The Apocryphal Gospels_A Very Short Introduction
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The non-canonical gospels and the historical Jesus
Conspiracy theorists seem to adore the non-canonical gospels. They are employed to support the suggestion that the image of the true Jesus has been suppressed, buried under layers of ecclesiastical constructs that domesticate the revolutionary message of the teacher from Nazareth. It is true that by comparison the canonical accounts present a relatively tame picture of Jesus, who is best understood within a 1st-century Jewish context. Perhaps it is because the canonical gospels present a Jesus whose teaching and life is tightly linked to a specific historical setting that in some ways these texts have become less attractive to postmodern tastes. By contrast, the non-canonical accounts are often free from the limitation of historical context, and their esoteric teachings are ambiguous enough to be interpreted in multiple ways. Yet even if the utility of the ideas in non-canonical gospels is more appealing for those pursuing contemporary spiritualities, this does not make their portrait of Jesus more authentically historical. If Jesus, the 1st-century Galilean, has become irrelevant to modern minds, he cannot be reclaimed by privileging historically dubious representations of him. Bad history does not make for good faith. It needs to be acknowledged that most of the non-canonical texts appear either to derive in various ways from the four gospels of the New Testament, or they seem to be the products of speculative and visionary theological schools that flourished between the 2nd and 4th centuries.
This is not to say that no material in the non-canonical gospels has any claim of originating with the historical Jesus. Rather, expectations should be limited. As has been discussed, the Gospel of Thomas is the most likely source of extra-biblical authentic Jesus tradition being preserved among the non-canonical gospels. Some forms of sayings which parallel canonical versions actually appear more primitive and consequently raise the possibility that they retain a form of wording closer to that actually spoken by Jesus. Again there is still a huge gap between what is recorded and what Jesus may actually have said. The Gospel of Thomas, at least in the fullest form in which it is preserved, is written in Coptic. This is likely to be a translation of a Greek version, evidenced by the fragments discovered at Oxyrhynchus. Jesus himself almost certainly gave his teaching in Aramaic. So even if the Gospel of Thomas does preserve the wording of a saying closer to that uttered by the historical Jesus than a version preserved in the New Testament, this is still perhaps two stages of translation removed from Jesus’ actual spoken words. Where the Gospel of Thomas may provide more interesting data is when it presents otherwise unattested sayings that have a degree of probability of originating with Jesus. In reality, most scholars who even entertain this possibility would place only a small selection of sayings from Thomas in this category.
Belief that the non-canonical gospels offer the possibility of repristinating early Christianity is just that – a belief! When the material contained in these texts is analysed from a thoroughgoing historical perspective, the vast majority of sayings and narratives are seen to stem from the period subsequent to the New Testament and thus have lesser claim than the canonical gospels to be accurate portraits of the historical Jesus. Does this then mean that the study of non-canonical gospels is a fruitless endeavour?
Hopefully not, but it needs to be recognized that their value lies elsewhere.
What is the value of the non-canonical gospels?
Hopefully by now it will be recognized that texts can have multiple layers of historical contexts. A modern historical novel, set in Tudor England say, may wish to transport readers back to that period, or help them to experience the authentic feel of Elizabethan England. Attention may be given to dress, diet, and even details of the station and influence of major figures. Yet often, in order to connect with a modern readership contemporary concerns must be projected back on to ancient characters. Thus the psychological, relational, and financial concerns they express can have a very modern feel, which while resonating with 21st-century readers would nonetheless actually be foreign to the purported context.
The same is true with the majority of non-canonical gospels. They reflect the concerns of their world more closely than the world of the 1st-century Jesus. Yet for the historian of ancient Christianity this is itself an extremely important window onto the piety, practices, and beliefs of diverse groups of Christians in the 2nd and 3rd centuries – and beyond. For example, the Gospel of Peter shifts the blame for the crucifixion heavily onto the Jews and seeks to absolve the Roman authorities. This does not mean that its storyline accurately represents the 1st-century historical reality. However, it is vitally important to understand that at least by the end of the 2nd century, early Christians were downplaying Roman involvement, perhaps to remove the offence of Jesus having been crucified by imperial authority, and simultaneously allowing Christians to scapegoat one of the groups that most fiercely disputed claims of Jesus’ messiahship and divinity.
Non-canonical gospels are also a powerful witness to the diversity of early Christianity itself. It has long been recognized that ‘the winners write history’. Even within Christianity there have been victors and those whose perspectives have been defeated and rejected. Regardless of whether this is piously seen as being due to divine providence, or rather more pragmatically as being due to the vagaries of history, it remains the case that what emerged as ‘orthodox’ Christianity was able to produce the narrative of the history of the church. In so doing, it either neglected competing understandings of the faith, or represented these as heretical and deviant. More than anything else, what the non-canonical gospels permit is the opportunity to hear once again those voices from the margins. By reading these texts it is possible to enter the thought-world of various mystical and experiential forms of Christianity. The discovery of such texts has rescued long-lost voices and in the process enlarged the understanding of the diversity and variety of early Christianity.
Further reading
Collections of Texts
J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993; first paperback edition 2005).
This is the most accessible and fullest one-volume collection of non-canonical New Testament texts.
E. Hennecke and W. Schneemelcher (eds.), New Testament Apocrypha, Volume One: Gospels and Related Writings; Volume Two: Writings Relating to the Apostles; Apocalypses and Related Subjects, rev. edn. (R. McL. Wilson, trans.; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991, 1993).
A translation into English of the standard German reference work. This is in the process of being fully revised and rewritten for a new edition.
J. M. Robinson (ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library in English, rev. edn. (Leiden: Brill, 1996).
This is the standard one-volume English translation of the Nag Hammadi texts.
A. E. Barnard, Other Early Christian Gospels: A Critical Edition of the Surviving Greek Manuscripts (LNTS 315; London: T&T Clark, 2006).
A collection of images, transcriptions, and translations of fragmentary Greek non-canonical gospel texts.
Online Resources
Useful websites include:
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html
www.nag-hammadi.com/
http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/Egerton/Egerton_home.html
http://forbiddengospels.blogspot.com/
http://wesley.nnu.edu/Biblical_Studies/noncanon/gospels.htm
Treatments of Collections of Non-Canonical Texts
D. R. Cartlidge and J. K. Elliott, Art and the Christian Apocrypha (London/New York: Routledge, 2001).
J. D. Crossan, Four Other Gospels: Shadows on the Contours of Canon (Minneapolis, MN: Winston Press, 1985).
B. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
J. K. Elliott, A Synopsis of the Apocryphal Nativity and Infancy Narratives (NTTS 34; Leiden: Brill, 2006).
P. Foster (ed.), The Non-Canonical Gospels (London: T&T Clark, 2008).
P. Jenkins, Hidd
en Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
H.-J. Klauck, Apocryphal Gospels: An Introduction (Eng. trans.; London: T&T Clark, 2003).
H. Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (London/Philadelphia, PA: SCM/TPI, 1990).
F. Lapham, An Introduction to the New Testament Apocrypha (London: T&T Clark, 2003).
J. D. Turner and A. McGuire (eds.), The Nag Hammadi Library after Fifty Years: Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration (Leiden: Brill, 1997).
Works on Individual Non-Canonical Texts
H. I. Bell and T. C. Skeat, Fragments of an Unknown Gospel and Other Early Christian Papyri (London: British Museum, 1935).
T. Chartrand-Burke, ‘The Infancy Gospel of Thomas: The Text, its Origins, and its Transmission’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 2001).
A. D. DeConick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas: A History of the Gospel and Its Growth (LNTS 286; London: T&T Clark, 2005).
— The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation, with a Commentary and New English Translation of the Complete Gospel (LNTS 287; London: T&T Clark, 2006).
— The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says (London: T&T Clark, 2007).
S. J. Gathercole, The Gospel of Judas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
R. F. Hock, The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 1995).
K. L. King, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2003).
T. J. Kraus, Ad fontes: Original Manuscripts and Their Significance for Studying Early Christianity – Selected Essays (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
M. J. Kruger, The Gospel of the Saviour: An Analysis of P.Oxy. 840 and its Place in the Gospel Traditions of Early Christianity (TENT 1; Leiden: Brill, 2005).
S. Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1993).
C. M. Tuckett, The Gospel of Mary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
M. L. Turner, The Gospel According to Philip: The Sources and Coherence of an Early Christian Collection (Leiden: Brill, 1996).
R. Uro, Thomas: Seeking the Historical Context of the Gospel of Thomas (London: T&T Clark, 2003).
R. Valantasis, The Gospel of Thomas (London/New York: Routledge, 1997).
R. McL. Wilson, The Gospel of Philip (London: A. R. Mowbray & Co., 1962).
Works Providing Important Background to the Non-Canonical Gospels
R. E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (ABRL, rev. edn.; New York: Doubleday, 1993).
W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1984).
J. Jeremias, Unknown Sayings of Jesus (London: SCM, 1964).
A. H. B. Logan, The Gnostics: Identifying an Early Christian Cult (London: T&T Clark, 2006).
J. Robinson and H. Koester (eds.), Trajectories through Early Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1971).
References
Chapter 1
The manuscript found in Archduke Rainer’s collection is known as the Fayyum Fragment and has been given the papyrus abbreviation P.Vindob.G 2325. See the discussion of this manuscript by T. J. Kraus, ‘The Fayum Gospel’, in P. Foster (ed.), The Non-Canonical Gospels (London: T&T Clark, 2008), pp. 150–6.
A fascinating discussion of the archaeology of the Oxyrhynchus site and the significance of the papyrus documents unearthed there can be found in P. Parsons, City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish: Greek Lives in Roman Egypt (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007).
N. T. Wright claims that the Gospel of Judas is not a true ‘gospel’ in his Judas and the Gospel of Jesus (London: SPCK, 2006), pp. 27–39.
The evolution in meaning of the term ‘gospel’ is carefully traced by G. N. Stanton, Jesus and Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), esp. chapter 2, pp. 9–62.
For the wider political situation in Rome in AD 69, see P. A. L. Greenhalgh, The Year of the Four Emperors (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975).
Martin Hengel argues that the titles of the written gospels were not added secondarily, but were part of the gospels as they originally circulated. M. Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ (London: SCM, 2000), pp. 50–3.
Irenaeus uses the notion of ‘appropriateness’ to justify why the number of gospels can be no fewer or no more than four. See D. Minns, ‘Irenaeus’, Expository Times 120 (2009), pp. 157–166.
The estimate of about 40 known gospel-like texts is suggested in recent publications: C. M. Tuckett, ‘Forty Other Gospels’, in M. Bockmeuhl and D. A. Hagner (eds.), The Written Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 238–53; C. Hedrick, ‘The 34 Gospels: Diversity and Division Among Earliest Christians’, Bible Review 18.3 (2002): 20–31, 46–7.
The two most sustained challenges to the use of the whole category of ‘Gnosticism’ have come from M. A. Williams, Rethinking ‘Gnosticism’: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) and K. L. King, What is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
For a defence of the retention of the term ‘Gnostic’, see A. H. B. Logan, The Gnostics: Identifying an Early Christian Cult (London: T&T Clark, 2006) and B. Pearson, Ancient Gnosticism: Traditions and Literature (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007). For a discussion of the succession lists of bishops of Rome being an artificial construct of the second half of the 2nd century, see P. Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries (London: Continuum, 2003), pp. 404–6.
For an advanced discussion of Valentinism, see E. Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed: The Church of the ‘Valentinians’ (Leiden: Brill, 2006).
For the debate about Gnosticism before Christianity, see E. Yamauchi, ‘The Issue of Pre-Christian Gnosticism Reviewed in the Light of the Nag Hammadi Texts’, in J. D. Turner and A. McGuire (eds.), The Nag Hammadi Library after Fifty Years: Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 72–88.
On the Gospel of the Saviour, see C. W. Hedrick and P. A. Mirecki, Gospel of the Savior: A New Ancient Gospel (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 1999).
The discovery of the Gospel of Judas was brought to wider public attention through a series of National Geographic publications and television documentaries. See The National Geographic (May 2006): 78–95.
Two mainstream treatments dealing with the methodological problems that attend historical Jesus research can be found in E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (London: SCM, 1985), and the multi-volume work of J. P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 3 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1991, 1994, 2001).
The classical critique of the view of Christianity as a unified religion was outlined in the 1930s, see W. Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (English translation, London: SCM, 1972; German original, 1934).
A radical redating of non-canonical gospel material can be seen in Appendix 1 of J. D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992), pp. 427–34.
The colour-coded results of the Jesus Seminar were published in R. W. Funk and R. W. Hoover (eds.), The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (Toronto: Polebridge/Macmillan, 1993).
Chapter 2
The James Robinson quote is from his ‘Nag Hammadi: The First Fifty Years’, in J. D. Turner and A. McGuire (eds.), The Nag Hammadi Library after Fifty Years: Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 3–6. See also J. M. Robinson (ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library in English, revised edn. (Leiden: Brill, 1996).
On the revelation dialogues, see K. L. King, The Secret Revelation of John (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).