clothes him. Having stripped himself of the perishable rags, he put on imperishibility, which no one can possibly take away from him. Having entered the empty spaces of terrors, he passed through those who were stripped naked by oblivion, being knowledge and perfection, proclaiming the things that are in the heart, […] teach those who will receive teaching.