The Case for the Real Jesus

by Lee Strobel

  “It’s a bit anti-women too, isn’t it?” I added.

  “Yes, it’s very politically incorrect the way it concludes,” he said. “Simon Peter says, ‘Miryam’—or Mary—‘should leave us. Females are not worthy of life,’ and Jesus answers, ‘Look, I shall guide her to make her male, so she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.’ I’ve actually heard gratuitous assertions that Thomas originally didn’t have that conclusion. So there you go: you just redefine the evidence if it doesn’t fit your theory.”

  Interestingly, the Gnostic gospels as a whole don’t elevate women in the way that some authors have claimed. As Witherington points out:

  The Gnostic literature is written by those who wish to get beyond human sexual matters, who see such material things as hindrances to the core of a person’s true identity. Thus it is not true that women are more affirmed as women in the Gnostic literature than they are in the canonical Gospels. Quite the opposite is the case. The Gnostic literature is all about transcending or ignoring one’s material or bodily identity. But the canonical Gospels affirm maleness and femaleness as part of the goodness of God’s creation.35

  “What about salvation in Thomas?” I asked Evans.

  “Salvation is not perhaps exactly the way it is in other Gnostic texts, but it’s pretty close,” he answered. “It comes from self-knowledge, from understanding oneself authentically, and recognizing where one fits into the cosmos, as well as repudiating and not getting caught up with this world. So it’s slightly Christian, slightly Old Testament, slightly Gnostic.”

  “And the resurrection?”

  He leaned forward. “That’s an interesting question,” he said. “Jesus is called the ‘living one.’ Some wonder if the post-Easter and pre-Easter Jesus are blended together in Thomas. But it doesn’t even matter to them—this is the revealing Jesus.”

  “History itself doesn’t seem to matter very much to the Gnostics,” I observed.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Evans said. “Contrast that with the canonical Gospels. The reason for the Christian movement in the New Testament is that an event of history has taken place. Jesus has become flesh, we have seen him, we have touched him, he died on the cross, and on Sunday morning he was resurrected. But for the Gnostics, Jesus is a revealer—he tells us things and we must internalize and live in light of them. What actually happened becomes less relevant. It isn’t the story that counts anymore; it’s the thought. It isn’t a response of faith in something God has done; it’s just knowing what you’re supposed to know.”

  “So the idea of Jesus dying for our sins would not be a…,” I said, pausing to let him finish the sentence.

  “No, in their view Jesus didn’t die for our sins,” he said. “He came so that we would have knowledge. How he left doesn’t matter.”

  “The Jesus Seminar elevated the Gospel of Thomas to equal stature with the canonical Gospels in The Five Gospels,” I observed. “Even if we grant that Thomas was written much later than the New Testament, do you think a legitimate argument can be made that Thomas should have been included in the Bible?”

  Evans was adamant. “No, I’m sorry, it cannot,” he insisted, becoming more animated as he spoke. “If Thomas is to be included, then why not the Diatessaron, because that’s its source? Why not any mishmash written by anyone at the end of the second century that takes second-and third-hand materials, blends them together, and creates an inauthentic setting? Would even a Jesus Seminar scholar argue sincerely that the Jesus of Thomas is closer to the historical Jesus of the 20s and 30s than the Jesus we have presented in Mark or Q? I can’t believe that!

  “What happens is that some radical scholars are hypercritical of the canonical Gospels and shove them to the end of the first century. Then they’ll take these alternative gospels and not be critical of them at all. By being naive and gullible, they drag them to the early second century, or they even smuggle them in supposed ‘early forms’ into the first century. Then they can say all these documents were written at approximately the same time by approximately the same kinds of people in terms of their qualifications. Now you go back to Koester’s statement: it’s just dogmatism and prejudice to privilege the canonical Gospels.

  “If you picture fifteen or twenty gospels as all being part of one soupy gray porridge, then picking out four of them and saying these four are privileged—well, yeah, that does sound rather dogmatic. But that grossly misrepresents the evidence. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were earlier than all these other gospels, and they have credible connections with the first generation, apostolic, eyewitness sources. The only way to deny that is to say, well, I don’t care what the evidence says, I will instead rely on my own intuition and guesswork and preference. Now, I call that dogmatic and prejudiced!”

  I was thankful that Evans didn’t politely dance around issues the way some scholars do. I decided to ask his opinion about something else Pagels had said to me—suspecting that he would again be direct in his answer.

  “Pagels thinks the Gospel of Thomas should be read alongside Mark, which is the public teaching of Jesus, because Thomas ‘possibly’ preserves Jesus’ private teaching,” I said. “Would you suggest people use Thomas in this way?”

  “I disagree profoundly,” came his immediate response. “That’s wishful thinking. I don’t think there’s any hope in the world that this is Jesus’ private teaching. Let’s put it this way: if anything in the Gospel of Thomas actually goes back to Jesus, it’s because it reflects authentic tradition that is already preserved in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Everything distinctive in Thomas turns out to be late second-century Syrian tradition.”

  Referring to my notes, I read Evans this quote from Jenkins:

  The new portrait of Gnosticism is profoundly attractive for modern seekers, that large constituency interested in spirituality without the trappings of organized religion or dogma. For such an audience, texts like Thomas are so enticing because of their individualistic quality, their portrait of a Jesus who is a wisdom teacher rather than a Redeemer or heavenly Savior.36

  “Do you think that’s true?” I asked.

  “We’re seeing conflicting graphs these days—there’s an increased interest in spirituality and a decreased interest in organized religion,” he said. “Well, that makes Thomas attractive. If you are biblically illiterate and don’t care about history or what really occurred with Jesus, if you’re not interested in the organized church, then Thomas would be interesting. Let’s face it: we’re in a postmodern era that is interested in oddball, eclectic, in some cases downright spooky aspects of spirituality, and Thomas kind of fits in.

  “It’s sort of like reading Nostradamus—it’s ambiguous, it’s vague, it’s open to all kinds of interpretation. And Thomas doesn’t lay very heavy demands on anyone. You’re chastised for being ignorant—well, nobody wants to be ignorant. There isn’t any severe rebuke for immorality or injustice—things that the authentic Jesus does talk about.”

  My thoughts went to people who are reading exaggerated claims about Thomas in books and on the Internet. “What about average, everyday Christians?” I said. “What current value does Thomas have for them?”

  Evans thought for a moment before answering. “I don’t know that Thomas has any value for everyday Christians. If you’re looking for the real Jesus, there are far, far better places to go—like the canonical Gospels,” he said. “However, I tell my students that if they’re curious about documents outside the New Testament, then go ahead and read them. I say, ‘You tell me: Should Thomas be right alongside Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?’ Without exception, they come back and say, ‘My goodness, what weird stuff. Good grief! Now I think the church chose wisely.’

  “Once these documents are carefully studied, fairly and in full context, with no prejudice or no bias, with no axe to grind or special pleading, if you have a historical perspective in mind, then you have to say the early church mad
e very wise choices from the get-go. You don’t come up with a Dan Brown conclusion that, boy, somebody really fooled around with the stew; they should have ended up with the gospels of Philip, Thomas, and Mary instead of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

  “It’s not a photo finish,” he declared. “Not even close.”

  DOCUMENT #2: THE GOSPEL OF PETER

  Next I turned to the “Gospel of Peter,” knowing that when I called it by that title, I was making an assumption that may very well not be correct. “Scholars aren’t even sure they’ve got the ‘Gospel of Peter,’ are they?” I asked.

  “No,” he replied. “They’re not.”

  “Then why has it been called by that name?”

  “The document was found in the 1880s in Akhmîm, Egypt, in a codex inside the coffin of a Christian monk who died in the ninth century. In this codex was the Apocalypse of Peter, an account of the martyrdom of St. Julian from the Byzantine era, fragments of Greek Enoch, and a gospel fragment without its beginning or end, so there’s no title. But because the apostle Peter appears in the text and narrates it, and because it was accompanied by the Apocalypse of Peter when it was found, archaeologists assumed it was the lost Gospel of Peter that the ancient church historian Eusebius and Bishop Serapion had warned was falsely attributed to the apostle.”

  “They didn’t consider it to be reliable?” I asked.

  “Oh, heavens, no!” he replied, shaking his head. “It was considered full of errors and false teaching and therefore should not be read in the church.”

  “So we don’t know for sure that this is a copy of that gospel?”

  “We don’t know that at all.”

  “What about you?” I asked. “You’re apparently pretty skeptical.”

  “I’m extremely skeptical,” he said, “because Bishop Serapion says the Gospel of Peter was ‘docetic,’ which means Jesus only appeared to be physical. In other words, he didn’t leave footprints; his feet didn’t quite touch the ground. Yet where’s the docetism in the Akhmîm fragment?”

  I pondered that question. “Some people point to the part that says it was as if Jesus felt no pain during the crucifixion,” I observed.

  “That’s not docetism,” Evans insisted. “That’s lionizing Jesus by saying that even though he was brutally treated, he didn’t lose self-control. He didn’t cry out in pain. If the text is understood rightly, it implies he felt the pain but controlled himself.”

  “Overall,” I said, “what does the fragment talk about?”

  “It starts with Pilate giving up Jesus to the crowd to be crucified. Then there’s this extraordinarily crazy story about the ruling priest spending the night in a cemetery.” Evans’s eyes got wide. “This writer doesn’t know what he’s talking about!” he declared. “No ruling priest would do that! Then the stone of Jesus’ tomb rolls aside and two angels, whose heads reach all the way to the clouds, go into the tomb and come out helping a third person, whose head goes above the clouds. I mean, we have an NBA dream team here!” he added with a chuckle.

  “Following them, coming out of the cave, is a cross,” he continued. “I mean, this is bizarre! You wonder—how does it ambulate? Is it a pogo stick? Does it have wheels? Then a heavenly voice says, ‘Have you preached to them that sleep?’ Jesus doesn’t answer—the cross does! The cross says, ‘Yes!’ This is extraordinary! You read this and you say, ‘I can’t believe my eyes.’ How can anyone suggest that this account of a talking cross and angels with their heads going to the clouds could really be an early, primitive account about Jesus?”

  “But,” I insisted, “Crossan does date it very early. He extracts what he calls the ‘Cross Gospel’ from it and says all four Gospel accounts are based on this. In his book The Cross That Spoke, he dates this gospel to as early as AD 50.” 37

  Evans shook his head. “Crossan is just about all by himself on that point. Very, very few scholars would say the Akhmîm fragment could be as early as the New Testament Gospels, but I’m not so sure even they would say it’s got an early core on which the canonical Gospels depend. Crossan does, but not too many people think that’s credible, since it’s such a tour de force of special pleading.

  “The problem is when the Akhmîm fragment is critically studied, it appears to be loosely based on Matthew, and it contains errors that somebody ignorant of first-century political and cultural realities in Palestine would make—like having ruling priests spend the night in the graveyard. They would not do that—and anybody writing in the middle of the first century would know that. Obviously, he’s ignorant of Jewish burial traditions and rules about corpse impurity. Also, the fragment is anti-Semitic, which would reflect lateness, not earliness. Because who would write a gospel in the 50s?”

  “A Jewish person,” I ventured.

  “That’s right. So now we supposedly have an anti-Semitic person writing a document on which the Jewish authors—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—would base their accounts?38 This is absurd! Would they base their accounts on a document that has manifest errors that would be obvious to them? The writer doesn’t even know who rules what part of Israel at that time.

  “And Jesus’ head goes into the clouds? This probably represents embellishment of the Shepherd of Hermes, written between AD 110 and 140, and an addition to Ezra in the mid-second century. What about the cross being buried with Jesus—and talking? This is the stuff of later legend. In the late second century, and on into the third, there were some fantastic ideas that cropped up about Jesus’ cross, like going wherever he goes and preceding him into heaven.

  “Any fair-minded historical reading of the Akhmîm fragment would say that, given the errors and the coherence with documented late tradition, that this may very well not be the lost Gospel of Peter at all. If it isn’t, we could date it in the third century, or even the fourth or fifth centuries. It’s little more than a blend of details from the four canonical Gospels, especially from Matthew, embellished with pious imagination, apologetic concerns, and a touch of anti-Semitism.

  “Moody Smith of Duke Divinity School put it this way: ‘Is it thinkable that the tradition began with the legendary, the mythological, the anti-Jewish, and indeed the fantastic, and moved in the direction of the historically restrained and sober?’”39

  Evans waited for the question to sink in. “Of course not,” he concluded. “That’s not how history works. It doesn’t move from wild stories of talking crosses and angels with their heads going to the clouds and then progress to the sober accounts of the canonical Gospels.”

  DOCUMENT #3: THE GOSPEL OF MARY

  Popularized by Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code, the Gospel of Mary has become increasingly fashionable, especially among women who see it as validating female leadership in the church. “What about any historical connection with Mary herself?” I asked Evans.

  “Nobody in all seriousness who’s a scholar and is competent would say Mary Magdalene composed this gospel that now bears her name.”

  “Her name was attached to legitimize it?” I asked.

  “Sure. And by the way, that’s what Gnostics would do. In contrast, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke circulated anonymously. Their authority and truth were transparent. Everybody knew this was what Jesus taught, so there wasn’t much concern over who wrote it down. But in the second century, they had to force it. So the gospels of the second century and later would attach a first-century name to try to bootstrap their credibility, since they didn’t sound like Jesus. They had to compensate by saying, well, Thomas or Peter or Philip or Mary wrote it, so it must have credibility.”

  “You’d date the Gospel of Mary to the second century?”

  “Yes, probably between 150 and 200,” he replied. “And, frankly, that’s not very controversial. Scholars are virtually unanimous about this. There’s nothing in it that we can trace back with any confidence to the first century or to the historical Jesus or to the historical Mary.”

  “What takes place in the gospel?”

  “Mary Ma
gdalene tells the disciples about some revelations that Jesus gave her, but Andrew and Peter are skeptical because the teaching is at odds with what Jesus had taught them. Mary is saddened that they’d think she would misrepresent Jesus’ words, and she begins to cry. Levi rebukes Peter, defends Mary, and exhorts the disciples to preach the gospel, ‘neither setting boundaries nor laying down laws, as the Savior said.’ They go forth and that’s the end.”

  “What’s the significance of Jesus supposedly being against the setting of boundaries?” I asked.

  “It appears to be a reaction to the kind of rules laid down in the pastoral letters. A guy may want to be a bishop, but he must meet certain specified qualifications. Deaconesses likewise must be this and not that. And this Gospel of Mary appears to be something of a protest in the middle of the second century against rules that were probably shutting out eccentric, offbeat teachers, maybe some of whom are women.

  “Can you just imagine a woman of a Gnostic orientation who wanted to preach from time to time? The bishop declines permission, maybe appealing to the pastoral letters. So the Gospel of Mary, with a decidedly Gnostic flavor, deals with that particular issue by saying that Jesus told Mary in a revelation not to lay down rules. The gospel defends the right of women to be teachers, perhaps in opposition to the growing institutionalization of Christianity that put some restrictions on women.

  “Now, it’s just fragmentary enough that we don’t know quite the whole story—so you can modernize it, you can make it politically correct, you can feminize it, you can do all kinds of things with it, which some people do. What’s clear, though, is that the gospel fits a setting that’s no earlier than the mid-second century.”

  “I hesitate to bring this up, because it’s already been thoroughly debunked by so many credible scholars,” I said, “but we might as well mention that this gospel does not actually support the now-popular idea that Jesus was married to Mary.”40