There are Roman Catholic missionaries in developing coun tries who devote themselves to voluntary poverty for the sake of others, and evangelical televangelists who run twelve-step programs to ensure financial success. There are New England Presbyterians and Appalachian snake han dlers. There are Greek Orthodox priests committed to the liturgical service of God, replete with set prayers, incantations, and incense, and fundamentalist preachers who view high-church liturgy as a demonic invention.
There are liberal Methodist political activists intent on transforming society, and Pente costals who think that society will soon come to a crashing halt with the return of Jesus. And there are the followers of David Koreshstill todaywho think the world has already started to end, beginning with the events at Waco, a fulfillment of prophecies from Revelation. Many of these Christian groups, of course, refuse to consider other such groups Christian. All this diversity of belief and practice, and the intolerance that occasion ally results, makes it difficult to know whether we should think of Christian ity as one thing or lots of things, whether we should speak of Christianity or Christianities.
What could be more diverse than this variegated phenomenon, Christianity in the modern world? In fact, there may be an answer: Christianity in the an cient world. As historians have come to realize, during the first three Christian centuries, the practices and beliefs found among people who called themselves Christian were so varied that the differences between Roman Catholics, Primi tive Baptists, and Seventh-Day Adventists pale by comparison.
Most of these ancient forms of Christianity are unknown to people in the world today, since they eventually came to be reformed or stamped out. Many of these texts claimed to be written by Jesus closest followers. Opponents of these texts claimed they had been forged.
This book is about these texts and the lost forms of Christianity they tried to authorize. The Varieties of Ancient Christianity The wide diversity of early Christianity may be seen above all in the theologi cal beliefs embraced by people who understood themselves to be followers of Jesus.
In the second and third centuries there were, of course, Christians who believed in one God. But there were others who insisted that there were two. Some said there were thirty. Others claimed there were In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that God had created the world. But others believed that this world had been cre ated by a subordinate, ignorant divinity.
Why else would the world be filled with such misery and hardship? Yet other Christians thought it was worse than that, that this world was a cosmic mistake created by a malevolent divinity as a place of imprisonment, to trap humans and subject them to pain and suffering.
In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that the Jewish Scripture the Christian Old Testament was inspired by the one true God. Others believed it was inspired by the God of the Jews, who was not the one true God.
Others believed it was inspired by an evil deity. Others be lieved it was not inspired. In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that Jesus was both divine and human, God and man.
There were other Christians who argued that he was completely divine and not human at all. For them, divinity and humanity were incommensurate entities: God can no more be a man than a man can be a rock. There were others who insisted that Jesus was a full flesh-and-blood human, adopted by God to be his son but not himself divine. There were yet other Christians who claimed that Jesus Christ was two things: a full flesh-and-blood human, Jesus, and a fully divine being, Christ, who had temporarily inhabited Jesus body during his ministry and left him prior to his death, inspiring his teachings and miracles but avoiding the suffer ing in its aftermath.
In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that Jesus death brought about the salvation of the world. There were other Chris tians who thought that Jesus death had nothing to do with the salvation of the world. There were yet other Christians who said that Jesus never died. How could some of these views even be considered Christian?
Or to put the question differently, how could people who considered themselves Christian hold such views? Why did they not consult their Scriptures to see that there. Why didnt they just read the New Testament? It is because there was no New Testament. To be sure, the books that were eventually collected into the New Testament had been written by the second century.
But they had not yet been gathered into a widely recognized and au thoritative canon of Scripture. The Lost Scriptures The Gospels that came to be included in the New Testament were all written anonymously; only at a later time were they called by the names of their re puted authors, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
But at about the time these names were being associated with the Gospels, other Gospel books were be coming available, sacred texts that were read and revered by different Chris tian groups throughout the world: a Gospel, for example, claiming to be written by Jesus closest disciple, Simon Peter; another by his apostle Philip; a Gospel allegedly written by Jesus female disciple Mary Magdalene; another by his own twin brother, Didymus Judas Thomas.
But how did they make their decisions? How can we be sure they were right? And whatever happened to the other books? When the New Testament was finally gathered together, it included Acts, an account of the activities of the disciples after Jesus death.
But there were other Acts written in the early years of the church: the Acts of Peter and of John, the Acts of Paul, the Acts of Pauls female companion Thecla, and others.
Why were these not included as parts of Scripture? Our New Testament today contains a number of epistles, that is, letters writ ten by Christian leaders to other Christians, thirteen of them allegedly by Paul.
Scholars debate whether Paul actually wrote all of these letters. And there are other letters not in the New Testament that also claim to be written by Paul, for example, several letters sent by Paul to the Roman philosopher Seneca, and a letter written to the church of Laodicea, and Pauls Third Corinthians the New Testament has First and Second Corinthians.
Moreover, there were let ters written in the names of other apostles as well, including one allegedly written by Simon Peter to Jesus brother James, and another by Pauls compan ion Barnabas. Why were these excluded? The New Testament concludes with an apocalypse, a revelation concerning the end of the world in a cataclysmic act of God, written by someone named John and brought into the New Testament only after Christian leaders became convinced that the author was none other than John the son of Zebedee, Jesus.
But why were other apocalypses not admitted into the canon, such as the apocalypse allegedly written by Simon Peter, in which he is given a guided tour of heaven and hell to see the glorious ecstasies of the saints and, described in yet more graphic detail, the horrendous torments of the damned?
Or the book popular among Christian readers of the second century, the Shepherd of Hermas, which, like the book of Revelation, is filled with apocalyptic visions of a prophet?
We now know that at one time or another, in one place or another, all of these noncanonical books and many others were revered as sacred, inspired, scriptural. Some of them we now have; others we know only by name. Only twenty-seven of the early Christian books were finally included in the canon, copied by scribes through the ages, eventually translated into English, and now on bookshelves in virtually every home in America.
Other books came to be rejected, scorned, maligned, attacked, burned, all but forgottenlost. Losses and Gains It may be worth reflecting on what was both lost and gained when these books, and the Christian perspectives they represented, disappeared from sight. One thing that was lost, of course, was the great diversity of the early centuries of Christianity.
As I have already pointed out, modern Christianity is not lacking in a diversity of its own, with its wide-ranging theologies, liturgies, practices, interpretations of Scripture, political views, social stands, organizations, insti tutions, and so on. But virtually all forms of modern Christianity, whether they acknowledge it or not, go back to one form of Christianity that emerged as victorious from the conflicts of the second and third centuries. This one form of Christianity decided what was the correct Christian perspective; it de cided who could exercise authority over Christian belief and practice; and it determined what forms of Christianity would be marginalized, set aside, de stroyed.
It also decided which books to canonize into Scripture and which books to set aside as heretical, teaching false ideas. And then, as a coup de grce, this victorious party rewrote the history of the controversy, making it appear that there had not been much of a conflict at all, claiming that its own views had always been those of the majority of Chris tians at all times, back to the time of Jesus and his apostles, that its perspective, in effect, had always been orthodox i.
What Christianity gained at the end of these early conflicts was a sense of confidence that it was and always had been right. It also gained a creed, which is still recited by Christians today, that affirmed the right beliefs, as. Relatedly, it gained a theology, including a view that Christ is both fully divine and fully human, and a doctrine of the Trin ity which maintained that the Godhead consists of three personsFather, Son, and Holy Spiritdistinct in number but equal in substance.
Moreover, it gained a hierarchy of church leaders who could run the church and guarantee its adher ence to proper belief and practice. And it gained a canon of Scripturethe New Testamentcomprising twenty-seven books that supported these leaders vision of the church and their understanding of doctrine, ethics, and worship. These gains are obviously significant and relatively well known. Less fa miliar are the losses incurred when these particular conflicts came to an end.
It is these losses which we will be exploring throughout this book. It is striking that, for centuries, virtually everyone who studied the history of early Chris tianity simply accepted the version of the early conflicts written by the ortho dox victors. This all began to change in a significant way in the nineteenth century as some scholars began to question the objectivity of such early Christian writers as the fourth-century orthodox author Eusebius, the so-called Father of Church History, who reproduced for us the earliest account of the con flict.
This initial query into Eusebiuss accuracy eventually became, in some circles, a virtual onslaught on his character, as twentieth-century scholars began to subject his work to an ideological critique that exposed his biases and their role in his presentation. The reevaluation of Eusebius was prompted, in part, by the discovery of additional ancient books, uncovered both by trained archaeolo gists looking for them and by bedouin who came across them by chance, other Gospels, for example, that also claimed to be written in the names of apostles.
In this book we will examine these lost books that have now been found, along with other books that were marginalized by the victorious party but have been known by scholars for centuries. We will also consider how the twentyseven books of the New Testament came to be accepted as canonical Scripture, discussing who made this collection, on what grounds, and when.
And we will explore the nature of these early conflicts themselves, to see what was at stake, what the opposing views were, how the parties involved conducted themselves, what strategies they used, and what literature they revered, copied, and col lected on the one hand and despised, rejected, and destroyed on the other. Through it all, we will be focusing our attention on the diversity of early Chris tianity, or rather the diversity of early Christianities, a diversity that came to be lost, only to be rediscovered, in part, in modern times.
The Stakes of the Conflict Before launching into the investigation, I should perhaps say a word about what is, or at least what was, at stake. Throughout the course of our study I will be asking the question: What if it had been otherwise? What if some other form of Christianity had become dominant, instead of the one that did?
In anticipation of these discussions, I can point out that if some other form of Christianity had won the early struggles for dominance, the familiar doc trines of Christianity might never have become the standard belief of mil lions of people, including the belief that there is only one God, that he is the creator, that Christ his son is both human and divine. The doctrine of the Trin ity might never have developed.
The creeds still spoken in churches today might never have been devised. The New Testament as a collection of sacred books might never have come into being. Or it might have come into being with an entirely different set of books, including, for example, the Gospel of Thomas instead of the Gospel of Matthew, or the Epistle of Barnabas instead of the Epistle of James, or the Apocalypse of Peter instead of the Apocalypse of John.
If some other group had won these struggles, Christians might never have had an Old Testament; if yet a different group had won, Christians might have had only the Old Testament which would not have been called the Old Testament, since there would have been no New Testament.
Moreover, we will see that as vital as the outcome of these early Christian struggles was for the internal character of the religion, it was even more sig nificant for the effect and impact that this religion had externally, on the his tory of civilization itself. It is conceivable that if the form of Christianity that established itself as dominant had not done so, Christianity would never have become a major world religion within the Roman Empire.
Had that happened, the empire might never have adopted Christianity as its official religion. In that case, Christianity would never have become the dominant religion of the Euro pean Middle Ages, down to the Renaissance, the Reformation, and on to today. Had the conflicts been resolved differently, as odd is this may seem, people in the Westwe ourselvesmight have remained polytheists to this day, worshiping the ancient gods of Greece and Rome.
On the other hand, the empire might have converted to a different form of Christianity and the development of Western society and culture might have developed in ways that we cannot imagine. However one plays such games of imagination, it is clear that the victory of one form of Christianity was a significant event both for the internal workings of the religion and for the history of civilization, especially in the West. But it was also a victory that came with a price.
In this study, as I have indicated, we will be exploring both what was gained and what was lost once the conflicts of the early Christian centuries had been resolved. The Shape of Our Study For those who like to have a road map for their journey, I can explain how the book has been structured.
It contains three major parts. The first, Forgeries and Discoveries, looks at several intriguing literary texts: a a Gospel alleg edly written by Jesus disciple Peter, b a legendary account of Thecla, a fe male companion of the apostle Paul, c a Gospel claiming to be written by. Judas Thomas, supposedly Jesus twin brother, and d a longer, but until re cently lost, version of the Gospel of Mark.
To this extent, they may be taken as representative of a larger number of fabricated accounts known from the early Christian centuries, some recognized as forgeries al ready in antiquity, others not discovered or rediscovered until relatively re cent times. As we will see, it is principally through such literary textsmany of them lost, and only some now foundthat we know about alternative forms of Chris tianity, as there are very few archaeological discoveries for example, of build ings, coins, or artwork that can contribute to our knowledge.
After examining these four instances of forgery at some length, we will move to the second part of the book, Heresies and Orthodoxies, to consider broader social phenomena, based on information drawn from such forgeries and from a wide array of other surviving sources.
In particular, we will discuss the widely disparate beliefs of several important Christian groups: the JewishChristian Ebionites, the anti-Jewish Marcionites, and a variety of groups called Gnostic. Standing over and against each of these groups was a form of Chris tianity that endorsed the beliefs and practices that eventually came to dominate the religion toward the middle of the third century.
Since, from the distance of a later perspective, this group or groups may be considered the forebears of Christian orthodoxy, we will call them the proto-orthodox.
This will take us to the third part, Winners and Losers, where we move beyond the diverse texts, beliefs, and practices of these various groups to con sider the conflicts that raged between them, as each of them contended for converts, insisting that its views were right while those of the others were wrong.
In particular, we will consider how proto-orthodox Christians engaged in these internecine battles which eventually led to their victory. As we will see, these confrontations were waged largely on literary grounds, as members of the proto orthodox group produced polemical tractates in opposition to other Christian perspectives, forged sacred texts to provide authorization for their own per spectives forgeries, that is, claiming to be written by Jesus own apostles , and collected other early writings into a sacred canon of Scripture to advance their views and counteract the views of others.
It is out of these conflicts that the New Testament came into being, a collection of twenty-seven books taken to be sacred, inspired, and authoritative.
The study will conclude then with some thoughts on the significance of the victory of this one form of Christianity over the others, as we reflect on what was achieved and what was sacrificed when so many alternative forms of Chris tianity and the texts they espoused came to be lost to posterity, only to be found again, in part, in modern times.
Almost all of the lost Scriptures of the early Christians were forgeries. On this, scholars of every stripe agree, liberal and conservative, fundamentalist and atheist. The book now known as the Proto-Gospel of James claims to have been written by none other than James, the brother of Jesus see Mark ; Gal.
It is an intriguing text in which, among other things, Jesus mother, Mary, is said to have remained a virgin even after giving birth, as proved by a post partum inspection by an overly zealous midwife who finds her intact.
But whoever actually wrote the book, it was not James. So, too, with a book now called Pseudo-Titus, allegedly written by the Titus known from the New Testa ment as a companion of the apostle Paul.
It also is an interesting book, arguing page after page against sexual love, even within the confines of marriage, on the grounds that physical intimacy leads to damnation: Why, it asks, do you strive against your own salvation to find death in love? But whoever actually wrote the book, it was not Titus. The same holds true for nearly all of the Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses that came to be excluded from the canon: forgeries in the names of famous apostles and their companions.
That Christians in the early centuries would forge such books should come as no surprise. Scholars have long recognized that even some of the books accepted into the canon are probably forgeries. Christian scholars, of course, have been loathe to call them that and so more commonly refer to them as pseudonymous writings. Possibly this is a more antiseptic term. But it does little to solve the problem of a potential deceit, for an author who attempts to pass off his own writing as that of some other well-known person has written a forgery.
Forgery, of course, is not the only kind of pseudonymous writing there is. In the modern world, at least, pseudonymity occurs in two forms. On the one hand, there are simple pen names, usually considered innocent enough.
When Maryann Evans published Middlemarch and Silas Marner under the name George Eliot, there was no public outrage although in her case it did raise, at first, a good deal of public curiosity. On the other hand, there are works written under a false name with the intent to deceive. In when the Hitler Diaries appeared, the world was fooled for a time. A now in famous German forger had done credible work, and for several days even experts and newspaper magnates were fooled into thinking that these were authentic handwritten diaries kept by the Fhrer him self up to the last days of World War II.
The forgery was soon exposed, how ever, and people were not amusedespecially the experts and media moguls who had been duped. There are numerous discussions of forgery in ancient Greek and Latin sources. In virtually every case the practice is denounced as deceitful and illspirited, sometimes even in documents that are themselves forged. An interest ing example occurs in a fourth-century Christian text, the so-called Apostolic Constitutions, a book giving instructions about Christian belief and practice, written in the names of the twelve disciples.
The book warns its readers not to read books that claim to be written in the names of the twelve disciples but are not. But why would a forger condemn forgery? Possibly to throw a reader off the scent of his or her own deception. An interesting parallel case may occur even within the pages of the New Testament.
A book written in Pauls name, 2 Thessalonians, warns against a let ter, allegedly written by Paul, that had disturbed some of its readers In an interesting twist, scholars today are not altogether confident that 2 Thessalonians itself was written by Paul. Either way, someone was forging books in Pauls name. Second Thessalonians aside, scholars are reasonably sure that forgeries have found their way into the New Testament. This does not apply to any of the Gos pels, whose authors chose to remain anonymous and only decades later were reputed to be either followers of Jesus Matthew the tax collector and John the son of Zebedee or companions of the apostles Mark the secretary of Peter and Luke the traveling companion of Paul.
Nor can the Book of James or the Apoca lypse of John be labeled forgeries. The former was written by someone named James, but he does not claim to be Jesus brother; and the name was quite com mon among first-century Jews as many as seven people are called James just in the New Testament.
So too the Apocalypse: It was written by someone named John, but nowhere does he claim to be any particular John. Other books, however, are widely regarded as forged.
The author of 2 Peter explicitly claims to be Simon Peter, the disciple of Jesus, who beheld the trans figuration But critical scholars are virtually unanimous that it was not written by him. So too the Pastoral epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus: They claim to be written by Paul, but appear to have been written long after his death. Possibly it is better to reverse the question: Why shouldnt forgeries have made it into the New Tes tament?
Who was collecting the books? When did they do so? And how would they have known whether a book that claims to be written by Peter was actu ally written by Peter or that a book allegedly written by Paul was actually by Paul? So far as we know, none of these letters was included in a canon of sacred texts until decades after they were written, and the New Testament canon as a whole still had not reached final form for another two centuries after that.
How would someone hundreds of years later know who had written these books? The debates over which books to include in the canon were central to the formation of orthodox Christianity. We will observe some of these debates in the following chapters. First, however, I should say a word about terms. As I pointed out, scholars sometimes refer to forged documents as pseudonymous writings, or they use the technical term pseudepigrapha, meaning false writ ings but taken to mean writings written under a false name.
This is not an altogether helpful term, however, since it is typically taken to refer only to the noncanonical books that claimed, and sometimes received, scriptural standing e. But by rights it should cover some of the New Testament books as well, including the letter of 2 Peter. And so sometimes these noncanonical books are called apocrypha.
That term, too, may be a bit misleading, as it technically refers to secret writings that have been uncovered the Greek word literally means covered over or hidden , and there was nothing particularly secretive about a number of these writings: They were used, and written to be used, in communal settings as authoritative texts. Still, the latter term has taken on a broader sense of noncanonical document of the same kind as found in the canon i.
I will use the term Christian apocrypha in that sense through out the discussion. In the four chapters that follow, we will consider several of these apocry phal texts, forged documents that disclose alternative forms of Christianity that came to be lost.
These chapters will serve to set the stage for our broader consideration, in part 2, of the social groups that embodied some of these un derstandings of the faith. Most of these groups were eventually reformed or repressed, their traces covered over, until scholars in the modern period began to rediscover them and to recognize anew the rich diversity and importance of these lost Christianities. Ancient Christians knew of far more Gospels than the four that eventually came to be included in the New Testament.
Most of them have been lost to us in all but name. Some are quoted sporadically by early church writers who opposed them. A few have been discovered in modern times. We can assume, and in many cases we know, that the Christians who read, preserved, and cherished these other Gospels understood them to be sacred texts.
The Christians who rejected them argued that they were heretical pro moting false teachings and, in many instances, forged. The Christians who won the early conflicts and established their views as dominant by the fourth century not only gave us the creeds that have been handed down from antiquity,1 they also decided which books would belong to the Scriptures.
Once their battles had been won, they succeeded in labeling themselves orthodox i. But what should we call Christians who held the views of the victorious party prior to their ultimate victory? It may be best to call them the forerunners of orthodoxy, the proto-orthodox. Proto-orthodox Christians accepted the four Gospels that eventually became part of the New Testament and viewed other Gospels as heretical forgeries.
As the famous theologian of the early and mid-third century, Origen of Alexan dria, claimed, The Church has four Gospels, but the heretics have many Hom ily on Luke 1. We know almost nothing of the Gospels of the Twelve Apostles and of Basilides, a famous second-century Gnostic heretic.
These quotations give a sense of what we lost when these texts disappeared. The Gospel of the Egyptians appar ently opposed the notion of procreative sex. In one passage, a female follower of Jesus, Salome, known slightly from the New Testament Gospels see Mark , says to Jesus, Then I have done well in not giving birth, to which Jesus is said to reply, Eat of every herb, but do not eat of the one that is bitter Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 3.
At an earlier point he is said to have declared, I have come to undo the works of the female Miscellanies 3. The Gospel according to Matthias may have been an even more mys tical affair.
At one point Clement quotes the intriguing words, Wonder at the things that are before you, making this the first step to further knowledge Miscellanies 2. It is a fas cinating document, the subject of an extensive modern literature; we will look at it at length in a later chapter. The early fourth-century church father Eusebius also mentions the Gospels of Thomas and Matthias, along with the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of Peter Church History 3.
The last named is of particular interest, because Eusebius gives an ex tended account of how it was used, questioned, and eventually condemned as heretical by a proto-orthodox leader, to be relegated to the trash heaps of dis carded Gospels.
But then it turned up again, not in a trash heap but in the tomb of an Egyptian monk, discovered over a hundred years ago.
Eusebius, Serapion, and the Gospel of Peter Prior to its discovery, virtually everything we knew about the Gospel of Peter came from Eusebiuss account. In his ten-volume Church History, Eusebius narrates the history of the Christian Church from the days of Jesus down to his own time, in the early fourth century.
This writing is our best source for the history of Christianity after the period of the New Testament to the time of the emperor Constantine, the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. The work is filled with anecdotes and, of yet greater use to historians, extensive quotations of earlier Christian writings.
In many instances, Eusebiuss quota tions are our only source of knowledge of Christian texts from the second and third centuries. The account we are particularly interested in here concerns Serapion, a proto-orthodox bishop of the city of Antioch, Syria, one of the hubs of Christian activity in the early centuries, and his encounter with the Gospel of Peter.
Serapion had become bishop in CE. Under his jurisdiction were not just the churches of Antioch but also the Christian communities in the surrounding area, including one in the town of Rhossus. Serapion had made a visit to the Christians of Rhossus, trying, in good proto-orthodox fashion, to correct their misperceptions about the true gospel message.
While there he learned that the church in Rhossus used as its sacred text a Gospel allegedly written by Simon Peter. Not knowing the character of the book, but assuming that it must be acceptable if Peter himself had written it, Serapion allowed its use, prior to returning home to Antioch. But some informers came forward to cast doubts on the authenticity of the book, inducing him to read it for himself. When he did so, he realized that this Gospel was susceptible to heretical misconstrual, specifically that some of the passages found in it could be used in support of a docetic Christology.
Docetism was an ancient belief that very early came to be proscribed as heretical by proto-orthodox Christians because it denied the reality of Christs suffering and death. Two forms of the belief were widely known. According to some docetists, Christ was so completely divine that he could not be human. As God he could not have a material body like the rest of us; as divine he could not actually suffer and die.
For these docetists, Jesus body was a phantasm. There were other Christians charged with being docetic who took a slightly different tack. For them, Jesus was a real flesh-and-blood human. But Christ was a separate person, a divine being who, as God, could not experience pain and death. In this view, the divine Christ descended from heaven in the form of a dove at Jesus baptism and entered into him;7 the divine Christ then empow ered Jesus to perform miracles and deliver spectacular teachings, until the end when, before Jesus died since the divine cannot die , the Christ left him once more.
That is why Jesus cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Or as it can be more literally translated, Why have you left me behind? For these Christians, God had left Jesus behind, by reascending to heaven, leaving the man Jesus to die alone on the cross. With regard to the firstJesus the phantasmthey asked: If Jesus did not have a real body, how could he really die?
And if he did not die, how could his death bring salvation? If he did not have real blood, how could he shed his blood for the sins of the world? With regard to the second viewJesus and Christ as separate beingsthey asked: If the divine element in Jesus did not suffer and die, how was his death different from that of any other crucified man?
How could his death be redemptive? It might be a miscarriage of justice, perhaps, or a bad end to a good man. But it would be of no real relevance to the plan of God for salvation.
And so proto-orthodox Christians denounced both. It was not just their lives at stake but their eternal lives, the salvation of their souls. When Serapion read the Gospel of Peter for himself, he realized that it could be used in support of a docetic Christology. And so he wrote a little pamphlet, The So-Called Gospel of Peter, in which he explained the problems of the text, pointing out that whereas most of the Gospel was theologically acceptable, there were additions to the Gospel story that could be used in support of a docetic view.
Serapion concluded that because the book was potentially hereti cal, it must not have been written by Peteroperating on the dubious assump tion that if a text disagreed with the truth as he and his fellow proto-orthodox Christians saw it, then it could not possibly be apostolic.
Serapion then penned a letter to the Christians of Rhossus in which he for bade further use of the Gospel and appended his pamphlet detailing the prob lem passages. Eusebius narrates the tale and quotes the letter. But he does not cite the passages. That is unfortunate, since now it is impossible to know for certain whether the Gospel of Peter discovered in the nineteenth century is the book condemned by Serapion and known to Eusebius.
Most scholars, however, assume that it is, for this book, too, would have been acceptable in the main to proto-orthodox thinkers. Yet there are several passages that could well lend themselves to a docetic construal.
And this is a book written in the first person by someone who calls himself Simon Peter. No one today thinks that Jesus disciple Peter wrote the book. To that extent, Serapion was right.
He had discovered a forgery. The Discovery of the Gospel of Peter The text was forgotten for centuries, known only from Eusebiuss brief account. That changed dramatically during an archaeological excavation conducted by a French team operating out of Cairo, digging in upper Egypt in the town of Akhmim during the winter season of Grbant, the team uncovered the tomb of a monk in the Christian section of the towns cem etery.
The tomb could date anywhere from the eighth to the twelfth centuries. Their conclusions are drawn from analysis of the evidence of unity in the New Testament, the formation and closing of the canon, and the methodology and integrity of the recording and distribution of religious texts within the early church. Perhaps you've heard the recent buzz about "alternative Christianities" and "new gospels.
Much of the controversy stems from a library of ancient texts found at Nag Hammadi, Egypt. Now revolutionary questions about the Christian faith are being raised as a result of these findings: Is Jesus truly a divine Savior or just a teacher of wisdom?
Is orthodoxy a by-product of third-century or fourth-century theologians? Did Judas betray Jesus because of evil intent or a request by Jesus? Does salvation include the physical body or just the soul? Darrell L. Bock takes you on a tour of the new claims as well as the controversial writings, examining their origins and comparing them with traditional sources. With discussion questions for group or individual study at the end of each chapter, The Missing Gospels will help you understand the messages of all of these writings so you can form your own opinion.
This provocative work could even change what you believe! Misuse of the Bible has made hatred holy. In this provocative book,Adrian Thatcher argues that debates on sexuality currently ragingthrough the churches are the latest outbreak in a long line ofsavage interpretations of the Bible.
Fascinating reading for anyoneconcerned about the future of Christianity. Carson Publisher: Wm. In this volume, thirty-seven first-rate evangelical scholars present a thorough study of biblical authority and a full range of issues connected to it. Recognizing that Scripture and its authority are now being both challenged and defended with renewed vigor, editor D.
Carson assigned the topics that these select scholars address in the book. After an introduction by Carson to the many facets of the current discussion, the contributors present robust essays on relevant historical, biblical, theological, philosophical, epistemological, and comparative-religions topics. To conclude, Carson answers a number of frequently asked questions about the nature of Scripture, cross-referencing these FAQs to the preceding chapters.
This comprehensive volume by a team of recognized experts will be the go-to reference on the nature and authority of the Bible for years to come. Popular Science gives our readers the information and tools to improve their technology and their world. The core belief that Popular Science and our readers share: The future is going to be better, and science and technology are the driving forces that will help make it better.
Did the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel come to heal the brokenhearted ? Did Mark's Jesus call his disciples to prayer and fasting , and did he cry from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you persecuted me?
Did St. Paul write to the Romans that God works all things together for good for those who love him ? Did the author of Hebrews declare that Jesus died apart from God ?
These statements are found in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament, but are not included in our standard printed editions or translations. Peter Rodgers argues that these and other textual variations should be reconsidered. After reviewing ten important verses using the traditional areas of text-critical inquiry manuscript evidence, internal criteria such as style, and transcriptional probabilities , Rodgers turns our attention to important but neglected narrative features indicated by quotations, allusions, and echoes of the Old Testament.
These references to the story told in the Scriptures of Israel shed new light on the passages considered, offering fresh material and greater perspective for making judgments about the original text. The clear tendency toward asceticism as a way of preparing for the reception of the mystical tradition, which is already attested to in the last chapter of the Book of Enoch, becomes a fundamental principle for the apocalyptics, the Essenes, and the circle of the Merkabah [Throne] mystics who succeeded them.
Further, while labeling the Gospel of Thomas a forgery on the same grounds, Ehrman exempts the canonical Gospels. In his view, their unknown writers made no special authorial claims, even though later people said they were written by Matthew, Mark, etc. I think this distinction is dubious and leaves the Gospels open to the same charge. These examples illustrate how difficult it is to evaluate the authen- ticity and value of any religious text.
Altered, distorted, and spurious writings nevertheless were and are a major problem for every religion relying on scripture. Throughout the book Ehrman explores these and other issues of textual development and transmission within early Christian communities. These communities are difficult to charac- terize because information is often scant, inconsistent, and prejudiced; moreover, like modern Christian sects, they sometimes modified their views, differed among themselves, and split.
Hence Ehrman depicts what is thought to be representative. As to secret teachings, aside from the virtually certain inference of Jewish esotericism, there are several references in the Pseudo-Clementine literature used by the Ebionites, e. While Ehrman discusses the Pseudo-Clementines, he does not, however, mention this aspect. At the other pole were the Marcionites, founded by the second- century theologian, Marcion, son of a Christian bishop and a bishop himself.
He had been troubled by the dichotomy between the wrathful, vengeful, and harshly punitive God of the Hebrew Bible and the loving, merciful, and forgiving God preached by Jesus. Sent by the former, Christ was neither the promised messiah nor was he born of a woman. Ehrman continues with a broad survey of the origins and tenets of Christian Gnostics who attempted to address the question of why the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer — and their writings which depict the material world as the imperfect sometimes evil creation of an ignorant creator, usually identified with Yahweh.
Part 4 — What Is Gnosticism? Not baptism alone sets us free, but gnosis [knowledge]: who we were, what we have become; where we were, whereinto we have been thrown; whither we hasten, whence we are redeemed; what is birth and what rebirth.
Individuals and groups differed mainly on questions as to who is saved, how and when redemption or enlightenment is to be accomplished, what are true conceptions of God and the universe, and why evil and suffering exist — questions which touch the deepest and most sensitive issues of human life and conduct. Scripture and doctrine ultimately derive from them, yet their underlying basis — the revelation of divine wisdom — presupposes prophets, sages, seers, mystics, and anointed ones who are the receivers and transmitters of spiritual knowledge.
Heresy, however, is a word with an interesting but little known history. Each sect hairesis was a community to which its adherents chose to belong — just as a modern day Christian might choose to be a Methodist or a Catholic. But now obstacles to it spring up within Christianity itself. The devil cannot resist sowing weeds in the divine wheat field — and he is successful at it. True Christians blinded by him abandon the pure doctrine.
In the 19th century, as newly-discovered Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Persian, and Asian religious texts began to broaden the western intellec- tual horizon, interest in Gnosticism once again began to stir, possibly in reaction to what these texts implied about Jewish and Christian origins, scripture, and doctrine. According to King, such definitions for the most part only recon- structed the master story which viewed Gnosticism as a post-Crucifixion deviation influenced by other and inferior religious systems.
However, a group of scholars calling themselves the History of Religions School turned elsewhere for the origin of Gnosticism, seeing roots also in the religions of Iran, Babylonia, and India, as well as a proto-Gnosticism in pre-Christian Judaism. The mid-twentieth century saw a major shift in thinking led by the work of Walter Bauer, who also challenged the longstanding assump- tion that Gnosticism was a secondary development in the history of Christianity.
More importantly, he focused his immense scholarship on the master story. Perhaps the greatest challenge to old notions of early Christian- ity has been the Nag Hammadi texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls, which clearly indicate that the earliest Christian groups were rooted in and part of a larger esoteric movement proclaiming salvation through bap- tismal initiation and gnosis.
Of the highest One, Eugnostos writes: He is immortal and eternal, having no birth; for everyone who has birth will perish. He has no name; for whoever has a name is the creation of another. He has no human form;. He is infinite; he is incomprehensible. He is unchanging good. He is unknowable, while he nevertheless knows himself. He is immeasurable. He is untraceable. He is perfect, having no defect. He is imperishably blessed. Parrott, ed. Brill, Leiden, ; also Daniel R.
Such borrowings and adaptations illustrate the difficulty of charac- terizing Gnosticism in any simple way, so much so that some scholars, including Karen King, argue that it is a misleading if not meaningless term.
The word Gnosticism, she reminds us, is an artificial construct of modern scholarship. Coined in the 17th century by English philoso- pher Henry More, it is a convenient label used to define a historical entity that never existed outside the intellectual categories created to describe certain sectarian groups, doctrines, and practices.
In an international colloquium on the Origins of Gnosticism was held in Messina, Italy, partly to consider the problem of definitions.
Regarding the last, Conze noted, it seemed remarkable that during the same period of time — i. In a footnote to the printed edition, he added: The rather startling paper of G. Perhaps the basic ideas were thought out in some prehistoric period as a kind of philosophia perennis, at a time before Europeans, Asians and Americans dispersed into their respective continents. Even then gnosis offers two fundamentally different paths to the truthseeker: personal escape from the evils and suffering of the world or, like the bodhisattva of compassion, to remain and help transform it with the light of knowledge and divine wisdom.
For imperishability [descends] upon the perish- able; the light flows down upon the darkness, swallowing it up; and the Pleroma fills up the deficiency.
These are the symbols and the images of the resurrection. He it is who makes the good. Christian Gnostics:The Prodigal Siblings? By Tim Steffey. Download PDF.
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