by Paul Foster
(Jerome, Vir. Inl.2)
Likewise, the Gospel of the Ebionites has a single witness. Epiphanius, in his work entitled the Panarion (‘medicine-chest’), seeks to provide readers with ‘remedies’ against the various ‘heresies’ circulating in Christianity. In chapter 30 of this work, he cites from a gospel used by the Ebionite. There is strong evidence to suggest that this work was composed in Greek, due to the presence of a pun that works only in that language. Although the text is most closely aligned with traditions from Matthew, it combines elements from Luke’s Gospel at a number of points and this text may be best considered as a type of gospel harmony. Epiphanius preserves seven excerpts from this text. Following the convention of arranging these in a narrative order that follows the broad storyline of the synoptic gospels produces this table of contents:
The disproportionate interest in the figure of John the Baptist may suggest that the Gospel of the Ebionites represented a close allegiance from members of the community who cherished this text
towards the Baptist, whom they may have revered as some kind of foundational figure. There is emphasis placed on John’s diet, with locusts being omitted from the description, which Epiphnius characterizes as a perversion of the gospel.
And:
‘It came to pass that John was baptizing; and there went out to him Pharisees and were baptized and all Jerusalem. And John had a garment of camel hair and a leather belt about his waist, and his food, as it says, was wild honey, the taste of which was that of manna, as a cake dipped in oil.’
Thus they were resolved to pervert the word of truth into a lie and to put a cake in the place of locusts.
(Panarion 30.13.4–5)
Similarly, it has Jesus deny that he wished to eat meat at the Passover. These features suggest that the Ebionites may have promoted a vegetarianism that is also evidenced in other branches of Christianity in the 2nd century.
The Jewish–Christian gospels perhaps stand closer to the canonical gospels than any of the other gospel-type texts that survive. Unfortunately, the fact that their preservation is refracted through the lenses of writers who are hostile to the perspectives that these texts promote means that ultimately the overall shape of their narratives and the details of the majority of the stories they contained are no longer recoverable.
The value of non-canonical gospels set during the life of Jesus
In many regards, the texts considered in this section are the most disparate and diverse. They are not unified by belonging to a common collection, or by presenting similar theological perspectives. Rather, the one common feature is that they purport to recount stories from the period of Jesus’ public ministry – the same phase of Jesus’ life that is the focus of the canonical gospels. Because of this overlap, comparisons may be made which allow for consideration of the possibility that these texts may preserve independent (perhaps earlier) versions of traditions that are paralleled in the four canonical gospels, or potentially they may offer that ‘pearl of great price’ – an authentic saying or incident from the life of Jesus otherwise unattested in the canonical sources.
Although this aspirational hope has motivated much interest in these texts, close analysis has shown that for the large part they appear to be later than the canonical gospels, they tend to draw upon the traditions embedded in those texts, and the new details they present are novelistic or fanciful. What then is the value of these texts that promised so much but delivered so little in scholarly attempts to learn more about the historical Jesus? First, it needs to be appreciated that these texts provide a glimpse into the way 2nd-century Christians handled and modified traditions concerning Jesus. Second, they highlight a number of pertinent issues for certain Christian groups: law-observance, vilifying Jews, heightening miraculous claims, and so on. Third, they reveal the textual nature of the preservation of early Christian tradition: with amateur scribes compiling their own collections of texts; the way Christians become innovators in using the new technology of the codex; and how they generated their own system of abbreviations. The dynamism and diversity of early Christianity comes to life through these texts, and the myth of a monolithic Christian movement existing in the 2nd and 3rd centuries is exploded.
Chapter 5
Secret revelations and dialogue gospels
Listening to Jesus beyond the grave
While travelling along the Damascus Road, Paul – or, as he was then, Saul – had a dramatic encounter that was to transform him from being a persecutor of the early movement centred on devotion to Jesus into a promoter and advocate for that system of faith. What changed him? The debate is endless and the attempts to psychologize the inner turmoil that led to this transformation tend to be pure speculation. The only firsthand data are Paul’s own testimony and interpretation of events: that the God who had set him apart even from his mother’s womb, called Paul on the Damascus Road through a revelation of Jesus his son given to Paul, in order that he might preach Jesus to the Gentiles (Gal. 1.15–16). For Paul, both the authority and authenticity of that revelatory calling was unquestionable. It transformed his understanding of the movement he had been persecuting and it shaped the events of the rest of his life. There was no division between the authority contained in what Jesus said during his earthly life and what he continued to say after his death. For Paul, both were undeniably authentic, and no separation was possible.
Yet, this raises the fundamental question that links both authority claims and decisions about legitimate interpretation: namely, what was to stop other believers receiving equally valid communications from the risen Jesus, and how could fellow believers question the veracity of such revelations if the recipient claimed they came directly from Jesus? Paul’s call to preach to the Gentiles was a radical departure for a movement that had grown up inside Judaism as a messianic group. However, his ‘revelation’ appeared to be vindicated by the success he achieved among those non-Jewish believers who came to faith in Jesus. What other radical new teachings might the risen Jesus wish to communicate through later generations of followers? Some of the earliest surviving examples of this phenomenon from the post-Pauline phase can be seen in the gospel-like texts that record revelatory dialogues with Jesus, often in his risen state. The tone of these documents ranges from relatively sober and understandable encounters to the communication of bizarre descriptions of the aeons and cosmic realms – but they all claim to be written with the authority of Jesus behind them.
The Gospel of Judas
Exciting stories of the discovery of non-canonical gospel texts are not confined to the end of the 19th century. In fact, in many ways the most bizarre and tragic story belongs to the end of the 20th and start of the 21st centuries. It appears that four codices were ‘discovered’ (if that is not too soft a euphemism for what was probably tomb robbery) around 1978 near the village of Ambar, 60 kilometres north of Al Minya in Egypt. Details of the codices are still emerging but they seem to have comprised of the following: a Greek version of the Exodus, a Coptic version of Paul’s epistles, a mathematical treatise, and a codex with multiple texts, the third of which was titled the Gospel of Judas.
The ‘journey’ of this final codex from discovery to publication has been extremely turbulent. It was left unstudied and decaying for several decades. The reason for the delay was simply the greed of those trying to sell the codex. The brittle, though at this stage well-preserved, codex came into the hands of an Egyptian antiquities dealer called Hanna. The story becomes somewhat murky at this point. Around 1980, Hanna attempted to sell a number of his sequestered treasures including the ancient codex. He arranged a viewing of the artefacts for a potential buyer, Nicolas Koutoulakis of Geneva, accompanied by two women. The day after the viewing, Hanna’s apartment was robbed and all his antiquities taken. One of the women, described as a ‘red-haired beauty’ known as Mia, appears to have had some part in the robbery, since later the missing items were recovered indirectly from her. By 1982, the manuscript was back in Hanna’s possession but
now housed in a bank vault in Geneva. In 1983, a team of American scholars were allowed to view the codex for the purpose of purchasing it. They expected to have to pay in the region of $50,000 to $100,000, but they were astounded when Hanna asked for $3 millon. Negotiations broke down. The following year Hanna visited the United States with the codex, in an attempt to find a buyer. For safekeeping, the codex was deposited in a safe-deposit box in the Hicksville branch of Citibank on Long Island, New York. The manuscript was to languish in that bank vault for 16 years, undergoing serious disintegration in the humid atmosphere. On 3 April 2000, the codex was sold to Frieda Tchacos Nussberger, from whom the codex received its name – Codex Tchacos. It was then sold on to Bruce Ferrini, who appears to have frozen the manuscript in the belief that this would aid its preservation. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Freezing resulted in the partial destruction of the sap holding the fibres together, and accelerated the destruction and crumbling of the papyrus. When he was unable to pay the agreed cost of the codex, Ferrini returned it to Nussberger, although it appears that he held back some of the now highly fragmented pages.
In 2001, contact was made with the Maecenas Foundation in Basel, Switzerland. At last the work of serious reconstruction was to begin. Professional papyrologists described the codex as being the most structurally compromised they had ever seen. The work of reconstruction should be highly praised for its skill, care, and brilliant dedication to detail. Obviously gaps exist in the reconstruction, but large sections of the text were able to be preserved and the ordering was assisted by the presence of page numbers throughout the codex. The existence of the text of the Gospel of Judas was announced at the Eighth Congress of the International Association for Coptic Studies in Paris on 1 July 2004. The wider public dissemination of knowledge about the Gospel of Judas came through the May 2006 edition of National Geographic with the broadcast of an accompanying, although at times somewhat sensationalized, documentary. Approximately 28 years after discovery, the Gospel of Judas was finally in the public domain.
The actual contents of Codex Tchacos in its original form as unearthed in 1978 still are not totally certain. The codex certainly housed four texts, and it is likely that a fifth text was also originally part of the collection. The contents may be listed as follows:
The fourth text is extremely fragmentary, it is impossible to determine if page 66 represents its conclusion or whether the text breaks off at some midpoint. Some of the fragments held by Ferrini, known as the Ohio fragments, have been identified with the Corpus Hermeticum. The recent critical edition of The Gospel of Judas published by National Geographic makes the following statement: the ‘identification of the contents of Ohio 4578 is clear, and it suggests that Codex Tchacos originally also contained a hitherto unattested Coptic translation of Corpus Hermeticum XIII’. This description of contents reveals the literary tastes of the compiler of the codex, and one can note that he read an eclectic range of texts that can loosely be classified as ‘Gnostic’, and it is within this setting that the Gospel of Judas is to be understood.
Prior to the discovery of the text of the Gospel of Judas, its existence in antiquity was known by reference to its title. Originally written in Greek, Irenaeus states that:
Others again declare that Cain derived his being from the Power above, and acknowledge that Esau, Korah, the Sodomites, and all such persons, are related to themselves. On this account, they add, they have been assailed by the Creator, yet no one of them has suffered injury. For Sophia was in the habit of carrying off that which belonged to her from them to herself. They declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things, and that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion. They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas.
(Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 1.31.1)
The Gospel of Judas represents a tractate from the Sethian branch of Gnosticism, and it purports to be a secret revelation of a conversation between Jesus and Judas that occurred three days before Jesus’ final Passover. In this belief system, the divine unassailable God exists beyond the reach of the base material realm. From his mind comes forth his ‘first-thought’, a feminine deity called Barbelo, and in turn from her emanates her son Autogenes – the self-begotten one. After various stages of emanations, heavenly Seth, the perfect man, comes forth and his seed is the souls of repentant humanity. An abridged version of this cosmological salvation myth occurs in the Gospel of Judas (47.1–54.12) and it is this understanding that shapes the thought-world of the text.
One of the key concerns in the Gospel of Judas is to present a new understanding of the eponymous figure of Judas. While the original team of scholars deserve praise for their work of reconstructing the text, in the areas of translation and interpretation there were a number of fundamental errors. A leading scholar, April DeConick, has corrected the translation at a number of points and as a result has made the text more self-coherent and understandable as a Sethian parody of apostolic Christianity. Perhaps the most important case of mistranslation, which affects the way one understands the whole text, is to be found in Gos. Jud. 44.18–21. The translation published in the National Geographic edition reads as follows: ‘When Jesus heard this, he laughed and said to him, “You thirteenth spirit, why do you try so hard? But speak up, and I shall bear with you.”’ The trouble stems from the decision to render the Coptic loanword daimon as ‘spirit’ and not as ‘demon’. While the translation of the term as ‘spirit’ is possible in Classical Greek from about five centuries before the composition of the text, close study of the use of the term in Gnostic texts from Nag Hammadi reveals that it uniformly is a negative reference denoting ‘demons’, ‘devils’, or ‘evil spirits’. The original translation also presented Judas as occupying a privileged place in Jesus’ eyes:
When he heard this, Judas said to him, ‘What good is it that I have received it? For you have set me apart for that generation.’ Jesus answered and said, ‘You will become the thirteenth, and you will be cursed by the other generations – and you will come to rule over them. In the last days they will curse your ascent to the holy generation.’
(Gos. Jud. 46.14–47.1)
Yet a more accurate translation reveals that Judas is not set apart ‘for’ that generation, rather he is set apart ‘from’ it. This means that Judas is not set apart for the privileged Gnostic generation but he is separated from it – this is the very opposite of privilege.
Judas has insights into Jesus’ origin that evade the other disciples, for he alone perceives that Jesus is ‘from the immortal realm of Barbelo’ (Gos. Jud. 35.17–18). While Jesus acknowledges the superiority of Judas’ insight in comparison to the rest of the disciples, he also gives this praise with a barbed warning: ‘for somebody else will replace you in order that the twelve may again come to completion with their god’ (Gos. Jud. 36.1–4).
Perhaps the most sensational aspect of the Gospel of Judas was seen as being the praise that Jesus supposedly lavishes upon Judas for his impending act of betrayal. The National Geographic translation states: ‘But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me’ (Gos. Jud. 56.17–18). Again, mistranslation and misunderstanding have led to seeing this as a request from Jesus to Judas that the latter might hand the former over to execution. There is no doubt a docetic perspective here which sees a separation between the spiritual ‘ungenerated one’ and the human outer shell, but there is no request for Judas to be the mechanism for the shedding of that shell. This verse needs to be read in the wider context where Jesus berates the other disciples for offering sacrifices to the lower god (Gos. Jud. 37.20–40.26), and where he commands them to stop sacrificing (Gos. Jud. 41.1–2). Yet Judas will do ‘more than’ these disciples who lack insight, he will actually sacrifice ‘the man that clothes’ Jesus. This is not a good thing, but it is a greater travesty. In eff
ect, the text mocks apostolic Christianity by saying that even Judas the thirteenth demon had more insight concerning the origin of Jesus than the other disciples. Nonetheless, Judas perpetrated the worst sacrifice by handing Jesus over to death and the followers of the apostles venerate Jesus’ death as an act of salvation when it was brought about by a demon. This bitter satire of apostolic Christianity may have been an attempt to win over converts, or it may have been written for the internal consumption of those already committed to Sethian beliefs. Either way, it is illustrative of the factionalism that existed in emergent Christianity and of the vastly different understandings of salvation and the nature of Jesus.
The Gospel of Mary
Fragments of the Gospel of Mary survive in three different manuscripts, two Greek and one Coptic. The Greek fragments are significantly earlier than the Coptic and it is generally agreed that the text was originally composed in Greek. The earliest fragment is probably Rylands Papyrus (P.Rhy.) 463. This is dated to around the early 3rd century and is a single-leaf text written on both sides, thus indicating that it probably came from a codex. The material contained by P.Rhy. 463 overlaps with the section numbered 17.4–19.5 in the more extensive Coptic text. The second, perhaps slightly later, Greek fragment was discovered at Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy. 3525) and published in 1983. This papyrus scrap has text only on one side, thus suggesting it was written in scroll format. It also overlaps entirely with the Coptic text for the material in 9.1–10.14.