Chapter Eleven

Accept no imitations

• Is there evidence that the early church made good choices when selecting the books which today made up the canon of the NT?

You will have noticed, from the opening of Luke’s gospel, that there were many accounts of the Gospel in existence when Luke began to write.

Since many have undertaken to set in order a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us …

(Luke 1:1)

We don’t know what Luke thought about these other accounts since he doesn’t tell us. The only gospels which survive from the first century are the four in the NT so, whatever your point of view might be, these four, together with the other NT books, are the principal evidence for the life and teaching of Jesus, and the history of how the church began. That is indisputable.

Biblical scholar, and well-known sceptic of Christianity, Bart Ehrman, whom we’ve met before writes:

… the oldest and best sources we have for knowing about the life of Jesus … are the four gospels of the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This is not simply the view of Christian historians, who have a high opinion of the New Testament and its historical worth; it is the view of all serious historians of antiquity of every kind, from committed evangelical Christians to hardcore atheists (Ehrman, ‘truth and fiction’ 102)

So, even the sceptics acknowledge that much.

However, you may have heard about ‘alternative’ gospels and the ‘alternative’ Christianities that went with them. These ‘alternative’ gospels are traditionally referred to as apocryphal gospels. They are also referred to by some as missing or lost gospels, and the ‘alternative’ Christianities are also referred to as multiple Christianities or lost Christianities or ancient Christianities. These were all dismissed by the early church as fakes, and with good reason. It is not the purpose of this book to go into detail about the apocryphal gospels. Indeed, I do not mean to suggest by the fact that I am discussing them, that I think you should pay them any attention. You have better things to do with your time. Feel free to ignore them; you won’t miss out. Before the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, they mostly just sat on dusty old shelves in university libraries, lonely and unloved except by historians and theologians. The word arcane could have been invented to describe them; the apocryphal gospels that is, not the historians and theologians.

OK, I’m exaggerating. Some of them were newly rediscovered, so for academics they were sometimes quite exciting! For example, in 1945, 13 leather bound books, kept in a storage jar, were discovered at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, containing more that forty works, nearly all previously unknown (Metzger, 118). The story of how the Nag Hammadi library was discovered is a real humdinger (Ehrman, ‘Lost’ 51-55; Pagels, 13-16, 22-26). It would make a great movie. Netflix etc. should take note.

Before discoveries such as the Nag Hammadi library, most of our information about the apocryphal gospels came from ancient books about them rather than directly from the books themselves. It’s rather like the situation with Papias, whose writings we only know about through the writings of others, such as the historian Eusebius. But thanks to Nag Hammadi and other finds we now have much more direct knowledge of the apocryphal writings. We know the titles of about 40 gospels that existed in ancient times; and we have more or less complete copies of about a dozen of these. However, only the real gospels were written within living memory of Jesus. All the fakes are from the second century at the earliest, many much later.

Many ask why these alternative gospels were ‘excluded’ from the NT. In most cases there is no need to explain, any more than there is a need to explain why I have not been selected to play football for England, or offered the position of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge (Newton’s old job). Why don’t the King and Queen invite me round for dinner at Buckingham Palace? Why hasn’t the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra appointed me as their principal clarinettist? Why have they excluded me? How unfair of them! Bruce Metzger remarks:

Sometimes apocryphal gospels are described as ‘excluded books of the Bible’. Even a casual acquaintance, however, of these gospels and their credentials will convince the reader that no one excluded them from the bible; they excluded themselves. (Metzger, 122)

The apocryphal gospels were written long after the real ones, as the early church recognised, and most modern scholars agree. Many of the apocryphal gospels and other writings claim to be written by an apostle or other major figure from the NT; but these were all written long after the supposed authors had died. For this reason and many others, all scholars, even the ones who are sympathetic to them, agree with the early church that the apocryphal gospels (and the apocryphal Acts and letters) are all fakes. You’d have thought that would be enough for most people, wouldn’t you? But apparently not.

An example of an alternative gospel is the gospel of Peter. It was one of the more successful ones. It teaches Docetism, a dead give away that it is a fake. See below for the meaning of Docetism. As a matter of fact, in this case, we know that this is how this gospel was identified as a fake by the early church. Serapion, the Bishop of Antioch around AD 200 writes:

As for us, brothers, we accept both Peter and the other apostles as Christ, but we reject the writings that falsely bear their names, recognizing through our experience that we did not receive such writings.

Eusebius vi.12.2-6 (adapted from Stevenson, 126)

Apparently, the church in Rhossus, about thirty miles from Antioch, was making use of this Gospel of Peter. Serapion raised no objection to it initially since he had not read it. When he became aware of its contents, however, he realised that it taught Docetism and so could not be authentic. He then wrote a book called The So Called Gospel of Peter detailing the problems with it and instructed the Christians at Rhossus to stop using it. We have a partial copy of the Gospel of Peter thanks to a discovery made in 1886-7 of a collection of manuscripts in the tomb of a monk (Ehrman, 16).

The gospel is dated by scholars to the first half of the second century so it can’t have been written by Peter (Bauckham, 535). The fact that it claims to be written by Peter, and is even written in the first person, is also a big red flag. But hey, if you are going to fib, fib big. Go for the big guy, the chief apostle himself! It’s interesting that no one had the brass neck to claim to possess a book written by Jesus. Who knows, perhaps they were looking through the attic one day, and found it at the bottom of an old box, somewhat like the apocryphal Acts of Paul (Ehrman, ‘Lost’ 31-32).  On the other hand, perhaps it was kept safe by a secret society for a hundred years, but now can be revealed. It seems, though, that this was a step too far, even for the most brazen of second century fakers.

Compare the brazen false claim made by the Gospel of ‘Peter’ with the shyness of the real gospel writers. None of the authors give their names within the text of their gospel. Mark and Luke are obscure figures in the NT. The early church could have falsely claimed that their gospels were written by much more prominent people, to give them more weight, but they didn’t. Mark’s gospel is, according to early writers, based on the preaching of Peter, and yet the gospel itself makes nothing of this. Many people think that Mark leaves his signature in the gospel:

They all left him, [left Jesus after his arrest] and fled. A certain young man followed him, having a linen cloth thrown around himself over his naked body. The young men grabbed him, but he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked.

(Mark 14:50-52).

Is the young man Mark himself? Why else would that remark be there? John is based on the eyewitness account of someone who only identifies himself as ‘the beloved disciple’. Luke is a companion of Paul. He could boast about that if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. Matthew does not identify himself as the man behind the gospel named after him, but perhaps he too leaves behind his signature. The gospel has a clear interest in financial matters, far more so than the others. Matthew was a tax collector. There is information in the gospel about Matthew (Matthew 9.9-13 and 10:3). In the other gospels he is just a name.

Forgery of documents was widespread in the ancient world as was mistaken attribution (Ehrman, ‘Jesus Int’ 114-121). By forgery I mean someone wrote a book or letter, but pretended it was written by someone else. False or mistaken attribution means that someone either knowingly or innocently attributed a book to the wrong author. ‘Ancient sources took forgery seriously. They almost universally condemned it often in strong terms.’ Whilst some were fooled, others were wary. Forgers were caught out and exposed, such as the church elder who claimed to have found Acts of Paul mentioned above, which in fact he had written himself. He was removed from his post by a church tribunal (Ehrman, ‘Lost’ 31-32). Early Christian writers discussed forgery and at least some had sophisticated methods for identifying the true author of a book, for example Dionysius of Alexandria in Eusebius HE vii, 24-25 (Wiles and Santer, 145)

The real gospels are not invalidated by the fake ones. Take for example Plutarch, the ancient historian, whose works are more or less contemporary with the NT, if perhaps slightly later. He was a major source of historical information for Shakespeare’s plays, including of course his tragedy, Julius Caesar. There were writings falsely attributed to Plutarch, written after his death (Walbank, ‘Plutarch’). The fact that there were writings falsely attributed to Plutarch, does not invalidate his genuine writings. It simply reflects Plutarch’s fame as a writer. The same applies to the fake gospels and other apocryphal writings. If the false attributions of these tell us anything, then they tell us, incidentally, or even unconsciously, the names of the people who were widely considered, in the second century, to have been important Christian leaders at the time of the apostles. After all, why pretend your fake work was written by someone no one had heard of. In this, at least, the fakes simply provide confirmation of the real gospels. The names of the key figures match.

Rather than asking why the apocryphal gospels and other apocryphal writings were excluded, it would be more sensible to ask why the books that are in the NT were included. Groucho Marx famously refused to join any club that would have him as a member. The NT canon is one of the most exclusive clubs in history. What is so special about the twenty-seven books that they got in?

Anyway, here I am, possibly against my better judgement, discussing the ‘alternative’ gospels. But perhaps we can make a virtue out of a necessity by taking the opportunity of comparing them with the real gospels - a comparison which simply demonstrates how good the real gospels are.

 

The apocryphal gospels: why bother discussing them?

As we have noted, even though different mainstream Christian churches today have wide variety of different ideas on many subjects, they all agree on the NT canon and the twenty-seven books thereof. No one can add to them, no one can take away from them. Churches might interpret them in different ways, but all are agreed that these books are foundational to the Christian faith. All see them as expressing the original Christian faith which started with the apostles of Jesus and was taught by them. They will all tell you that in the early days, especially in the second and third centuries, there were groups of people calling themselves Christians who deviated from this original, apostolic Christianity; but their ideas and beliefs were firmly resisted and refuted. The original apostolic faith is called orthodox, that is, correct belief; and ideas of the other groups were, and still are called heretical, that is erroneous, invented, deviating from the original. The leaders of these groups were called heresiarchs, the chief heretics. Heretic is a harsh word, which in this more polite age, we would probably avoid using; but writers in the ancient word were not known for being especially polite. The NT canon was established, in part, to foil these heresies, and to define which writings could be used to establish orthodox, i.e. correct apostolic teaching. The result is that nowadays, any attempt to persuade someone like me to believe that a particular questionable idea is properly Christian, will be met with the answer ‘whatsoever is not read therein [in the scriptures], nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith.’ I will call the Christianity found in the NT orthodox, original, and apostolic since that is what I think it is.

There is a theory today, however, which has become widely publicised and believed, which attacks this traditional view of the NT. This theory originated with a German theologian called Walter Bauer in a book published in 1934 (Ehrman, ‘Lost’ 172-180; Pagels, 28). This theory claims that what we understand today as orthodox Christian belief is not the original Christianity. To start with, the theory says, there were many different versions of Christianity, all with their own gospels, acts of the apostles, and letters, i.e. the apocryphal ones. According to this theory we should not speak of early Christianity, but of early Christianities, for there were many.

One of those many versions of Christianity eventually became the dominant one, says the theory, and the others died out, for one reason or another; and their scriptures were mostly lost or destroyed. As fans of the theory like to remind us, history is written by the winners. The Christians who believed in the version of Christianity which eventually ‘won’ are the ones who wrote the history of the church. Supporters of the theory often call this version of Christianity proto-orthodox. The ‘proto-orthodox’ made out that their version of the faith was the original Christianity, and that their church was the original Church, and the others were heresies. The proto-orthodox churches chose which books went into the NT, and decided which books should be excluded from it, thus sealing their victory. These people then called themselves the Catholic Church; Catholic in this case meaning universal rather than Roman Catholic (Ehrman, ‘Jesus int.’ 191, 197; Pagels, 18, 31). Pagels writes:

It is the winners who write history – their way. No wonder then that the viewpoint of the successful majority has dominated all traditional accounts of the origin of Christianity. Ecclesiastical Christians first defined the terms (naming themselves ‘orthodox’ and their opponents ‘heretics’) … But the discoveries at Nag Hammadi reopen fundamental questions. They suggest that Christianity might have developed in very different directions. (Pagels, 147)

Ehrman also thinks that Christianity might have turned out differently and speculates about what might have happened if one of the other alternatives had ‘won’ (Ehrman, ‘Lost’ 247ff).

And so, some claim, what we think of as Christianity, that is Christianity based on the NT, is not the real Christianity, but just a random product of history. Therefore, you can’t trust it, or the New Testament, QED … again!

This theory was popularised by a series of best selling books, starting with Elaine Pagels’ 1979 book The Gnostic Gospels quoted above. This book led to a 1984 channel 4 documentary called Jesus: The Evidence, which I remember had quite an impact at the time. It was quickly dubbed Jesus: Ignoring the Evidence. Then there was the sensationalist The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail mentioned in chapter one. A more recent, more sober presentation of the theory is found in Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities. There are plenty of others, of varying quality. The theory has even found its way into children’s educational materials. See, for example, the article called ‘Lost and Hidden Christianity’ on the BBC’s website, where the theory is, rather outrageously, presented to students as if it were uncontested fact (Lunn-Rockliffe, ‘Lost and Hidden Christianity’). If you look at the book list at the end of the article you might notice something rather familiar about it! You will not be surprised to learn that the theory is also found in Professor Dawkins’ book (Dawkins, 121). ‘The four gospels that made it into the official canon were chosen, more or less arbitrarily, out of a larger sample of at least a dozen’.

Bauer’s theory in its original form has been frequently refuted (Blomberg, 333), and both Pagels and Ehrman acknowledge that he overstated his case; but the basic idea, that there were many ‘alternative’ Christianities, of which what is now considered orthodox Christianity was only one, has been spread far and wide amongst the general public, partly by them.

It is important to point out that neither Pagels nor Ehrman are hostile towards the NT or Christianity as such; after all they have devoted most of their working lives to studying the subject. There are many distinguished scholars who hold similar views to theirs who are practicing and believing Christians.

Ehrman takes the view NT is not reliable as historical evidence, but still sees it as having value both historically and spiritually. He lost his faith in Christianity, he tells us, not because of scholarly issues with the NT, but because of the existence of suffering in the world (Ehrman, Jesus int, p139, 269-283).

As he says at the end of his book Jesus Interupted:

I do not see the material in the preceding chapters as an attack on Christianity or an agnostic’s attempt to show that faith, even Christian faith is meaningless and absurd. That is not what I think and it is not what I have been trying to accomplish.

(Ehrman, ‘Jesus int’ 271)

Elaine Pagels says:

I believe that we owe the survival of Christian tradition to the organisational and theological structure that the emerging church developed. Anyone as powerfully attracted to Christianity as I am will regard that as a major achievement.

(Pagels, 147)

Even Richard Dawkins is not as hostile to Christianity as he was when he wrote his book the God Delusion. He still thinks that Christianity is a load of baloney, though, and often uses a word to describe it which has the same initial letter as baloney, but which is less polite!

Of course, there are people who are extremely hostile to Christianity, who have no interest in scholarship, except for those facets of it that can be used to attack Christianity’s foundations. If you go on the internet, it doesn’t take long to find them. They are very keen on the ‘alternative Christianities’ theory.

Whoever is putting forward this idea, whether they are relatively friendly or outright hostile, it amounts to an all-out attack on the foundations of traditional Christianity, and it needs to be robustly challenged. This is why we need to discuss the apocryphal gospels and put them in their correct place: back on dusty shelves in university libraries, lonely and unloved except by historians and theologians. Don’t worry; they will still be loved by someone!

 

Da Vinci

The book which really put the theory in to the public domain was Dan Brown’s novel the Da Vinci Code which was a truly massive best seller, and which was turned into a film starring Tom Hanks, no less. Now, of course, the book is fiction, and everyone obviously realises that the story of the main characters, Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu, is itself not real. However, many readers will assume that the historical ‘facts’ in the book are correct. At the beginning of the book there is a page which is headed ‘Fact’. Below this heading Dan Brown states, amongst other things, that ‘all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.’ Some might say that readers should realise that this page is part of the fiction; but should they? If some readers take Dan Brown’s statement at face value, I really don’t think that is the fault of the readers.

One of the characters in the book, Sir Leigh Teabing, says: ‘Almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false’ (Brown, p315). If fact, almost everything Teabing and the other characters in the book say about Christ is false. If you’re interested in the details, try Darrell Bock’s book Breaking the Da Vinci Code. Here are the highlights, or are they lowlights?

Teabing states that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and they had a child together called Sarah (p326, 332, 339). He backs his claim by (mis)quoting the apocryphal Gospel of Philip.

Robert Langdon, states:

Originally, . . . Christianity honoured the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, but Constantine [the Roman Emperor] shifted it to coincide with the pagan’s veneration day of the sun (Brown, 311).

Sophie Neveu asks Teabing, ‘who chose which gospels to include [in the NT]’. Teabing replies:

More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John among them . . . Ah, the fundamental irony of Christianity. The Bible as we know it today was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great (Brown, 310).

This happened at the church council of Nicea in AD325, according to Teabing.

And, oh yes:

History is always written by the winners (Brown, 340).

Oh gosh, is it really?

There is an apocryphal Gospel of Philip, which was written in the third century (Ehrman, xi), and there was a council of Nicea, overseen by the Roman emperor Constantine, in AD325. The rest is fiction.

There is no suggestion in the Gospel of Philip that Jesus was married to Mary Magalene, or anyone else, or that he had a child (Blomberg, 270); neither is this suggested in any of the apocryphal writings, or in any ancient document. Sunday, the first day of the week, was the day of worship for Christians from the beginning, because that is the day that Jesus rose from the dead (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:1-2). It has nothing to do with the worship of the Sun; it’s to do with the worship of the Son. Sorry, I couldn’t resist that one. The old ones are the best! By the time of the council of Nicea, the idea that there are four gospels called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John had been established for a very long time. The canon of the NT has nothing to do with Constantine. There were disputes at Nicea, but all sides used the same four gospels to support their case.

You won’t find any of the ridiculous ideas in the Da Vinci Code in the books by Elaine Pagels or Bart Ehrman. They are respected and distinguished scholars of the NT. But you will find the ‘multiple Christianities’ theory.

 

Pick and Mix

The I call this theory the ‘pick and mix’ theory. ‘Pick’ because in the early days, according to this theory, you might as well have just picked one of the many Christianities at random because no one of them was any more valid than others; ‘mix’ because although there is a bewildering variety of different sets of beliefs in these alternative Christianities, they are all, with one important exception, permutations, combinations, and variations on quite a small set of themes. This is handy, because you can get the gist of what the alterative Christianities were about quite quickly, without having to read their writings. You can read them if you like, of course - they are all freely available translated into English on the internet - if it’s a dark, cold, rainy November afternoon, and you really, really don’t have anything better to do. Good luck!

So, what were these themes? With the exception noted above, all alternative Christianities believed one, more than one, or all of these.

 

Rejecting the Old Testament: the Jewish Scriptures

This is arguably the key to the other themes, as well as being the most obviously inauthentic aspect of the apocryphal writings. The people who are most famous for doing this, the Marcionites, were named after Marcion, their founding father. Marcion was born in Sinope on the southern shore of the Black Sea around AD100. He was, apparently the son of the bishop, and a wealthy man having made his money in shipping. He went to Rome around AD140 and donated 200,000 sesterces to the Church there. Initially, the orthodox churches in Rome were pleased, naturally, until they found out about his ‘alternative’ views. They returned the money. The Marcionite churches were very successful, widespread, and endured for centuries in some places. Ironically, Marcion was the first to come up with a list of approved books. They were the letters of Paul which are now in the NT, excluding 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, and the gospel of Luke, which Marcion edited to remove the bits he didn’t like (Ehrman, 103-109). So, in fact, the ‘canon’ of Marcion actually supports the NT canon.

According to Marcion, and many of the other alternative Christianities, the god of the Jewish scriptures, that is the of Old Testament, and the God of the New Testament were two different Gods (Ehrman, 114). The New Testament God was the real God. The Old Testament god was the creator of the world, but he was not the God. Jesus and all his apostles were devout Jews and believed in what we call the Old Testament as scripture, and in the Old Testament God as the one and only God. They would have regarded Marcion’s ideas as not just ridiculous, but actually quite offensive; if, that is, they had had the opportunity hear them; which of course they did not, since Marcion’s invented his version of Christianity in the second century, long after the apostles were dead. Marcion’s Christianity was not the original, that is certain, and neither were any of the others that rejected the Jewish scriptures. In our search for the original Christianity, we can eliminate all these from our enquires.

In Matthew’s gospel, which like the other three canonical gospels, was complete years before Marcion was even born, Jesus says:

Don’t think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I didn’t come to destroy, but to fulfil.  For most certainly, I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not even one smallest letter or one tiny pen stroke shall in any way pass away from the law, until all things are accomplished. (Matt 5:17-18)

By the law and the prophets Jesus means, essentially, the Old Testament scriptures. Jesus is very clear on whether or not we should get rid of the Old Testament. Not one dot or iota shall be changed, iota being the smallest letter in the alphabet, he says. What does he mean by fulfilling the law and the prophets though? That is something you will enjoy learning as you get to know the (real) gospels. If you want a brief summary to be going on with, then you won’t do better than St Augustine’s remark on the subject: the New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New.

 

Docetism

The word Docetism comes from the Greek word meaning to seem or to appear. The docetists claimed that Jesus was not a real human being, but only seemed to be.

There were two different flavours of Docetism (Ehrman, p15). The first claimed that since Jesus was divine, he could not have a physical body like us, and in particular, could not have suffered and died on the cross. For these docetists Jesus was in fact some kind of ghost. Does that even need debunking? Only many decades after Jesus died would it be possible for anyone to attempt to claim something like this, since anyone who had met Jesus, or someone who knew Jesus, would know perfectly well that Jesus was a fully flesh and blood human being, and would dismiss someone saying this as a bit of a crank. The Apocryphal Acts of John even claimed that Jesus did not leave any footprints when he walked along, as a human would (Ehrman, 42; Pagels, 92). That particularly makes me laugh. You may well know that story ‘footprints in the sand’, which brings comfort to many, and makes others cringe. If you don’t know it, it’s easily found on the internet. Where would that story be if Jesus left no footprints! And of course, just in case you wanted to know, Jesus had no need to go to the bathroom.

The second type of Docetist claimed that the divine Christ and the human Jesus were two separate beings. Christ entered the human Jesus at his baptism, did all the miracles and gave the inspired teaching, and then left him before he died (Ehrman, ‘Lost’ 125).

In stark contrast, the real gospels make it very clear that Jesus was fully and physically human, and definitely was just one person, not two. Just like all of us, he felt hunger, anger, frustration, compassion, temptation (without giving in to it), grief, and of course, suffering. He died on the cross.

He again took the twelve, and began to tell them the things that were going to happen to him. ’Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem. The Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes. They will condemn him to death, and will deliver him to the Gentiles. They will mock him, spit on him, scourge him, and kill him. On the third day he will rise again.’ … For the Son of Man also came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’ (Mark 10: 32-45) …

… They came to a place which was named Gethsemane. He said to his disciples, ’Sit here, while I pray.’ He took with him Peter, James, and John, and began to be greatly troubled and distressed. He said to them, ’My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here, and watch.’

He went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass away from him. (Mark 14:32-35) …

… It was the third hour, and they crucified him. The superscription of his accusation was written over him, ‘THE KING OF THE JEWS.’ With him they crucified two robbers; one on his right hand, and one on his left. The Scripture was fulfilled, which says, ‘He was counted with transgressors.’ Those who passed by blasphemed him, wagging their heads, and saying, ‘Ha! You who destroy the temple, and build it in three days … save yourself, and come down from the cross!’ …

… Those who were crucified with him also insulted him.

When the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.  At the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ which is, being interpreted, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’…  Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and gave up the spirit. (Mark 15:24 – 39)

This Is literally the crux of the matter. Crux is the Latin word for cross. This is at the centre of the orthodox faith. The one Christ was fully God, and fully human. Through his suffering and death he brought about the salvation of humankind, and reconciled humans to God. This, the Docetists, and all the ‘alternative’ Christianities deny.

Why did Marcion and the others reject the Jewish Scriptures? Why did second century writers invent Docetism? And why did these things prove so popular? Orthodox Christianity is deeply paradoxical. My view, for what it’s worth, is that most deviations from orthodoxy, then and now, can be explained as misguided attempts to make the paradoxes go away. The idea that Christ is both fully human and fully God certainly qualifies as a paradox; so does the idea that the redemption of the world came through Jesus’ offering up of himself to suffering and death on the cross. I personally have no problem with the paradoxical nature of Christianity. As a matter of fact, I think it’s part of the attraction. Wouldn’t you expect the deepest truths about God to be paradoxes? Some, though, find paradox to be troubling, so they try to eliminate it by replacing it with something simpler; but babies and bathwater come to mind. Eliminate the paradox and you also eliminate the truth.

The Old Testament is possessed of the most profound wisdom, encompassing the whole gamut of human life, and is in many places sublime and beautiful. It is also, in some places, brutal or primitive or both. How can the God who is capable of the brutality found in the Old Testament, also be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? Simple, says Marcion: they are not the same God. Simple, but it’s not the original Christianity. How can Jesus be both fully human and fully God. How can God suffer and die on the cross? Simple, say the Docetists: either Christ isn’t human but only seemed to be, and he didn’t die on the cross; or he is two different beings only one of whom died on the cross. Simple, but it’s not the original Christianity.

 

Dualism

This is the belief that there is a sharp distinction between the physical matter of which we, and everything in the creation is made, and the spirit. The creation itself is evil. Matter is evil, and only the spirit is good. Salvation, according to this view, consists of the spirit escaping the prison of the physical world to live a purely spiritual life. This goes against the Jewish Scripture which insists that the creation is inherently good, with the exception of what it calls ‘the darkness’ and which God called ‘night’ (Genesis 1 – 2:4).

 

Gnosticism

The views that can described as gnostic are widely divergent and disparate. Ehrman says we should probably talk about Gnosticisms rather than Gnosticism. Well, at least he’s consistent! The origins of Gnosticism are rather mysterious and there are various different views on the subject (Ehrman, 116-120; Pagels, 26-29). There were non-Christian Gnostics and well as Christian ones. They tended to believe most or all of the above. They often also believed in elaborate mythologies.

The word gnostic means knowledge. According to gnostic belief systems, salvation comes through secret, esoteric knowledge, known and understood only by the spiritual elite.

 

Those who wrote and circulated these texts [gnostic gospels] did not regard themselves as ‘heretics’. Most of the writings use Christian terminology unmistakenly related to a Jewish heritage. Many claim to offer traditions about Jesus that are secret, hidden from the ‘many’ who constitute what, in the second century, came to be called the ‘Catholic Church’ … as the Gnostics use the term, we could translate [gnosis] as insight, for gnosis involves an intuitive process of knowing oneself. And to know oneself, they claimed, is to know human nature and human destiny. … Yet to know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God; this is the secret of gnosis (Pagels, p18)

 

[according to the Gnostics] Salvation came not by having faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection but by understanding the secret teaching that he revealed.  Since the teaching was secret, the public instruction that Jesus gave was not his real message, or at least it was carefully coded so that only the insiders, those with the divine spark within, could fully understand it. His real message came in private revelations that he gave to his closest followers … they the Gnostics were the losers in the struggle over who would decide the ‘right’, the official form of Christianity, for all posterity. (Ehrman, ‘Jesus Int.’ 196-197)

 

The real gospel was the precise opposite of a secret. The apostles were often told to be quiet about it and got into big trouble for failing to shut up (Acts 4:1-20). The twelve apostles were the source of authoritative teaching in the early church. Everything they did was in the open (Luke 26:26). The orthodox Christians emphasised the traditions handed down from the apostles publicly, in the open, in the churches founded by the apostles. There is no reason to think that the apostles had secret teachings which they kept from ordinary Christians and revealed only to a select few as the Gnostics claimed. Such claims were treated, understandably, with great scepticism. The early church might not have put it quite this way, but we can say that the claims of the Gnostics were conveniently unfalsifiable.

As Irenaeus, the second century writer, pointed out at the time:

The tradition of the apostles, made clear in all the world, can be seen in every church by those who wish be behold the truth … Even if the apostles had known of hidden mysteries, which they taught to the perfect [an ironic reference to the Gnostics] secretly and apart from the others, they would have handed them down especially to those whom they were entrusting the churches themselves.

Against the Heresies iii, preface 4.2 (Wiles and Santer, 128)

Salvation and redemption, according to orthodox Christianity, which are achieved through Jesus’ death on the cross, are a gifts of God’s grace received through faith, and are open to all. Salvation does not come through secret knowledge available only to a few. Salvation literally means being rescued or healed. Redemption literally means the price of freedom has been paid. For a fuller definition of these terms, please see the NT!

Those who circulated the texts, the apocryphal writings, might not have considered themselves heretics, but the people who wrote them knew they were fakes. No doubt many of the ordinary members of heretical groups genuinely believed that their version of Christianity was the true one; but also, no doubt, at least some of the heresiarchs themselves were precisely what the defenders of orthodoxy said they were: frauds. But it doesn’t matter from the point of view of this book whether the followers of the alternative Christianities were sincere or disingenuous. What matters is: were the gnostics and the others simply ‘the losers in the struggle over who would decide the “right”, the official form of Christianity for all posterity’ as Ehrman and many others claim; or were the proto-orthodox right (without inverted commas) to claim they their beliefs were original, apostolic and correct, and that all the others were in error?

Ehrman does not claim that there is no connection between the proto-orthodox and the original teaching of the apostles. He says, ‘When some scholars look at these developments [which led to what we now think of as orthodox Christianity] they see strong lines of continuity with what came before in the teachings of Jesus’ (Ehrman, Jesus int, 267). That is a pretty non-committal statement though. In fact, as non-committal statements go, it’s something of a masterclass. Conversely, no one is claiming that modern mainstream Christianity is exactly the same as the faith practiced by the apostles. The claim is that the faith found in the NT, in a modern bible which anyone can hold in their hand and read for themselves, expresses the essence of the faith of the first Christians. Is that claim true?

 

Might one of the alternative Christianities be the original?

All of the apocryphal gospels, and acts of the apostles and letters, produced by supporters of the alternative Christianities, come from the first half of the second century at the earliest. These are evidence of course – all ancient documents are evidence of something – but these are evidence of what some groups who called themselves Christian in the second and third centuries thought and believed. This makes them too late to provide evidence that any of the alternative Christianities might have a claim to be to the original Christianity; but is there evidence from the first century? Are there any references to them, direct or incidental, in the NT for example?

There are plenty of references to what the NT calls false teaching, including in the gospels (Matthew 7:15). Usually, the writers do not tell us what the false teachings were. I guess that’s sensible; they didn’t want to help the false teachers to spread their message. There is very little that can sensibly be said about the nature of these teachings since we don’t know what they were!

Nevertheless, in some cases the teachings are described. The response of the NT writers to these false teachings are as follows:

• It’s okay to get married and have sex with your husband or wife. (1 Timothy 4:1-3; 1 Cor 7)
• It’s also okay to remain single in order to dedicate yourselves more fully to God. (1 Cor 7; Matt 19:12)
• It’s okay to enjoy foods all kinds. (1 Timothy 4:1-3; Col 2:20-23)
• It’s okay to be vegetarian or vegan and it’s also okay to eat meat. One group should not look down on the other; but you should be considerate to others who are not as well established in the faith as you are. Don’t eat foods in front of them that might be a problem for them. (Romans 14:1-22; 1 Cor 10:23-33)
• If letter claims to be written by an apostle, check that claim – take nobody’s word for it! (2 Thessalonians 2:1-2)
• Pay no attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation. (1 Timothy 1:3-7)
• Don’t worship angels (Col 2:18)
• Avoid those with a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction. (1 Timothy 6:3-5)
• If you don’t believe in the resurrection, then you might as well not bother. (1 Cor 15:12 -19)
• The freedom you have as a Christian is not an excuse for immorality, indulging base desires or blasphemy. (Jude; Gal 5:13)
• Be sceptical of people who claim to have a special message from a spirit, especially if the message contradicts a basic teaching, for example that Jesus has ‘come in the flesh’. (1 John 4:1-3)
• Don’t get taken in by nonsense dressed up as philosophy (Col 2:8). Keep it simple: focus on Christ.

Taking a contrary view to these seems not so much an alternative to traditional Christianity, more an alternative to common sense. I don’t think there is any reason to regard these false teachers as alternatives to Matthew, Mark et al., somehow representing an equally valid view to theirs. It would be more sensible to regard them as - yes - false teachers.

An interesting verse, from the point of view of a study of the alternative gospels, is the following from St Paul’s letter to Timothy.

Timothy, guard that which is committed to you, turning away from the empty chatter and oppositions of what is falsely called knowledge, which some profess, and thus have wandered from the faith. (1 Tim 6:20-21)

Could this be a reference to Gnosticism? Well, perhaps, and perhaps not. Either way, it seems like good advice to me.

 

Orthodox Christianity is the Original!

Norman Geisler points out that:

The vast majority of New Testament scholars, including most critics, accept [that St Paul is the author of the letters] 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans and Galatians. They also acknowledge that these were written between AD 55 and 61AD. Almost all scholars agree that Jesus died between AD30 and 33.  In these books written between two decades or so of the events they describe, 27 gospel facts are confirmed (Geisler, 393).

The edited highlights are:

• Jesus is descended from King David, the ancient King of Israel, and is called son of God. (Rom 1:3)
• Jesus, again called son of God, was born of a woman (Gal 4:4)
• Jesus lived under Jewish law (Gal 4:4)
• He had brothers (1 Cor 9:5)
• … and 12 disciples (1 Cor 15: 7)
• … and a disciple named James (1 Cor 15:7)
• Paul knew Peter and James (Gal 1:18-2:16)
• Jesus instituted the Holy Communion. (1 Cor 11:23-25)
• He died on the cross (Rom 4:25,: 5:8; Gal 3:13)
• He died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures (1 Cor 15:3, 2 Cor 5:21)
• He was buried (1 Cor 15:4)
• He rose from death, bodily, on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures (1 Cor 15:4ff)
• He made post resurrection appearances to the apostles and to others (1 Cor 15: 5-8)

You might wonder why it’s necessary to point out some of the things. Born of a woman? How else would you be born? Died on the cross? Death is the usual result of being crucified. Buried? Well, that is what tends to happen when people die. Talk about the bleedin’ obvious; but now that you know what the alternative gospels say, you can see that it is indeed necessary!

The purpose of the letters was not to give biographical information about Jesus, but we see, in these letters, the essential outline of the life of Jesus described in the canonical gospels. There is enough of an outline to clearly distinguish this view of Jesus here from all of the alternative gospels and other writings described above. Furthermore, the teaching found in these epistles is precisely the teaching of the orthodox Christian faith, the faith that was defended in the second and third centuries by writers such as Irenaeus quoted above.

• The Jewish scriptures, the Old Testament scriptures, are the scriptures. There were no others at this point. Jesus fulfils them.
• … and so when Paul wants to back up his views, he appeals to the Jewish scriptures e.g. Gal 3:7-9; 4: 21-31.
• There is one God, and the God of the Jewish Scriptures is He.
• Jesus was a real flesh and blood human being. Through his suffering and death on the cross, Jesus brought about the salvation of humankind, and reconciled humans to God.
• Redemption is a gift of God’s grace received through faith, and is open to all.

There is some more general teaching in Romans 13-15. Paul does not quote the gospels – they had not been written at this point - but this teaching clearly aligns with the teachings of Jesus which later found the way in to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Here are some examples of parallels. These cover all four letters!

 

 

Here we have indisputable evidence that ‘what we think of as Christianity today’ was firmly established in the fifties of the first century, 20 years or so after the death of Christ, and was centred on Jerusalem where Peter, the chief apostle, and James the brother of the Lord, and John, the acknowledged pillars of the church were based (Gal 1:11-2:16). Here we also have evidence that the teaching of the apostles, especially of St Peter, was the authoritative source for Christian teaching, even for St Paul. Paul acknowledged this rather grudgingly – but he acknowledged it.  And even if it was possible for him to receive a revelation direct from Jesus Christ, this was not independent of the traditions handed down, which were essential. If orthodox Christianity was established in Corinth (Greece) and Galatia (Asia minor, now Turkey) and Rome (everyone knows where that is) in the fifties, then it must have begun some significant time before that. In fact, in Galatians, Paul refers to meetings he had with Peter and James, one three years and the other fourteen years after his conversion. The second meeting happened some time before the writing of Galatians, which puts the first meeting in the thirties of the first century. So, there you have it. Orthodox Christianity was there from the beginning!

There was one great dispute about the nature of Christianity which did take place in the first century. This is the exception referred to above. The dispute was about whether non-Jewish Christians should follow the Old Testament law or not. Some early Christians took the view that they should; meaning that they should, for example, observe the Jewish sabbath (Saturday), eat only kosher food, and that all male converts to Christianity should, like all male Jews, be circumcised. You can see that that dispute is ongoing at the time that Paul wrote the letter to the Galatians, which is one of the four books of the NT we are considering here. Clearly, it was a painful (literally, if you are an adult male) and difficult issue for the early church; and at times, it could get quite heated. Luke gives an account of a council of apostles at Jerusalem which adjudicated on the matter (Acts 15:1-35): gentile Christians did not have to be circumcised or follow the full Old Testament law. This was confirming what had been the practice up to that point; it was the people who wanted the gentiles to be circumcised and follow the Old Testament law who were trying to change things. Scholars disagree about whether or not this council is the same event as the meeting that Paul refers to in Galatians chapter 2. Either way, Galatians confirms that there was agreement between Paul on the one hand and Peter and James, the brother of the Lord, on the other. The ruling of the council created another problem though. If the Gentiles didn’t have to follow the Old Testament law, did that also apply to the Jewish Christians? There was no simple answer to that question, as we can see when Paul makes his final visit to Jerusalem in Acts 21:17-26. The method that James suggests for calming things down doesn’t go well. Things avalanche from there, but these events lead Paul, finally, to the city of Rome. Some accuse Luke of candy coating the history of the early church and suggesting that it was much simpler and smoother than it was in reality (Fredriksen, 160). Perhaps he does to some extent, but far less so than your average corporate video. He makes no attempt to pretend that this dispute did not happen. Paul, as you can see in Galatians 2:11-16, does not attempt to candy coat anything. If you are inclined to see that as evidence of the authenticity of Galatians, please feel free to go ahead (Marshall, 74).

There was a group of Jewish Christians in the second century called the Ebionites. It is likely that these were the descendants of those who thought that all Christians should obey the full Old Testament law. They were not Gnostics, they were not Dualists or Docetists, and they most definitely were not Marcionites – the polar opposite in fact. Of the second century groups, this is the only one that might possibly have a claim to be an alternative to the orthodox. Yet, according to Galatians, they were opposed on the matter of gentiles keeping the Jewish law, by James and Peter, and those that were considered pillars (Gal 2:6-10). Their views were similar to the orthodox, apart from the matter of following the Old Testament law, although there were other differences. They, apparently, used the gospel of Matthew as their scripture. They also had their own gospel, the Gospel of the Ebionites, which as far as it’s possible to tell, was an amalgamation of Matthew, Mark and Luke. So then, there is no support from the Ebionites for the idea of an ‘alternative’ gospel rivalling the canonical ones.

In summary, the evidence shows that orthodox Christianity, the Christianity found the NT, is the original. None of the so called ‘alternative’ Christianities has any claim to be a rival of this original. They are aberrations and deviations from it. When you read the NT, you are getting the real thing. QED, as they say!

Hopefully what I have said in this chapter, and the preceding few chapters, is enough to achieve my aim of showing that:

it is rational and reasonable, supposing that you are open to the possibility of the miraculous, to regard the NT as good historical evidence for Jesus, what he said and what he did, and for the history of the first few decades of the Christian church.

Now we can return to two questions which we put to one side earlier:

• How do we interpret the Bible in the light of modern scientific discoveries, especially the first part of the Bible (Genesis 1 – 11: 5). This contains the two creation stories, the story of the great flood, the tower of Babel - the so called primordial history, which seems to tell a very different story to the one told by science.
• Most of us would normally dismiss out of hand any claim that a miracle has occurred, and if we read a miracle story in an ancient document other that the NT ones, we would automatically regard it as an invention; so why treat the NT miracles differently?

Summary

There is a theory today which has become widely publicised, most notoriously by Dan Brown’s novel the Da Vinci Code, which attacks the traditional view of the how the canon of the New Testament was formed. This theory claims that what we understand today as orthodox Christian belief is not the original Christianity. To start with, the theory says, there were many different versions of Christianity, all with their own gospels, acts of the apostles, and letters. According to this theory we should not speak of early Christianity, but of early Christianities, for there were many.

One of those many versions of Christianity eventually became the dominant one, says the theory, and the others died out, for one reason or another; and their scriptures were mostly lost or destroyed. The supporters of the dominant version of Christianity chose which books went into the New Testament canon, and decided which books should be excluded from it. These people then called themselves the Catholic Church; Catholic in this case meaning universal rather than Roman Catholic. And so, some claim, what we think of as Christianity, that is Christianity based on the New Testament, is not the real Christianity, but just a random product of history.

However, an examination of the non-canonical gospels and other writings shows that most are of poor quality, all were written much later than the canonical books in the second century or later, and all the ones that claim to be written by a major figure in the early church are fakes. In most cases they were not excluded, they excluded themselves.

It is true that there were many different groups describing themselves as Christian in the second and third centuries which had ideas which were very different from what we now think of as mainstream Christianity. These groups were many and varied, but all believed a combination one or more of the following:

• The Marcionites and many others claimed the Old Testament God is not the real God. Jesus and his disciples would have considered this idea to be completely ridiculous.
• The Docetists claimed that Jesus was not a real human being. This is self-refuting.
• The Gnostics claimed that Christianity was all about secret knowledge possessed and understood only by a spiritual elite, and was not a universal faith for everyone.

These ideas can be judged on their own merits – or rather by the fact that, even on the most generous of assessments, their merits are very limited.

There is clear evidence that the Christianity found in the New Testament was, in essence, there from the beginning, unlike any of these other ideas. There is no reason to think that New Testament Christianity is not the original and authentic faith.

 

Works cited

Bauckham, R. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. 2^nd ed., Wm.B Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2017

Blomberg, Craig. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. 2^nd ed., Apollos. 2007

Brown, Dan. The Da Vinci Code. 10^th anniversary edition. Transworld Publishers, 1^st Jan. 2013.

Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. 10^th Anniversary Ed., Transworld Publishers 2016

Ehrman, Bart D. Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them.) HarperOne, 2009.

--- Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. Oxford University Press, 2003.

--- Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine. Oxford University Press, 2004.

Geisler, Norman. The Big Book of Christian Apologetics: An A to Z guide. Baker Books, 2012.

Lunn-Rockliffe, Sophie. ‘Lost and Hidden Christianity,’ bbc. 19 August 2024. https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/losthiddenchristianity_article_01.shtml

Metzger, Bruce M. The New Testament: Its Background, Growth and Content. 3^rd ed., Abingdon Press 2003

Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. Paperback ed. Phoenix, 2006

Stevenson, J. A New Eusebius: Documents Illustrating the History of the Church to AD337. 2^nd ed., revised by W.H.C. Frend, SPCK, 1987.

Walbank, Frank W. ‘Plutarch’. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 Apr. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Plutarch. Accessed 19 May 2024.

Wiles, Maurice and Mark Santer. Documents in Early Christian Thought. Cambridge University Press, 1975.