The Da Vinci Fraud: Why the Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction (22 page)

But there are other reasons for the suggestion of an early date of writing. First, the Christology of Thomas is pretty much
nontitular
. That is, it refrains from calling Jesus the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Christ, and so forth. For Davies and Patterson this implies that Thomas comes from the dawn age of Christianity when Christian devotion to the slain and resurrected Jesus had not yet articulated itself in the form of divine titles with which to crown Jesus. But I think the compiler and his coreligionists were reacting to such titles, repudiating them out of a Zenlike fear that such titles will serve to make believers substitute a dogma about Jesus for the Living One himself. See saying 43, “His disciples said to him, ‘Who are you, that you say these things to us?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Do you not know who I am from what I say to you?’”

Similarly, some point to the (supposed) lack of futuristic eschatology (expectation of the soon-coming end of all things) as a sign of early date. But it may be that Thomas, where it does repudiate futurism (and that is not consistent), is not innocent of it but rather reactive against it. In this case, Thomas is relatively late because its readers and writers have seen the world so far outlast the apocalyptic deadlines set for it that such timetables can no longer be taken seriously. The Kingdom of God can no longer be realistically expected to come from without, so from now on it must be sought within. So we might date Thomas roughly contemporary with John—the mid-second century.

THE GOSPEL OF PETER

Toward the close of the second century (ca. 190-200), the congregation at Rhossus, about thirty miles from Antioch in Syria, was found to be using a gospel ascribed to Peter. Someone thought this untoward and complained to Bishop Serapion, who at first thought it no serious aberration. But a second complaint caused him to take a closer look. Suspecting Marcionite influence, he sought out local Docetists of some type (Gnostics?) with whom he was apparently on cordial terms, and he borrowed some of their writings, perhaps including commentaries on the Gospel of Peter itself. Doing his home-work, he finally decided the text in question was heretical. He then wrote the congregation as follows:

For our part, brothers, we welcome both Peter and the rest of the apostles as we would Christ himself, but, as seasoned men, we reject the writings that spuriously carry their names, knowing that we never accepted such writings. As for me, when I visited you, I assumed you all held fast to the true faith, so I saw no particular need to examine the gospel some circulate under the name of Peter. I said, “If this is all that is troubling you, let it be read.” Since that time, however, I have been told more: that its partisans’ minds were sunk in some snake-hole of heresy. Now I shall make sure to pay you another visit, so, brothers, expect me soon. But we, brothers, mindful of what sort of heresy Marcion belonged to, . . . were enabled by students of this very gospel, that is, successors of those who first circulated it, those we call Docetists, for most of the ideas are their doctrines, [I say,] using [works we borrowed] by them, [we] were enabled to go through [the gospel] and discover that, while most of it was in fact quite compatible with the genuine teaching of the Savior, some things had been added.
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A fragment of the Gospel of Peter was discovered in 1884 in a tomb in Akhmim, Egypt, bound in a small book along with part of 1 Enoch in Greek as well as a fragment of the Apocalypse of Peter.

M. R. James dated the Gospel of Peter at about 150, and most even today follow him. This judgment depends upon too early a date for the traditional four gospels. Peter’s date depends on theirs because it is obvious that Peter uses all four of the others, drawing upon each for various details. But John Dominic Crossan has given strong reasons for thinking that Peter uses a fifth gospel source, one older than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which they seemed to have used also.
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It would have been a Passion gospel pure and simple (unlike Peter, of which only the Passion section happens to remain), and Crossan calls it the Cross Gospel. He admits, however, that later editors have added to Peter other material taken from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

THE GOSPEL OF MARY

This second-century Nag Hammadi gospel is a pretty standard Gnostic “revelation” to the reader as to the proper strategy needed in order to elude the watchful Archons who would bar the fleeing soul’s heavenward ascent. The important thing about it is the ascription of it to Mary Magdalene. Not only is it credited to her, but she appears in an opening scene in which she must defend her apostolic authority for the teachings, from Jesus, she proposes to impart. We may be sure that this narrative sequence, which is lively and full of interest, reflects the position, and the uphill battle, of prophetesses in the Gnostic communities as elsewhere. At least she does finally prevail here, as women did generally in “heretical” groups like the Marcionites and Gnostics, taking refuge from the abuses of emerging orthodox authorities who sought to snuff out their ministry.

As to the actual content, about half of which is lost due to manuscript damage, there are two ways to understand the point of the guided tour of the heavenly spheres. First, we might just be reading someone’s learned speculations, put forth for curiosity’s sake. This is what we are reading in Jewish apocalypses like 1 Enoch, where Enoch is shown (with us looking over his shoulder) the regions of heaven where the snowflakes and the raindrops and the hail stones are stored, and so on. Second, and more likely, we are to memorize the details of the gauntlet that we will have to pass through after death so as to be ready with the right response at the right moment. This is the function of works like the Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead (the Papyrus of Ani and the Bardo Thödöl, respectively). But the point of such books is pretty much that implied in the old joke where the lad asks mommy why grandpa is so feverishly studying the Bible, and she replies, “He’s cramming for his finals!” The Tibetan Book of the Dead implicitly warns the reader he or she had best cultivate certain spiritual attitudes while there is still time. This is because the soul will have to withstand the vision of two groups of deities on the intermediate plane: the peaceful deities and the wrathful deities. The first will dazzle; the second will terrify. But the book calls upon the soul to recognize in both the mere figments of his own innermost self, then he will be able to get past them and on into liberation. These deities are obviously counterparts to the Gnostic Archons who seek to turn back the ascending soul. What is the difference between the peaceful and the wrathful deities? The first are viewed in the light of the soul’s good karma; the second are distorted through the warped lens of bad karma. So it is really the individual’s own works, good or bad, and his disposition that he must deal with as he seeks liberation. Karen L. King’s
The Gospel of Mary of Magdala
is very helpful in enabling the reader to grasp the same dynamic in this gospel: The evangelist is really talking about an
inner
ascent of moral and spiritual progress. If the Gnostic must ascend through seven heavenly spheres, the Yogi must awaken the Kundalini (the spiritual force coiled within) and make it ascend up the spine through a set of seven chakras, “circles,” or centers of psychic power. Ultimately the outer ascent of the one and the inner ascent of the other are two enabling metaphors for the same essential process.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE HEBREWS

The Gospel according to the Hebrews occupies a special place on the margins of the traditional canon. Its associations in early Christianity were heretical, to be sure, explaining why it did not gain admittance to the canon. But not very heretical, for the book was the favorite of various Jewish-Christian sects who held the Torah and Jesus equally sacred and found no difficulty in combining the two. The emerging Catholic Church uneasily tolerated this position. It was certainly more to its liking than Marcionite Christianity, with its thorough repudiation of Judaism. And the scholars of the church held the Gospel according to the Hebrews at arm’s length, but hold it they did. We find various major figures commenting on it, bringing it to bear on the interpretation of canonical passages where light might be shed. Even those who would not brook its presence in the official canon (and that was not everybody, even in Catholicism), still did not deem it a false gospel. Copies of it circulated on into the early Middle Ages, though it is, so far as we know, no longer extant.

From the several mentions of it and quotations from it in the early Church fathers, we know a good bit about the book. It was a shorter version of Matthew, and many (like Jerome) even considered it to be the Hebrew or Aramaic original of our Greek Gospel of Matthew. This it cannot have been, since the latter patently makes verbatim use of the Greek Mark. Still, there is some relation. Nicephorus tells us exactly how much shorter Hebrews was than canonical Matthew, about twenty-four hundred words. Several other ancient writers provide a handful of juicy passages they thought worthy of preservation and of comparison with canonical Matthew. Numerous others made comments on short notes, variant readings, very slight differences from canonical Greek Matthew. These quotations and notices have often been compiled for the modern reader.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE NAZARENES

Also some kind of revision of Matthew, this gospel was written during the second century and used by Jewish-Christian Nazarenes around Beroea. One distinctive feature of this gospel is its note that the man whose hand is healed in Matthew 12:9-14 explains his plight to Jesus: “I was a mason, working with my hands to gain my bread. Please, Jesus, restore me to health, so I need not eat my bread in shame.” We also read how, coincident with Jesus’s death, not that the Temple’s veil was torn but that its great lintel collapsed and shattered. In the Nazarene version of the Parable of the Talents (Matt. 25:14-30), we read that one servant (assimilated to Luke’s Prodigal Son?) squandered the master’s money on debauchery, while the second invested it, and the third buried it.

The most interesting surviving feature of the Gospel according to the Nazarenes is a scene set in the home of Mary in Nazareth: “Behold, the Lord’s mother and brothers said to him, ‘John the Baptist is baptizing for the remission of sins. Let’s go and be baptized by him!’ But he said, ‘What have I done that I need his baptism—unless by saying this I speak in ignorance?’” There is a version of this in Thomas, saying 104, “They said, ‘Come, let us pray today and let us fast.’ Jesus said, ‘Why? What sin have I committed? Or how have I been overcome? But after the bridegroom has left the bridal chamber, then let people fast and pray.’”

Also striking is a saying like that of the seventy-sevenfold forgiveness (Matt. 18:21-22), with the addition, “For even in the prophets, after being anointed with the Holy Spirit, somewhat of sin was found.”

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE EBIONITES

This was another Jewish-Christian gospel, probably based on Matthew but taking care to add elements (in a stylistically cumbersome and redundant manner) from Luke and Mark as well. At least it appears so in the opening scene, which, as in Mark, is the baptism. The Ebionites rejected the Virgin Birth doctrine and with it the Matthean and Lukan nativities.

Ebionites were also vegetarians and therefore rejected animal sacrifice. And yet they espoused, against Paul, a staunch observance of the Torah! How could that be? They took seriously Jeremiah 7:22, “I never spoke to your ancestors or issued any commandment concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices in the days when I brought them out of Egypt!” Then where did the endless Levitical laws of sacrifice come from? “How can you boast, ‘We are wise, for the Law of Yahweh is with us’? No, look: the lying pen of the copyists has turned it into a lie!” (Jer. 8:8). Ebionites understood this to mean that, though the Torah was divinely inspired of God, the text had been seriously tampered with, riddled with misleading interpolations. They held a variation on the Gnostic theme of Jesus as the divine Revealer. For the Ebionites this meant first and foremost that Jesus’s task was to reveal which were the true biblical passages and which the corruptions. And sacrifice loomed large among the latter. Hence the Ebionite Jesus said: “I have come to abolish sacrifices, and if you do not leave off sacrificing, the wrath of God will not cease from you.” John the Baptist, then, could not have eaten locusts, since even they are animal flesh of a sort, so the Ebionite gospel depicts him eating only wild honey. Jesus can scarcely have deigned to eat of the Passover lamb, so in this gospel he recoils from the very idea: “Do I desire at this Passover to eat flesh with you?”

Written in Greek, as incongruous as it may seem, the Gospel according to the Ebionites cannot be much later than the canonical gospels since Irenaeus (ca. 180) has heard of it.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE EGYPTIANS (1)

Clement of Alexandria preserves just a few brief quotations from this Egyptian gospel, enough for us to tell it was composed by and used for Encratite Christians, people who equated sexual reproduction with original sin, perhaps because it trapped otherwise pure souls in bodies of sinful flesh, or possibly because the primal Adam-Eve division occasioned the further splintering of the human race into classes and groups who enslave, exploit, and oppress one another. These Christians believed one must repent and be baptized into identity with Christ the New Adam, the one who restored the primordial oneness of Eden before the Fall. Such people strove to live a life of gender equality by dissolving traditional social structures and family roles, and living heedless of government in their own anarchist conclaves, as they waited for the second advent of Christ. Women functioned as prophets in their movement (as we see also in the Acts of Paul, another Encratite document); accordingly, in the Gospel of the Egyptians, Salome appears as a close disciple and revealer of the esoteric revelation of Jesus. Salome was an extremely common name in the Holy Land, but it seems reasonable to identify this Salome with the woman disciple of Jesus mentioned in Mark 16:1. Since she also appears in Secret Mark, which also features themes of esotericism and initiation, Stephan Hermann Huller has suggested that what Clement calls the Gospel of the Egyptians is actually the same document as the Secret Gospel of Mark, another Egyptian work.
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