The Gospel of Thomas-in comparison with the New Testament Gospels-is late, not early; secondary, not authentic. Contrary to what a few scholars maintain, the Gospel of Thomas originated in Syria and probably no earlier than the end of the second century The Gospel of Peter, which describes a talking cross, is late and incredible. In fact, the fragmentary document that we have may not be the Gospel of Peter at all. The document that we have may date to the fourth or fifth century. The "secret" version of the Gospel of Mark, allegedly found in the Mar Saba Monastery, is a modern hoax. Analysis of the hand-writing betrays the telltale signs of forgery. The distinctive conclusions of the Jesus Seminar are rejected by most scholars in North America and Europe. There is absolutely no credible evidence that Jesus had a wife or a child. The evidence is compelling that the New Testament GospelsMatthew, Mark, Luke and John-are our best sources for understanding the historical Jesus. The New Testament Gospels are based on eyewitness testimony and truthfully and accurately relate the teaching, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus was not a Cynic; in all probability he never encountered a Cynic. No killer monks (albino or otherwise) number among the membership of Opus Dei. All descriptions of documents, literature and archaeology in this book are accurate. In high school I assumed that I would be a lawyer, so I went to a very fine liberal arts college in southern California, where I majored in history and minored in philosophy, in preparation for law school. But in my senior year in college I had become a committed Christian, which led me to seminary, instead of law school ("from law to grace," as one minister remarked). I went to seminary for the purpose of training in Christian ministry. I was fascinated with Jesus of Nazareth and wanted to learn more about him and his teaching. I looked forward to a lifetime in pastoral ministry But in seminary I discovered the academic side to theology and biblical studies. I loved it. Greek and Hebrew came easily; exegesis was fun; historical and background studies were stimulating. While other students were attempting to avoid these subjects, I engaged them enthusiastically. In my second year I took an advanced course in Greek in which we read the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke-in one semester! That did it; I was hooked on the life, teaching and world of Jesus. I was fascinated with the Gospels themselves and the questions scholars grappled with: What are the sources of the Gospels? How do they relate to one another? How much of the Gospels is history, and how much is interpretation? I enjoyed it so much I decided to pursue a Ph.D. I had the good fortune of entering Claremont Graduate University at a time when its biblical studies faculty was at its greatest. CGU, along with the nearby Claremont School of Theology, boasted a powerhouse faculty in New Testament and related fields of study In this faculty were Hans Dieter Betz, William Brownlee, Burton Mack, James Robinson, James Sanders and John Trever. Professor Betz chaired the Hellenism and the New Testament Seminar, which was favored with visits from Ronald Hock and Edward O'Neill, both on the faculty of the University of Southern California. During this time the seminar was finishing its work on Plutarch and just launching its work on the Greek magical papyri. Betz impressed me greatly with his high standards and attention to detail. His commentaries on Galatians and the Sermon on the Mount in the Hermeneia commentary series are impressive and well respected. Professor Robinson chaired the Nag Hammadi Seminar, dedicated to the publication and study of the Coptic Gnostic codices found in Nag Hammadi, Egypt. I found his enthusiasm for fresh research, discovery and publishing infectious. Entering Claremont was like walking into a publishing factory. I was overwhelmed by the activity During my time with the Nag Hammadi Seminar, I became acquainted with Charles Hedrick (who taught me Coptic) and Marvin Meyer, who now is the research director for the Coptic Magical Texts Project at Claremont Graduate University and an expert on Gnostic texts. Professor Mack was in those days engrossed in Philo and Jewish wisdom traditions. He was at that time a warmhearted Christian scholar. I distinctly recall him in 1977 telling me how happy he was that I was serving on the staff of a nearby church. "That is really good," he said. "What we need are more doctors of the church." Times change and so do some people. Professor Brownlee was wonderful to work with. He was quiet, gentle and unassuming. Yet he was one of the very first scholars to lay eyes on the Dead Sea Scrolls. He was in Jerusalem, doing a year of postdoctoral studies in 1947- 1948, when the first cave containing scrolls was discovered. His studies in the book of Ezekiel and the ancient Ugaritic language were set aside. Brownlee brought one of the scrolls back with him to Duke University in the fall of 1948 so he could use it in teaching Hebrew. (That of course is no longer allowed!) He published an early study of the Rule Scroll (IQS) and spent much of his career analyzing Qumran's commentary (or pesher) on the book of Habakkuk. I found him delightful to work with and eventually finished my doctoral dissertation under his supervision. It was from Brownlee that I learned much about the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it was with him that I studied Aramaic and Syriac. His sudden death in 1983 left me an academic orphan and ended plans that we had made for collaborative studies in Isaiah and Daniel. I also had the privilege of making the acquaintance of John Trever, Bill Brownlee's longtime friend. Trever was with Brownlee in Jerusalem in 1947- 1948, and it was he who took the very first-and quite excellent-photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Trever was also happy to give me a guided tour of his collection of photographs and artifacts, explaining where they were found and their significance. Although I was very close to Brownlee, the person who influenced me the most at Claremont was Professor Sanders, who joined the faculty in 1977, the year my doctoral studies commenced. It would be almost impossible to exaggerate the significance of his contribution to my understanding of biblical literature and its full context. Sanders introduced me to the versions of Scripture, such as the Old Greek (or Septuagint) and the Aramaic (or Targum). He led me through the rabbinic literature, taught me to appreciate rabbinic midrash and transformed textual criticism-the study of ancient manuscripts and their diverse readings and variantsinto a joy. Under his instruction my appreciation of Scripture grew. Over the years we have collaborated on a number of publishing projects and jointly chaired from 1989- 1996 a program unit in the Society of Biblical Literature. Although I started out at Claremont as a New Testament student, I was so deeply influenced by Brownlee and Sanders that I wrote my dissertation on the book of Isaiah. There are New Testament components in the dissertation, to be sure, but at the conclusion of my doctoral studies I was as much interested in a career in Old Testament as I was in New Testament. One of the ironies of my life is that twenty-five years ago I interviewed for a position in Old Testament at Acadia Divinity College. I was passed over on account of my youth and ended up at Trinity Western University instead-as an assistant professor of New Testament! This appointment guided me back to the New Testament, and after twenty-one years at Trinity I was appointed to Acadia Divinity College as the Payzant Distinguished Professor of New Testament. It seems I was destined for Acadia after all-but in New Testament not Old. As I taught New Testament at Trinity, I of course began to shift my research and publishing away from Isaiah and the Old Testament to the New Testament. I focused on Jesus and the Gospels, which had been the focus of my interest back in seminary An interesting thing happened. I realized that my work in Isaiah, the Greek and Aramaic versions of the Old Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls and early rabbinic literature was an enormous asset in the study of Jesus and the Gospels. As I became acquainted with more and more New Testament scholars (at regional and national Society of Biblical Literature meetings), I became aware that many of them lacked training in the Semitic background of the New Testament. I was bumping into New Testament scholars who had studied Greek and knew something of the GrecoRoman world, but had only the feeblest ability with Hebrew and Aramaic (if at all). Most knew little of early rabbinic literature and the Aramaic paraphrases of Scripture. This deficiency on the part of so many New Testament scholars helps explain the oddness of much of the work of the Jesus Seminar, founded by Robert Funk in 1985. Whereas many of the Seminar's members have been exposed to Greek literature and Greco-Roman culture and conventions, not many of them appear to have competence in the Semitic (Jewish) world of Jesus. Few seem acquainted with the land of Israel itself. Few have done any archaeological work. Few know rabbinic literature and the Aramaic paraphrases of Scripture. As a consequence of these deficiencies, it is not surprising that the Jesus Seminar has come to so many odd and implausible conclusions. For example, the Seminar does not understand what Jesus meant by his reference to "kingdom of God." The Seminar has completely misunderstood the meaning of eschatology and holds to a skewed idea of the meaning of Jesus' favorite self-designation "Son of Man." Moreover, the Seminar finds no meaningful place for Israel's Scripture in Jesus' self- understanding and teaching. The Seminar's errors are egregious and legion. Unfortunately, the Seminar has gained a great deal of media attention and has cultivated a series of books that advance misguided and mistaken views of Jesus and the Gospels-both those in the New Testament and those outside the New Testament. Fabricating Jesus will address just these sorts of issues. I am a Christian. I was a Christian before going to seminary and graduate school, and I still am after completing school and teaching and publishing for more than a quarter century. When some of my friends at seminary learned that I would be entering Claremont to pursue a doctorate, I was warned that critical study would not be good for my faith. Of course, I had heard of some who after becoming involved in critical research had given up faith. I will speak to that topic in the first chapter. My academic life has not resulted in the loss of faith. Aspects of my faith have changed, to be sure. Not everything is as cut and dried, black and white, as it once was. There are aspects of theology that remain uncertain, historical details that remain unclear. But then again, I have found that that was the way it was for Jesus and his earliest followers. Maybe not having pat answers for everything is what faith is all about. At first, I must admit, I found aspects of biblical criticism unsettling. But in time I realized that what biblical criticism challenged was not the essence of the Christian message, but the baggage that many think is part of the message. Typically this baggage includes views of authorship and dates of given biblical books (for example, the idea that biblical books must be early and written by apostles even when they make no such claim), as well as assumptions regarding the nature of biblical literature (for example, the belief that the Gospels are history and nothing else) and the nature of Jesus' teaching (for example, the view that everything Jesus said was wholly unique and never before heard). In time I was able to distinguish the baggage from the message. In fact, I can say that biblical criticism rescued the message and helped me see it and appreciate it more fully I have found careful, searching study of the historical Jesus rewarding. I love to lecture. I love to preach. I love to tell the stories of the Gospels. I love to see the look in the faces of people in the congregation when they first understand what Jesus meant-what he really meant-when he said or did something. I am always touched when I see how the story of Jesus affects people and brings positive change to their lives. The story of the sinful woman (Luke 7), or the good Samaritan (Luke 10), or the prodigal son (Luke 15), if proclaimed in proper context, results in forgiveness, reconciliation and even self-reproach. It seems that none of the power Jesus exuded has diminished in the passage of time. I have found that the better we come to understand who Jesus was, what he said and how he was understood by his contemporaries, the more we appreciate him and the movement that he inaugurated. When Jesus' actions or words are misunderstood, problems begin. I have found that lying behind assertions to the effect "Jesus could not have said this" are mistakes in interpretation, usually due to a failure to view the saying in its proper context and setting. Fabricating Jesus is a book that takes a hard look at some of the sloppy scholarship and misguided theories that have been advanced in recent years. I am appalled at much of this work. Some of it, frankly, is embarrassing. Fabricating Jesus is written at a popular level and is primarily intended for nonexperts who find much that has been said about Jesus in recent years terribly confusing. Notes are kept to a minimum and are gathered at the back of the book. I have tried to define terms common in biblical studies but unfamiliar to general readers as I introduce them; in addition, I have appended a glossary at the back for quick reference. A list of recommended books is provided for any readers who want to look in more depth at the documents and scholarly literature that stand behind my arguments and conclusions. I want to thank Jim Hoover of InterVarsity Press, who invited me to write this book and provided me with many great ideas and insights. I also thank my wife, Ginny, who graciously read through the whole manuscript, one chapter at time, and asked me those important questions, such as, "What does this mean?" Because of her care and attention, the book is much easier to read. And finally, a word of thanks is due Danny Zacharias, who assisted with the preparation of the indexes. Craig A.Evans Did Jesus have a child by Mary Magdalene? Was he a Cynic? Or was he a mystic, perhaps even a Gnostic? Did he fake his death and sneak out of the holy land? Did he escape to Egypt? Did he write letters to the Jewish court and explain that it was all a mistake, that he never claimed to be the Son of God? Did he celebrate the Last Supper with friendstwenty-five years after his crucifixion? Has the grave of Jesus been found? Has the grave of his father been found? Are the New Testament Gospels reliable? Are there better sources for the life and teaching of Jesus? Do the Dead Sea Scrolls talk about Jesus? Is the gospel story true? Is there a conspiracy to hide the truth? Indeed, did Jesus ever really exist? When I first began academic study of Jesus and the Gospels some thirty years ago, I could never have guessed that I or anyone else would find it necessary to write a book addressing such questions. Surely no one in all seriousness would advance such theories. Surely no credible publishers would print them. Yet, all that has happened. Have you wondered why it is that modern scholars (especially the ones who make it into the popular press) seem so prone to discount the evidence of the Gospels, looking to other sources for information? In several books scholars argue that it is necessary to rely on second - and third-century sources, because our first-century New Testament Gospels are not reliable. Does this make sense? Others claim that there are conspiracies to suppress the evidence. Evidence of what? Why? We live in a strange time that indulges, even encourages, some of the strangest thinking. It is a time when truth means almost what you want to make of it. And in these zany quests for "truth," truth becomes elusive. In fact, a book published a few years ago appeared under the title Truth Is Stranger Than It Used To Be. Quite so. What I find particularly troubling is that a lot of the nonsense comes from scholars. We expect tabloid pseudoscholarship from the quacks, but not from scholars who teach at respectable institutions of higher learning. Modern scholars and writers, in their never-ending quest to find something new and to advance daring theories that run beyond the evidence, have either distorted or neglected the New Testament Gospels, resulting in the fabrication of an array of pseudo-Jesuses. A variety of influences have led to these results, whether (1) misplaced faith and misguided suspicions, (2) cramped starting points and overly strict critical methods, (3) questionable texts from later centuries, (4) appeals to contexts alien to Jesus' actual environment, (5) skeletal sayings devoid of context altogether, (6) failure to take into account Jesus' mighty deeds, (7) dubious use of Josephus and other resources of late antiquity (8) anachronisms and exaggerated claims, or (9) hokum history and bogus findings. In short, just about every error imaginable has been made. A few writers have made almost all of them. The chapters that follow take up these issues one by one, spending two chapters on questionable texts. The book concludes with an eleventh chapter in which I offer my assessment of important aspects of genuine progress in the study of the historical Jesus, and in which the Gospels inside the New Testament and the Gospels outside the New Testament are treated properly and other relevant primary materials are given their due. Fabricating Jesus inquires into the thinking and the methods of scholars and popular writers. What presuppositions do they hold? What methods do they use? Why do they move from valid observations to audacious conclusions? Indeed why and how do they fabricate a Jesus different from the one we find in the New Testament? Are these scholars actually using sound historical method? These are some of the questions this book explores. Fabricating Jesus is designed to speak to a variety of readers. First, this book is written to assist anyone who is confused by the wild theories and conflicting portraits of Jesus, the claims that he really didn't see himself as the Messiah or as God's Son, or that the New Testament Gospels are not trustworthy, or that other sources are better or at least equally valid, and so forth. Second, the book is written for people who are interested in Jesus and the New Testament Gospels and want to learn more but are baffled by the strange books that have appeared in recent years. I hope you haven't given up. Third, it is written for skeptics, especially those prone to fall for some old nineteenth-century philosophical hokum that almost no one today holds. Fourth, Fabricating Jesus is written for the guild, for the scholars whose profession is to investigate the Gospels and the life and teaching of Jesus, in hope that it may call us not to a lesser standard of scholarship but indeed to a higher one, one which doesn't presume that skepticism equals scholarship. Finally, this book is written to defend the original witnesses to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. When put to the test, the original documents hold up quite well. Despite their having been maligned, even ridiculed, and pushed into the background, it is time to give them a fresh hearing. Old and New School Skeptics in recent years several books have appeared, written by scholars who at one time or another in their lives regarded themselves as traditional, even conservative, Christians but who later came to define themselves as far to the Christian left or even outright agnostics, especially with regard to the traditional portrait of Jesus and the historical reliability of the Gospels. One or two of them are no longer sure Jesus ever existed at all. My impression is that the majority of biblical scholars, archaeologists and historians who start out as Christian believers continue on in Christian faith and active involvement in the church. Their views on this issue or that may change as they study; most of us who enter the world of biblical scholarship become less rigid and more open to new perspectives. But why do some scholars depart the faith and become hostile to believers? The popular media, of course, love to exploit and sensationalize these kinds of "coming-out" stories. A big part of the problem starts with conservative Protestant Christianity itself, especially of the Western variety Due to controversies, such as the modernistfundamentalist debacle at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, lines were drawn in the sand and detailed statements (or confessions) of faith were drawn up. These statements sometimes came to function as litmus tests regarding who was in and who was out. Learn the statement and agree with it, and all was well. Fail to agree and find yourself on the outside. Indeed, some of these statements seemed to take priority over Scripture itself. It is not surprising that negative reactions to this sort of rigidity have occurred. Learned study of Scripture that addresses serious questions-such as who wrote the books of the Bible, under what circumstances, with what purposes and, with respect to historical issues, how accuratelyinvariably works against rigid fundamentalism. My purpose here is not to revisit this larger question, but it is necessary to bring it up because I think it plays a significant role in why some scholars and clergy experience a crisis of faith and make radical shifts. When it comes to evaluating Jesus, popular Christian apologists often appeal to the triad of options proposed by C.S.Lewis half a century ago: Jesus was either liar, lunatic or Lord. The appeal makes for good alliteration, maybe even good rhetoric, but it is faulty logic. Without further qualification, those who adhere to this line of argument commit the fallacy of excluded middle. That is, they overlook other viable alternatives. At least two other alternatives are possible; both relate to how Scripture is understood, and both come into play in the books that Fabricating Jesus criticizes. A fourth alternative is that Jesus is neither liar, lunatic nor Lord (in the traditional, orthodox sense); he is something else. He may be Israel's messiah, the Lord's servant and perhaps the greatest prophet who ever lived. He could even be called God's son, but not in the trinitarian sense, in which Jesus is seen as fully God and fully human. As far as we know, this more or less agrees with Ebionite Christianity, a form of Jewish Christianity that emerged in the second century and eventually disappeared sometime in the fifth century. The Ebionites possessed one or more edited versions of the Gospel of Matthew, which tended to enhance the status of the law and minimize the divine nature of Jesus. They believed Jesus was Israel's messiah and fulfillment of prophecy. They believed that in the sense King David could be called God's "son" (as in Ps 2:7) Jesus also could be called son of God. But Ebionites did not hold to what theologians call "high Christology"-that is, the view that Jesus is divine. The Ebionite understanding of Jesus is pretty close to the view of two of the scholars considered later in this chapter. A fifth alternative is that we really don't know who Jesus was, what he really said and did, what he thought of himself, or what his companions thought of him, because the New Testament Gospels and other sources we have are not reliable. The New Testament Gospels may well present Jesus as Israel's Messiah and as God's Son, but for all we know, that is nothing more than the theology of Christians who lived in the second half of the first century, Christians who had never met Jesus and had never heard him teach. This form of skepticism sometimes runs even deeper, arguing that not only were the original Gospels unhistorical and unreliable, we are not sure if the manuscripts we possess today accurately reflect the Gospels in their original form. So goes the argument. This is the view of another set of scholars we will consider in this chapter. In reading some of the more radical books on Jesus, I find that loss of confidence in the historical reliability of the New Testament Gospels is often occasioned by misplaced faith and misguided suspicions. By misplaced faith I mean placing one's faith in the wrong thing, such as believing that the Scriptures must be inerrant according to rather strict idiosyncratic standards and that we must be able to harmonize the four Gospels. If our faith depends on these ideas, especially in rigid terms, then scholarly study may well lead to a collapse of faith. By misguided suspicions I mean the unreasonable assumption that Jesus' contemporaries (that is, the first generation of his movement) were either incapable of remembering or uninterested in recalling accurately what Jesus said and did, and in passing it on. What we have here is a form of hypercriticism that is all too common in scholarly circles and sometimes seems to arise from confusing criticism with skepticism-that is, thinking that the more skeptical the position, the more critical it is. Radical skepticism is no more critical than is credulity. We can see how this view of things works out by looking briefly at the work of four scholars whose Christian views at one time were fairly conservative and more or less evangelical. The first two I call "old school skeptics" and the second two I call "new school skeptics." The first two opt for something approximating the fourth alternative I have outlined; the second two opt for the fifth alternative. I have chosen these scholars because they have discussed their personal views and their respective pilgrimages of faith, especially with regard to their understanding of Jesus and the Gospels. I could have discussed a number of other scholars, but have not done so because they have not made their views public. I also want to make clear that I am not criticizing these scholars for taking the positions that they have taken. Their personal journeys are their business. I cite and discuss a few of their comments because I think they illustrate the issue that is being addressed in this chapter, an issue that I think lies behind many of the problems and controversies that will be considered in the other chapters of this book. I am, nonetheless, critical of some of the conclusions that they have reached. OLD SCHOOL SKEPTICS-MINIMIZING JESUS The two old school skeptics I wish to discuss briefly are Robert Funk (1926- 2005) and James Robinson (1924-). Their skepticism of the New Testament Gospels is not as radical as some think. Yes, they are quick to point to this Gospel saying and that deed and pronounce them inauthentic, deriving from the early church, not from Jesus. I disagree with their understanding of the formation, age and transmission of the Gospels; I disagree too with the high value and early date they assign to some of the Gospels that are outside the New Testament. But even so, Funk and Robinson believe that a good amount of useful, reliable material emerges from the Gospels, so that a coherent, even edifying portrait of Jesus emerges. Both scholars appear to admire Jesus and regard him as a spiritual benchmark. Their complaints tend to be directed against an ossified church housing a Christianity preoccupied with doctrine but not with social justice. They may paint with a broad brush, but I have no doubt there are churches that would do well to consider this criticism. Robert Funk. In Honest to Jesus Funk says of his youthful education: If the creationists had their way I... would have been stuck with a literalist reading of Genesis 1 and 2, which I had already acquired from attending Sunday school.... [My pastor] sent me to a Bible college located in the hills of eastern Tennessee. I promptly became a teenage evangelist, using my rhetorical skills to make my audiences laugh and cry But I was uneasy. Learning at the college was mostly by memorization and rehearsal. Truth was already encoded in the simplistic creed of the school. A doctrinal straitjacket did not suit me.1 Funk goes on to describe his later education, which led to a Ph.D. in New Testament and an academic career. He says that he increasingly found teaching in theological institutions frustrating, so he was glad when he relocated to the University of Montana. But even there he grew discouraged, feeling as much out of place in the university as in the church. He relocated to California, founded the Westar Institute and Polebridge Press, and launched the Jesus Seminar. What strikes me is how Funk began his Christian experience with a "literalist reading of Genesis 1 and 2," went on to attend a "Bible college," becoming "a teenage evangelist" and learning "by memorization and rehearsal." I don't want to read into this too much, but it sure sounds as if a rigid, fundamentalist understanding of Scripture laid the foundation of his formative years. Funk goes on to say that learning was an agonizing experience. I have heard that before-how breaking away from a fundamentalist understanding of Scripture can be emotionally devastating. James Robinson. James Robinson was one of my professors in graduate school. I found him fascinating and was much impressed by his productivity From time to time he remarked on his upbringing and early years in theological education. Not long ago he published an insightful "Theological Autobiography" In it he spends little time describing his pilgrimage, racing on to narrate at length the frustrations and vicissitudes he experienced in gathering and eventually publishing the Gnostic codices from Nag Hammadi. But here and there in his autobiography Robinson says a few things that pertain to his pilgrimage: Before going on to graduate studies, I taught for a year at my college (Davidson)... a quite literal Old Testament. My students were mostly returning veterans, who must have experienced me as hopelessly naive. Whether or not they actually believed anything I said, by the end of year I no longer did. I had tried to make sense of my childhood theology to myself, and had failed. In effect, my theological trajectory over half a century has moved step by step from right to left. I am often asked by Christians who are not academics the leading question as to how a lifetime of critical biblical scholarship has affected my faith as a Christian. The implied answer is that such "higher criticism" obviously destroyed it.2 Robinson says that at Davidson College he taught "a quite literal Old Testament." He imagines that his students viewed him as "hopelessly naive." Here again, we likely have a rigid, fundamentalist understanding of Scripture. Having taught the Old Testament, while probably reading scholarly literature along the way and trying to respond to students' questions, Robinson says he "no longer" believed what he had taught. But what did he no longer believe? He goes on to say, "I had tried to make sense of my childhood theology to myself, and had failed." What was this "childhood theology"? As best I can extract from his autobiography, Robinson is talking about Calvinist theology and a conservative view of Scripture. Unable to make sense of his conservative theology, Robinson began moving "step by step from right to left." Near the end of his autobiography he acknowledges that "higher criticism" destroyed his faith as a Christian. Robinson also asserts that traditional Christianity's failure to deal with injustice would have destroyed his conservative Christian faith in any case, quite apart from higher criticism. By saying that higher criticism destroyed his Christian faith, I take it that Robinson means the Christian faith of his childhood. Robinson seems to hold to an appreciative view of Jesus. He is skeptical to be sure, but what he says about Jesus, so far as it goes, would be appreciated by most Christians. But in my estimation, what he says is comparable to a watered-down version of Ebionite Christology NEW SCHOOL SKEPTICS-MISUNDERSTANDING JESUS The two scholars I mention as "new school skeptics" are far more extreme and more radical than the likes of Funk and Robinson. Indeed, they make Funk and Robinson look like Billy Graham. I have in mind Robert Price and Bart Ehrman. Robert Price. Robert Price has recently written books in which he argues that the Jesus Seminar is far too optimistic in thinking that as much as 18 percent of the sayings and deeds attributed to Jesus in the Gospels actually go back to Jesus. Price thinks the evidence is so weak for the historical Jesus that we cannot know anything certain or meaningful about him. He is even willing to entertain the possibility that there never was a historical Jesus. Is the evidence of Jesus really that thin? Virtually no scholar trained in history will agree with Price's negative conclusions. Price is a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, a conservative evangelical school. Previously he was involved with a fundamentalist Baptist church and was a leader of a chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Not long after seminary, where he was exposed to biblical criticism, Price began rethinking his faith. He returned to school, earning a Ph.D. in systematic theology from Drew University In the years that followed he began moving to the left, leaving one pastorate for another. He returned to school, this time earning a degree in New Testament. Influenced by nineteenth-century New Testament critics, Price moved further to the left, eventually adopting an agnostic position. His own views of the New Testament Gospels became increasingly radical. In my view Price's work in the Gospels is overpowered by a philosophical mindset that is at odds with historical research-of any kind. For him parallels in other ancient texts mean that Jesus could not have said what is attributed to him or the event described did not happen. Moreover, because there is evidence that the sayings and stories of Jesus were edited and contextualized, nothing can be trusted. Price uncritically embraces the dubious methods and results of the Jesus Seminar, adopts much of the (discredited) Christ-Myth theory from the nineteenth century (in which it was argued that Jesus never lived), and so forth. Price's procedure strikes me as an atavistic grab bag or a throwback that seems out of touch with genuine progress in critical studies in the last 150 years. What we see in Price is what we have seen before: a flight from fundamentalism. Bart Ehrman. Bart Ehrman became a believer as a teenager and after his conversion was nurtured in a conservative setting. He enrolled at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, went on from there to Wheaton College and Wheaton College Graduate School, where he earned degrees in New Testament, and later completed M.Div. and Ph.D. degrees at Princeton Theological Seminary under the direction of Bruce Metzger, the venerable dean of New Testament textual criticism.
I want to spend more time with Ehrman, for his books have sold widely and have had far more influence than the publications of the other scholars considered in this chapter. It was the study of textual variants-the usual myriad scribal errors and glosses that are found in handwritten books from antiquity and the Middle Ages-that caused Ehrman to question his faith. In short, he found what he took to be errors in Scripture. Errors in Scripture, thinks Ehrman, mean that the words of Scripture can no longer be viewed as God's words. OLDEST SYNOPTIC GOSPELS PAPYRI The earliest copies of manuscripts of the Greek New Testament (the language the New Testament was written in originally) are found on fragments of papyrus (pl. papyri, often abbreviated p), a type of paper made from reeds that grow along the Nile River in Egypt. Much, but not all, of the Greek New Testament survives in the papyri. All of the Greek New Testament survives in the later codices (sg. codex), which are ancient books usually made of vellum, or leather, pages. The oldest Greek papyri containing the text of the Synoptic Gospels are listed below along with the Gospel passage(s) or fragments they contain. Papyrus 67 (PBarcelona 1) A.D. 125-150 Matthew 3:9, 15; 5:20-22, 25-28 Papyrus 103 (POxy 4403) A.D. 175-200 Matthew 13:55-57; 14:3-5 Papyrus 104 (POxy 4404) A.D. 175-200 Matthew 21:34-37, 43, 45 (?) Papyrus 77 (POxy 2683 + 4405) A.D. 175-200 Matthew 23:30-39 Papyrus 64 (PMagdalen 17) A.D. 125-150 Matthew 26:7-8, 10, 14-15, 22-23, 31-33 Papyrus 4 (PParis 1120) A.D. 125-150 Luke 1:58-59; 1:62-2:1; 2:6-7; 3:8-4:2; 4:29-32, 34-35; 5:3-8 Papyrus 75 (John Bodmer) c. A.D. 175 Luke 3:18-22; 3:33-4:2; 4:34-5:10; 5:37-6:4; 6:10-7:32; 7:35-39, 41-43; 7:46-9:2; 9:4-17:15; 17:19-18:18; 22:4- 24:53 Rather rigid ideas about the verbal inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture underlie Ehrman's problem, as he says in the autobiographical section of his introduction: For me, though, this [the loss of the original manuscripts of the New Testament] was a compelling problem. It was the words of scripture themselves that God had inspired. Surely we have to know what those words were if we want to know how he had communicated to us, since the very words were his words, and having some other words (those inadvertently or intentionally created by scribes) didn't help us much if we want to know His words. The Bible began to appear to me as a very human book.... This was a human book from beginning to end. It was written by different human authors at different times and in different places to address different needs.... Those of us at Moody, believed that the Bible was absolutely inerrant in its very words.5 Because for Ehrman the Bible became a human book and therefore no longer could be viewed as God's words, he lost confidence in it. Having lost confidence in the Bible, including the Gospels that tell the story of Jesus, Ehrman lost his faith. He now regards himself as an agnostic. I must admit that I am puzzled by all this. If not at Moody Bible Institute, then surely at Wheaton College, Ehrman must have become acquainted with a great number of textual variants in the biblical manuscripts. No student can earn a degree in Bible and not know this. Yet Bible students are not defecting in droves. I am also puzzled by Ehrman's line of reasoning. For the sake of argument, let's suppose that the scribal errors in the Bible manuscripts really do disprove verbal inspiration and inerrancy, so that the Bible really should be viewed as a human book and not as God's words. Would we lose everything as a result? No. Moderate and liberal Christians have held essentially this view for a century or more. The real issue centers on what God accomplished in Jesus of Nazareth. OLDEST GREEK CODICES Coincident with the emergence of Christianity was the development of the codex, the forerunner of the modern book, with bound pages printed on both sides. Several early codices of the Greek Bible have survived. Codex Sinaiticus (abbreviated W: produced by three scribes in the fourth century Codex Vaticanus (abbreviated B): produced by two scribes in the fourth century Codex Alexandrinus (abbreviated A): fifth-century codex; first to fall into the hands of Western scholars, leading to quest for more manuscripts, presented to England's Charles I in 1627 Codex Beza (abbreviated D): late-fourth-century codex, containing numerous unique readings Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (abbreviated C): called the "rewriting of Ephraem" because a twelfth-century monk scraped, then copied over this sixth-century Greek codex with the discourses of Ephraem Syrus Codex Washingtonianus (abbreviated W): latefourth/early-fifth-century codex, containing an interesting gloss at Mark 16:14-15 Let me put it this way: What did Peter and the other original followers of Jesus proclaim following the experience of the resurrection? Peter's preaching is summed up in the Pentecost sermon: Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know-this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. But God raised him up.... This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. (Acts 2:22-24, 32) Peter and the rest of the apostles proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus. For them this was the good news, this was conclusive evidence that God was at work in the ministry and person of Jesus of Nazareth. Peter didn't stand up and proclaim, "Men of Israel, I have good news ; the Bible is verbally inspired and therefore inerrant and, moreover, the Gospels can be harmonized." Had that been Peter's message, then Ehrman would have a valid point. The message that runs throughout the New Testament writings and the earliest Christian communities was that God had raised Jesus, to which Peter and many others (including one or two noncommitted persons, such as Jesus' brothers James and perhaps Jude, and at least one opponent, Paul) bore witness. It was the reality of the resurrection and its impact on those who heard and responded to it in faith that propelled the new movement forward, not "mistakefree" Scripture. The witness of (Old Testament) Scripture was very important to the early Christian movement, of course. Throughout his sermon Peter appeals to Scripture. Almost every New Testament writer does. But the proofs adduced from Scripture are clearly subordinate to the message itself, which is the miracle of Easter. Nonexperts perhaps need to be told that in the first ten to fifteen years of the existence of the church, not one book of the New Testament was in existence. Nevertheless, the church grew fast and furious, without benefit of a New Testament or the Gospels (inerrant or otherwise). And finally, I am puzzled by the examples of "errors" that Ehrman puts forward as evidence that Scripture is not trustworthy Because Fabricating Jesus focuses on Jesus and the Gospels and not the rest of the New Testament, I will limit my discussion to the Gospel passages that Ehrman discusses. Ehrman makes much of passages that he and most textual critics rightly deem as later, inauthentic scribal glosses. He calls attention to Luke 22:41- 45, Luke's version of Jesus' prayer in the garden on the night of his betrayal and arrest. The original text consisted of verses 41-42 and 45. Verses 43-44, which describe Jesus' perspiration as great drops of blood, are almost certainly an insertion. Not only are these verses absent from the oldest manuscripts, the portrait of an emotional Jesus is out of step with Luke's tendency to downplay Jesus' emotions. The story of the woman caught in the act of adultery an 7:53-8:11) ap pears only in later manuscripts of the Gospel of John, and sometimes in different locations. The last twelve verses of the Gospel of Mark (Mk 16:9-20) are not the original ending; they were added at least two centuries after Mark first began to circulate. These passages-one from Mark, one from Luke and one from John-represent the only major textual problems in the Gospels. No important teaching hangs on any one of them (unless you belong to a snakehandling cult; see Mk 16: 18). Ehrman thinks he has uncovered an example that demonstrates an important theological difference between the Gospels. In some manuscripts Matthew 24:36 reads: "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but the Father only" But earlier manuscripts read: "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only" What is conspicuous is the presence of the phrase, "nor the Son." Ehrman rightly suggests that the verse originally included "nor the Son," but later scribes probably deliberately omitted it, to avoid the impression that Jesus' knowledge was limited. Fair enough. But Ehrman draws an unwarranted conclusion when he argues that a significant New Testament teaching-in this case Christology-hangs on the scribal addition. This is simply not true. The limitation of Jesus' knowledge is plainly stated in the parallel passage in Mark 13:32: "But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." Therefore, with or without "nor the Son" in Matthew 24:36, nothing is changed theologically. Ehrman's reasoning here is faulty and misleading. For Ehrman personally, however, the smoking gun that drove him toward the abandonment of his confidence in Scripture is Jesus' comment in Mark 2:25-26: And he said to them, "Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?" Jesus has alluded to the story of David's receiving consecrated bread (or "bread of the Presence") from Ahimelech the priest (1 Sam 21:1-10). David was fleeing from Saul, and when Saul learned that Ahimelech had assisted David and his men, he murdered Ahimelech and most of his family. Abiathar escaped and eventually succeeded his father as priest (1 Sam 22:1-10). Because Ahimelech-not his son Abiathar-was the priest when David and his men ate the consecrated bread, we have a mistake, technically speaking, either made by Jesus himself or by Mark (or perhaps by someone who passed on the story). Ehrman says he finally admitted to himself that this passage contains a mistake: "Once I made that admission, the floodgates opened. For if there could be one little, picayune mistake in Mark 2, maybe there could be mistakes in other places as well." Ehrman then cites a few more candidates, such as Jesus' comment that the mustard seed is the smallest of seeds or the apparent discrepancy between the Synoptic Gospels and John about which day Jesus died. And so everything began to unravel for Ehrman. But observe the line of reasoning; it is so typical of brittle fundamentalism. I have heard fundamentalists say, "Show me one mistake in the Bible and I will throw out the whole thing." I suspect Ehrman heard that more than once in his Moody Bible Institute days. His reasoning today, even as a professing agnostic, still has a fundamentalist ring to it. I repeat: The truth of the Christian message hinges not on the inerrancy of Scripture or on our ability to harmonize the four Gospels but on the resurrection of Jesus. And the historical reliability of the Gospels does not hinge on the inerrancy of Scripture or on proof that no mistake of any kind can be detected in them. Ehrman's struggle with faithand I feel for him-grows out of mistaken expectations of the nature and function of Scripture, mistaken expectations that he was taught as a young, impressionable fundamentalist Christian.6 THE FIRST CHRISTIAN WITNESSESS Emphasizing the central role of the resurrection brings me back to the importance of the first Christian witnesses. It also brings me back to Robert Funk. In his zeal to direct attention to the authentic Jesus as opposed to the Christ of ecclesiastical dogma and creed, Funk goes so far as to assert: "We can no longer rest our faith on the faith of Peter or the faith of Paul."' On one level, he is right; I think I understand what he means. Christians must embrace what Jesus taught and what Jesus himself believed. Quite true. But on another level I think that Funk is seriously mistaken. Peter and Paul were foundational witnesses to the event that brought the church into existence: the resurrection of Jesus. Ignoring this witness runs the risk of abandoning authentic Christianity, Jesus and all. THE OLDEST GREEK MANUSCRIPTS OF JOHN'S GOSPEL The oldest surviving fragments of the Greek new Testament are found written on papyrus. The following are the oldest papyri that preserve portions of the Gospel of John. ps Papyrus 5 (housed in the British Library in London), also designated POxy 208 + 1781, dates to the early third century It contains John 1:23-31, 33-40; 16:14-30; 20:11-17, 19-20, 22-25. 22 Papyrus 22 (housed in the Glasgow University Library), also designated POxy 1228, dates to the middle of the third century It contains John 15:25- 16:2, 21-32. p28 Papyrus 28 (housed in the Palestine Institute Museum of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California), also designated POxy 1596, dates to the late third century It contains John 6:8-12, 17-22. p39 Papyrus 39 (housed in Ambrose Swasey Library, Rochester Divinity School), also designated POxy 1780, dates to the early third century It is a small fragment, containing John 8:14-22. p45 Papyrus 45 (housed in the Chester Beatty Collection, in Dublin), also designated P Chester Beatty 1, dates to the late second century This is one of the major papyri. It contains large portions of the four Gospels and Acts. Of John it contains 4:51, 54; 5:21, 24; 10:7-25; 10:30- 11:10, 18-36, 42-57. P46 (P Chester Beatty II) contains significant portions of several of Paul's letters 52 Papyrus 52 (housed in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester), also designated Gr. P 457, dates to the very beginning of the second century and may be the oldest surviving fragment of the Greek New Testament (though recently some have claimed that fragments of Matthew date to the first century itself). Papyrus 52 is a small fragment, containing John 18:31-33 (on the recto side), 37-38 (on the verso side). p66 Papyrus 66 (housed in the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana), also designated P Bodmer II, dates to the second or third century The Bodmer Papyri are very important. Papyrus 66 contains John 1:1-6:11; 6:35-14:26, 29- 30; 15:2-26; 16:2-4, 6-7; 16:10- 20:20, 22-23; 20:25-21:9, 12, 17. 75 Papyrus 75 (housed in the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana), also designated P Bodmer XIV and XV, dates to the late second century Besides portions of Luke, it contains John 1:1-11:45, 48-57; 12:3-13:1, 8-9; 14:8-29; 15:7-8. P80 Papyrus 80 (housed in the FundaciOn San Lucas Evangelista, Barce Iona), also designated P Barcelona 83, dates to the middle of the third century All that survives is a single verse: John 3:34. p90 Papyrus 90 (housed in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford), also designated POxy 3523, dates to the middle or late second century. It contains John 18:36-19:7. p95 Papyrus 95 (housed in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence), also designated PL I1/31, dates to the third century It contains John 5:26-29, 36-38. 0162 Uncial 0162 (housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), also designated POxy. 847, is not a papyrus, but a single leaf of leather, or vellum. It dates to the late third or early fourth century and as such is an early example of the later uncial. It contains John 2:11-22. Uncial refers to codices of the Bible written in the third to tenth centuries on parchment or vellum in large rounded capital letters. They are the next earliest copies of manuscripts after the papyri. POxy. = Oxyrhynchus Papyri, a trove of thousands of papyrus fragments found in Egypt at Oxyrhynchus, containing a variety of texts in six or more languages. The documents that the early Christian community gathered bore witness to this great event and struggled to interpret it and apply it in a variety of real-life situations. The books that make up the New Testament constitute a vital record of the early church's experience and witness. These witnesses and the records they left behind need to be taken seriously and studied carefully8 Failure to do so will almost certainly result in distorted portraits of Jesus and misguided understanding of what true Christian faith is all about.
Chapter 2.
The Question of Authenticity The Jesus Seminar gained a great deal of notoriety when it concluded in 1993 that only 18 percent of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the New Testament Gospels are actually something he said. The Seminar reached similar results with respect to the activities of Jesus.' Why was the percentage so low? Minimalist conclusions like these are arrived at through cramped starting points and overly strict critical methods. CRAMPED STARTING POINTS In recent years some scholars have come to some pretty surprising conclusions or at least have made some surprising assertions. We have been told that (1) Jesus was illiterate, (2) Jesus had no interest in Scripture, (3) Jesus had no interest in eschatology, and (4) Jesus certainly did not think of himself as Israel's Messiah or in any sense divine. In other words, some of these scholars think that almost everything of importance affirmed in the New Testament writings is wrong. The problem is that some scholars, especially among the Jesus Seminar, use these conclusions as starting points. Accordingly, we hear comments from them to the effect: "Given that Jesus probably could not read ... had no interest in Scripture... this saying does not go back to him." Given such cramped starting points, which often are little more than presuppositions and not documented and argued conclusions, it is no wonder that much of the material in the New Testament Gospels is regarded as inauthentic and unhistorical. All four of the assertions of the previous paragraph are misguided and almost certainly false. Let's review them one by one. WAS JESUS ILLITERATE? Recently a few scholars have suggested that Jesus was functionally illiterate. They allow that Jesus perhaps knew the alphabet and could make out a few words, perhaps even sign his own name, but probably could neither read nor write.' Other scholars think Jesus could read and perhaps write, but not at the level of proficiency expected of a professional scribe.' Scholars are divided on this question because the evidence is somewhat ambiguous. Many Christians will immediately assert that, of course, Jesus was literate. He was the Son of God, after all, and could do anything. Christians in the second and third centuries, and later, began to assume this too. Some suggested that as a boy Jesus was a wonder student who made a fool out of his schoolteacher. But this is not consistent with Christian belief in the full humanity of Jesus. As a young child Jesus learned to speak, as a boy he learned to play, and as an older youth he learned the skills of the family trade. Indeed, according to Hebrews 5:8, Jesus "learned obedience through what he suffered." And an early Christian confession says that Jesus "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant" (Phil 2:7). This clearly implies limitations of some sort. The question of the literacy of Jesus is therefore a legitimate question to raise. In a theological sense there was no need for Jesus to have been literate to have accomplished his ministry So the question is not whether Jesus as Son of God should have been able to read (or do advanced math, astronomy, or any other subject). Rather, the question is, Could and did Jesus read? The evidence, viewed in the light of general, contextual considerations, favors literacy There are three types of evidence that must be explored to answer this question. The first type of evidence concerns specific passages. There are only a few. Luke 4: 16-30 describes Jesus reading from the scroll of Isaiah and then preaching a homily. Most scholars hesitate to draw firm conclusions from this passage because it appears to be an expansion of Mark 6: 1-6, which says nothing about reading Scripture. John 8:6 says Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. The problem here is that in all probability this passage (that is, Jn 7:53-8:11) is not part of the original version of the Gospel of John. Even if the passage is accepted as preserving a genuine reminiscence of something Jesus did, it tells us nothing certain about Jesus' literacy He may have been doing nothing more than doodling. John 7:15 speaks directly to the question of Jesus' literacy, though. Some in Jerusalem wonder: "How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?" Literally, they ask how he "knows letters, not having studied" (or "not having learned"). But the reference here is to a lack of formal, scribal training, not to having had no education whatsoever. Behind the question is the knowledge that Jesus has not sat at the feet of a trained, recognized rabbi or sage. Nevertheless, being recognized as one who possesses learning argues against illiteracy The evidence of these specific New Testament Gospel narratives favors literacy, or at the least the assumption in early Christianity that Jesus was in fact literate. However, the level of literacy is not made clear. Of course, some scholars discount the evidence of these Gospel narratives, claiming that they do not really reach back to the historical Jesus but only to assumptions about Jesus held by second - and thirdgeneration Christians. In any event, these passages do not settle the question. The second type of evidence is contextual, inquiring into general levels of literacy in the Roman Empire in the time of Jesus and into levels of literacy among the Jewish people as a distinctive group. Here again scholarly opinion varies widely, with some concluding that literacy was low (as low as 5 percent or less) and others concluding that literacy rates were somewhat higher, especially among Jewish men.5 The major problem with this type of contextual evidence is that whatever it says about the general public, it does not necessarily tell us anything about a specific individual, in this case Jesus of Nazareth. If the data that we have truly support the conclusion that literacy rates were indeed higher among Jewish men, then the case for the literacy of Jesus is strengthened. But again, the question is not settled. The third type of evidence is also contextual, focusing on Jesus' activities and style of ministry, how he was perceived by his contemporaries-friend and foe alike-and what emerged from his ministry The evidence here, I be lieve, decisively tips the balance in favor of concluding that Jesus was indeed functionally literate. According to the commands of Old Testament Scripture, Jewish parents were to teach their children the law (see Deut 6:9; 11:20). Of course, this does not mean that all parents did this or that all parents necessarily interpreted this command as requiring literacy. Teaching the law, or summaries of key portions of it, could have been done and probably was done orally. Literacy was not necessarily required to comply with this particular command of Scripture. Nevertheless, such a command would encourage literacy, even if it did not require it. According to various Jewish authors living about the time Jesus did, Jewish parents in fact did educate their children in the law and in literacy For example, according to the unknown author of the Testament of Levi, a writing that probably dates to the first century B.C.: "Teach your children letters also, so that they might have understanding throughout all their lives as they ceaselessly read the Law of God" (13:2). Josephus, the first-centuryA.D. Jewish historian, states, "Above all we pride ourselves on the education of our children, and regard as the most essential task in life the observance of our laws and of the pious practices, based thereupon, which we have inherited" (Against Apion 1.60). He says later, "[The law] orders that [children] shall be taught to read, and shall learn both the laws and the deeds of their forefathers" (Against Apion 2.204). These expressions, admittedly from priestly sources that probably do not reflect the social and educational realities and expectations of most Jewish adults, do underscore the great value placed on Scripture and literacy in the Jewish world, especially among Jews who take the law of Moses seriously. From everything that we can learn of him, this is just the sort of person Jesus was. He took Scripture seriously. He quoted it, he taught it, and he debated it with priests, scribes, and various religious persons and groups. This sort of evidence clearly argues in favor of Jesus' literacy. Statistics and generalities are of some use. But it is the big picture of Jesus' ministry itself that makes us conclude that Jesus indeed could read. Jesus is frequently called "teacher" (sometimes with the Hebrew rabbi or the Aramaic rabbouni). Jesus refers to himself in this manner and is called such by supporters, opponents and nonpartisans. Jesus and others called his closest followers "disciples," which in Hebrew and Greek literally means "learners."' The terminology of teacher and learner creates a strong presumption in favor of Jesus' literacy In the Jewish setting an illiterate rabbi who surrounds himself with disciples and debates Scripture and its interpretation with other rabbis and scribes is hardly credible. On occasion Jesus himself refers to reading Scripture. He asks Pharisees who criticized his disciples for plucking grain on the sabbath: "Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry?" (Mk 2:25; see Mt 12:3). To this passage Matthew adds, "Or have you not read in the law how on the sabbath the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are guiltless?" (Mt 12:5; see Mt 19:4). In another polemical context Jesus asks the ruling priests and elders, "Have you not read this scripture?" (Mk 12:10). Later he asks the Sadducees, who had raised a question about resurrection, "And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said to him, `I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'?" (Mk 12:26). In a discussion with a legal expert who has asked what one must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus asks in turn, "What is written in the law? How do you read?" (Lk 10:26). Jesus' rhetorical and pointed "have you not read?" seems to be distinctive of his style and surely would have little argumentative force if he himself could not read. It should be noted too that in the Gospel stories reviewed, Jesus' literacy is never an issue. There is no evidence of apologetic tendencies in which Jesus' literary skills are exaggerated. Jesus' ability to read appears to be a given, but not an issue. The upshot of all of this is that whatever the literacy rates were in late antiquity, it is more than likely that Jesus himself could read. WAS JESUS INTERESTED IN SCRIPTURE? Related to the question of Jesus' literacy is the question of his interest in Scripture. The Jesus Seminar maintains the curious position that Scripture was of interest to early Christians but not to Jesus. Therefore, when we encounter passages in the Gospels where Jesus quotes or alludes to Scripture, the Seminar thinks it is the early church that is speaking, not Jesus. This view is very strange. Jesus was nothing if not a teacher. A teacher of what? Everything that Jesus taughtfrom the rule of God to the Golden Rule-is rooted in Scripture. His disciples-"learners"-learned and passed on his teaching. Is it really likely that Jesus' original teaching made little or no reference to Scripture and that this is what his disciples had to add to it? This makes little sense. A far better and simpler explanation is that the reason that certain passages of Scripture became important to the early church and understood in a certain way is because this is what Jesus taught and his disciples learned and passed on to other believers. The creative genius behind early Christian thought is Jesus himself, not several anonymous figures. According to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus quotes or alludes to twentythree of the thirty-six books of the Hebrew Bible (counting the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles as three books, not six).7 Jesus alludes to or quotes all five books of Moses, the three major prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel), eight of the twelve minor prophets, and five of the "writings.' In other words, Jesus quotes or alludes to all of the books of the Law, most of the Prophets and some of the Writings. According to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus quotes or alludes to Deuteronomy fifteen or sixteen times, Isaiah about forty times and the Psalms some thirteen times. These appear to be his favorite books, though Daniel and Zechariah seem to have been favorites also. Superficially, then, the "canon" of Jesus is pretty much what it was for most religiously observant Jews of his time,' including-and especially-the producers of the scrolls at Qumran.'° Moreover, there is evidence that villages and synagogues in the time of Jesus possessed biblical scrolls (see 1 Maccabees 1:56-57; Josephus Jewish Wars 2.229 [in reference to Antiochus IV's efforts to find and destroy Torah scrolls] ; Life of Flavius Josephus 134 [in reference to scrolls in Galilee during the early stages of the revolt against Rome]). The data that we have surveyed are more easily explained in reference to a literate Jesus, a Jesus who could read Scripture, could paraphrase and interpret it in Aramaic (his native tongue) and could do so in a manner that indicated his familiarity with current interpretive tendencies in both popular circles (as in the synagogues) and in professional, even elite circles (as seen in debates with scribes, ruling priests and elders). Moreover, the movement that Jesus founded produced a legacy of literature, including four Gospels, a narrative of the early church (the book of Acts) and a number of letters. The sudden emergence of a prolific literary tradition from an illiterate founder is not impossible, but it is less difficult to explain if Jesus was in fact literate and frequently appealed to Scripture. WAS JESUS INTERESTED IN ESCHATOLOGY? Perhaps one of the most astonishing claims made by influential members of the Jesus Seminar is that Jesus was noneschatological. But before the Seminar's views can be evaluated, it is necessary to say a few things about eschatology The word eschatology refers to the study of final or last things. In Jewish and Christian theology it usually refers to God's final accomplishment of his purposes. Some day in the future, things will be very different. Exactly how Jesus' announcement of the presence of the kingdom of God relates to eschatology has been a subject of debate since the days of Jesus. Long ago the disciples asked the risen Jesus: "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6). Speculations about end times have been a preoccupation with many people of faith down through the centuries. The disciples' question is still being asked. Unfortunately, many Christians, including pastors and Bible teachers, do not understand either the meaning of the expression "kingdom of God" or the meaning of the biblical concept of eschatology Some Christians think that by "kingdom of God" Jesus meant heaven or the millennium. Some even try to make a distinction between kingdom of God and kingdom of heaven. Worse, some think eschatology refers to the "end of the world." Oddly enough, it is to these popular misunderstandings that the Jesus Seminar has, by and large, responded. When the Seminar interprets Jesus in a "noneschatological" way, the Seminar is rejecting the idea that in proclaiming the kingdom of God, Jesus was proclaiming the end of the world. Unfortunately, in misunderstanding both eschatology and Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of God, the Seminar rejects eschatology altogether and misinterprets what Jesus meant by "kingdom."" I Here, I believe, we have an example of throwing the baby out with the bath water. With eschatology removed as something imposed on the teaching of Jesus by fanatical followers who thought the world was about to end, the kingdom of God is variously misinterpreted among influential Seminar members as a "mystical perception of self" (so Marcus Borg) or as egalitarian community (so John Dominic Crossan).12 In its red-letter edition of the Gospels, the Jesus Seminar chose to translate "kingdom of God" (Greek, basilcia tou theou) "God's imperial rule." This curious rendering shows that the Seminar simply does not know what it is talking about.13 The expression "kingdom of God" is neither difficult nor complicated when we take into account the biblical data. A reading of the Psalms shows that God is understood as KingKing of his people Israel as well as King of all the peoples of the earth. God is King now and forever. God is King in heaven, but he is also King on earth. In other words, the kingship of God entails temporal elements (God rules now, and he will rule in the future) and spatial elements (God rules in heaven, but he also rules here on earth). When the linguistic dimension of kingdom is taken into account, especially in reference to God, it is best to translate the word as "rule." Accordingly, when Jesus proclaims the kingdom of God, he is proclaiming the rule of God. He demonstrates that God's rule is truly making itself felt in his ministry through healing and especially through exorcism: "If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom [or rule] of God has come upon you" (Lk 11:20). Eschatology needs to be understood in the light of the meaning of the rule of God. The "last things" entailed in Jesus' proclamation of the rule of God is that now at last God's rule is making itself felt on earth, as the prophets had promised. Jesus has not proclaimed the end of the world but the beginning of the world's renewal. He is calling on his people to repent and embrace God's rule. Repenting and embracing God's rule will transform lives. It is in this light that the Lord's Prayer should be understood: Interpreters think that Luke's shorter, simpler form of the prayer may be closer to the original prayer of Jesus. This could be true. But even the longer form of the prayer in Matthew probably correctly reflects Jesus' thinking. It reads as follows: Lying at the core of Jesus' prayer is an old Aramaic Jewish prayer called the Qaddish (also spelled Kaddish, from the first word of the prayer, meaning "may be made holy"). This prayer reads: May his great name be glorified and made holy in the world that he created according to this will. May he establish his kingdom in your lifetime and during your days... Although the form of the Qaddish that we now have has probably been expanded in the passage of time, the original two petitions-that God make his name holy, and that he establish his kingdom (or rule) soon-stand out and obviously parallel the first two petitions of Jesus' prayer. The implication of this is that Jesus taught his disciples a prayer similar to the prayer that all devout Jews prayed. Jesus' innovation is to link people's behavior to these two petitions. That is, we are to pray that God make his name holy and that God's rule come soon, and we are to pray that we live rightly and expectantly in the light of this prayerful hope. Jesus has not taught his disciples to pray for the end of the world; he has enjoined his disciples to pray that God's rule come finally and fully, "on earth as it is in heaven," as the interpretive phrase correctly elaborates in the form of the Lord's Prayer that we have in Matthew's Gospel. When Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of God is correctly understood, and when we avoid distorted understandings of eschatology, we find that the message of Jesus was indeed profoundly eschatological. Jesus did not call his disciples to find their inner, mystical selves or to form an egalitarian community; he called on his disciples to repent and embrace the rule of God, a rule that transforms the individual and society and will eventually engulf the whole earth. DID JESUS UNDERSTAND HIMSELF TO BE ISRAEL'S MESSIAH? It was fashionable throughout much of the modern period of biblical scholarship (say, in the last two centuries or so) to doubt that Jesus thought of himself as Israel's Messiah. It was argued that the confession that Jesus was the Messiah arose among his Jewish following in the aftermath of the Easter proclamation that Jesus had been resurrected. Doubts along these lines continued into and through most of the twentieth century, especially in German scholarship. At most, some scholars were willing to allow for an implicit messianic self-understanding on the part of Jesus, seen, for example, in Jesus' expressions of authority, either in word or deed. However, the picture has changed in recent years, thanks largely to a better understanding of Jewish messianism in the time of Jesus and to some important texts from the Dead Sea area finally published in the 1990s. But before we go further in this discussion, it will be helpful to define messianism. The word messiah is Hebrew and means "anointed." In the Old Testament the word is used in reference to three offices: the anointed priest, the anointed king, and the anointed prophet. Normally, however, when we speak of messianism we are referring to ideas about the anointed king, who is usually understood to be a descendant of David. In the days of Jesus, messianism had to do with hopes of a coming anointed descendant of David who would restore Israel. The Dead Sea Scrolls have enriched our understanding of messianic ideas in late antiquity. Perhaps the single most important scroll for Jesus' messianic self-understanding is 4Q521 (that is, document number 521, from cave 4 of Qumran). A portion of this text speaks of things that will take place when God's Messiah comes on the scene. The relevant portion reads: [For the heavens and the earth shall listen to his Messiah [and all that is in them (Ps 146:6) shall not turn away from the commandments of the holy ones. Strengthen yourselves, 0 you who seek the Lord in his service. Will you not find the Lord in this, all those who hope in their heart? For the Lord attends to the pious and calls the righteous by name. Over the humble his spirit hovers (Is 11:2), and he renews the faithful in his strength. For he will honor the pious upon the th[ro]ne of his eternal kingdom, setting prisoners free [Ps 146:7], opening the eyes of the blind, raising up those who are bowed down] (Ps 146:8). And for[ev]er I shall hold fast [to] those [who h ope and in His faithfulness sh [all...] and the frui[t of] good [dee] ds shall not be delayed for anyone and the Lord shall do glorious things which have not been done, just as he said. For he shall heal the critically wounded; he shall make alive the dead (Is 26:19); he shall send good news to the afflicted (Is 61:1); he shall satisfy the poor (Ps 132:15); he shall guide the uprooted; he shall make the hungry rich (Ps 107:9). (4Q521 frag. 2, col. 2, lines 1-13) [The italics indicate words and phrases quoted or paraphrased from the Old Testament, with references placed in parentheses. The words and letters placed in square brackets are restorations (that is, educated guesses).] This fragment from 4Q521 consists of a number of phrases drawn from Psalms (especially Ps 146) and Isaiah. All of these phrases are viewed as prophecy, to be filled when "his" (that is, God's) "Messiah" makes his appearance. The author of this fragmentary scroll evidently held a rather exalted view of God's Messiah. Heaven and earth and all that is in them "shall listen to" or "obey" the Messiah. Prisoners will be set free, the eyes of the blind will be opened, the bowed down will be raised, the wounded will be healed (probably in reference to the aftermath of the anticipated great war between the "sons of light" and the "sons of darkness"), the dead will be made alive, and good news will be sent to the poor. All of these wonderful things are to happen when the Messiah, the Lord's anointed, makes his appearance. What makes all of this interesting for understanding Jesus is that he says something similar when he replies to the imprisoned, discouraged John the Baptist. John asks Jesus, "Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?" (Mt 11:3). Jesus replies with his own selection of words and phrases from prophecy: Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk [Is 35:5-61, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear [Is 35:5], and the dead are raised up [Is 26:19], and the poor have good news preached to them [Is 61:1]. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me. (Mt 11:4-6, emphasis added) What is interesting is that Jesus has appealed to some of the same passages and phrases that were employed by the author of 4Q521. Jesus tells John that the blind have regained their sight, the dead are raised up, and the poor (or afflicted) have heard good news. The implication is quite clear. In answering John's question in this way, Jesus has clearly implied that he is indeed Israel's Messiah, for the wonderful things that are supposed to happen when the Messiah appears are in fact happening in Jesus' ministry At other points too the Dead Sea Scrolls have helped us understand more accurately the messianic ideas of Jesus' time and even specific messianic ideas expressed in the New Testament. For example, in the angelic announcement of Jesus' birth, Mary is told that her son will be "called Son of the Most High" and "Son of God" (Lk1:32,35). At one time some critics argued that the idea that the Messiah would be called "Son of God" reflected Greco-Roman influence on early Christianity (in that the Roman emperor was called "son of God" and the like). But the expected saving figure of 4Q246, an Aramaic text that dates to the first century B.C., is called "Son of the Most High" and "Son of God." This idea was right at home in Palestine after all. After his baptism, Jesus is told by the heavenly voice: "You are my beloved Son, in whom I well pleased" (Mk 1:11). The allusion to Psalm 2:7 is apparent: "You are my son, today I have begotten you." Although earlier in Psalm 2 it is clear that this remarkable utterance is made in reference to the Lord's Messiah (see v. 2), some scholars were not sure if this psalm was understood in a messianic sense in the time of Jesus. One of the Rule scrolls from Qumran suggests that it was. According to 1QSa, the Messiah will come, "when God will have begotten him" (2:11-12). What all of this shows us is that at important places the messianism of Jesus was rooted in the messianic ideas current in his time. But more impor tant, the remarkable parallels between 4Q521 and his reply to John the Baptist shows that Jesus clearly understood his ministry in messianic terms. Regarding the question of what impact the Easter announcement would have had, there is no doubt that seeing him resurrected would have elevated Jesus in the thinking of Jesus' followers. But there was no ancient Jewish expectation that the Messiah would die and be raised up. Death and resurrection, therefore, do not constitute a messianic pattern. Had Jesus not encouraged his disciples to think of him in messianic terms, I doubt very much that the exciting discovery of the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances would have in themselves led the disciples to think of Jesus as Israel's Messiah. Had there been no messianic content in Jesus' teaching and activities prior to Easter, it is doubtful that there would have been any after Easter. The best explanation of the data is that Jesus was indeed understood as the Messiah prior to Easter and that Easter confirmed this understanding in the minds and faith of the disciples. Finally, Jesus' frequent reference to himself as the "Son of Man" is another indication of his messianic selfunderstanding. It is true that there is no clear evidence that "Son of Man" in the time of Jesus was understood as a title of the Messiah. But by calling himself the "Son of Man," Jesus alludes to the mysterious son of man figure in Daniel 7.14 This figure approaches God (the "Ancient of Days") and receives kingdom (or kingly) rule and authority. That Jesus understood himself as this figure supports the point that has been made Jesus did indeed understand himself as Israel's Messiah. The messianic identity of Jesus is no post-Easter Christian invention. THE CRITERIA OF AUTHENTICITY Not only are the starting points of some scholars cramped and unjustified, their methods are often quite severe and skeptical. Some scholars seem to think that the more skeptical they are, the more critical they are. But adopting an excessive and unwarranted skeptical stance is no more critical than gullibly accepting whatever comes along. In my view, a lot of what passes for criticism is not critical at all; it is nothing more than skepticism masking itself as scholarship. This way of thinking is a major contributor to distorted portraits of Jesus and the Gospels in much of today's radical scholarship. This overly skeptical thinking, for example, leads to the conclusion that much of what Jesus said in public or to his disciples in private was either forgotten or was irrelevant and that, therefore, what eventually came to be written in the Gospels was for the most part from later Christians, not from Jesus himself. Indeed, this is absurd. That is, if Jesus really said little of lasting significance and was unable to train his disciples to remember accurately what little he did say, then we must really wonder why the Christian movement emerged at all. Some of this skepticism is due to improperly formulated criteria used in deciding what is authentic and what is not. These criteria are variously termed the "criteria of authenticity" or the "authenticity criteria." This may sound terribly technical and complicated, but it actually is an attempt to apply common sense in trying to determine whether ancient documents are trustworthy sources for learning what happened, and who said what. No matter what perspective we bring to the New Testament Gospels (and to the extracanonical Gospels, for that matter), we need to have criteria. The word criterion (plural, criteria) is a Greek word that means "judgment" or "basis for passing judgment." We all have criteria for passing judgment with respect to many things in life. When someone says, "I think this story is true," and you respond, "Why do you think so?" you are asking the person to explain his or her criteria or basis for making the judgment. Some conservative Christians will, of course, simply respond by saying, "Whatever the New Testament Gospels say Jesus said or did I accept as historical." That may work for those who already accept the inspiration and authority of the Bible. But what about those who would like to have sound, compelling reasons for accepting the Gospel narratives as reliable? Telling them that the Bible is inspired and therefore true without providing any criteria that historians would recognize will not satisfy them. After all, don't Mormons say the same thing with respect to the Book of Mormon? Don't Muslims affirm the inspiration of the Qur'an? One holy book after another could be appealed to in this manner. Is this the only defense that can be made? Thoughtful people rightly apply criteria in evaluating claims (for exam ple, "This is true," "This is valuable," "This really happened," and so forth). So also historians apply criteria for assessing the historical worth of documents. They ask questions such as, When was this document written? Who wrote this document? Do the details in this document cohere with other known and trusted sources? Was the author of this document in a position to know what really happened and what really was said? Are claims in this document supported by archaeological evidence and geographical realities? Over the years, biblical scholars have developed historical and literary criteria for assessing biblical literature. Discussions of criteria for the study of the Gospels have been especially intense, with a great number of criteria proposed. I have seen hair-splitting studies that list as many as twentyfive criteria. Some of these criteria seem unnecessarily complex. Some criteria are questionable. But a few of the criteria are consistently invoked.15 Here is a review of those criteria I think are the best. (I will also discuss one that I think is often misused and misapplied.) Historical coherence. When the Gospels tell us things that cohere with what we know of Jesus' historical circumstances and principal features of his life and ministry, it is reasonable to believe that we are on solid ground. Jesus drew a following, attracted the attention of the authorities, was executed and yet was proclaimed Israel's Messiah and God's Son. Deeds and sayings attributed to him in the Gospels that cohere with these major elements and, indeed, help us understand these major elements should be judged authentic. This criterion provides a basis for accepting the narrative of Jesus in the temple precincts, quarreling with and criticizing the ruling priests (as we see in Mk 11-12 and parallel passages in other Gospels). This criterion also encourages us to accept as authentic Jesus' affirmation that he is indeed Israel's Messiah and God's Son (Mk 14:61-63), for this makes sense of his crucifixion on the grounds of his claim that he is "king of the Jews" (Mk 15 :26). Multiple attestation. This criterion refers to sayings and actions attributed to Jesus that appear in two or more independent sources (such as Mark and Q, the sayings source used by Matthew and Luke). Sayings and actions of Jesus that appear in two or more independent sources suggest that they were circulated widely and early and were not invented by a single writer. The fact that there is a good amount of material that enjoys multiple attes tation is itself a witness to the antiquity and richness of our sources. Here are a few examples of sayings with multiple attestation: Jesus' saying on the lamp appears in Mark 4:21 and in the sayings source (Mt 5:15; Lk 11:33). This saying is followed by the saying on what is revealed, which appears in Mark 4:22 and in the sayings source (Mt 10:26; Lk 12:2). Jesus' saying on the evil generation that seeks a sign is found in Mark 8: 12 and in the sayings source (Mt 12:39; Lk 11:29). Embarrassment. This criterion is easily misunderstood. All it means is that material that potentially would have created awkwardness or embarrassment for the early church is not likely something that a Christian invented sometime after Easter. "Embarrassing" sayings and actions are those that are known to reach back to the ministry of Jesus, and therefore, like it or not, they cannot be deleted from the Jesus data bank. Perhaps the classic example of "embarrassing" tradition is the baptism of Jesus (Mk 1:9-11 and parallels). What makes Jesus' baptism embarrassing? John's baptism called for repentance of sins and yet, according to Christian teaching, Jesus was sinless. So why would sinless Jesus go to John for baptism? Good question. No Christian would make up this story. Its preservation in the Gospels argues strongly that it is authentic material. The fact that it is preserved in the Gospels and not deleted also shows that the writers of the Gospels made every effort to tell the truth. Another important example is seen in the narrative in which the imprisoned John sends messengers to Jesus, asking: "Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?" (Mt 11:2-6; Lk 7:18-23). Jesus answers John's question in an indirect, almost veiled way, "Go and tell John what you hear and see." As presented, this exchange is awkward, perhaps even embarrassing. Who would make up a story in which John-an ally of Jesus-expresses doubts about Jesus' identity and mission? And why would an invented reply by Jesus fail to make explicit his messianic identity and mission? Why not have Jesus affirm loudly and clearly, "Go and tell John that I am he who is to come"? The story as we have it preserved in Matthew and Luke gives historians confidence that it faithfully and accurately reports the exchange between John and Jesus and is not a later Christian fiction. Dissimilarity. No criterion has been more discussed than the criterion of dissimilarity Used properly, it can lend support to the conclusion that a given saying or deed is authentic. Applied improperly, it unnecessarily and unreasonably rules out of bounds a host of sayings and deeds. Improperly applied it requires sayings and deeds attributed to Jesus to be dissimilar to (or inconsistent with) the theology of the early church and tendencies and emphases within the Judaism of Jesus' day. If you find the logic of this elusive, don't feel bad; the logic is indeed a bit strained. What this form of the criterion is trying to do is to rule out sayings and deeds that may have originated in Jewish circles, on the one hand, or in early Christian circles, on the other. So, if a saying is not dissimilar to both of these contexts (hence in this form it is called "double dissimilarity"), there is no guarantee that the saying (or deed) originated with Jesus. The problem with the criterion applied this way is that it rules out almost everything attributed to Jesus. After all, Jesus was Jewish and much of what he taught reflected themes and concepts current among religious teachers of his day (not to mention Israel's Scripture). So shouldn't we expect Jewish tendencies and emphases to be present in authentic teachings of Jesus? Of course. And the early church clung to Jesus' teaching as precious and formed its thinking and practices in conformity with it. So shouldn't we expect lines of continuity between Jesus and the movement that he founded?" Yes. Nevertheless, the criterion does have its uses-when it is applied in a positive fashion. There is some material in the New Testament Gospels that the early church did not choose to develop as part of its theology and practice. Accordingly, it is hard to explain it as invented by the early church. The best explanation is that it derives from Jesus. In some cases the same may be true with respect to Jewish tendencies. Jesus' free and easy association with sinners was not the sort of thing that religious teachers in his day did (and even Christians could be a little reserved in this matter). So again, we may have an instance where Jesus' actions and teachings are somewhat at variance with the actions and teachings of his Jewish contemporaries. Semitisms and Palestinian background. This criterion, which is sometimes subdivided into two or more criteria, suggests that sayings and deeds that reflect the Hebrew or Aramaic language (Semitisms), or reflect first-century Palestine (geography, topography, customs, commerce) are what we should expect of authentic material. Of course, material that enj oys the support of this criterion may derive from early Jewish Christians and not necessarily from Jesus. But this criterion, nevertheless, is important. After all, the Gospels were written in Greek and yet they purport to preserve the sayings of Jesus, who spoke Aramaic, and the deeds of Jesus, who ministered in firstcentury Palestine. If these Greek Gospels faithfully preserve the sayings and deeds of Jesus, then these Greek Gospels should show evidence of Semitism and Palestinian background; and this they do. Coherence (or consistency). Finally, the criterion of coherence (or consistency) is also useful and functions in some ways as a catch-all. According to this criterion, material that is consistent with material judged authentic on the basis of the other criteria may also be regarded as authentic. All of these criteria have their place and can make (and have made) useful contributions to the scholarly study of the historical Jesus. They enable historians to give good reasons for judging this saying or that deed attributed to Jesus as authentic. The problem is in assuming that everything that is attributed to Jesus that does not enjoy support from one or more of the criteria should be regarded as inauthentic. Lack of support from the authenticity criteria does not necessarily mean that the saying or deed in question cannot derive from Jesus. Here is where I think many skeptical scholars, especially among the prominent members of the Jesus Seminar, go wrong. They not only misapply some of the criteria (such as dissimilarity) and ignore or misunderstand others (such as Semitisms and Palestinian background), they tend to assume that sayings and deeds not supported by the criteria must be judged as inauthentic. This severe, skeptical method leads to limited results, results that can be badly skewed, if the starting points themselves are off-base and wrong-headed. The portrait of Jesus can be distorted badly through misapplication of the authenticity criteria to the New Testament Gospels. When the extracanonical Gospels and sources are thrown into the mix and treated as though they were as ancient and as reliable as the canonical Gospels, then the problem of distortion is taken to new levels. That is the concern addressed in chapters three and four.
Chapter 3.
The Gospel of Thomas For many people the most disturbing feature in contemporary reports concerning the Jesus of history is the attention given to texts outside of the New Testament, some of which are called "Gospels." These Gospels-which are also referred to as "extracanonical Gospels"-are purported to make important contributions to our knowledge of the historical Jesus. Sometimes it is even claimed that these texts give us more reliable information about Jesus than the New Testament Gospels themselves. Is this claim valid? Do the extracanonical Gospels provide us with reliable, historical information about Jesus? Should our understanding of Jesus be shaped by what these nonbiblical Gospels have to offer? In this chapter and the next we will look closely at five extracanonical Gospels, the ones that get the most attention and are said to support portraits of Jesus different from what we find in the New Testament. Some scholars claim that these writings reach back to the first century, perhaps even to the middle of the first century, and contain information that is at least as historically reliable as the information contained in the New Testament Gospels. We will see-to the contrary-that none of these extracanonical writings originated earlier than the middle of the second century and in two cases probably did not originate before the end of the second century. Because of the late dates of these extracanonical Gospels, it is unlikely that they contain information that adds to our knowledge of Jesus. The whole edifice of the non-New Testament Jesus collapses when these extracanonical writings get the critical scrutiny they deserve but often do not receive. There is nothing wrong in appealing to texts outside of the New Testa ment in the task of reconstructing the history of Jesus and the early church, or in the task of interpreting New Testament writings. That is an appropriate and necessary thing to do. For example, the Dead Sea Scrolls shed important light on various aspects of Jesus' teaching, on key elements in Paul's theology, and on teachings in James, Hebrews and other books in the New Testament. Other writings from the New Testament era also assist in the task of interpretation by fleshing out the historical and cultural context.' Thus, making use of extracanonical writings isn't the problem. EXTRACANONICAL GOSPELS AND FRAGMENTS The extracanonical Gospels and fragments that are frequently given serious consideration include the following: Apocryphon of James (preserved in NHC 1) Dialogue of the Savior (preserved in NHC 3) Gospel of the Ebionites (preserved in quotations by Epiphanius) Gospel of the Egyptians (preserved in quotations by Clement of Alexandria) Gospel of the Hebrews (preserved in quotations by various church fathers) Gospel of the Nazoreans (preserved in quotations by various church fathers) Gospel of Peter (allegedly preserved in a large fragment from Akhmim and a small fragment POxy 2949 and possibly POxy. 4009) Gospel of Thomas (preserved in NHC 2 and POxy. 1, 654, and 655) Protevangelium of James (preserved in numerous Greek manuscripts) Secret Gospel of Marh (preserved in a supposed letter of Clement of Alexandria) POxy. 840 POxy. 1224 Papyrus Egerton 2 (+ Papyrus Koln 255), or the Egerton Gospel Fayyum Fragment (= Papyrus Vindobonensis Greek 2325) NHC = Nag Hammadi Codex POxy. = Papyri Oxyrhynchus What is troubling is the ready, often uncritical acceptance of some of the extracanonical Gospels. Some of the same scholars who criticize the New Testament Gospels severely and push the dates of their composition toward the end of the first century are ready to treat the extracanonical sources generously and argue for dates of composition near the beginning of the second century, perhaps in the first century itself. The result is that all of the Gospels-inside and outside the New Testament-are treated as though they have been composed in the same generation.2 We must not "privilege" the New Testament Gospels, we are told. After all, skeptics say, most of these writings, whether in or outside the canon, were composed at about the same time and therefore have about the same historical value. In the interests of objective scholarship we are to treat all of the sources as potentially useful. But it seems to me that some of these scholars are privileging the extracanonical texts, and to do this they obscure important aspects of when various texts were written.3 DATING THE GOSPELS Before moving on, let's get some important dating clear. Jesus taught and ministered in the late 20s and early 30s of the first century Paul wrote his letters in the late 40s to the early or mid-60s. Although its date of composition is debated, the Gospel of Mark was likely written in the mid to late 60s, and the Gospels of Matthew and Luke sometime after that (and some scholars in fact argue that Mark, Matthew, and Luke-also called the Synoptic Gospels-date to the 50s and 60s). The Gospel of John is usually dated sometime in the 90s. This means that most, perhaps even all of the New Testament writings date to the first century It also means the Gospel of Mark was written within one generation of the death of Jesus, which in all probability means that some people who had known Jesus were still living when this Gospel was written and circulated. Some think that the sayings source (or Q), which Matthew and Luke used, dates to the 50s, perhaps even earlier. Accordingly, it is likely that the authors of documents that date to the middle of the first century (such as Q and Mark) had access to authentic sayings of Jesus and stories about him, and that their works would have been read (or heard) by living witnesses. It would not be easy for a Gospel that misrepresents the life and teaching of Jesus to have gained widespread acceptance when many of Jesus' followers were still living and in a position to challenge distortions. Not only do the earliest New Testament Gospel sources date to the middle of the first century, Paul also refers to Jesus' teaching, to his words at the Last Supper, to his death and burial, and to his resurrection. This is important, for Paul, who was converted to the Christian faith in the 30s, knew some of the original disciples and apostles, such as Peter and James, the brother of Jesus. Consequently, the New Testament writings provide us with early information about Jesus. This is why writings believed to have originated in the first century, especially in the middle of the first century, are widely accepted as our best sources of information about the historical Jesus. EXTRACTING HYPOTHETICAL SOURCES FROM EXTANT TEXTS Scholars sometimes are able to extract early sources from later extant texts. (A text that is extant is one that still exists, as opposed to one that is merely thought to have existed.) A clear example of this is seen in the Synoptic Gospels. Matthew and Luke share a large number of sayings that did not come from Mark. Scholars believe that Matthew and Luke had access to a source in addition to Mark. They have called this source of sayings Q (usually understood as an abbreviation of the German word Quelle, "source" or "spring"). Another helpful example is seen in two writings found in the Nag Hammadi Library. One writing is called Eugnostos the Blessed (Nag Hammadi Codex [NHC] 3.3; 5.1), a nonChristian religious/philosophical text, and the other is called The Sophia of Jesus Christ (NHC 3.4; Berlin Gnostic Codex 8502.3), a revelation discourse given by Jesus. Eugnostos the Blessed probably approximates the original form of the text, while The Sophia of Jesus Christ represents a later reworking of the text, with insertions in which Jesus is identified as the speaker. In these examples we have plausible evidence of early texts embedded in later texts. Other examples could be cited, such as Jude and 2 Peter, where the former appears to be embedded in the latter. But in the cases of the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Peter to cite just two examples, we do not have such evidence. Both of these writings drip with indications of lateness, yet some scholars hope to date forms of these writings to the first century. They do this by attempting to extract early, hypothetic forms of the text from the actual texts that we have. But they do this without any evidence. When were the Gnostic Gospels and other extracanonical sources written? All of the Gnostic Gospels and extracanonical sources were written in the second century or later. Typical dates range fromA.D. 140 to 160. Some scholars argue for earlier dates, such as 120 to 140 (and some argue for later dates). Although it is theoretically possible that early, reliable information about Jesus not found in the New Testament writings could be preserved in some of these second-century writings, it is not likely. This is why biblical scholars in the past have rarely appealed to writings such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Mary for additional information about Jesus. These writings are viewed as simply too late-written at least one hundred years after the death of Jesus, or fifty to eighty years after the New Testament Gospels were written. In the scholarly and popular press the most frequently mentioned writings outside of the New Testament are the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Pcter the Egerton Papyrus 2 (or Egerton Gospel), the Secret Gospel of Mark, and the Gospel of Mary. Most people had not heard of these writings until relatively recently, most often in connection with a book or television documentary making sensational claims. If these extracanonical Gospels were written long after the New Testament Gospels, why do some scholars appeal to them? This is where the discussion gets interesting. Some scholars have argued that early editions of the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Peter reach back to the middle of the first century, that the Egerton Gospel predates Mark and John-and may have been on the writing table of the evangelist Mark himself-and that the Secret Gospel of Mark may represent an earlier form of the canonical Gospel of Mark. It is no wonder then (if these early dates and hypothetical early forms of these writings are valid) that some scholars make use of these extracanonical sources in their reconstructions of the historical Jesus. Accordingly, the Jesus Seminar's assessment of the authentic words of Jesus came out under the title The Five Gospels, with the "fifth Gospel" being the Gospel of Thomas.4 What are we to make of all this? Is there solid evidence that these writings date, at least in some form, to the first century and contain sayings from and stories about Jesus that are early, independent, and perhaps even superior to what is found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Before continuing, I should mention that besides the extracanonical Gospels that contain unusual sayings, there are dozens of isolated, free-floating sayings attributed to Jesus that are found in a variety of sources. These isolated sayings are called the agrapha (from the Greek meaning "not written," that is, not written in the New Testament Gospels). Some of these sayings come into play in today's scholarly work. They will not be discussed in this chapter, but they are treated briefly in appendix one. Two RECENT AND VERY DIFFERENT ASSESSMENTS In 1991 two engaging and competent studies of the life of Jesus appeared, one by John Dominic Crossan and the other by John P Meier.5 One of the most remarkable discrepancies between their works is the sharp divergence of opinion with respect to the value of the extracanonical Gospels for Jesus research. In Crossan's work, these writings play an important role; in Meier's, their role is negligible. A brief comparison of these two scholars' respective approaches and conclusions will illustrate this striking divergence, which in many ways is a characteristic of the current debate among New Testament specialists, and will serve as a point of departure for the evaluation of these writings. In his reconstruction of the historical Jesus, Crossan relies heavily on the extracanonical materials, many of which he dates quite early It is not surprising then that Crossan often concludes that traditions contained in the extracanonical Gospels-traditions that parallel those of the New Testament Gospels-are more primitive and historically superior. Often he thinks he finds the earliest, most original form of Jesus' teaching in the extracanonical Gospels. Sometimes Crossan will extract a hypothetical early version of one of these Gospels. For example, Crossan thinks he can identify two early versions of the Gospel of Thomas. The earliest version he dates in the 50s, while a somewhat later version he dates in the 60s or 70s. From the mid-secondcentury Dialogue of the Savior Crossan believes he can identify an early "dialogue collection," perhaps dating in the 70s. He dates an early version of the Gospel of the Egyptians-another secondcentury work-in the early 60s, and he extracts from the Gospel of Peter (late second century, perhaps even later) a hypothetical Cross Gospel, which he dates in the 50s. We will look at the Gospel of Peter again in chapter four. Crossan's analysis of extracanonical sources contributes to his picture of the historical Jesus in significant ways. But many rightly wonder about the validity of this analysis, for it appears to be little more than subjective guesswork and special pleading. In any case, some of his assumptions will be put to the test in the following discussion. Meier's conclusion, however, could hardly be more at odds with Crossan's. All the extracanonical writings, he concludes, contribute little to what can be known of the historical Jesus. Here is his assessment of these writings: Contrary to some scholars, I do not think that the... agrapha, the apocryphal gospels... (in particular the Gospel o f Thomas) offer us re liable new information or authentic sayings that are independent of the NT. What we see in these later documents is rather... imaginative Christians reflecting popular piety and legend, and gnostic Christians developing a mystic speculative system.... It is only natural for scholars-to say nothing of popularizers-to want more, to want other access roads to the historical Jesus. This understandable but not always critical desire is, I think, what has recently led to the high evaluation, in some quarters, of the apocryphal gospels... as sources for the quest. It is a case of the wish being father to the thought, but the wish is a pipe dream. For better or for worse, in our quest for the historical Jesus, we are largely confined to the canonical Gospels; the genuine "corpus" is infuriating in its restrictions. For the historian it is a galling limitation. But to call upon the Gospel of Peter or the Gospel of Thomas to supplement our Four Gospels is to broaden out our pool of sources from the difficult to the incredible.6 CROSSAN'S PROPOSED EARLY DATES FOR EXTRACANONICAL WRITINGS John Dominic Crossan has proposed early dates for the extracanonical writings, which most scholars do not accept. Moreover, he also proposes the existence of even earlier versions of some of these writings. Crossan dates and names the extracanonical writings as follows: Gospel of Thomas (earliest edition: A.D. 505) Egerton Gospel (i.e., Papyrus Egerton 2: A.D. 50s) Fayyum Fragment (A.D. 50s) Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1224 (A.D. 50s) Gospel of the Hebrews (A.D. 50s) Cross Gospel (= a pruned version of the Gospel of Peter, A.D. 505) Gospel of the Egyptians (earliest version, A.D. 60s) Secret Gospel of Mark (early A.D. 70s) Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840 (A.D.SOs) Gospel of Thomas (later draft, A.D. 60s or 70s) Dialogue Collection (= a pruned version of the Coptic Gnostic tractate Dialogue of the Savior late [?] A.D. 70s) Apocryphon of James (dating from first half of second century, but containing tradition reaching back to the A.D. 50s) Gospel of the Nazoreans (A.D.15Os) Gospel of the Ebionites (A.D. 150s) Gospel of Peter (A.D. 150s) Crossan claims that the Gospel of Thomas, the Egerton Gospel, Papyrus Vindobonensis Greek 2325, Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1224, the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Egyptians are independent of the New Testament Gospels, with the Dialogue of the Savior and the Apocryphon of James containing independent traditions. He further concludes that the Cross Gospel, which is now embedded in the Gospel of Peter, preserves the Passion narrative on which all four of the New Testament Gospels are based. Reader beware: These early dates and hypothetical sources are not widely accepted among scholars. See John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991), pp. 427-34. The dates noted in the parentheses refer not to the dates of the actual manuscripts but to Crossan's conjectured dates of the autographs (that is, originals). On the alleged Cross Gospel, see John Dominic Crossan, The Cross That Spoke: The Ong ins of the Passion Narrative (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988). Note Meier's contention that the "wish" is "father to the thought." It is the desire to have alternative sources, rather than compelling historical evidence for the legitimacy of those sources, that has led to the positive evaluation of these extracanonical sources. Meier suspects that far from representing independent and possibly earlier tradition, the agrapha (that is, the independent sayings of Jesus "not written" in the New Testament) and extracanonical Gospels ultimately derive from the New Testament Gospels. He offers the careful qualification that this dependence is indirect. That is, the agrapha and extracanonical Gospels reflect second - and thirdhand acquaintance with the traditions of the New Testament Gospels. Rarely do their authors quote from the canonical Gospels in their written form. By and large, what the authors of the extracanonical Gospels knew was oral tradition, but it was an oral tradition generated by the written Gospels of the New Testament, an oral tradition that was itself edited and adapted in its transmission. This is why, Meier explains, the extracanonical writings often contain sayings and stories that appear to be combinations of elements from two or more of the New Testament Gospels. The extracanonical Gospels, he says, should not be dated earlier than the second century. Accordingly, these Gospels outside the New Testament are hardly capable of providing researchers with reliable, independent information that they can use to supplement or even correct the New Testament Gospels. MORE WIDELY ACCEPTED DATES FOR EXTRACANONICAL WRITINGS Gospel of the Egyptians (A.D. 120) Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840 (A.D. 120) Gospel of the Nazoreans (A.D. 120) Gospel of the Ebionites (A.D. 120) Gospel of the Hebrews (A.D. 140) Apocryphon of James (A.D. 150) Fayyum Fragment (A.D. 150) Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1224 (A.D. 150) Gospel of Mary (A.D. 160) Gospel of Peter (A.D. 170) Egerton Gospel (A.D. 180) Gospel of Thomas (A.D. 180) Secret Gospel of Mark (A.D. 1960) These dates are approximate and often are no more than educated guesses. The dates refer to the date of composition, not to the date of the fragment that has been found. No imaginary documents that can be dated to the first century are listed. For further information, see J.K.Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation based on M.R.James (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 1, Gospels and Related Writings, rev. ed. (Cambridge: James Clarke; Louisville: Westminster/john Knox Press, 1991). WHAT'S AT STAKE The importance of this debate can hardly be exaggerated. What is at stake is a considerable body of material and the contribution it might make to Jesus research. If Crossan and other like-minded scholars are correct, then Jesus research cannot make genuine and meaningful progress apart from careful study of the extracanonical Gospels. If Meier is correct, then the agrapha and extracanonical Gospels offer little of value to Jesus research. Indeed, an overly positive assessment of their value may lead to a distorted picture of the historical Jesus, the scholar fabricating a Jesus of his or her own imagination. Are these writings, in the words of Helmut Koester, longtime professor of New Testament at Harvard, "just as important" as the New Testament writings for the study of early Christianity? Do they "contain many traditions which can be traced back to the time of the very origins of Christianity"?7 With these questions in mind, let's take a close look at the most talked about extracanonical Gospels. EXTRACANONICAL GOSPELS A little historical perspective is helpful here. Until recently the extracanonical Gospels were not taken seriously as potential sources for Jesus research. Three quarters of a century ago Rudolf Bultmann-who was not a conservative biblical scholar-regarded these Gospels and related writings as nothing more than "legendary adaptations and expansions" of the canonical Gospel tradition. Almost no one in his generation disagreed. Today the picture has changed. Of the thirty or so documents that have been identified as Gospels or Gospel-like writings, five of them receive most of the attention, and all of them have defenders who advocate their antiquity, independence and perhaps even superiority over against the New Testament Gospels. These writings are the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, Egerton Papyrus 2 (or the Egerton Gospel), the Gospel of Mary and the Secret Gospel of Mark. The Gospel of Thomas has influenced research on the historical Jesus far more than the other writings despite how egregious its misdating has been. The most recent document to gain popular attention is the newly published Gospel of Judas, for which I served as a consultant. (For my brief comments on the Gospel of Judas, see appendix two.) THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS Thirteen leather-bound books (or codices), written in the Coptic language, dating to about A.D. 350-380, were found in Egypt sometime near the end of 1945 (near a place called Nag Hammadi). One of these books contains a writing that begins, "These are the secret words that the living Jesus spoke and Judas, even Thomas, wrote," and ends with the words, "the Gospel ac cording to Thomas." Third - and fourthcentury church fathers mention a Gospel that went by the name of the apostle Thomas.' It seems, then, that the Gospel of Thomas mentioned by Christian theologians seventeen centuries ago had turned up in the dry sands of Egypt. This was a remarkable find by any reckoning. But there is more. GREEK AND COPTIC GOSPEL OF THOMAS COMPARED POxy 654 = Gospel of Thomas prologue, sayings 1-7 and a portion of saying 30. POxy 1 = Gospel of Thomas sayings 26-33. POxy 655 = Gospel of Thomas sayings 24, 36-39, 77. With one or two exceptions, most scholars have assumed that Thomas was originally composed in Greek and that the Oxyrhynchus Papyri stand closer to the original form of the tradition. I believe the evidence better supports the contention that Thomas was originally composed in Syriac and that both the Greek and the Coptic are later translations. When the new discovery was read and translated (and was found to contain a prologue and 114 sayings, or logia, mostly attributed to Jesus), scholars realized that parts of the Gospel of Thomas had in fact been found a half century earlier, in the 1890s, in a place called Oxyrhynchus, also in Egypt. Three Greek papyrus fragments (called the Oxyrhynchus Papyri [hereafter abbreviated POxy]) published at the turn of the century, numbered 1, 654 and 655, contain about 20 percent of the Gospel of Thomas, at least as compared with the Coptic version. The Greek fragments range in date fromA.D. 200 to 300. The Gospel of Thomas is an esoteric writing, purporting to record the secret (or "hidden") teachings of Jesus, teachings reserved for those qualified to hear these teachings. The following is my translation of the prologue and the first seven sayings, according to the Greek version (that is, POxy 654), with restored letters and words placed in square brackets. (We are able to complete most of the missing Greek text thanks to the fully preserved Coptic translation.) Prologue These are the [secret] words [that] the living Jesus [spo]ke a [nd Judas], even Thomas, [wrote]. 1And he said, ["Whoever finds the interpretation of these words will not taste [death]." 2[Jesus says], "Let him who se[eks] not cease [to seek until] he finds, and when he finds [he will be amazed; and when he is am] azed he will reign, an[d when he has reigned he will attain rest." 3Jesus says, ["If] those who lead you [say to you, `Behold,] the kingdom is in the sk[y, then] the birds of the sk[y will precede you. If they say that it is under the earth, then the fish of the se[a will enter it, preceding you. And the king[dom of God] is within you, [and it is outside of you. Whoever] knows [himself] will discover this. [And when you] know yourselves, [you will realize that] you are [sons] of the Father who lives. But if you will not] know yourselves, in [poverty you are] and you are pov[erty]." 4[Jesus says,] "A ma[n full of days will not hesitate to ask a ch[ild of seven days concerning the place of [life, and you will live. For many who are fi[rst] will be [last and] the last will be first, and they [will become one and the same]." 5Jesus says, "K[now what is before your sight, and [what is hidden] from you will be reveal led to you. For there is nothing] hidden which will not [become] reveal led], nor buried which [will not be raised]." 6[His disciples] q[ue]stion him [and slay, "How [shall we] fast, [and how shall we pr]ay, and how [shall we give alms]? What [diet] shall [we] observe?"Jesus says, "[Do not lie and what you ha] te, do not do; [for all things are revealed in the presence] of truth. [For nothing] hid [den will not become manifest]." 7"[... Blessed is [the lion which man eats, and the lion become[s man; and cursed is the man] whom [the lion eats...]." The Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas is different from the Jesus of the New Testament Gospels. The private, esoteric orientation of the text is plainly evident. Unlike the canonical Gospels, these writings were for the spiritually elite, not for the common people. The opening line, "These are the secret words that the living Jesus spoke," should not be understood to imply that all of Jesus' teaching was secret (or hidden). Writings such as the Gospel of Thomas recognize and presuppose the public teachings of Jesus (as recorded, for example, in the New Testament Gospels). What the Gospel of Thomas claims to record are the secret or hidden words that Jesus spoke in private to Thomas and to his other disciples. Thomas, of course, is the favored disciple, who understands Jesus more deeply than the other disciples and who is the one who writes the words of Jesus. The Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas urges his followers not to cease seeking until they find. They must know themselves if what is hidden is to be revealed to them. In contrast to the Jesus of the New Testament Gospels, who urges his followers to have faith, in saying 1 the Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas encourages his disciples to find "the interpretation of these words." If they do, they "will not taste death." The esoteric slant is also seen in sayings that have counterparts in the Synoptic Gospels. For example, in reference to the need for faith, the Synoptic Jesus encourages his disciples to ask, seek and knock. If they do so, they will receive good things from their Father in heaven (Mt 7:7-11). But the Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas promises his disciples that if they seek until they find, they will be amazed, they will reign, and they will find rest. Another strange dimension appears in the Gospel of Thomas. Like other writings, Thomas places emphasis on knowledge and knowing. Scholars call this Gnosticism, from the Greek word gnosis, which means "knowledge." Church fathers of the second, third and fourth centuries called those who claimed to possess secret or hidden knowledge "Gnostics" (that is, "Knowers"). We don't know if these people called themselves Gnostics. Gnosticism took many forms and was condemned by leading theologians as heresy. At its simplest, Gnosticism might be described as an orientation that focused more on knowledge and the mystical, and less on faith. Gnosticism tended to hold the Old Testament and the Jewish people in low esteem, especially the more radical form of Gnosticism that believed that the world was created by an evil god, the god of the Jews. This more radical form of Gnosticism saw the physical world as hopelessly flawed and the human body as corrupt and as a prison, designed to hold the soul captive. The goal of salvation, then, is not pardon from sin but acquisition of knowledge whereby the physical body and the corrupt, fallen physical world can be escaped. Jesus came not to redeem as much as to reveal, to show his true disciples the way to escape this world of darkness and join him in the world of light above. There were, of course, many variations of these Gnostic and mystical ideas. The main thing to see, however, is that Gnosticism was not a neutral variation of general Christian belief but indeed an essentially different and opposing religion that simply borrowed terminology from the New Testament Gospels and changed its meaning. Although not an instance of this kind of full-blown Gnosticism, there is a strong Gnosticizing element in the Gospel of Thomas. We see it in a cluster of sayings preserved in POxy. 1: 36 [Jesus says, "Do not be anxious from morning un[til evening an]d from eve[ning until morn]ing, neither [abouty]our [food], what you should eat, [nor] about your clo[thing, what you should wear. You a[re much bet]ter than the [fill]ies, whic [h do n] of co [m]b or s[pi]n. (If) you have n[o garme]nt to put on, what [will you put] on? Who will add to your stature? (It is) h[e who will give you your garment." 37 His disciples say to him, "When will you become revealed to us and when shall we see you?" He says, "When you disrobe and you are not ashamed... [nor are afrai]d." 38 [Jesus slays, ["Often,] therefore, you have desired to hear these wo[rds of mine] an[d you have no o]n[e else to hear.] Days will come when you will s]ee[k me and will not find me."] 39 [Jesus says, "The Pharisees and the scribes] took the keys] of [knowledge. They hlid [them. They neither] enter led nor permit those who] would ent[er to enter.] But you be [wise] a[s serpents and in]noce[nt as dov]es." 77 "Li[f]t the ston[e] and there you will find me; split the wood and I am there." Saying 36 exploits the Synoptic sayings regarding faith and anxiety (Mt 6:25-34; Lk 12:22-31) in order to advance the Gnostic idea of being properly attired and, paradoxically, of being ready to strip off one's clothing without shame (37).9 The Gnosticizing orientation is also seen in saying 39. In contrast to the Synoptic Jesus, who pronounces a woe on the scribes and Pharisees because they "shut the kingdom of heaven against people" and do not "allow those who would enter to go in" (Mt 23: 13), the Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas says that the Pharisees and the scribes have taken the keys of knowledge [Greek loan word gnosis] and hidden them." The Jesus of Thomas defines the kingdom of heaven in terms of knowledge. And finally, saying 77 testifies to the mystical presence of Jesus, a theme that comes to fuller expression in other Gnostic texts. Sayings such as these strongly suggest that the Gospel of Thomas is indeed a Gnostic writing. WHEN WAS THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS WRITTEN? Most of the codices that make up the Nag Hammadi Library have been dated to the second half of the fourth century, though of course many of the writings within these old books date to earlier periods. The codex that contains the Gospel of Thomas may date to the first half of the fourth century. In the case of the Gospel of Thomas itself we have the three Greek fragments from Oxyrhynchus that date to the beginning and middle of the third century. One of the fragments may date as early as A.D. 200. Although almost all scholars concede that Thomas could have been composed as early as the middle of the second century, the evidence strongly suggests that Thomas was not composed before A.D. 175 or 180. A few scholars still argue that the Gospel of Thomas contains primitive, pre-Synoptic tradition.10 This is possible theoretically, but it is difficult to cull from this collection of sayings (114 in the apparently complete Coptic edition) material that can confidently be judged primitive, independent of the New Testament Gospels, or even authentic. Among the compelling evidence that leads to the conclusion that Thomas is a late writing, not an early one are the following: (1) Thomas knows many of the New Testament writings. (2) Thomas contains Gospel materials that scholars regard as late. (3) Thomas reflects later editing in the Gospels. (4) Thomas shows familiarity with traditions distinctive to Eastern, Syrian Christianity, traditions that did not emerge before than the middle of the second century Let's review these four types of evidence. Although some readers may find aspects of this discussion technical and complicated, it is important to understand why the Gospel of Thomas really should not be considered an ancient source for the historical Jesus. 1. Thomas knows many New Testament writings. Quoting or alluding to more than half of the writings of the New Testament (that is, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, Hebrews, 1 John, Revelation)," Thomas seems to be a collage of New Testament and apocryphal materials that have been interpreted, often allegorically, in such a way as to advance late-secondcentury Gnostic ideas. Moreover, the traditions contained in Thomas hardly reflect a setting that predates the writings of the New Testament, which is why Crossan and others attempt to extract hypothetical early versions of Thomas from the Coptic and Greek texts that we possess today Attempts such as these strike me as special pleading-that is, because the evidence that actually exists undermines the theory, appeals are made to hypothetical evidence more accommodating to the theory The problem here is that we do not know if there ever was an edition of the Gospel of Thomas substantially different from the Greek fragments of Oxyrhynchus or the later Coptic version from Nag Hammadi. Proposing an early form of Thomas, stripped of the embarrassing late and secondary features, is a gratuitous move. The presence of so much New Testament material in Thomas argues for a date well into the second century, when Christians would have had access to more than just a few of the writings that eventually made up the New Testament. Thomas's familiarity with so much of the New Testament should give us pause before accepting theories of the antiquity and independence of this writing. 2. Thomas contains late Gospel material. Another problem with viewing the Gospel of Thomas as independent of the canonical Gospels is the presence of a significant amount of material that is distinctive to Matthew (M for short), Luke (L for short) and John. This is an important observation because scholars usually view Mark and Q (the material common to Matthew and Luke, and not derived from Mark)-not M, L and the Johannine tradi tion-as repositories of material most likely to be ancient. Yet Thomas parallels the later traditions often, as we see in the following lists: PARALLELS BETWEEN "M" AND THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS Matthew 5: 10-Gospel of Thomas 69a Matthew 5:14-Gospel of Thomas 32 (= POxy. 1.7) Matthew 6:2-4-Gospel of Thomas 6, 14 (= POxy 654.6) Matthew 6:3-Gospel of Thomas 62 Matthew 7:6-Gospel of Thomas 93 Matthew 10:16-Gospel of Thomas 39 Matthew 11:30-Gospel of Thomas 90 Matthew 13:24-30-Gospel of Thomas 57 Matthew 13:44-Gospel of Thomas 109 Matthew 13:45-46-Gospel of Thomas 76 Matthew 13:47-50-Gospel of Thomas 8 Matthew 15:13-Gospel of Thomas 40 Matthew 18:20-Gospel of Thomas 30 (= POxy 1.5) Matthew 23:13-Gospel of Thomas 39, 102 (= POxy 655.2) PARALLELS BETWEEN "L" AND THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS Luke 11:27-28 + 23:29-Gospel of Thomas 79 Luke 12:13-14-Gospel of Thomas 72 Luke 12:16-21-Gospel of Thomas 63 Luke 12:49-Gospel of Thomas 10 Luke 17:20-21-Gospel of Thomas 3 (= POxy 654.3), 113 PARALLELS BETWEEN JOHN AND THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS John 1:9-Gospel of Thomas 24 (= POxy. 655.24) John 1:14-Gospel of Thomas 28 (= POxy 1.28) John 4:13-15-Gospel of Thomas 13 John 7:32-36-Gospel of Thomas 38 (= POxy 655.38) John 8:12; 9:5-Gospel of Thomas 77 If the Gospel of Thomas really does represent an early, independent collection of material, as its advocates argue, then how do we explain the presence of so much M, L and Johannine material? The presence of this material suggests that Thomas has been influenced by the New Testament Gospels, not early Jesus tradition that is earlier than the New Testament Gospels. 3. Thomas reflects later editing in the Gospels. A telling factor that should give us pause before assuming too quickly that the Gospel of Thomas offers early and independent tradition lies in the observation that features characteristic of editing (or "redaction") by Matthew and Luke are also found in Thomas. Two of the passages of the M list (Mt 15:13; 13:24-30) contain editing by Matthew. Other sayings in Thomas that parallel the triple tradition (that is, material common to Matthew, Mark and Luke) agree with Matthew's wording (for example, Mt 15:11 = Gospel of Thomas 34b; Mt 12:50 = Gospel of Thomas 99) rather than with Mark's wording. Matthew's unique combination of alms, prayer and fasting (Mt 6:1-18) appears to be echoed in Gospel of Thomas 6 (= POxy 654.6) and 14. In Thomas alms, prayer and fasting are discussed in a negative light, probably reflecting Gnostic antipathy toward Jewish piety, which surely argues for viewing Thomas as secondary to Matthew. All of this suggests that Thomas has drawn upon the Gospel of Matthew. There is also evidence that the Gospel of Thomas was influenced by the Gospel of Luke. The Evangelist Luke alters Mark's somewhat awkward "For there is nothing hid, except to be made manifest" (Mk 4:22) to the much smoother "For nothing is hid that shall not be made manifest" (Lk 8:17). It is this edited version that is found in Gospel of Thomas 5-6, with the Greek parallel preserved in POxy. 654.5 matching Luke's text exactly. If Thomas truly represents early, independent material, how is it that Luke's later editorial improvements appear in Thomas? Elsewhere there are indications that Thomas has followed Luke (for example, Gospel of Thomas 10 influenced by Lk 12:49; Gospel of Thomas 14 influenced by Lk 10:8-9; Gospel of Thomas 16 influenced by Lk 12:51-53 as well as Mt 10:34- 39; Gospel of Thomas 55 and 101 influenced by Lk 14:26- 27 as well as Mt 10:37; Gospel of Thomas 73-75 influenced by Lk 10:2). Given the evidence, it is not surprising that a number of respected scholars have concluded that Thomas has drawn upon the canonical Gospels.12 Advocates of Thomas's independence of the canonical Gospels often point to the abbreviated form that many of the parables and sayings have in Tho mas. One of the best known examples is the parable of the wicked tenant farmers (Mt 21:33-41; Mk 12:1-9; Lk 20:9-16; Gospel of Thomas 65). In the opening verse of Mark's version approximately eleven words are drawn from Isaiah 5:1-7 to form the backdrop of the parable. Most of these words do not appear in Thomas. Crossan takes this as an indication that the older form of the parable has been preserved in Thomas, not in Mark, which supposedly preserves an expanded, secondary version.13 However, in Luke's opening verse only two words from Isaiah 5 ("planted vineyard") remain. We have here a clear example of abbreviation of the tradition. Other scholars have concluded that the version in Thomas is an edited and abridged form of Luke's version of the parable.14 The same possibly applies to the saying about the rejected stone (Mt 21:42; Mk 12:10-11; Lk 20:17; Gospel of Thomas 66). Mark's longer version quotes Psalm 118:22-23. But Luke only quotes Psalm 118:22. Once again Luke, who depends on Mark and is further removed from the original form of the tradition, has abbreviated the tradition. The shorter form also appears in Thomas. Thus, it is risky to draw firm conclusions relating to priority on the basis of which form of the tradition is the shortest and appears abbreviated. It is thus possible that Gospel of Thomas 65 and 66 are neither separate logia nor derived from pre-Synoptic tradition, but constitute an edited version of Luke's abbreviation of Mark's parable. 4. Thomas shows familiarity with late traditions distinctive to Eastern, Syrian Christianity. Not long after the publication of the Gospel of Thomas it was noticed that the new Gospel shared several affinities with Eastern, or Syrian, Christianity, especially as expressed in second-century traditions, including Tatian's harmony of the four New Testament Gospels, called the Diatessaron. This point is potentially quite significant, for the Diatessaron was the only form of New Testament Gospel tradition known to Syrian Christianity in the second century We must carefully consider the implications of this evidence. Proponents of the independence and first-century origin of the Gospel of Thomas are aware of at least some aspects of this writing's relationship to Syrian Christianity. Dominic Crossan and Stephen Patterson rightly call attention to Edessa, eastern Syria, as the original context of Thomas. They point out, among other things, that the name "Judas Thomas" is found in other works of Syrian origin and circulation, such as the Book of Thomas the Con tender (NHC 2.7), which begins in a manner reminiscent of the Gospel of Thomas: "The secret words that the Savior spoke to Judas Thomas, which I, even I Mathaias, wrote down" (138.1-3; see 142.7: `Judas-the one called Thomas"), and the Acts of Thomas, in which the apostle is called "Judas Thomas, who is also (called) Didymus" (1; see 11: "Judas who is also Thomas"). The longer form of the name in the Acts of Thomas agrees with the prologue of the Gospel of Thomas, where the apostle is identified as "Didymus Judas Thomas." In the Syriac version of John 14:22, `Judas (not Iscariot)" is identified as `Judas Thomas." This nomenclature continues on into later Syrian Christian traditions.15 Despite these parallels with Syrian tradition, whose distinctive characteristics, so far as we can trace them, emerged in the second century, Crossan and Patterson (and others) are confident that the Gospel of Thomas in fact originated quite early. Patterson thinks Thomas must have existed before the end of the first century (though he allows for later editing). Crossan believes that the first edition of Thomas emerged in the 50s and the later editionessentially the extant (existing) text-emerged in the 60s or 70s. In other words, the Gospel of Thomas in its first edition is earlier than any of the New Testament Gospels. Indeed, Crossan supposes that even the later edition of Thomas may be earlier than the New Testament Gospels.16 In summary, scholars have weighed in on both sides of this question, with many arguing that the Gospel of Thomas dates to the second century and with almost as many (several of whom are numbered among the members of the Jesus Seminar) arguing that Thomas dates to the first century The latter usually date Thomas to the end of the first century but believe they can identify independent tradition that in some cases should be preferred to its parallel forms in the Synoptic Gospels. This important question cannot be settled by taking a poll. I think we need to take a hard look at the Gospel of Thomas, especially as it relates to Syrian tradition. In my view this text should not be dated before the middle of the second century. Indeed, the evidence suggests that Thomas was likely composed in the last quarter of the second century and nothing in Thomas can be independently traced back to the first century. Let's consider the evidence. In print and in public lectures Crossan has defended the antiquity and independence of the Gospel of Thomas principally on two grounds: (1) He can find "no overall compositional design" in the Gospel, apart from a few clusters of sayings linked by catchwords, and (2) he finds several differences in the parallels with the New Testament Gospels that he believes cannot be explained in terms of editing on the part of the author of Thomas. Patterson's arguments are similar.17 As it turns out, the Syrian evidence addresses both points. Almost from the beginning, a few scholars with Syriac expertise recognized the Semitic, especially Syriac, style of the Gospel of Thomas. This was, of course, consistent with what has already been said about the form of the name of the apostle (that is, `Judas Thomas," not simply "Thomas"). These scholars also noticed that at points distinctive readings in Thomas agree with the Syriac version of the New Testament or with the earlier Diatessaron by Tatian.'8 Further, the scholars wondered if perhaps portions of Thomas originated in the Syriac language instead of the Greek language, as was widely assumed. In a recent study Nicholas Perrin has put this question to the test. He has analyzed the entire text of Thomas, translating the Coptic version into Syriac and Greek. The results of his investigation are quite impressive. On the assumption that the Gospel of Thomas was not originally written in Greek or Coptic but in Syriac, which is not implausible given its Syrian provenance, more than five hundred catchwords can be identified linking almost all of the 114 sayings that make up this work. In fact, there were only three couplets (56 and 57, 88 and 89, and 104 and 105) for which Perrin could find no linking catchwords. These exceptions are hardly fatal to Perrin's analysis, for the original Syriac catchwords could easily have been lost in transmission or in translation into Coptic.19 Moreover, Perrin is not only able to explain the order of the whole of Thomas in reference to catchwords, he is able to show in places the Gospel's acquaintance with the order and arrangement of material in Tatian's Diatessaron. The mystery of the order of the sayings that make up the Gospel of Thomas appears to have been resolved. Perrin concludes that the Gospel of Thomas is indeed dependent on the New Testament Gospels, but not directly Thomas depends on the New Testament Gospels as they existed in the Diatessaron, in Syriac. In my view the principal argument that Crossan and others have advanced in support of the literary independence of the Gospel of Thomas from the New Testament Gospels has been dealt a crippling blow. It is no longer justified to say that there is no discernible framework or organizing principle lying behind the composition of Thomas. There clearly is, when this writing of acknowledged Syrian origin is studied in the light of the Syriac language. Just as impressive is the number of specific contacts between the Gospel of Thomas and Syrian Gospel traditions and other Syrian religious traditions. What we see is that again and again, where Thomas differs from the New Testament Gospels, this is where Thomas agrees with Syrian tradition. This point has not been sufficiently appreciated by Crossan and others. There are many examples that could be examined, but space (and perhaps the patience of most readers) permit review of only two. Jesus' paradoxical saying on peace and sword offers an instructive example. I will present the familiar forms of this saying found in English translations of the Greek New Testament followed by the parallel saying in the Gospel of Thomas, which is then followed by the English translation of the Syriac version of Matthew's form of the saying and the parallel in yet another Syriac text. Greek Matthew 10:34: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." Greek Luke 12:51: "Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!" Gospel of Thomas 16a: "They do not know that it is division I have come to cast upon the earth: fire, sword, and war." Syriac Matthew 10:34b: "I came not to bring peace but division of minds and a sword." (Curetonian Syriac) Syriac Recognitions 2.26.6: "1 have not come that I might cast peace on the earth but rather war." The Thomas form of the saying appears to reflect elements from both Matthew and Luke. Thomas's "division" derives from Luke, and Thomas's "sword" derives from Matthew. Both of these elements appear in the Syriac version of Matthew: "I came not to bring peace but division of minds and a sword." Moreover, Thomas's "war" reflects a version of Jesus' saying in the Syriac Recognitions: "I have not come that I might cast peace on the earth but rather war."20 The evidence strongly suggests that the form of the saying preserved in Gospel of Thomas 16a derives from a Syriac form of Matthew 10:34, with further embellishment from other Syrian sources, such as that reflected in the Syriac version of the Clementine Recognitions. There are many examples like this, where the form of a saying in Thomas agrees with either the form of the saying in Tatian's Diatessaron or in the later Syriac Gospels. Our second example concerns Jesus' beatitude pronounced on the poor. Here again the English of Greek New Testament forms of the saying is presented, followed by the parallel saying in Thomas, which in turn is followed by the Syriac forms. Greek Matthew 5:3: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Greek Luke 6:20: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." Gospel of Thomas 54: "Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven." Syriac Matthew 5:3: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for yours is the kingdom of heaven" Diatessaron: "Blessed are the poor in spirit-" Crossan views Thomas 54 as providing strong evidence of the independence of the tradition in Thomas. He notes that Matthew's apparent gloss "in spirit" is missing in Thomas and that the forms of the two clauses are mixed, with the first clause in the third person (as in Matthew) and the second clause in the second person (as in Luke). Crossan cannot imagine how the author/collector of Thomas could have done this: "One would have at least to argue that Thomas (a) took the third person `the poor' from Matthew, then (b) the second person `yours' from Luke, and (c) returned to Matthew for the final `kingdom of heaven.' It might be simpler to suggest that Thomas was mentally unstable."21 As it turns out, however, it is simpler to review the Syrian tradition. Thomas 54 follows the Syriac form of Matthew (probably from the Diatessaron, the only form in which the New Testament Gospel tradition was available for Syriac speakers in the late second century). The omission of the qualifying prepositional phrase "in spirit" should hardly occasion surprise. Not only is it missing from Luke, its nonappearance in Thomas is consistent with the worldview of Thomas. That is, it's not too difficult to explain in light of Thomas's antimaterialistic perspective (see Gospel of Thomas 27, 63, 64, 65, 95, 110), a perspective consistent with the ascetic views of the Syrian church. No, Thomas declares, it is not the poor in spirit who are blessed, it is the (literal) poor. So, to return to Crossan's argument, all one needs to say is that Thomas (a) took the saying as it existed in Syriac (which accounts for the mix of third and second person as well as the presence of the phrase "kingdom of heaven"), and (b) deleted the unwanted qualifying phrase "in spirit." Before concluding the discussion of the Gospel of Thomas, one other issue needs to be addressed. Stephen Patterson, James Robinson and others have argued that the literary form of the Gospel of Thomas supports an early date. Because Thomas is like Q, the sayings source on which Matthew and Luke drew, then Thomas in its earliest form may approximate the age of Q.22 This argument is wholly specious, not only because it does not take into account the extensive coherence with late-second-century Syrian tradition or the lack of coherence with pre-70 Jewish Palestine, it fails to take into account of the fact that other sayings collections, some in Syria, emerged in the second and third centuries. Among these are the rabbinic collection that became known as the Pirqe Avot ("Chapters of the Fathers") and the Sentences of Sextus. The latter is particularly significant because it originated in Syria in the second century, the approximate time and place of the emergence of the Gospel of Thomas. The evidence suggests that the Gospel of Thomas is another second-century collection that emerged in Syria. When all of the appropriate evidence is taken into consideration, I find it hard to avoid the conclusion that the Gospel of Thomas originated in the late second century, not in the middle of the first century. Let me make this em phatically clear: This is where all of the evidence takes us: (1) the association of the Gospel of Thomas with `Judas Thomas," (2) the arrangement and order of the sayings explained by hundreds of Syriac catchwords that link the sayings, and (3) the coherence of the readings in Thomas, which differ from the Greek New Testament Gospels, with the readings either in the Diatessaron or other Christian Syriac works from this period compellingly argue for a latesecond-century Syrian origin of the Gospel of Thomas. In short, it is this flood of factors that point to the Eastern, Syriac-speaking church, a church that knows the New Testament Gospels primarilyperhaps exclusivelythrough Tatian's Diatessaron, a work not composed before A.D. 170, that persuades me that the Gospel of Thomas does not offer students of the Gospels early, independent material that can be used for critical research into the life and teaching of Jesus. Reliance on this writing can only lead to a distorted portrait of the historical Jesus.
Chapter 4.
The Gospel of Peter, the Egerton Gospel, the Gospel of Mary and the Secret Gospel of Mark Having looked closely at the Gospel of Thomas in chapter three, we will move a little more quickly in this chapter in surveying four other extracanonical Gospels. THE GOSPEL OF PETER Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea (c. A.D. 260-340) states that 1 Peter is accepted and has been used by the ancient elders, but other writings attributed to the apostle are rejected (Ecclesiastical History 3.3.1-4). The rejected writings that are attributed to Peter include the second letter (presumably 2 Peter), the apocalypse (that is, the Apocalypse of Peter), the Gospel (that is, the Gospel of Peter), and the preaching (that is, the Preaching of Peter). Later in his history Eusebius refers to the "writings that are put forward by heretics under the name of the apostles containing Gospels such as those of Peter, and Thomas, and Matthias, and some others besides" (Ecclesiastical History 3.25.6). Still later Eusebius once again mentions the Gospel attributed to Peter, this time in reference to Serapion, bishop of Antioch (in office A.D. 199-211). Eusebius quotes a portion of the bishop's letter, titled "Concerning What Is Known as the Gospel of Peter." Serapion states: For our part, brothers, we receive both Peter and the other apostles as Christ, but the writings that falsely bear their names we reject, as men of experience, knowing that such were not handed down to us. For I myself, when I came among you, imagined that all of you clung to the true faith; and, without going through the Gospel put forward by them in the name of Peter, I said: "If this is the only thing that seemingly causes a mean spirit among you, let it be read." But since I have now learned, from what has been told me, that their mind was lurking in some hole of heresy, I shall give diligence to come again to you. Therefore, brothers, expect me quickly But we, brothers, gathering to what kind of heresy Marcianus belonged (who used to contradict himself, not knowing what he was saying, as you will learn from what has been written to you), were enabled by others who studied this very Gospel, that is, by the successors of those who began it, whom we called Docetists (for most of the ideas belong to their teaching)-using [the material supplied] by them, were enabled to go through it and discover that the most part was indeed in accordance with the true teaching of the Savior, but that some things were added, which also we place below for your benefit. (Ecclesiastical History 6.12.3-6) The testimony of Serapion confirms the existence of a work known as the Gospel of Peter, a work that emerged sometime in the second century. For us, however, the value of his statement is limited, for almost nothing is said of the contents of the Gospel of Peter and no part of it is actually quoted. To the best of our knowledge, no other church father quotes any part of this Gospel. This lack of specific information will have a bearing on the question of the identity of the various manuscript finds that are thought to relate to this writing. In the winter of 1886-1887, during excavations at Akhmim in Egypt, a codex was found in the coffin of a Christian monk. The manuscript comprises a fragment of a Gospel, fragments of Greek Enoch, the Apocalypse of Peter and, written on the inside of the back cover of the codex, an account of the martyrdom of St. Julian. The Gospel fragment bears no name or hint of a title, for neither the beginning nor the conclusion of the work has survived. Because the apostle Peter appears in the text, narrating in the first person ("But I, Simon Peter" N. 60]), because it seemed to have a docetic orientation (that is, where the physical reality of Jesus is discounted), and because the Gospel fragment was in the company of the Apocalypse of Peter, it was widely assumed that the fragment belonged to the Gospel of Peter mentioned by Eusebius.I Critical assessments of the then newly published Gospel fragment diverged widely, with some scholars, such as Percival Gardner-Smith claiming that the fragment was independent of the New Testament Gospels and others such as Henry Barclay Swete claiming that the fragment is dependent on the New Testament Gospels.' Throughout this debate no one asked if the Akhmim fragment really was part of the second-century Gospel of Peter. It was simply assumed that it was. Then, in the 1970s and 1980s, two more Greek fragments from Egypt were published, POxy 2949 and POxy 4009, which with varying degrees of confidence were identified as belonging to the Gospel of Peter. Indeed, one of the fragments was thought to overlap with part of the Akhmim fragment. The publication of these fragments renewed interest in the Gospel, because it was felt that the identity of the Akhmim fragment as the second-century Gospel of Peter, initially accepted and later rejected by Serapion, was confirmed. Indeed, it has also been suggested that the Fayyum Fragment (PVindob. G 2325) is yet another early fragment of the Gospel of Peter.3 In recent years Helmut Koester and a circle of colleagues and students have given new life to Gardner-Smith's position. According to Koester the Gospel of Peter's "basis must be an older text under the authority of Peter which was independent of the canonical Gospels." Koester's student Ron Cameron agrees, concluding that this Gospel is independent of the canonical Gospels, may even predate them, and "may have served as a source for their respective authors."4 This position has been worked out in detail by John Dominic Crossan, who accepts the identification of the Akhmim fragment with Serapion's Gospel of Peter. In a lengthy study that appeared in 1985 Crossan argued that the Gospel of Peter, though admittedly in its final stages influenced by the New Testament Gospel tradition, preserves an old tradition, on which all four of the Passion accounts in the canonical Gospels are based.' This old tradition is identified as the Cross Gospel. Crossan's provocative conclusion calls for evaluation. I will translate a selection from the Akhmim Gospel fragment that Crossan thinks reflects the earlier Cross Gospel.6 VII (25)Then the Jews and the elders and the priests, knowing what sort of harm they had done to themselves, began to lament and say: "Woe (to us) for our sins; the judgment and the end of Jerusalem have drawn near." VIII (28)But the scribes and the Pharisees and the elders, having gathered together, heard that all the people were grumbling and murmuring and beating their breasts, saying: "If at his death these great signs have happened, behold how righteous he must have been!" (29)They were afraid and went to Pilate entreating him and saying: (30) "Give us soldiers, that we might guard his tomb for three d[ays], lest his disciples come and steal him and the people suppose that he had been raised from the dead, and do us harm." (31)And Pilate gave them Petronius the centurion, with soldiers, to guard the tomb. And elders and scribes went with them to the tomb. (32)And having rolled a large stone, all who were there, with the centurion and the soldiers, place (it) at the door of the tomb (33)and put on it seven seals, and after pitching a tent they kept guard. IX (34)Early in the morning of the sabbath a crowd from Jerusalem and the surrounding countryside came in order to see the sealed tomb. (35)Now in the night in which the Lord's Day dawned, while the soldiers kept guard in pairs in every watch, a loud voice rang out in heaven, (36)and they saw the heavens opened and two men descending from there in great brightness and drawing near to the tomb. (37)But that stone which had been placed at the door rolled by itself and withdrew to one side. The tomb opened and both of the young men entered. X (38)Then those soldiers, observing these things, awakened the centurion and the elders (for they themselves were there on guard). (39)And while they were relating what they had seen, again they see three men coming out of the tomb-two of them supporting the one, and a cross following them- (40)and the head(s) of the two reached to heaven, but (the head) of the one being led by the hand extended above the heavens. (41)And they heard a voice from heaven, saying: "Did you preach to those who sleep?" (42)And an answer was heard from the cross: "Yes." XI (45)Having seen these things, those about the centurion hurried (that) night to Pilate, abandoning the tomb which they had been guarding, and reported everything that they had seen, being greatly disturbed and saying: "Truly he was the Son of God." (46)Pilate answered and said: "I am clean of the blood of the Son of God. To you this seemed (right)." (47)Then all came and were beseeching him and urging him to command the centurion and the soldiers to relate to no one what they had seen. (48)"For it is better," they said, "for us to be guilty of the greatest sin before God than to fall into the hands of the people of the Jews and be stoned." (49)Pilate therefore commanded the centurion and the soldiers to say nothing. Crossan's hypothetical Cross Gospel contains elements that suggest that the Akhmim fragment (or Gospel of Peter) was written after, not prior, to the Synoptic Gospels, particularly the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. The confession of the Jewish authorities' guilt (7.25; 11.48), which in itself lacks historical realism, could owe its inspiration in part to Jesus' woe and lament for Jerusalem (Lk 21:20-24; see Lk 23:48) and perhaps to Caiaphas's ominous counsel On 11:49-50). Does it really seem likely that the Akhmim fragment's tradition that the "Jews and elders" expressed grief by acknowledging their sins and the imminence of "judgment and the end of Jerusalem" is early, independent and preSynoptic? Don't such statements reflect the relationship between "Jews" and "Christians" afterA.D. 70, when the various groups and subgroups of Jews were reduced largely to two principal movements (followers of Hillel [and Shammail and Jesus), and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 is viewed as the result of the Jews' failure to recognize Jesus as "Messiah"? Is such a statement as "it is better to be guilty of the greatest sin before God than to fall into the hands of the people" earlier than what we find in the Synoptic tradition? Such a statement bears the stamp of enthusiastic Christian exaggeration unrestrained by realistic knowledge of Jewish piety and sentiment. It has, moreover, an antiJewish ring to it as well. Similarly, the statement of the people in the Akhmim fragment at 8.28 ("all the people were grumbling and murmuring and beating their breasts, saying: `If at his death these great signs have happened, behold how righteous [dikaios] he must have been!'") surely represents an embellishment of Luke 23:47-48: "Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, and said: `Certainly this man was righteous [dikaios] 'And all the multitudes who assembled to see the sight, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts." The author of the Akhmim Gospel fragment apparently possessed little accurate knowledge of Jewish customs and sensitivities. According to 8.31 and 10.38 the Jewish elders and scribes camp out in the cemetery, as part of the guard keeping watch over the tomb of Jesus. Given Jewish views of corpse impurity, not to mention fear of cemeteries at night, the author of our fragment is unbelievably ignorant. Who could write such a story only twenty years after the death of Jesus? And if someone did at such an early time, can we really believe that the Evangelist Matthew, who was surelyJewish, would make use of such a poorly informed writing? One can scarcely credit this scenario. There are worse problems. The Jewish leaders' fear of harm at the hands of the Jewish people (Akhmim fragment 8.30) smacks of embellishment, if not Christian apologetic. The "seven seals" (8.33) and the "crowd from Jerusalem and the surrounding countryside" that "came in order to see the sealed tomb" (9.34) serve an apologetic interest: The resurrection story is well attested. These details are probably secondary to the canonical versions of the story The appearance of the expression "the Lord's Day" (9.35), of course, is another indication of lateness (see Rev 1:10; Ignatius's Epistle to the Magnesians 9:1), not antiquity The centurion's confession (Akhmim fragment 11.45) appears to reflect Matthew (Mt 27:54; see Mk 15:39; Lk 23:47).7 Finally, can it be seriously maintained that the Akhmim fragment's resurrection account, complete with a talking cross and angels whose heads reach heaven, constitutes the most primitive account? Is this the account that the canonical Evangelists had before them? Or isn't it more prudent to conclude what we have here is still more evidence of the secondary, fanciful nature of this apocryphal writing?8 Doesn't the evidence suggest that the Akhmim Gospel fragment is little more than a blend of details from the four canonical Gospels, especially from Matthew, that has been embellished with pious imagination, apologetic concerns and a touch of anti-Semitism? It is difficult to conclude that this material, no matter how deftly pruned and reconstructed (and don't we have here again an example of special pleading?) could possibly constitute the earliest layer of tradition on which the Passion narratives of the New Testament Gospels are dependent. Scholars a generation or two ago found no independent traditions in the Akhmim Gospel fragment. Recently, other scholars have reached similar conclusions. John P Meier describes the fragment as a second-century "pastiche of traditions from the canonical Gospels, recycled through the memory and lively imagination of Christians who have heard the Gospels read and preached upon many a time." Moody Smith's rhetorical question only underscores the problematical dimension of Crossan's hypothesis: "Is it thinkable that the tradition began with the legendary, the mythological, the anti Jewish, and indeed the fantastic, and moved in the direction of the historically restrained and sober?"' Indeed, Crossan's case appears to be another example of special pleading, of wish becoming father to the thought. The evidence strongly suggests that the Akhmim Gospel fragment is a late work, not an early work, even if we attempt to find an earlier substratum, gratuitously shorn of imagined late additions. But more pressing is the question that asks if the existing ninth-century Akhmim Gospel fragment really is a fragment of the second-century Gospel of Peter condemned by Bishop Serapion in the early third century. The extant Akhmim fragment does not identify itself, nor do we have a patristic quotation of the Gospel of Peter to compare it to and possibly settle the questions. Nor is the Akhmim Gospel fragment docetic, as many asserted shortly after its publication. If the fragment is not docetic, then the proposed identification of the fragment with the Gospel of Peter is weakened still further. After all, the one thing that Serapion emphasized was that the Gospel of Peter was used by docetists to advance their doctrines.10 And finally, as Paul Foster has shown, the connection between the Akhmim Gospel fragment and the small papyrus fragments that may date as early as 200-250 is quite tenuous.ll Thus we have no solid evidence that allows us with any confidence to link the extant Akhmim Gospel fragment with a second-century text, whether the Gospel of Peter mentioned by Bishop Serapion or some other writing from the late second century. Given its fantastic features and coherence with late traditions, it is not advisable to make use of this Gospel fragment for Jesus research. THE ECERTON GOSPEL Papyrus Egerton 2 was found somewhere in Egypt and fell into the hands of scholars in 1934. It consists of four fragments. The fourth fragment yields nothing more than one illegible letter. The third fragment yields little more than a few scattered words. The first and second fragments offer four (or perhaps five) stories that parallel stories found in John and the Synoptic Gospels. Papyrus Koln 255, discovered sometime later, is a related fragment of the text. Its lines will be inserted in italics where appropriate in the following translation of the Egerton Gospel. (Note: recto refers to the side of the papyrus in which the fibers run horizontally, while verso refers to the other side of the papyrus, where the fibers run vertically)" PAPYRUS EGERTON 2 Fragment I verso (1a)'[And Jesus said] to the lawyer[s: "'Punish everyone who acts con[trary to 4the 1]aw, but not me. Fo[rShe knows not] what he does (or) how he does it." [But6t]urn[ing] to [the] rulers of the people The sa[idt]his word: "Sea[rch8t]he scriptures, in which you thi[nk] 9you have life. Those 10ar[e what tes]tify about me. Do not 11s[uppose th]at I came to accu[s]e 12[you] before my Father. 13Moses is [the one who ac]cuses you, (the one) in whom 14you have hoped." And when th[e]y 15s[ai]d: "We know [full] well that 16God spo[ke] to Moses, but we do not know "[whence you are]," answering, Jesus sa[id 18to the]m: "Now accuses (you) 19[your un]belie[f] in the things 20written by him. For if you had 21believed in Moses], you would have believed 22a[inme]; for concerning me that one 21a[wrote] to your fa[th]ers." Fragment I recto (lb) 22[... that they] should draw together, c[arrying] 23stones, that they might sto[ne 24h]im. And the [rul]ers laid 25han[ds] upon him, 26[th]at they should arrest (him) and hand (him) 27[over] to the crowd; and they were not [able] to 28arrest him because 29his hour of delivera[nce] (into their hands) had not yet c[ome]. 30But the Lord himself, going [out from their ha]nds ,31escaped from th[em]. (2) 32And [be]hold a leper draw[ing near to him] 33says: "Teacher Jesus, wandering with lep [ers] 34and eatin[g with them] 35in the inn, I also con[tracted leprosy]. "If then [you will it], 371 shall be cleansed." Immediately the Lord [said to him]: 38"[I] will it; be cleansed." [and immediately] 39the lep[rosy de]parted from him. 40But [said] Jesus to him, "Go, show 41yourself to th[e priests.] 42aand offer for 43a(pur]ification, as Moses commanded, and] 44asin no longer." Fragment 2 recto (3) 42[...com]ing 43to him to examine 44him they began testing him, say[ing]: 45"Teacher Jesus, we know that [from God] 46you have come, for what you are doing tes [tifies1 47beyond all the prophets. [Therefore, tell] 48us: Is it proper to [give 49payment] to the kings that which pertains to their rule? Should [we pay th]em 50or n[ot]?" But Jesus knowing th[eir 51th]inking, becoming ang[ry], 52said to th[em]: "Why do you call me acher' [with y]our mouth, n[ot he aring 54what I [s]ay? Well did Is[aiah prophesy [concerning 55y]ou, saying: Th[is people] 56with the[ir li ps [honor] 57me, [but their hea]rt is [far] 58from m[e. In v]ain [they worship me.] 59Command[ments of men..."'] Fragment 2 verso (4) 60[...] in the place, having shut 61[...] it had been laid beneath 62[...] its wealth uncertain 63[...] But while those ones were perplexed 64at this strange question, 65Jesus then walked and stood 66at the bank of the Jordan 67River. And stretching out 68his right hand [...] filled 69[...] and sowed (it) upon the 70[rive]rM. And then [. 71the water having produced [...] the 72[...] and [...] before 73their eyes brought forth fruit 74[...] much [...] to (their) joy (?) 75[..] Fragment 3 verso (5) 76[...]77[.78[.79[...]80[...]knowing81[...] Fragment 3 recto (6) 82"We are one [...] 831 abide w[ith"... st]ones 84to[... that they] 85should kill [him...] 86he says: "The one [...] 87[...] At many points these fragments parallel the New Testament Gospels. The first story is filled with allusions to the Gospel of John. Jesus' assertion in lines 7- 10 could well be drawn from John 5 :39, 45. The lawyers' reply in lines 15- 17 appears to be taken from John 9:29, while Jesus' rejoinder in lines 20-23a reflects John 5:46.13 The attempt to stone Jesus in lines 22-24 parallels John 10:3 1, while the declaration in lines 25-30 that they were unable to do so because his "hour had not yet come" echoes John 7:30; 8:20. Reference to Jesus in line 30 as "the Lord" has a secondary ring. The second story is mostly Synoptic. The opening sentence in line 32, "and behold a leper drawing near to him says," agrees with Matthew 8:2a (but not the parallel Mk 1:40a) nearly verbatim. The leper's petition in line 36 employs the same vocabulary, though not the forms, of that of the leper's request in Mark 1:40b (and parallel). Jesus' response in line 38 agrees with the Synoptic story exactly (Mk1:4lb and parallel). The statement in lines 38-43a that "immediately the leprosy departed from him" agrees almost exactly with Mark 1:42 (and with Lk 5:13, but for the word order). The Egerton Papyrus has no equivalent of the command of secrecy found in Mark (Mk 1 :43-44), which could argue for Egerton's independence, if not priority. But then most of this material has been omitted by Matthew also (Mt 8:4). Its absence in the Egerton Papyrus may suggest nothing more than that the author had no more interest in the Gospel of Mark's secrecy theme than had Matthew and Luke, who often chose to abbreviate this theme or remove it altogether. Jesus' order that the man show himself to the "priests" parallels Mark 1:44. But the plural betrays a lack of acquaintance with Jewish law and custom. The plural may have been inspired by the final part of Jesus' saying "as a witness to them," which is found in all three Synoptic Gospels but not paralleled in the Egerton Papyrus. The final part of the admonition (line 44a) parallels John 5: 14. The third story again combines elements from John and the Synoptic Gospels. The opening statement in lines 45-47, "Teacher Jesus, we know that [from God] you have come, for what you are doing tes[tifies] beyond all the prophets," is based on John 3:2 and John 9:29 (see also Jn 1:45; Acts 3:18). Egerton's use of "teacher" (didashale) is secondary to John's transliteration rabbi, and may be due to its appearance in Mark 12:14a ("Teacher, we know that you are true"). The question put to Jesus in lines 48-50 is taken from Mark 12: 14b (and parallel) but appears to have missed the original point. Jesus' emotion in line 51 recalls Mark 1:43, while his question in lines 52-54 recalls a form of the question found in Luke 6:46. The remainder of Jesus' saying, which is a paraphrase of Isaiah 29: 13, echoes Mark 7:6-7 and parallel. Crossan concludes from these fragments that Papyrus Egerton 2 represents a tradition that predates the canonical Gospels. He thinks that "Mark is dependent on it directly" and that it gives evidence of "a stage before the distinction of Johannine and Synoptic traditions was operative." Helmut Koester agrees with Crossan's second point, saying that in Papyrus Egerton 2 we find "pre Johannine and pre-synoptic characteristics of language [which] still existed side by side." He thinks it unlikely, against other scholars, that the author of this papyrus could have been acquainted with the canonical Gospels and "would have deliberately composed [it] by selecting sentences" from them.14 Serious questions concerning Crossan's and Koester's assessment, however, must be raised. First, several times editorial improvements introduced by Matthew and Luke appear in Egerton (for example, compare Egerton line 32 with Mk 1:40; Mt 8:2; Lk 5:12; or Egerton lines 39-41 with Mk 1:44; Mt 8:4; Lk 17:14). There are other indications that the Egerton Papyrus is later than the canonical Gospels. The plural "kings" is probably secondary to the singular "Caesar" that is found in the Synoptics (and in Gospel of Thomas 100). The flattery, "what you do bears witness beyond all the prophets," may reflect John 1:34, 45 and is again reminiscent of later pious Christian embellishment that tended to exaggerate the respect that Jesus' contemporaries showed him (see the examples in Gospel of the Hebrews 2 and Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 18.64). A second question arises in response to Koester's statement about the improbability that the author of the Egerton Papyrus "would have deliberately composed [it] by selecting sentences" from the canonical Gospels. Isn't this the very thing that Justin Martyr and his disciple Tatian did? Sometime in the 150s Justin Martyr composed a harmony of the Synoptic Gospels and some years later Tatian composed a harmony (that is, the Diatessaron) of all four New Testament Gospels. If Justin Martyr and Tatian, writing in the second century, can compose their respective harmonies through the selection of sentences and phrases from this Gospel and that Gospel, why couldn't the author of the Egerton Papyrus do the same thing? Indeed, it is likely that this is the very thing that he did. A third question arises out of Koester's suggestion that the mixture of John-like and Synoptic elements is primitive, while their separation into the existing canonical forms is secondary If Koester's suggestion is correct, then the Egerton Gospel does indeed derive from the middle of the first century, as Crossan in fact argues. It would have to be this early if it were to be used by the Synoptic Evangelists. If this is the case, then we must wonder why we have no other fragment or any other evidence of the existence of this extraordinarily primitive Gospel. Why don't we have other papyri, extracanonical Gospels or patristic quotations attesting this primitive pre-Synoptic, pre Johannine unified tradition? Several examples of passages made up of mixed and confused texts can be found in Justin Martyr's quotations, which sometimes combine materials from two or more Gospels. Here is an instructive example: For not those who make profession, but those who do the works, shall be saved, according to his word: "Not every one who says to me, `Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven [see Mt 7:21]. For whoever hears me, and does my sayings [see Mt 7:24 = Lk 6:47], hears him who sent me [see Lk 10:16 (Codex D); Jn 5:23-24; 13:20; 12:44-45; 14:24; see also Justin's Apologia 1.63.5]. And many will say to me, `Lord, Lord, have we not eaten and drunk in your name, and done wonders?' And then I will say to them, `Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness [see Lk 13:26-271.' Then shall there be wailing and gnashing of teeth, when the righteous shall shine as the sun, and the wicked are sent into eternal fire [see Mt 13:42-43]. For many shall come in my name [see Mt 24:5 and parallel], clothed outwardly in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are devouring wolves [see Mt 7: 15]. By their works you will know them [see Mt 7:16, 20]. And every tree that does not bring forth good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire [see Mt 7:191." (Apologia 1.16.9-13) Justin has assembled, either from memory or by picking and choosing from written texts, a "word" of Jesus that is in reality a blending of Synoptic materials, which at one point may also reflect the influence of the Gospel of John. Although drawn from a variety of contexts, there is nevertheless a general thematic unity that holds these materials together. With respect to composition, the sayings in Egerton Papyrus 2. 1, 3 are quite similar to Justin's "word" of Jesus. Another feature that tells against the antiquity and priority of the Egerton Papyrus is the story related in the badly preserved verso of fragment 2. The story is reminiscent of the kind of stories we find in the late and fanciful apocryphal Gospels. For example, in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas we are told of the boy Jesus, who sowed a handful of seed that yielded a remarkable harvest: Now when it was seed-time, Joseph went forth to sow corn, and Jesus followed after him. And when Joseph began to sow, Jesus put forth his hand and took of the corn so much as he could hold in his hand, and scattered it. Joseph therefore came at the time of the harvest to reap his harvest. And Jesus also came and gathered the ears which he had sown, and they made an hundred measures of good corn: and he called the poor and the widows and fatherless and gave them the corn which he had gained, save that Joseph took a little thereof unto his house for a blessing. (Infancy Gospel of Thomas 10: 1-2 [Latin] ; see Infancy Gospel of Thomas 12: 1-2 [Greek MSA]; Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew34)15 The relevant part of Papyrus Egerton 2 reads: But while those ones were perplexed at this strange question, Jesus then walked and stood at the bank of the Jordan River. And stretching out his right hand [...] [...] and sowed (it) upon the [rive]r(?). And then [. the water having produced [...] the [...] and [...] before their eyes brought forth fruit [...] much [...] to (their) joy (Lines 63- 74) Although we cannot be certain, given the condition of the text, it is likely that these lines tell a story in which, by way of illustration, Jesus took a handful of seed and sowed it on the river, with the result that the water-to the astonishment of those present-produced an abundance of fruit. The reference to joy suggests that the people benefited from the miracle, much as the "poor and the widows and the fatherless" did in the lighthearted tale in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Whether or not these two stories derive from a common source is not important. What is important is to appreciate the presence of what appears to be a quite fanciful tale among the passages preserved by the Egerton Papyrus. The appearance of this tale, which is like those that are all too common among the later extracanonical Gospels, sig nificantly increases the burden of proof for those who wish to argue that the Egerton traditions are primitive, even pre-Synoptic. Admittedly, while the hypothesis of Crossan, Koester and others remains a theoretical possibility, the evidence available at this time favors the likelihood that Papyrus Egerton 2 (or the Egerton Gospel) represents a secondcentury combination of elements from the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John rather than primitive firstcentury material on which the canonical Gospels depended. THE GOSPEL OF MARY The Gospel of Mary narrates a story in which Mary Magdalene relates to the disciples the revelations that Jesus gave her. Andrew and Peter express doubts that Mary is telling the truth because the teaching is at variance with what they themselves had been taught. Mary weeps, saddened that they would think that she would misrepresent the words of the Savior. Levi rebukes Peter, defending Mary and exhorting the disciples to preach the gospel, "neither setting boundaries nor laying down laws, as the Savior said." The disciples then go forth and the Gospel of Mary comes to an end. Three overlapping fragments of the Gospel of Mary have been found. At most, we have half of the original text.16 The following is a translation of the Greek papyrus fragments: "[N]or have I established law, as the lawgiver."... having said these things, he departed. But they were grieved, shedding many tears and saying, "How shall we go to the nations, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of the Son of Man? For if they neither spared that One, how will they spare us?" Then Mary stood up and greeting them she kissed them all and says, "Brothers, weep not; do not be grieved nor distressed, for his grace shall be with you, sheltering you. Rather, let us give thanks for his greatness, because he has joined us together and made us human beings." Having spoken these things Mary turned their minds to the good and they began to ask about the utterances of the Savior. Peter says [to?] Mary, "Sister, we know that you were much loved by the Savior, as no other woman. Therefore tell us what words of the Savior you know, what we have not heard." Mary answered, saying, "What escapes you and I remember I shall report to you." And she began (to speak) to them these words. "One time while seeing the Lord in a vision, I said, `Lord, I saw you today' He answered, saying, `You are blessed..."' (4:10-7:2 = POxy 3525) "`. the remainder of the course of the season of the age (I shall have) rest in silence."' Having said these things Mary became silent, since it was to this point that the Savior had spoken. Andrew says, "Brothers, what does it seem to you concerning the things that have been said? For I do not believe that the Savior has said these things, for it seems different from his thought." Thinking about these matters (Peter says), "Was the Savior speaking to a woman in secret and (not) openly, in order that we all might hear? He was not wishing to indicate that she is more worthy than we are, was he?" [Then Mary wept...] "[Do you think I have told lies] about the Savior?" Levi says to Peter, "Peter, anger always lies within you; and now thus you question the woman as opposing her. If the Savior regarded her worthy, who are you to despise her? For that one, having known her, loved her always and assuredly. Rather, we should be ashamed and having put on perfect humanity, let us do that which was commanded us. Let us preach the gospel, neither setting boundaries nor laying down laws, as the Savior said." Having said these things Levi, going out, began to preach the gospel. [The Gospel according to Mary] (9:29- 10:14 = Papyrus Rylands 463) The purpose of the Gospel of Mary was to challenge those who "set boundaries" and "lay down laws." Because Peter and Andrew reject Mary's teaching, we probably should infer that those who lay down laws appeal to the better-known apostles whose teachings are preserved in the betterknown, more-widely circulated documents of the Christian communities. The group behind the Gospel of Mary is attempting to defend its teachings and, perhaps, the right of women to be teachers, perhaps in opposition to a growing institutionalization of Christianity and an increasing restrictiveness of the role of women (as perhaps seen in the Pastoral Letters). This tension is also attested in the Gospel of Thomas, where Peter demands, "Make Mary leave us, for females are not worthy of (eternal) life" (114). Jesus rebukes Peter, declaring that he will be able to transform Mary into a male so that she and all other women thus transformed will gain entry into the kingdom of heaven. 17 In some recent writings, including Dan Brown's popular novel The Da Vinci Code, it has been speculated that Jesus and Mary were lovers, perhaps married. Those who hold this view appeal to the Gospel of Mary, where it says: "Sister, we know that you were much loved by the Savior, as no other woman." The Gospel of Philip is also appealed to: "And the companion of the [Savior is] Mary Magdalene. [But Christ loved] her more than [all] the disciples [and used to] kiss her [often] on her [. (NHC 2.3.63.32-36). Some translations restore the text to read, "he used to kiss her often on her mouth," but that is pure conjecture. The author of this text may have imagined that Jesus kissed Mary often on the hand, forehead or cheek. We don't know what the original text said, and in any case there is no warrant for assuming from these passages in the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Philip that Jesus and Mary were lovers. The texts do not say this. There is no evidence from antiquity that anyone thought this. The Gospel of Mary may well reflect struggles over church polity, the role of women, the issue of legalism in one form or another, and the limits of apostolic authority But this writing, however it is to be understood, reflects a setting no earlier than the middle of the second century. We find in it nothing that with any confidence can be traced to the first century or traced back to the life and ministry of the historical Jesus and the historical Mary Magdalene.18 THE SECRET GOSPEL OF MARK At the annual Society of Biblical Literature meeting in New York in 1960 Morton Smith announced that during his sabbatical leave in 1958, at the Mar Saba Monastery in the Judean wilderness, he found the first part of a letter of Clement of Alexandria (c. A.D. 150-215) penned in Greek, in what was said to be an eighteenth-century hand, in the back of a seventeenth-century edition of the letters of Ignatius. In 1973 Smith published two editions of his find, one learned and one popular. From the start, scholars suspected that the text was a forgery and that Smith was himself the forger. Many scholars-including several members of the Jesus Seminar-defended Smith and the authenticity of the Clementine letter. What made the alleged find so controversial were two quotations of a mystical or secret version of the Gospel of Mark, quotations of passages not found in the canonical Gospel of Mark. In the first, longer passage, Jesus raises a dead man and then later, in the nude, instructs the young man in the mysteries of the kingdom of God. The homoerotic orientation of the story is hard to miss. This mystical version of Mark has since become known as the Secret Gospel of Mark. Despite the facts that no one besides Smith has actually studied the physical document and that the paper and ink have never been subjected to the kinds of tests normally undertaken, many scholars have accepted the Clementine letter as genuine and its testimony as valid that there really was in circulation, in the second century, a secret version of the Gospel of Mark. Indeed, some scholars have suggested that Secret Mark may help us better understand how the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke relate to one another (that is, the Synoptic Problem), and of course some scholars have suggested that Secret Mark is older and more original than public Mark. Learned studies continue to appear, including two recent major monograph-length studies.19 The sad thing is that all of this labor has been misspent; the Clementine letter and the quotations of Secret Mark embedded within it are a modern hoax, and Morton Smith almost certainly is the perpetrator. Several scholars have for years suspected this to be the case, but the clear, recently published color photographs of the document have given experts in the science of the detection of forgeries the opportunity to analyze the handwriting of the document and compare it with samples of the handwriting of the late Professor Smith.20 The evidence is compelling and conclusive: Smith wrote the text. The following is some of the evidence that Stephen Carlson has compiled and analyzed: 1. Magnification of the handwritten text reveals the telltale presence of what handwriting experts call the "forger's tremor." That is, the handwriting in question is not really written; it is drawn, in the forger's attempt to imitate a style of writing not his own. These telltale signs are everywhere present in the alleged Clementine letter. 2. Comparison of the style of the Greek of the handwritten text with Morton Smith's style of writing Greek (as seen in his papers and marginal notes in his books) has shown that Smith is the person who wrote (or "drew") the Clementine letter. For example, Smith had an unusual way of writing the Greek letters tau, theta and lambda. These unusual forms occasionally intrude in what otherwise is a well-executed imitation of eighteenth-century style of Greek handwriting in the document in question. 3. Some of the distinctive themes in the document are in evidence in some of Smith's work published before the alleged find in 1958. 4. The discolored blotch that is plainly visible in the lower left-hand corner of the final page of the printed text of the volume and in the lower lefthand corner of the second page of the handwritten text prove that the handwritten pages were originally part of the printed edition of the letters of Ignatius. These corresponding blotches, as well as many of the other blotches and discolorations that can be seen in the color photographs, are mildew. The presence of this mildew strongly suggests that the book in question was not originally a part of the library of Mar Saba, whose dry climate does not produce mold and mildew in books. The mildew in the printed edition of the letters of Ignatius suggests that the book in which the alleged Clementine letter was discovered spent most of its existence in Europe. We may speculate that in Europe, or perhaps in North America, the book was purchased and the Clementine letter was drawn onto the blank end papers. The book was then taken to the Mar Saba Monastery, where it was subsequently "found" in the library 5. One of the Mar Saba documents cataloged by Smith is written in the same hand as the alleged Clementine letter. This document Smith dated to the twentieth century (not to the eighteenth century, as in the case of the Clementine letter). Moreover, the document Smith dates to the twentieth century is signed "M.Madiotes." This name is a pseudo-Greek name, whose root means "sphere" or "globe," or, in reference to a person, "baldy" Carlson plausibly suggests that here Smith, who was quite bald, is facetiously alluding to himself (that is, "M[orton] the baldhead"). 6. The entire story-finding a long-lost document in the Mar Saba Monastery that is potentially embarrassing to Christianity-is foreshadowed by James Hunter's The Mystery of Mar Saba (New York: Evangelical Publishers, 1940). Indeed, one of the heroes of the story, who helps to unmask the perpetrators and expose the fraud, is Scotland Yard Inspector Lord Moreton. The parallels between Morton Smith's alleged Mar Saba discovery and Hunter's Mar Saba mystery are fascinating. It should be added that Smith says in the preface to his publication of the Clementine letter that his invitation to visit Mar Saba came in 1941 (the year after the publication of Hunter's novel). 7. Carlson plausibly identifies the motives behind Smith's playful deception. We need not go into these details in this context. They possess a great deal of explanatory power. The upshot of the whole matter is that Smith's Mar Saba Clementine is almost certainly a hoax and Smith the hoaxer. No research into the Gospels and the historical Jesus should take Smith's document seriously Yet some scholars have made bold claims about the origins, dates and meaning of the New Testament Gospels on the basis of this spurious writing.21 CONCLUSION Many scholarly portraits and reconstructions of the historical Jesus are badly distorted through the use of documents that are late and of dubious historical value. The irony is that in trying to "go behind" the New Testament Gospels to find truth buried under layers of tradition and theology, some scholars depend on documents that were composed sixty to one hundred years after the New Testament Gospels. This is a strange way to proceed. Three of the five extracanonical Gospels reviewed in chapters three and four originated in the second half of the second century These are the Gospel of Thomas, the Egerton Papyrus, and the Gospel of Mary. A fourth writing, the Akhmim Gospel fragment, also cannot date earlier than the middle of the second century, if indeed it is the Gospel of Peter mentioned by Bishop Serapion at the beginning of the third century. But there are grave doubts that this document is the Gospel of Peter in the first place. The Akhmim Gospel fragment may be part of an unknown writing from an even later period of time. In any case, scholars are in no position to extract from the Akhmim fragment a hypothetical mid-firstcentury Passion and resurrection narrative on which the first century New Testament Gospels relied. Such a theory completely lacks a critical basis. The remaining document-the quotations of the Secret Gospel of Mark, embedded in a long-lost letter by Clement of Alexandria-is a modern hoax and therefore has nothing to offer critical scholarship concerned with Christian origins and the emergence of the Jesus and Gospel tradition. Yet this writing, along with the other texts, has been used in historical Jesus research. The scholarly track record with respect to the use of these extracanonical Gospels is, frankly, embarrassing. In marked contrast to the hypercritical approach many scholars take to the canonical Gospels, several scholars are surprisingly uncritical in their approach to the extracanonical Gospels. Apart from the all-too-common human desire to challenge authority, it is hard to explain why scholars give such credence to documents that reflect settings that are entirely foreign to pre-A.D. 70 Jewish Palestine and at the same time reflect traditions and tendencies found in documents known to have emerged in later times and in places outside of Palestine. Some of these scholars have even suggested reopening the New Testament canon to make room for works like the Gospel of Thomas. Professor Philip Jenkins, who is a historian and an "outsider" to historical Jesus research, remarks: Reviewing suggestions for a potentially revised New Testament canon, we are repeatedly struck by just how weak are the claims of most of the candidates.... Contrary to recent claims, the more access we have to ancient "alternative gospels," the more we must respect the choices made by the early church in forming its canon.22 Indeed. When students ask me why certain Gospels were omitted from the canon of the New Testament and whether some of them ought to be included, I tell them to read these Gospels. They do, and that answers their questions. In this and the previous chapter we have reviewed the extracanonical Gospels that are most often appealed to as potentially important sources for understanding the historical Jesus, sources that supposedly supplement and sometimes even correct the Gospels of the New Testament. We have found that these extracanonical Gospels do not offer early, reliable tradition, independent of what we possess in the New Testament Gospels. The extracanonical Gospels are late and almost always reflect a context far removed in time and place from firstcentury Palestine. The scholarly predilection for settings foreign to first-century Palestine is the subject of chapter five.
Chapter 5.
The Case Against Jesus as Cynic V rious scholars in the twentieth century have portrayed Jesus as a Pharisee, an Essene, a prophet, a great moral teacher, a philosopher, a charismatic holy man or a magician. These portraits, like Renaissance religious art in which Jesus and his disciples are depicted in sixteenth-century Venetian or Parisian dress, often tell us more about the scholars' biases than they do about Jesus in Nazareth or Jerusalem of the first century. Few are as misleading and distorted as the idea that Jesus was a Mediterranean Cynic. Jesus grew up and ministered in Galilee in the first three decades of the first century A.D.His environment was thoroughly Jewish. His home village was Nazareth. Although the village was small (somewhere between two hundred and four hundred inhabitants), it had a synagogue. There were no pagan temples or schools in Nazareth. In all likelihood not a single non Jew lived in Nazareth at this time. Recent excavations in and around Nazareth suggest that the village in the time of Jesus may not have been a sleepy, isolated place (as many have imagined it). There is evidence of vineyards and grape presses, terrace farming, olive presses and the manufacture of olive oil, and even stone masonry The old, quaint notion that the inhabitants of Nazareth had to look for work in nearby villages and cities is now obsolete. The economy of Nazareth was more than sufficiently active to keep its inhabitants fully occupied. Of course, Nazareth was not isolated from the rest of Galilee. This is another popular myth still held by some. Nazareth is only a few miles from Sepphoris, a major city, and Nazareth is near a major highway that connects Caesarea Maritima (on the Mediterranean, to the southwest) to Tiberias (on the Sea of Galilee, to the northeast). Sepphoris, Caesarea Maritima and Tiberias were the three largest and most influential cities in Galilee, and Jesus grew up near one of them and near the highway that linked the other two. Israel in the Time of Jesus But the Jewish reality of Jesus' upbringing and later ministry is not always appreciated in some of the books that have been published in recent years. Most writers, of course, acknowledge that Jesus was Jewish, but they propose strange contexts and settings in which they think Jesus should be interpreted. Some of these proposed contexts and settings simply did not exist in the Galilee of Jesus' day This tendency, however, is not just a modern one ; it is ancient as well. Pagans, Jews and Gnostics in the first two or three centuries A .D. expressed a variety of opinions of who Jesus was and what he was like. ANCIENT INTERPRETATIONS OF JESUS Non-Christians viewed the Christian movement with grave suspicions. Christians were regarded as lawless because they either did not obey the law of Moses or did not worship Caesar and the gods of the Romans. Christians were even accused of cannibalism, which was probably a gross misunderstanding of the Eucharist or Lord's Supper. Christians sometimes suffered terrible persecution, such as what took place at the hands of Nero, the mentally imbalanced megalomaniac who was emperor fromA.D. 54 to 68. The Romans tended to view Jesus as little more than a troublemaker. The great historian Tacitus, writing in the early second century A.D., described Jesus (called "Christus") as the founder of a "pernicious superstition," an evil that originated in Judea and eventually took hold in Rome itself, "where all things horrible and shameful collect and are practiced." Less extravagantly, his contemporary, Suetonius, viewed Jesus (whom he called "Chrestus") as an instigator of unrest, which may have been related in some way to the decision by Emperor Claudius in the middle of the first century to expel the Jews from Rome. Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia in the early second century, wrote to Emperor Trajan stating that Christians recited "a hymn antiphonally to Christus as to a god." He goes on to say that they "bound themselves with an oath not to commit any crime, but to abstain from theft, robbery, adultery, breach of faith, and embezzlement of property entrusted to them." Pliny's description suggests that the Christians he interrogated were slaves. Greek writers held similar views. Celsus acknowledged Jesus' Jewish origins but said he apprenticed in Egypt as a magician. Evidently Jesus was successful. On "account of those powers [Jesus] gave himself the title of God." Lucian of Samosata says Christians worship Jesus, "the man who was crucified in Palestine," as a god. Far more generously, Mara bar Serapion, a Syrian in a letter to his son, regards Jesus as the "wise king" of the Jews, comparable to philosophers like Pythagoras and Socrates. The opinions of the Jewish rabbis from about the same time are more uniform and negative. Jesus is viewed as a false prophet who practiced magic and led Israel astray Accordingly, he was hanged on the eve of Passover. Moreover, his resurrection is linked in some way to incantations. Indeed, healing in the name of Jesus-no matter how effective-is not permitted. It might also be mentioned here that Josephus, who was not a rabbi but lived in the first century and became a historian and apologist, described Jesus as a "doer of amazing deeds, a teacher of persons who receive truth with pleasure." More will be said about Josephus in chapter eight. The Gnostics (that is, "Knowers"), who absorbed some trappings of Christian teaching, viewed Jesus primarily as a revealer-not as the Messiah. They also described him in a variety of ways. According to them, Jesus appeared to his disciples as a child, or alternatively as an old man. His disciples were not always sure what to make of him, comparing him to an angel or even to a wise philosopher. Jesus' teaching was viewed as mysterious. In fact, it was so powerful, not even his own disciples could stand before Jesus and look him in the eyes.' A MODERN INTERPRETATION: JESUS THE CYNIC? Modern portraits have also run the gamut. Over the last century or so Jesus has been presented as a Pharisee (of one stripe or another), an Essene, a prophet or a great moral teacher. In more recent times Jesus has been interpreted as a philosopher, a rabbi, a sage, a charismatic holy man and a magician. Indeed, some of these portraits combine two or more of these categories.2 The teachings of Jesus have also been compared to those of the Buddha 3 Perhaps one of the strangest proposals to come from qualified scholars in recent years is that Jesus was a Cynic. This line of interpretation has been em braced by some of the members of the Jesus Seminar. In his popular book on the historical Jesus, John Dominic Crossan argues that Jesus was a "peasant Jewish Cynic" and that Jesus and his followers were "hippies in a world of Augustan yuppies."4 Although in places Crossan's work is helpful and occasionally insightful, the Cynic proposal is misguided and misleading. Given the popularity of Crossan's book and the support the Cynic hypothesis has found among a few other scholars, we will look at the evidence rather closely. GRECO-ROMAN WRITERS ON JESUS Cornelius Tacitus (c. A.D. 56-c. 118) was proconsul of Asia (A.D. 112-113), friend of Pliny the Younger and author of Annals and the Histories. Only portions of these works are extant. In Annals 15.44 he provides a passing reference to Jesus: Therefore, to squelch the rumor [that the burning of Rome had taken place by order], Nero supplied (as culprits) and punished in the most extraordinary fashion those hated for their vice, whom the crowd called "Christians." Christus, the author of their name, had suffered the death penalty during the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator [sic] Pontius Pilate. The pernicious superstition was checked for a time, only to break out once more, not merely in Judea, the origin of the evil, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible and shameful collect and are practiced. In his fifth volume of De Vita Caesarum (c. A.D. 120) the Roman historian Suetonius refers to the expulsion of the Jews from Rome in A.D. 49 during the reign of Claudius (Divus Claudius 25.4; see Acts 18:2). In his description he refers to one "Chrestus": [Claudius] expelled the Jews from Rome who, instigated by Chrestus [sic], continuously caused unrest. Pliny the Younger (or Gains Plinius Caecilius Secundus, c. 61- c. 113), who in A.D. 111-113 was the governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor, wrote to Emperor Trajan for advice in how to deal with Christians. The passage that is of interest is found in his Epistles book 10, letter 96: They [the Christians] assured me that the sum total of their error consisted in the fact that they regularly assembled on a certain day before daybreak. They recited a hymn antiphonally to Christus as to a god and bound themselves with an oath not to commit any crime, but to abstain from theft, robbery, adultery, breach of faith, and embezzlement of property entrusted to them. After this it was their custom to separate, and then to come together again to partake of a meal, but an ordinary and innocent one. According to Celsus (second century A.D.), a critic of early Christianity (as quoted by Origen): Jesus kept all the Jewish customs, and even took part in their sacrifices. (Contra Celsum 2.6) He was brought up in secret and hired himself out as a workman in Egypt, and having tried his hand at certain magical powers he returned from there, and on account of those powers gave himself the title of God." (Contra Celsum 1.38) Lucian of Samosata (c. A.D. 115-c. 200) refers to Jesus. According to Passing of Peregrinus 11: Christians... revered him as a god, used him as a lawgiver, and set him down as a protector-to be sure, after that other whom they still worship, the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world. Some years after Rome conquered Comagena and its capital Samosata in A.D. 72, Mara bar Serapion, while in prison, wrote a letter to his son Serapion in which he said: For what advantage did the Athenians gain by the murder of Socrates, the recompense of which they received in famine and pestilence? Or the people of Samos by the burning of Pythagoras, because in one hour their country was entirely covered in sand? Or the Jews by the death of their wise king, because from that same time their kingdom was taken away? God justly avenged these three wise men: the Athenians died of hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea; the Jews, ruined and driven from their land, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates did not die for good; he lived on in the teaching of Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good; he lived on in the statue of Hera. Nor did the wise king die for good; he lived on in the teaching, which he had given. Who were the ancient Cynics, what did they believe, and how did they live? Cynicism was founded by Diogenes (c. 412-321 B.C.). The nickname Cynic comes from the Greek word meaning "doggish" or "doglike." Cynics earned this dubious sobriquet because of their ragged, unkempt appearance. Attractive apparel and grooming meant nothing to them. And, like dogs, Cyn ics would urinate and defecate in public. Yes, they could be quite gross. ANCIENT JEWISH WRITERS ON JESUS On the ministry of Jesus: Jesus had five disciples: Matthai, Nakai, Nezer, Bum, and Todah. (b. Sanhedrin 107b) Jesus practiced magic and led Israel astray (b. Sanhedrin 43a) On the teaching of Jesus: He [a judge] said to them, "I looked at the end of the book, in which it is written, `I am not come to take away the Law of Moses and I am not come to add to the Law of Moses' [see Mt 5:17], and it is written, `where there is a son, a daughter does not inherit."' She said to him, "Let your light shine forth as a lamp" [see Mt 5:16]. R. Gamaliel said to her, "The ass came and kicked the lamp over." (b. Shabbat 116b) On the crucifixion of Jesus: On the eve of Passover they hanged Jesus the Nazarene. And a herald went out, in front of him, for forty days saying: "He is going to be stoned, because he practiced sorcery and enticed and led Israel astray Let anyone who knows anything in his favor come and plead on his behalf." But, not having found anything in his favor, they hanged him on the eve of Passover. (b. Sanhedrin 43a) On the resurrection of Jesus: He then went and raised Jesus by incantation. (b. Gittin 57a, ms. M) On healing in the name of Jesus: It once happened that ben Dama, the son of R.Ishmael's sister, was bitten by a serpent; and Jacob [James?], a native of Kefar Sekaniah, came to him in the name of Jesus ben Pantera. But R.Ishmael did not permit him. (t. Hullin 2.22) t. = Tosefta b. = Babylonian Talmud The Cynic typically carried a cloak, a beggar's purse and a staff, and usually went barefoot. In a letter to his father, Diogenes says, "Do not be upset, Father, that I am called a dog and put on a double, coarse cloak, carry a purse over my shoulders, and have a staff in my hand." This dress code has encouraged a few scholars to see significant parallels between Jesus and Cynics. After all, so goes the argument, Jesus gave his disciples similar instructions: •He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; they should take no bread, no bag, no money in their belts but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. (Mk 6:8-9) •"Take no gold, nor silver, nor copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff; for the laborer deserves his food." (Mt 10:9-10) •"Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not have two tunics." (Lk 9:3) •"Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and salute no one on the road." (Lk 10:4) Are Jesus' instructions in step with the Cynic dress code? Clearly not. Jesus' instructions in fact do not agree with Cynic dress and conduct; they contradict them. The very things Jesus tells his disciples not to take with them (no bag, no tunic and no staff either, if we follow the version in Matthew and Luke) are the characteristic markers of the true Cynic, as one observer from late antiquity put it: "What makes a Cynic is his purse and his staff and his big mouth."5 There is nothing Cynic-like in Jesus' instructions to his disciples. The only parallel with Jesus is simply in giving instructions with regard to what to wear and what to take on one's journey The only specific agreement is taking a staff (if we follow Mark; if we do not, then there is no agreement at all). The staff, however, is hardly distinctive to Cynics. On the contrary, in the Jewish context the staff has a long and distinguished association with the patriarchs, such as Jacob and Judah (Gen 32: 10; 38: 18), and the great lawgiver Moses and his brother Aaron (Ex 4:4; 7:9). Moreover, the staff is also a symbol of royal authority, figuring in texts that in later interpretation take on messianic and eschatological significance (for example, Gen 49:10; Is 11:4; Ezek 19: 14). GNOSTIC WRITERS ON JESUS On the manifestations of Jesus: Jesus took them all by stealth, for he did not reveal himself in the manner [in which] he was, but it was in the manner in which [they would] be able to see him that he revealed himself. He revealed himself to [them all. He revealed himself] to the great as great. He [revealed himself] to the small as small. He [revealed himself to the] angels as an angel, and to men as a man. (Gospel of Philip 57.28-58.2 [NHC 2.3]) [And I was afraid, and behold I] saw in the light [a youth who stood] by me. While I looked [at him he became] like an old man. And he [changed his] form (again), becoming like a servant. (Secret Book of John 2.1-5 [NHC 2.1]) Often he did not appear to his disciples as himself, but he was found among them as a child. (Gospel of Judas 33.19-21) Jesus said to his disciples: "Compare me to someone and tell me whom I am like." Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a righteous angel." Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher." Thomas said to him, "Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like." (Gospel of Thomas 13, 34.30- 35.4 [NHC 2.2]) On the power of Jesus' secret teaching: And he took (Thomas) and withdrew and told him three things. When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?" Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the things that he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me; [and] a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up." (Gospel of Thomas 13, 35.7-14 [NHC 2.2]) The spirits of (the disciples) did not dare to stand before [him], except for Judas Iscariot. He was able to stand before him, but he could not look him in the eyes, and he turned his face away (Gospel of Judas 35.7-13) Translations: James M.Robinson (ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library (Leiden: Brill, 1977); Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst, The Gospel of Judas (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2006). Besides the question of dress, some scholars suggest that Jesus' world view is Cynic. Instead of being caught up with materialism and vanity, the Cynic lives a life of simplicity and integrity before God. According to one ancient writer, the "end and aim of the Cynic philosophy... is happiness, but happiness that consists in living according to nature."6 Living according to nature also means treating fellow human beings as equals. A few scholars apparently think that this is more or less what Jesus taught. Was it? Here are teachings that are sometimes cited to make this point: And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, 0 men of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?" For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. (Mt 6:28-33) You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Mk 12:31; see Lev 19:18) For if you forgive people their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive people their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Mt 6:14-15) Superficially, Jesus' teaching is at points comparable to Cynic teaching. But Jesus' teaching is different at other significant points. For example, Jesus did not teach his disciples to pursue happiness and to live according to nature. What he taught was that nature reveals important things about God, namely, that he is loving, good and generous. Jesus urges his disciples to have faith and live in the light of God's goodness and care. But in the end the disciple is to seek God's kingdom (or rule) and righteousness. Then all the rest will fall into place. When the core values are understood, the profound differences between Jesus and the Cynics cannot be missed. Cynics were also known for flouting social custom and etiquette, such as urinating, defecating and engaging in sexual intercourse in public.7 Cynics could be coarse and rude. In fact, one was remembered to have retorted, "What difference does it make to me, from which end the noise comes?"8 There simply is no parallel to this kind of thinking or behavior in the teaching and lifestyle of Jesus and his disciples. A "CYNIC" JESUS? Jesus to his disciples: "Take no gold, nor silver, nor copper in your belts, no purse for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff." (Mt 10:9-10) Crates to his students: Cynic philosophy is Diogenean, the Cynic is one who toils according to this philosophy, and to be a Cynic is to take a short cut in doing philosophy Consequently, do not fear the name [Cynic], nor for this reason shun the cloak and purse, which are the weapons of the gods. For they are quickly displayed by those who are honored for their character. (Cynic Epistles 16) Diogenes to Hicetas: Do not be upset, Father, that I am called a dog [that is, "Cynic"] and put on a double, coarse cloak, carry a purse over my shoulders, and have a staff in my hand. (Cynic Epistles 7) Diogenes to Antipater: I hear that you say I am doing nothing unusual in wearing a double, ragged cloak and carrying a purse. (Cynic Epistles 15) Diogenes to Anaxilaus: For a scepter I have my staff and for a mantle the double, ragged cloak, and by way of exchange, my leather purse is a shield. (Cynic Epistles 19) For full texts of these epistles, see Abraham J.Malherbe, The Cynic Epistles, SBLSBS 12 (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1977). Jesus did indeed criticize some of his contemporaries for their religiosity, hypocrisy and mean-spiritedness toward the poor and marginalized: Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hyp ocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by people. (Mt 6:2) And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by people. (Mt 6:5) And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting maybe seen by people. (Mt 6:16) Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. (Mt 23:23) Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, saying, "If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets." (Mt 23:29-30) You leave the commandment of God, and hold fast the tradition of people. (Mk 7:8) Admittedly, all of this criticism could have been uttered by a Cynic. But this represents only one aspect of Jesus' teaching. Jesus criticized some of his critics, but he was not crude, nor did he suggest that religious faith was pointless. Herein lies a telling difference between the worldview of Jesus and that of Cynics. Whereas the latter railed against religion because the gods, they thought, were indifferent, Jesus urged his followers to believe in God, because he does take notice and cares deeply Indeed, some of Jesus' statements we have looked at go on to assure that "your Father who sees in secret will reward you" (Mt 6:6, 18). Accordingly, Jesus urges his disciples to pray, "for your Father knows what you need before you ask him" (Mt 6:8). This is not the teaching of the Cynics. Furthermore, Jesus proclaimed God's rule and urged his disciples to look to God for deliverance. Jesus longed for the redemption of his people and believed deeply that the God of Israel would fulfill the prophecies and promises of old. These hopes and beliefs are not consistent with Cynic ideology. JEWISH CUSTOMS AND SENSITIVITIES Life in the Greco-Roman world in the time of Jesus was not easy for Jewish people who were committed to living according to Jewish law and customs. It is understandable that many, especially those living outside the land of Israel, compromised and accommodated themselves to non-Jewish customs. But many Jews did not. For Jews who wished to maintain their ethnic and religious identity, it was important to observe laws and customs pertaining to food, to the sabbath and other holy days, and to aspects concerning personal purity This meant avoiding pork and other meat not properly prepared, refraining from work on the sabbath, and avoiding activities and places that were morally and ritually suspect. Devout Jews avoided public baths, brothels, arenas, pagan shrines and temples, and the prostitutes that sometimes were part of these facilities. Jewish cities typically did not construct such buildings and did not permit such activities. Of course, the smaller the percentage of the Jewish population and the less the Jewish influence, the more likely some or all of these buildings would be present in a given city. In the land of Israel itself these sensitivities were even greater. Not only would Jewish cities and villages not accommodate these buildings and activities, there were attempts to avoid or at least limit the trappings of paganism, including the circulation of coins with images of Caesar and legends describing Caesar as "god" or "son of god," and the placement of statues and idols of GrecoRoman deities. Not only did devout Jews wish to avoid personal impurity, they were concerned with the purity of the land itself. The presence of such pagan items would defile the land. Of course, within the land of Israel and just east of the Jordan River there were several non-Jewish cities (such as Gerasa and Scythopolis, part of an area called the Decapolis), where Jewish customs were not observed. Thus, I remain completely unpersuaded by the Cynic thesis. And I am not alone; most scholars concerned with the historical Jesus also find the thesis unlikely9 This should not be surprising, given the evidence I have cited. So why do some scholars compare Jesus with the Cynics? Good question. THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE Comparison with Cynic thought was encouraged in part by a number of parallels, most of which are general and reflect the wisdom and social criticism of the eastern Mediterranean world of late antiquitylo But a major impetus for the exploration of the Cynic model came, I believe, from archaeological discoveries in the 1970s and 1980s. Boiled down, these discoveries comprise two things: First, archaeology shows how widespread the Greek language was in the time and place of Jesus. Second, it shows how urbanized, in Greco-Roman fashion, some parts of Galilee were in the time of Jesus. As it turns out, Galilee was far more integrated into the larger Roman Empire than at one time imagined. Galilee, Samaria and Judea were no backwater. From these two discoveries some scholars infer the presence of GrecoRoman philosophy in Galilee. The logic goes something like this: Where there were Greco-Romanstyle urban centers, and where Greek was spoken, it follows that there were Greco-Roman philosophers and philosophies. And that means, of course, the presence of Cynics. And then, when Sepphoris, some four miles north of Nazareth, was excavated and found to have possessed a paved main street and several large buildings in Greco-Roman style, it was further concluded that Cynics must have been present in this city as well. And if Cynics were present in Sepphoris, then surely Jewish youths-like Jesus-living in nearby villages like Nazareth would have come under the influence of these itinerant philosophers. This all seems to make sense, doesn't it? But is something missing? Alas, I am afraid it isthe rest of the evidence. Why shouldn't we think Cynics were wandering about Sepphoris? The impressive discoveries in Galilee in general and in Sepphoris in particular have forced New Testament interpreters to reevaluate several things. For one, it is no longer tenable to think of Jesus as having grown up in rustic isolation-as was fashionable to think for so long. Jesus grew up in a village within reasonable walking distance from a large urban center, part of which was perched atop a hill and would have been visible to the inhabitants of Nazareth. "A city set on a hill cannot be hid," as Jesus himself once said (Mt 5:14). Furthermore, the great number of Greek inscriptions as well as Greek literary finds in the Dead Sea region has led many scholars to conclude that Greek was spoken by many Jews living in Galilee. This does not mean that Greek was their first language; Aramaic was. But it does mean that Greek was spoken in the time and place of Jesus. (And a few scholars think that Jesus himself spoke some Greek.) But the fact that many Jewish Galileans spoke Greek and that there were urban centers in Galilee, such as Sepphoris near Nazareth and Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee just a few miles southwest of Capernaum, does not mean that the Jewish people were soft on their historic faith and ready to absorb Greek philosophy, whether Cynicism or something else. Recent Jewish history suggests just the opposite. We should remember that a century and a half before Jesus was born, the Jewish people, led by the Hasmonean family (that is, Judas Maccabeus and his brothers), fought a bitter war against Antiochus IV and the Greeks in order to preserve Jewish faith and life. Galilean Jews in the time of Jesus were no doubt influenced by Greek thought and customs to some extent, but not to the extent of embracing ideologies that seriously conflicted with Jewish faith. And this is just what the archaeological evidence shows. So how Greek was Sepphoris, the city near the village of Nazareth, in the time of Jesus? This is an important question. Much of the archaeological work in the 1970s and 1980s revealed the extent of building. Besides paved, colonnaded streets and large buildings, a public theater was also excavated. Although it is disputed, it is likely that the first phase of the theater was built in the 20s and later expansion and renovation took place later in the century. But it was the further archaeological work in the 1990s, which included the discovery of the city dump, that led to the conclusion that Sepphoris was a thoroughly Jewish city in the days of Jesus. Archaeologists are usually able to date the various layers of ancient cities. We might think of an ancient city as a layered cake. The top layer is the most recent; the bottom layer is the most ancient. Therefore, the deeper archaeologists dig, the older the material they find. Archaeologists and scholars usually assume that most things that existed prior to A.D. 70 probably have relevance for understanding the world of Jesus, while most things that came into existence after A.D. 70 probably do not have relevance. Accordingly, it is important to date the remains of Sepphoris that existed prior to A.D. 70 before we draw conclusions about what this city may tell us about Jesus and his world. THE JEWISH STRUGGLE TO PRESERVE THE FAITH For a variety of reasons, Antiochus IV, the Greek ruler of the empire that controlled Israel in the second century B.C., tried to outlaw the Jewish religion. He forbade circumcision, possession and production of copies of the law of Moses, and insisted that Jews eat pork and honor the Greek gods. Antiochus even called himself "Epiphanes," which implied that he was a physical manifestation of a god. Jews who resisted the decree of Antiochus suffered grievously One of the books of the Old Testament Apocrypha-2 Maccabees-provides a graphic account of the torture inflicted on Eleazar, a devout Jewish elder, and on a Jewish mother and her seven sons. Eleazar, one of the scribes in high position, a man now advanced in age and of noble presence, was being forced to open his mouth to eat swine's flesh. But he, welcoming death with honor rather than life with pollution, went up to the rack of his own accord, spitting out the flesh, as men ought to go who have the courage to refuse things that it is not right to taste, even for the natural love of life. (2 Macc 6: 18- 20) It happened also that seven brothers and their mother were arrested and were being compelled by the king, under torture with whips and cords, to partake of unlawful swine's flesh. One of them, acting as their spokesman, said, "What do you intend to ask and learn from us? For we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our fathers." (2 Macc 7:1-2) In the time of Jesus and his disciples, these people, sometimes referred to as the Maccabean martyrs, were regarded as heroes of the faith. They set the example that all devout Jews should be willing to follow. Archaeologists of the land of Israel usually can find the A.D. 70 layer in the excavation cake because of the devastation that resulted in the Jewish revolt from Rome (A.D. 66-70). Many cities and villages were badly damaged if not destroyed altogether. Damaged and destroyed buildings often became the fill and foundations on which the new structures were built. Archaeologists of Sepphoris have found the A.D. 70 layer and the city dump. The dump is a great find because garbage reveals a lot about the people who lived at that time, especially when we are interested in knowing whether Jews lived in the city and whether they lived according to Jewish laws and customs. What archaeologists discovered is revealing. Among the animal remains that date before A.D. 70 archaeologists have found virtually no pig bones, which is hard to explain if we are to imagine the presence of a significant non-Jewish population in Sepphoris." In stark contrast to this finding, after A.D. 70 (that is, after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman army and the beginning of rebuilding throughout Israel) and after a sizeable growth in the non-Jewish population, pig bones come to represent 30 percent of the animal remains. This suggests that prior to the Jewish revolt, the population of Sepphoris was Jewish and observed the Jewish laws and customs. It was only after the revolt that support for Jewish law began to erode. This means that in the time of Jesus (a generation or more before the revolt), there was little and possibly no non-Jewish presence in Sepphoris. And this means there were no Cynics either. But there is more evidence that supports this conclusion. Over one hundred fragments of stone vessels have been unearthed thus far, dating from before A.D. 70, again pointing to a Jewish population at Sepphoris concerned with ritual purity (that is because stone vessels-unlike ceramic vessels-cannot easily be made unclean [see Jn 2:61). Non Jews usually did not bother with expensive, heavy and hard to move stone vessels. For non Jews ceramic vessels for drinking and cooking were quite acceptable. The large number of stone vessels found at Sepphoris is consistent with the absence of pork bones. That is, the people who lived in Sepphoris prior to A.D. 70 were Jewish and observed Jewish laws and customs. Consistent with concern over personal purity is the presence in Sepphoris of many rikvoth, or ritual bathing pools. Furthermore, a Hebrew pottery fragment and several lamp fragments bearing the image of the menorah (the seven-branched candelabra) have also been found, dating from the early period. But there is still more. Coins minted at Sepphoris during the pre-A.D. 70 period do not depict the image of the Roman emperor or pagan deities (as was commonly found on the coins of this time). In contrast, in the second century A.D. (long after the Jewish revolt had ended and the population had begun to change) coins were minted at Sepphoris bearing the images of the emperors Trajan (A.D. 98-117) and Antoninus Pius (A.D. 138-161), and the deities Tyche and the Capitoline triad. Indeed, in the reign of Antoninus Pius the city adopted the name Diocaesarea, in honor of Zeus (Dio) and the Roman emperor (Caesar). THE CONTRAST IN THE FINDINGS AT SEPPHORIS Before A.D. 70 What was found immersion pools (mikvoth) menorah fragments of stone vessels What was not found pig bones coins with image of Caesar pagan idols and images pagan buildings (for example, odeum, nymphaeum, gymnasium, shrines) After A.D. 70 What was found pig bones coins with image of Caesar pagan idols and images mosaics with pagan themes What has not been found in pre-A.D. 70 Sepphoris is just as important as what has been found. Excavations have not uncovered any structures typically present in a Greco-Roman city (such as pagan temples, gymnasium, odeum, nymphaeum or shrines and statues, all of which were offensive to Jewish sensibilities). One way of looking at it is that devout Jews were not advocates of multiculturalism. It is only in the post-A.D. 70 period that pagan art and architecture begin to make their appearance (such as the beautiful mosaic, found in a mansion, depicting pagan themes). All this evidence leads to the firm conclusion that Sepphoris in Jesus' day was a thoroughly Jewish city 12 There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to think there may have been Cynics loitering in the streets of Sepphoris, on the lookout for Jewish youths from nearby Nazareth village. Commitment to the Jewish laws and customs is seen throughout Galilee ; it is not limited to Sepphoris. Throughout Galilee the distribution of Jewish and non-Jewish pottery supports this conclusion. Whereas non Jews purchased Jewish pottery, the Jews of Galilee did not purchase and make use of pottery manufactured by non Jews. This is because non Jews had no purity issues in the use of ceramic and pottery; they were happy to buy ceramic from any source Jewish or non-Jewish. But not so in the case of Jews. From the Jewish perspective, ceramic was susceptible to impurity. Jews therefore pur chased pottery only from Jews, never from non Jews. Accordingly, Jewish pottery that dates prior to A.D. 70 is found in Jewish and non-Jewish sectors in and around Galilee, while non-Jewish pottery is found only in the non-Jewish sectors. These patterns of distribution strongly suggest that the Jewish people of Galilee were scrupulous in their observance of Jewish purity laws. WERE THERE CYNICS IN GALILEE IN THE TIME OF JESUS? There is no evidence, neither literary nor archaeological, of the presence of a single Cynic in Galilee in the time of Jesus. There was one man, born in Galilee, who after leaving Galilee later embraced Cynicism, but he was not a Cynic when he lived in Galilee. So even this person does not count as a Cynic resident in Galilee in the time of Jesus. Cynicism flourished in an earlier period and, so far as we know, was never an influential presence in Israel. We have few sources that go back to actual Cynics. What we mostly have are secondhand, idealized portraits of Cynic teaching and behavior. These portraits have been handed down, for the most part, by later Stoics, such as Epictetus. These Stoics admired aspects of Cynic teaching, though they were unwilling to embrace its coarse, difficult lifestyle. Because most of our information about the Cynics comes from these second - and thirdhand idealized portraits, we really are not in a position to make careful, precise comparison with the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. Regrettably, some scholars pick and choose from among alleged parallels (which in many cases probably reflect Stoic thought, not Cynic thought), exaggerating the similarities and ignoring the profound differences. Furthermore, the actions of the Jewish people in this region also do not bear out the Cynic or Hellenistic interpretation. The revolts that took place after the death of Herod the Great (4 B.C.), the removal of Archelaus and the Roman census (A.D. 6), and the riot in Jerusalem that instigated the great revolt (A.D. 66-70) point to deep-seated Jewish resentment of the pagan presence in Israel as a whole, but also including Galilee.13 Some of the prominent leaders in these various Jewish rebellions were from Galilee. Thus the evidencearchaeological, literary and historical-shows that despite a GrecoRoman presence in places, Galilean Jews consciously and at times violently attempted to maintain their religious identity and boundaries. Moreover, there is also no archaeological or literary evidence of a Cynic presence in Galilee in the early part of the first century A.D.No evidence whatsoever. The actions undertaken by certain Jewish figures indicate the degree of commitment to Israel's biblical heritage and future redemption. This is seen in the activity of John the Baptist (c.A.D. 28), who urged fellow Jews to be baptized "in the Jordan" river (Mk 1:2-8). This action as well as reference to "these stones" (Mt3:9;Lk3:8) may have been part of a Joshua theme that envisioned a reconquest of the Promised Land (see Josh 4:3, 20-21). Similarly, we later hear of Theudas (c.A.D. 45), who summoned the poor to take up their possessions and join him at the Jordan, whose waters would be divided at the command of the prophet (Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 20. 97-98 ; Acts 5 :36), and the unnamed Jewish man from Egypt who summoned the faithful to the Mount of Olives that they may might watch the walls of Jerusalem collapse (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 20.169-70;Acts21:38). Writings produced after the Romans gained control of Palestine, such as the intertestamental work Psalms of Solomon (esp. chaps. 17-18), longed for the expulsion of Gentiles from the land of Israel and for the purification of the land. These biblical ideas and patterns, accompanied by calls for renewal, testify to the strong desire on the part of many Jews to cleanse and restore their sacred land. It was within this thoroughly Jewish environment that Jesus developed and later conducted his ministry Given the evidence that Galilee in Jesus' time was populated with a Jewish people committed to their biblical heritage, and given the complete absence of evidence of any kind of Cynic presence in nearby Sepphoris or anywhere else in Galilee for that matter, the idea that Jesus was an itinerant Cynic is ludicrous. Jesus' teaching was much more like that of the rabbis and the Qumran community JESUS AND THE LAW OF MOSES Jesus' respect for the law of Moses is seen in his summary of the greatest commandment (Dent 6:4-5) and the one like it (Lev 19:18): Jesus answered, "The first is, `Hear, 0 Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." (Mk 12:29- 31) Jesus justifies his views of the sabbath by appeal to "what David did" (Mk 2:23-28; see 1 Sam 21:1-6). His pronouncement, "The sabbath was made for humans, not humans for the sabbath" (Mk 2:27), finds a close parallel in early rabbinic interpretation: "And you shall keep the Sabbath, for it is holy to you" [Ex 31:14]: This means: to you the Sabbath is given over; you are not given over to the Sabbath." (Mehilta on Ex 31:12-17 [Shabbat 1])14 Jesus also held to a high view of the temple and the altar. He teaches his disciples: So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. (Mt 5:23-24) Jesus' teaching here is completely in step with the perspective of Israel's great prophets (for example, Jet 7:21- 26; Hos 6:6; Amos 5:21-24; Mic 6:6- 8). His older Jewish contemporary Philo also said something similar: "For, if the worshipper is without kindly feeling or justice, the sacrifices are no sacrifices, the consecrated oblation is desecrated... But, if he is pure of heart and just, the sacrifice stands firm." (On the Life of Moses 2.107-108). The second-century B.C.Jewish sage Yeshua ben Sira gave similar advice: "Do not offer [God] a bribe, for he will not accept it; and do not trust to an unrighteous sacrifice; for the Lord is the judge, and with him is no partiality" (Sirach 35:12). What we see here is that at crucial junctures Jesus' teaching presupposes the validity of the law of Moses and in fact agrees with the best opinions on the law offered by Jewish teachers. Jesus values the law, appeals to Scripture to support his views and has high regard for the temple itself, which is why he severely criticizes the ruling priests (Mk 11: 15-18). Just as impressive are the meaningful parallels with the Dead Sea Scrolls, whose collectors and authors were the Essenes, a group that zealously contended for Jewish faith and life. Jesus' strict view on marriage and divorce closely parallels the views of the Essenes. His appeal to words and phrases from Isaiah in his reply to the imprisoned and questioning John the Baptist (Mt 11:2-6;Lk7:18-23) parallels in a remarkable way a messianic scroll from Qumran (that is, 4Q521). Jesus' string of beatitudes finds a formal parallel in one of the scrolls (that is, 4Q525). Jesus' use of Isaiah's song of the vineyard (Is 5:1-7) in his parable of the wicked vineyard tenants (Mk 12:1- 12) coheres with yet another scroll (that is, 4Q500). Indeed, some of the teaching that Jesus opposed is attested in the scrolls (for example, the belief that the condition of the poor, lame and sick is due to sin or is a sign of divine judgment, or that sinners are to be shunned). We also may have grim allusions to the Maccabean martyrs, who gave their lives for the faith of Israel. In warning his disciples to avoid giving offense and causing brothers and sisters to stumble, Jesus paints gruesome examples: And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell. (Mk 9:43-47) Commentators suspect that Jesus has alluded to the frightful injuries inflicted on the Maccabean martyrs, who refused to eat pork and violate the law of Moses (for example, the officer of the king "commanded that the tongue of their spokesman be cut out and that they scalp him and cut off his hands and feet" [2 Maccabees 7:41 ; "even if you gouge out my eyes" [4 Maccabees 5:301). Jesus' charge to his disciples that for one to be his disciple he or she must "take up his cross" (Mk 8:34) represents Jesus' own version of the frightful consequences the faithful will face, updated in the light of Roman practices in his time. Thus the evidence is impressive, even overwhelming, that Jesus was at home in a Jewish world that took seriously the teaching and stories of Scripture (what we usually call the Old Testament). There is nothing that compels us to view the teaching of Jesus in Cynic terms. There was no Cynic presence in Galilee in the early first century A.D.Jesus grew up in Nazareth, a village in which there was a small synagogue. It was in the context of the synagogue of Nazareth and in the context of his family and the elders of the village that Jesus' understanding of life and faith was nurtured, not in the context of an imagined Cynic teacher in nearby Sepphoris. Getting the context right is vitally important for understanding Jesus. Putting him in the wrong context will inevitably lead to a distorted portrait. Some scholars, however, prefer no context at all. We turn to this problem in chapter six.
Chapter 6.
Maxims Without a Context
Another odd procedure of some scholars-and again, it is
necessary to mention prominent members of the Jesus
Seminar-is the tendency to take the sayings of Jesus out of
the narrative contexts supplied by the New Testament Gospel
writers. The contexts found in the Gospels themselves, we
are told, reflect early Christian beliefs and interests, not the
actual contexts of the historical Jesus. What does this mean?
In assessing the question of authenticity (that is, did Jesus
really say this, or did someone else?), scholars often
distinguish the words of the pre-Easter Jesus from sayings
and teachings that arose among his followers after Easter.
Accordingly, scholars speak of sayings of Jesus, on the one
hand, and of Christian sayings or formulations, on the other.
(And here scholars usually speak of Christians as existing
only after Easter and Pentecost, not before.)
Some scholars assume that if there is continuity between
something attributed to Jesus and what the early church
came to believe and emphasize, then Jesus' saying may not
have originated with him but with the early church. Lying
behind this thinking is the so-called criterion of dissimilarity.
This kind of thinking often lies behind the tendency to strip
sayings of their narrative frameworks and contexts in the
New Testament Gospels. In chapter two I challenged the
misuse of the criterion of dissimilarity. In this chapter I will
challenge one of its unfortunate results-the tendency to
discount the historical and interpretive contexts of the
sayings of Jesus as found in the New Testament Gospels.
THE GENERAL PROBLEM
The problem with this approach is that Jesus becomes, as it
were, a talking head-a "laconic sage" who uses terse, almost
unfeeling language. Jesus begins to sound like a philosopher
whose utterances are truisms and maxims. We are told that
the contexts of Jesus' sayings supplied by the Evangelists are
artificial, secondary and misleading. We really don't know
what the original contexts were. At best, so goes the
argument, we can only make educated guesses.
And skeptical scholars are quick to make educated
guesses. Although almost two millennia removed, these
scholars somehow think they are able to locate the original,
non-Gospel contexts, and sometimes they just happen to be
different from the contexts of the Gospels-and
accommodating to the portrait of Jesus these scholars
present to the public.' The net result is that Jesus' sayings
lose what ancient context they have and become, in effect,
skeletal sayings, sayings on which scholars may hang any
likeness of Jesus they wish to fabricate. Without a context the
free-floating sayings can mean virtually anything the
interpreter wants to make of them.2
It must be acknowledged that many, if not most, of the
sayings attributed to Jesus in the New Testament Gospels are
without a specific context; that is, we are not told precisely
where Jesus was or at what stage in his ministry something
was said or done. Some sayings, moreover, appear in more
than one context. For example, the parable of the lost sheep
appears in Matthew 18: 12-14 and Luke 15:3-7. The
respective versions of the parable are not identical, and the
respective contexts are not identical. But the forms and
contexts are not all that different either. In the context of
Matthew the parable clarifies Jesus' teaching on the
importance of every individual, even those that go astray In
the context of Luke the parable teaches essentially the same
thing. Only in Luke the parable is directed to scribes and
Pharisees, while in Matthew the parable is directed to the
twelve disciples. But the point in both Gospels is basically
the same: God desires the recovery of the lost.
Diversity of context is seen in the respective Gospel
locations of the Lord's Prayer (Mt 6:9-13; Lk 11:2-4). In
Matthew the prayer appears in the middle of the Sermon on
the Mount (Mt 5-7), whereas in Luke the prayer does not
appear in the Sermon (Lk 6:20-49) but near the beginning of
Luke's central section (Lk 10-18). The content of the prayer is
not identical either, with a somewhat fuller form found in
Matthew. Yet, in both forms and contexts, the prayer is for the
disciples and teaches the same truths about God and his will.
Luke's central section itself is quite instructive. When we
follow this section passage by passage, from chapter 10 to
chapter 18, we notice that events parallel with Matthew
(which are numerous) and events parallel with Mark (which
are rare) occur in a different order within the narrative. What
this illustrates is that the Evangelists Matthew and Luke (and
probably Mark too) placed in context and in sequence the
stories and teachings of Jesus that they inherited. But this
fact does not mean that they did this contextualizing in false
and misleading ways. I am inclined to think that those whom
Jesus taught, who in turn taught others, had a better sense of
the original context and meaning of Jesus' sayings than
many scholars do today. Even if many sayings lack specific
contexts, all sayings are found in a general context and
within the flow of the narrative. And again, this is an
important dimension that some scholars do not seem to
appreciate sufficiently
In his important and influential book on the historical Jesus,
E. P Sanders rightly criticized scholars for focusing on the
sayings of Jesus with little regard for the basic facts and the
results of his life and ministry. Sanders begins his book by
identifying the "almost indisputable facts" as follows:
1.Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.
2.Jesus was a Galilean who preached and healed.
3.Jesus called disciples and spoke of there being twelve.
4.Jesus confined his activity to Israel.
5.Jesus engaged in a controversy about the temple.
6.Jesus was crucified outside Jerusalem by the Roman
authorities.
7.After his death Jesus' followers continued as an
identifiable movement.
8.At least some Jews persecuted at least parts of the new
movement (Gal 1:13, 23; Phil 3:6), and it appears that
this persecution endured at least to a time near the end
of Paul's career (2 Cor 11:24; Gal 5:11; 6:12; see Mt
23:34; 10:17).3
To these facts we could add a few more details to round out
the picture. I think that it is highly likely that Jesus was
viewed by the public as a prophet (Mk 6:4; Lk 7:16, 39), that
he spoke often of the kingdom of God (Mk 1:15; Lk 6:20),
that his temple controversy involved criticism of the ruling
priests (Mk 11:15-12:12), and that the Romans crucified him
as "king of the Jews" (Mk 15:26).
We find that many of the sayings of Jesus cohere with these
historical elements, oftentimes either explaining them or
being explained by them. These facts provide a general-but
important-context, in the light of which Jesus' teachings
should be interpreted. Jesus doesn't only talk; he acts and
things happen. Sayings interpreted without reference to
these important contextualizing facts may be misinterpreted.
Indeed, some of the strange interpretations that a few
scholars impose on the sayings require that these facts and
the Gospel contexts be ignored.
Not only do some scholars cut the sayings of Jesus out of
their Gospel contexts, some contend that the sayings have
not been accurately remembered. This idea sometimes grows
out of the questionable assumption that what eventually is
written down in the Gospels is at great variance with what
Jesus taught and what was then passed on orally from
disciple to disciple and groups of believers to groups of
believers before finally being committed to writing, rather
like in a modern game of "Telephone."
But where is the evidence for this? Other researchers in the
history of Jewish teaching and learning in the time of Jesus
have come to the opposite conclusion. Birger Gerhardsson, a
distinguished Swedish scholar of Jesus and the Gospels, has
shown how early rabbinic teachers expected their students to
memorize and pass on faithfully what is taught. He has
concluded that this applies to Jesus and his disciples: Jesus
taught his disciples, and his disciples taught those who came
after them. What was taught could be adapted, even
expanded, but not distorted. Accordingly, Gerhardsson
believes that there is significant continuity between the
original, oral teaching of Jesus and the later, written Gospels.
Shemaryahu Talmon, a scholar of Jewish antiquity, has
reached the same conclusion with regard to the founding
teacher of the Qumran sect and the later written records of
his teachings (that is, the Dead Sea Scrolls). Talmon has
found that the "Qumran evidence does not support the
contention of contemporary [New Testament] theorists of
orality that the spoken and the written word are
`contradictory and mutually exclusive."" Talmon's findings
are consistent with what is known of Jewish teachers and
teaching methods.
A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE
But some sayings do have specific contexts, and these
contexts are important for understanding the meaning of the
sayings. Perhaps the classic example is the parable of the
wicked vineyard tenants. Some scholars simply refuse to take
this parable in its Gospel context. They love to pare it down,
put it into different, hypothetical contexts, and then guess at
what the original meaning might have been. The wildly
divergent interpretations are almost comical.
The parable of the wicked vineyard tenants is important
because it speaks of a son who is rejected and murdered.
Was Jesus speaking of himself? And if so, what does this
imply about Jesus' self-understanding? Was he implying that
he is the son of the vineyard owner, that is, the Son of God?
Accordingly, this parable potentially makes a maj or
contribution to Christology
If the parable is taken in its Gospel context, then these
questions will be answered affirmatively. Yes, Jesus did imply
that he is the son of the vineyard owner, rejected and
murdered by the tenant farmers. Given the symbolism of the
parable-that Israel is the vineyard, God is the owner of the
vineyard, and the ruling priests are the tenant farmers who
refuse to comply with the owner's will Jesus has implied that
he is not simply one more messenger sent by God to Israel,
but he is God's Son, whom Israel's religious leaders intend to
kill.
Let's examine this parable and then review the various
proposals some scholars have made, trying to interpret the
parable without reference to its Gospel context. We will see
that these attempts are as unsuccessful as they are
unnecessary. In contrast, the weight of the evidence strongly
supports interpreting the parable in the context that the New
Testament Gospels have given it.
The parable of the wicked vineyard tenants reads as
follows:
'And he began to speak to them in parables: "A man
planted a vineyard; and he put a fence around it, and
hewed out a winepress, and built a tower [Is 5:1-2], and
leased it out to tenant farmers, and de parted. 'And he
sent to the tenant farmers in due course a servant, that
he might receive from the farmers a portion of the fruit of
the vineyard. 'But taking him, they beat him and sent
him away emptyhanded. 'And again he sent to them
another servant; but they struck that one on the head,
and treated him dishonorably. 'So he sent another; and
they killed that one, and many others, beating some and
killing others. 'He had yet one, a beloved son. He sent
him last to them, thinking, `They will respect my son.'
7But those tenants said to themselves, `This is the heir;
come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be
ours."And taking him they killed him, and cast him out of
the vineyard. 'What [therefore] will the owner of the
vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants, and
give the vineyard to others. 10Have you not even read
this scripture:
"And they were seeking to arrest him, but they feared the
crowd, for they knew that he had spoken the parable to
them. And leaving him, they departed. (Mk 12:1-12, my
translation)
For those scholars who reject the Gospel context, the
concluding quotation of Psalm 118:22-23 and the opening
words and phrases taken from Isaiah 5:1-2, the original
meaning of the parable of the wicked vineyard tenants
proves elusive. The range of suggestions made by these
scholars is amazing.
I begin with the suggestions offered by Charles Carlston's
learned treatment of the parables in Matthew, Mark and
Luke. Carlston doubts that the parable of the wicked
vineyard tenants actually derives from Jesus himself, and he
does not believe that the context of the parable in Mark is
true to the original intent and meaning of the parable
(whoever crafted it). Having rejected the parable's
authenticity and having rejected the context it has in the
New Testament Gospels, Carlston is not sure what the parable
originally meant. He makes three suggestions.5 All of them
are little more than guesses.
His first suggested interpretation is: "It could mean that
God will turn from the Jews who killed his Son and heir... to
others who are more worthy of God's vineyard, i.e., to those
who believe the gospel." But does this interpretation work? If
this is the meaning of the parable, then what would the
parable's "vineyard" mean to the early church? Is it the
people of Israel? Is it the land of Israel? Our scholar speaks of
God turning away "from the Jews who killed his Son and heir."
But the Jews (or Israel) themselves constitute the "vineyard."
So how can God turn away from the Jews and then give the
Jews to others who are more worthy? If we interpret the
parable in its Gospel context, this question is easily
answered. Those who murder the son are the caretakers of
the vineyard. That is, the religious leaders of Israel are the
villains. God will take the vineyard (Israel) away from them
and give it to others (such as Jesus' disciples and the
righteous of Israel).
Let's look at Carlston's second suggested interpretation:
"The parable could also imply that Jesus foresaw God's
turning from the Jews to the Gentiles." But this interpretation
has problems too. How did the Gentiles (that is, non-Jewish
peoples) get into the picture? The wicked tenants will be
destroyed and the vineyard will be given to other tenants,
that is, to other Jewish religious leaders. Again, the best
explanation of the parable emerges from its Gospel context.
Jesus threatens the aristocratic priests. They are in danger of
being removed and replaced with other (Jewish) religious
leaders who will care for the vineyard (Israel) the way they
should.
Here is Carlston's third suggested interpretation: "Finally,
the parable could be understood to reflect a regular principle
in the divine economy: just as God has turned from the Jews
to the Gentiles, so he will always turn from those who do not
produce `fruit' to those who do." This third proposal is only
slightly more convincing than the first two. The second half
of the interpretation is correct: God will turn away from those
who do not produce "fruit." According to the New Testament
Gospel context of the parable, God turns away from the
"builders," that is from the Jewish religious authorities. In
their place he will appoint "other" (Jewish religious)
authorities to care for the vineyard. But the first part of the
third interpretation suffers the same fate as the first two
interpretations. God has not turned away from the vineyard,
but from those who care for it.
A major problem with all three suggested interpretations is
in the assumption that while early Christians were skillful in
creating the parable, they were clumsy in making its
meaning clear. If the early church was skilled enough in
understanding Scripture to choose the appropriate prophetic
testimony (that is, Is 5:1-7) to identify the "vineyard," and to
create an allegory that sums up the history of God's saving
work in Israel's history-a history that involves Israel's habit of
rejecting the prophets and finally rejecting God's Son-then is
it plausible to think the early church forgot what the
vineyard stood for? One cannot have it both ways. It really is
not plausible that early Christians invented a parable that
attempts to clarify the church's place in God's divine plan (as
though to suggest that because of persistent rejection of the
prophets and God's Son, God has rejected Israel), but then
misrepresent the parable in such a way that it seems to be
talking about who cares for the vineyard.
All attempts to interpret the parable as a creation not of
Jesus but of the church suffer shipwreck on the rock of the
parable's basic story line: the focus is not on the identity of
the vineyard-it is Israel, and that is presupposed and remains
constant-the focus is on the conflict between those who care
for the vineyard and the owner of the vineyard, whom the
tenant farmers do not respect and will not obey. This is the
only plausible interpretation of the parable, and it is the
meaning that is consistent with its context in the New
Testament Gospels.
Fortunately, most interpreters today accept the parable as
authentic. But some of them still reject the context given the
parable in the New Testament Gospels, including the
allusions to Isaiah 5: 1-7 and the concluding quotation of
Psalm 118:22-23. But these interpreters run into the same
interpretive difficulties that plague Carlston's interpretive
proposals. Let's briefly survey some of these attempts.
Bernard Brandon Scott opines, "Since the parable provides
no ready identification models, no clear metaphorical
referencing, an audience is left in a precarious position: In
the plot the kingdom fails and the inheritance is in doubt."6
This proposal is extraordinary, for it contradicts both context
and content. Scott says there are "no ready identification
models." But of course there are: the biblical tradition in
general (that is, the history of Israel's suf fering prophets, of
Israel's stubborn sinfulness, etc.) and the allusions to Isaiah
5: 1-7 in particular (where God is the vineyard's owner and
the vineyard is Israel). Scott believes the parable leaves the
hearer in a precarious position because the "kingdom fails
and the inheritance is in doubt." There is no doubt
whatsoever about the kingdom and the inheritance if the
quotation of Psalm 118:22-23 ("The stone that the builders
rejected...") is allowed to stand as a scriptural quotation; it is
an intrinsic part of the meaning of the parable.
Still other interpreters have expressed misgivings about
the parable's context in the New Testament Gospels. In a
commentary focused on social issues in the time of Jesus,
Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh wonder if the parable
originally had been "a warning to landowners expropriating
and exporting the produce of the land."' What such a parable
could possibly have meant in the context of Jesus' ministry is
not clear, nor do these interpreters venture an opinion. Such
an interpretation clarifies nothing.
Robert Funk and Roy Hoover, editors of the Jesus Seminar's
The Five Gospels, the color-coded translation and
commentary on the Gospels, think the parable of the wicked
vineyard tenants is preserved in an earlier, more reliable
form and context in the Gospel of Thomas. Accordingly, they
think `Jesus' version was a disturbing and tragic tale, but it
was told without specific application."8 Really? "Without
specific application"? On the contrary, the application is
quite clear when the parable is read in its New Testament
Gospel context. The parable loses its application only when it
is removed from its context in the New Testament Gospels.
Besides, the Gospel of Thonlas was probably not composed
prior to A.D. 175. It is unlikely to have an early, more original
form of the parable. The Jesus Seminar's interpretation is a
sorry case of special pleading.
The Jesus Seminar's recommendation also bears the stamp
of John Dominic Crossan's earlier work. Crossan tells us that
the parable "is a deliberately shocking story of successful
murder."9 But to what end? Crossan isn't sure. In other
studies he offers other interpretations. Having taken the
parable of the wicked vineyard tenants out of its New
Testament Gospel context, Crossan, the Jesus Seminar and
other interpreters really have no idea what the parable
originally meant.
Despite seemingly tireless and ultimately fruitless efforts to
find significant meaning in the parable of the wicked
vineyard tenants, shorn of its New Testament Gospel context
or when authenticity is denied, all that is left is banality.
Either we have a clumsy attempt at Christian salvation
history, or we have a warning against exporting the land's
produce, or a tragedy, or maybe even a shocking story of
successful murder. These decontextualized approaches leave
us with a parable that there is no real reason to tell or to
preserve.
We are better off by far to take more seriously the earliest
context we have-that found in the New Testament Gospelsthan the doubtful contexts found in later sources or in the
imaginations and speculations of modern scholars.
There is one other feature mentioned earlier but not
pursued in detail. This has to do with the question of whether
Jesus really created the parable. Some scholars have found
the parable of the wicked vineyard tenants so extreme they
doubt its authenticity They complain of the irrational
behavior of the characters in the parable. The owner of the
vineyard seems particularly inept. Why on earth would he
repeatedly send servants? Why send his "beloved son" to
face such danger? One interpreter exclaims that the owner of
the vineyard acts throughout like a "total idiot." But it is
obvious that the behavior of the tenant farmers themselves is
hardly saner. Did they really think they could violate the
terms of the lease, commit assault and murder, and then
inherit the vineyard?
Because of these improbabilities, some think the parable is
an invention after the time of Jesus, or that Jesus (or someone
else) told a parable that originally was simpler and more
realistic, and was later embellished. What had once made a
simple, single point now has become a complicated allegory
that no longer realistically reflects living conditions in firstcentury Palestine. It reflects, instead, the Christian concept of
"the `blessed idiocy' of grace," as Carlston has put it.10 But
objections such as these fail to understand the nature of
Jewish parables, which often portray characters behaving in
absurd ways and doing things normal people would never do.
The parable of the vineyard tenants immediately calls to
mind several parables crafted by rabbis from the first
centuries of the Christian era. Some rabbinic parables
specifically liken Israel to a vineyard, sometimes actually
appealing to Isaiah's Song of the Vineyard (Is 5:1-7), the
passage of Scripture on which Jesus based his parable of the
wicked vineyard tenants. Note how one of the rabbinic
parables mixes metaphors by introducing "shepherds." Jesus
likewise appends a proof text about "builders" (that is, Ps
118:22-23), thus mixing the metaphors of farmers and
builders. Other parables speak of absentee owners of
vineyards, as does Jesus' parable. Another parable tells of an
angry king who takes vengeance on men who had violated
his vineyard, as is implied by the conclusion of Jesus'
parable.
RABBINIC PARABLES ABOUT THE VINEYARD
Absentee Owners
To what may this be compared? To one man living in
Galilee and owning a vineyard in Judea, and another man
living in Judea and owning a vineyard in Galilee.
(Midrash Tanhuma B, Qedoshin 6, attributed to Rabbi
Simeon ben Halafta)
Tended Like a Vineyard
Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai said: "Why was Israel likened to
a vineyard? In the case of a vineyard, in the beginning
one must hoe it, then weed it, and then erect supports
when he sees the clusters [forming]. Then he must return
to pluck the grapes and press them in order to extract
the wine from them. So also Israel-each and every
shepherd who oversees them must tend them [as he
would tend a vineyard]. Where [in Scripture] is Israel
called a vineyard? In the verse, `For the vineyard of the
Lord of Hosts is the House of Israel, and the seedling he
lovingly tended are the men of Judah' [Is 5:7]." (Midrash
Mishle, on Prov 19:21)
Vineyard Vandals
They were like robbers who had broken into the king's
vineyard and destroyed the vines. When the king
discovered that his vineyard had been destroyed, he was
filled with wrath, and descending upon the robbers,
without help from anything or anyone, he cut them down
and uprooted them as they had done to his vineyard.
(Exodus Rabbah 30.17 [on Ex 21:18])
Translations
"Absentee Owners." My translation
"Tended Like a Vineyard." Based on Burton L.Visotzky,
The Midrash on Proverbs, YJS 27 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1992), p. 89.
"Vineyard Vandals." Based on Simon M.Lehrman,
"Exodus," in Midrash Rabbah, ed. Harry Freedman and
Maurice Simon (New York: Soncino, 1983), 3:367.
The rabbinic parable of the unworthy tenants makes use of
the image of unruly, rebellious tenants. These unworthy
tenants steal from the vineyard and later are evicted when
the owner of the vineyard has a son. In this parable, as in the
other parables, the owner of the vineyard is God. Perhaps the
most amazing rabbinic parable-the parable of the foolish
king attributed to Yose the Galilean (second century A.D.)-
describes a remarkably foolish and incautious king who
entrusts his son to a villain. Several details of this parable
have significance for Jesus' parable, especially in view of the
questions raised about its authenticity. In Yose's parable we
have a man who appears to lack common sense. Against the
advice of friends and counselors he entrusts his son to a man
known to be a "wicked guardian." But the actions of the
guardian are just as difficult to comprehend. We are not told
that he stole anything or profited in any way by his actions.
He destroys the king's city, burns down his house and
murders his son. What could he possibly have hoped to gain?
Did he imagine that he could get away with these crimes?
Wouldn't every hearer of this parable suppose that the king
would send troops after the guardian and have him
executed?
These are the same kinds of questions critics have raised
against the logic, if not authenticity, of the parable of the
vineyard tenants in Mark 12 and parallels." How could the
owner of the vineyard be so foolish and so reckless with the
lives of his servants and especially the life of his son? What
could the tenants realistically have hoped to gain? Didn't
they know that the owner had the power to come and destroy
them? Did they really imagine that they could inherit the
vineyard?
THE PARABLE OF THE UNWORTHY TENANTS
A parable: A king had a field which he leased to tenants.
When the tenants began to steal from it, he took it away
from them and leased it to their children. When the
children began to act worse than their fathers, he took it
away from them and gave it to the grandchildren. When
these too became worse than their predecessors, a son
was born to him. He then said to the grandchildren,
"Leave my property. You may not remain in it. Give me
back my portion, so that I may repossess it." (Sipre
Deuteronomy 312 [on Deut 32:9])
Translation based on R.Hammer, Sifre: A Tannaitic
Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy, YJS 24 (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 318.
Questions such as these do not constitute valid objections
against the authenticity of parables, whether those of Jesus
or those of the rabbis. The incomprehensible folly of the king
in Yose's parable should not cast doubt on the question of its
authenticity (note too that Yose applies the parable to God's
trusting Nebuchadnezzar!). Nor should the folly of the
vineyard owner and the vineyard tenants cast doubt on the
authenticity of Jesus' parable. These parables do indeed
provoke these kinds of questions-for ancient hearers as well
as modern. But the shocking details and the questions they
raise are supposed to lead the hearers to grasp and apply the
intended lesson. Furthermore, all of the rabbinic parables
that have been mentioned are to some extent allegorical,
with the "king" or "owner" of the field or vineyard often
representing God, the field or vineyard representing either
the people or land of Israel, and tenants representing
Gentiles or other unworthy people, and the king's or owner's
"son" representing the people of Israel or the patriarchs
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the like. These are stock images,
drawn from a common Jewish treasury of words and themes.
Accordingly, the contents and plot of the parable of the
wicked vineyard tenants are true to the typical styles,
themes and formats of parables found in Judaism of late
antiquity There is nothing in Jesus' parable that requires us
to see at work the hand of later Christian allegorizers trying
to give it a new look and meaning. On the contrary, there are
elements present in this parable that tell against its origin in
the church. For example, if the early church rather than Jesus
himself was responsible for this parable, then why is there
such a concern over who possesses or governs the vineyard?
Furthermore, if an early Christian composed this parable,
then why isn't the resurrection of Jesus mentioned? The
parable ends with the murder of the vineyard owner's son
and the threat of retaliation. Even the quotation of Psalm
118:22-23 after the conclusion of the parable doesn't really
speak to resur rection. It implies that Jesus will be vindicated
(probably in the sense of becoming Israel's king) but says
nothing about resurrection specifically.
THE PARABLE OF THE FOOLISH KING
The parable, as told by Rabbi Yose the Galilean,
concerned a mortal king who had set out for a city far
across the sea. As he was about to entrust his son to the
care of a wicked guardian, his friends and servants said
to him: "My lord king, do not entrust your son to this
wicked guardian." Nevertheless the king, ignoring the
counsel of his friends and servants, entrusted his son to
the wicked guardian. What did the guardian do? He
proceeded to destroy the king's city, have his house
consumed by fire, and slay his son with the sword. After a
while the king returned. When he saw his city destroyed
and desolate, his house consumed by fire, his son slain
with the sword, he pulled out the hair of his head and his
beard and broke out into wild weeping, saying: "Woe is
me! How
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario