If this is your first time here, you ought to orient yourself by use of the Introduction, which can be found here.
Last week, following the work of Bible scholar Michael J. Kruger, we considered the "Homilies on Joshua," a writing by Origen of Alexandria, a Church Father. Within the first couple of paragraphs of the Homilies on Joshua, we found what appeared to be a complete list of the 27 books of the New Testament. We argued that this list constituted the first known reference to the New Testament canon.
It is, in fact, a matter of contention whether the 27-book list we find in Origen's Homilies was actually written by Origen, or rather was an addition by the man who originally translated Origen's works into Latin from Greek, Tyrannius Rufinus. Theologians and scholars have been suspicious of the fidelity of Rufinus' translations almost since the day they were first published. He was notorious for adding, redacting or amending material as he translated. Unfortunately, we have no older copies of much Origen's work than the Latin translations of Rufinus, so much of Origen's work is only known to us through the cloudy lens of Rufinus.
For our purposes, this is all a matter of dating. Origen might have had the 27-book list first, around 250 AD. If Rufinus was the actual source of this list, however, then we might look at Athanasius of Alexandria's "39th Festal Letter," written in 367 AD, as our source of the first 27-book list.
The majority of scholars like the 367 AD date for the original conception of the canon. Kruger argues that we can trust Rufinus in this case. Assuming Kruger is correct, and Origen composed the first familiar New Testament book list in or around 250, our next question is: "what other Christian texts were in circulation at the time?" Put another way: "What did Origen leave off of his book list?"
Today, we'll take a whirlwind tour through some, but certainly not all, of the texts that fall into this category. After that, we'll learn what beatitudes are, and read the first one.
Enjoy.
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What Did Origen Leave Out (If Rufinus Can Be Trusted)
Part I
Part I
At the time that Origen of Alexandria wrote his Homilies on Joshua, which contain perhaps the first written list of the books of our New Testament, many many Christian documents were circulating around the mediterranean for liturgical use. Collections of texts would vary from church to church, such that churches in Rome were reading from a different group of texts than churches in Antioch, which were again using different texts than the churches in Jerusalem. There was no agreed upon "New Testament canon" yet.
When the canon was set, the texts that did not become part of our New Testament would be relegated to the dustbin of "apocrypha." They did not disappear instantly, but eventually they faded deep into obscurity as canon and liturgy became universally regimented.
Sadly, Origen left us no way of knowing exactly what criteria he used to separate the canonical texts from the apocrypha. The only way to discern this in any way is to become familiar with exactly what was left out of the canon, and compare that body of work with what we know today as canon.
When the canon was set, the texts that did not become part of our New Testament would be relegated to the dustbin of "apocrypha." They did not disappear instantly, but eventually they faded deep into obscurity as canon and liturgy became universally regimented.
Sadly, Origen left us no way of knowing exactly what criteria he used to separate the canonical texts from the apocrypha. The only way to discern this in any way is to become familiar with exactly what was left out of the canon, and compare that body of work with what we know today as canon.
Modern American Christians seem to think of the New Testament as a monolithic and infinitely old thing. They see The Bible as "the word of God," as it were - as if the King James version had fallen from the sky, etched in eternal stone, signed "God." Most modern American Christians have not considered the implications of the truth that, maybe in 250, or maybe in 367, some human sat down and decided what was "canon," which became the "word" of their God.
Most American Christians haven't considered the implications of the facts that the four gospels were chosen from a longer list of gospels, that the epistles were chosen from a longer list of epistles, or that the Acts of the Apostles was selected from a much larger body of similar such works.
We've had the opportunity to look at some Old Testament Apocrypha, such as The Book of Enoch. Today, we'll familiarize ourselves with some New Testament Apocrypha. The following texts would, theoretically, have been available to Origen at the time he composed the Homilies on Joshua. We will break this into sections across multiple installments. Today, we'll cover apocryphal gospels. Let's get started, shall we?
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Gospels
The Infancy Gospel of James, written c. 145 AD
Among the texts that would have been available to Origen in Alexandria in the third century are what are known as Infancy Gospels. Infancy Gospels are stories of Jesus that extend back in time, focusing on the childhood of Jesus, or, as in this case, the childhood of Mary.
The Infancy Gospel of James is pseudepigraphically written in the name of Jesus' brother James, but scholarly dating of the writing makes this authorship impossible.
The Infancy Gospel of James concerns the miraculous birth of Mary, the mother of Jesus. According to this text, the birth was miraculous in that Anna, Mary's mother, was infertile when she became pregnant. The narrative follows Mary up to the birth of Jesus. It is unique in that few other texts concern themselves so heavily with Mary.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas contains various stories about Jesus' childhood years. The stories strike me as odd and funny. For instance, in this gospel, we see a boy Jesus using his power to murder other children. Furthermore, when the parents of one of his victims complain, he strikes them both blind. The child-Jesus presented in this ancient text does not seem to know, at first, how to reign in his potency.
Later in the narrative, Jesus seems to use his powers for better things, such as reversing his previous murders and blindings.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas shows us how pervasive the Superhero-Jesus paradigm was, even in the earliest forms of Christianity. It makes some sense that Origen did not include this bizarre accounting in his canon list.
The Gospel of Marcion, written c. 100 - 150 AD
The Gospel of Marcion is basically an alternate version of the Gospel of Luke. Most scholars think that The Gospel of Marcion was The Gospel of Luke as redacted by Marcion of Sinope during the second century. A small group of scholars think that The Gospel of Marcion predated, and was actually a source for, Luke. We will certainly find time to investigate both sides of this argument in detail at a later date. For our purposes now, The Gospel of Marcion is just another codex on Origen's bookshelf.
The Gospel of Basilides, written c. 140 AD
The Gospel of Basilides was a version of the gospel used by Basilides, a Gnostic Alexandrian who taught in the early second century. Basilides taught a docetic version of the Passion of Christ, which meant that his version of Jesus didn't suffer and die, although it was made to appear to others as though he had.
Although the text does not survive today, we know from other sources some of what Basilides wrote. He wrote that at the time of the crucifixion, Jesus supernaturally switched forms with Simon of Cyrene, so that the authorities thought they were executing Jesus, but were actually executing Simon. Apparently, according to Basilide's gospel, Jesus stood in the crowd looking like Simon and laughing at the ignorance of the authorities.
Why Jesus would stand laughing while someone got executed in his own stead is beyond my conception. I believe it was also beyond Origen's imagination, who is recorded to have known of and rejected the Gospel of Basilides.
The Gospel of Thomas, written between 50 and 250 AD, depending on who you ask
The Gospel of Thomas is the apocryphal gospel modern American Christians are most likely to have heard of.
The Gospel of Thomas is what is known as a "sayings" gospel. It is called a "sayings" gospel because it doesn't offer a narrative arc, the way the four canonical gospels do. Rather, it merely lists things Jesus said, one after another. There is a single expository sentence:
"These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down."Immediately after this, we get our first saying:
"And he said, "Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death."The Gospel of Thomas is sometimes argued to have predated Mark, the oldest canonical gospel. It was certainly composed and in circulation by the time Origen wrote his 27-book list in 250. We know for a fact that Origen knew of this text, as he mentions it multiple times in other writings.
We will spend substantial time with this text in the future.
The Gospel of Peter, written c. 100 - 150 AD
The Gospel of Peter was an early pseudepigraphical Christian writing that claimed to be written by Simon-Peter, Jesus' companion. Bible scholar Bart Ehrman dates the Gospel of Peter to the first half of the second century.
The Gospel of Peter is notable in that it fairly explicitly absolves Pontius Pilate of any wrongdoing in the Good Friday affair, and places all the blame for Jesus' death on Herod Antipas, heir to Herod the Great.
The Gospel of Peter is also notable for its treatment of the Resurrection. In The Gospel according to Peter, after Jesus' death, the scribes and Pharisees become worried that Jesus' disciples will try to steal his body and incite riots. They ask the authorities for military help in guarding the tomb of Jesus for three days to ensure against this. With a small centurion guard, the elders, scribes, Pharisees and others go out to watch the tomb. During the night, two men appear from heaven and approach the tomb. The stone that sealed the tomb rolls itself away, and the two men enter the depth.
The witnesses are amazed at this and talk amongst themselves. Suddenly, the two men appear coming out of the tomb, supporting another man. Behind them follows a cross, which moves on its own. From heaven comes a question: "“Hast thou preached to them that are sleeping?”
The answer comes not from the third human figure, Jesus, but from the cross itself. "Yea," it replies.
That's right. A self-propelled talking crucifix.
The talking cross presented in The Gospel of Peter is particularly unique to Christian literature.
The Diatessaron, written c. 160 AD
The Diatessaron is what is known as a "gospel harmony," or a work meant to harmonize multiple gospels (in this case, the canonical Matt, Mark, Luke and John) into one coherent text. Gospel harmonies have existed basically since the gospels have existed, and people have continued to produce them over the centuries.
The Diatessaron is perhaps the most well known of the ancient gospel harmonies, and was written by a man named Tatian, who was an ascetic Assyrian Christian living in the second century. Tatian's method for creating The Diatessaron seems to have been pretty simple: if he thought the material repeated itself, he cut it out. Otherwise, he left it in pretty much without regard for what it would do to the story arc. In order to fit everything together, the narrative got rearranged significantly. About 72% of the four gospels remain in the complete Diatessaron. Scholars debate whether or not Tatian did the original work in his native Syriac or in Greek, as only translations remain.
The Diatessaron, like many of these texts, will be an object of frequent study for us over the next few years.
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This list of apocryphal gospels available in 250 AD is by no means exhaustive. We know of more. It is also certain that there were gospels circulating at the time Origen was writing that do not survive. We understand, then, that there were an abundance of versions of the story of Jesus in 250 when Origen selected four for his list.
Next time, we'll learn that, just as there were other gospels, there were other "Acts of the Apostles" available to third century Alexandrians. "Acts of the Apostles" was apparently as much a genre as it was a title for any particular text. We'll see, too, that Epistles abounded in the ancient world in numbers far greater than what we now have in our canon.
For now, let's get back to our gospel reading.
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Matthew 5:1 through Matthew 5:3
1 When he saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him.
2 He began to teach them, saying:
3“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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Remember that last time, Jesus was kicking off his Galilean Ministry with a kind of goodwill miracle tour around the countryside of Galilee. I'll reiterate that we at The Moral Vision believe that the miracles were exaggerated accounts, and that rather than performing literal miracles, Jesus simply ventured about preaching a message of hope. He helped people through real-world problems with inspired real-world solutions, and offered solace in the form of deep compassion to the oppressed and the downtrodden.
If you believe he was actually "healing every kind of disease" by some supernatural power, that's fine too. I say "that's fine" because, whether or not we believe in miracles, the moral prescriptions of Jesus Christ remain steadfastly the same. The morality of Jesus is not contingent upon belief in the supernatural.
Today is a landmark day for us, though, because today, after all this time, we reach our first packet of data about Jesus Christ's Moral Vision. Today, we witness the beginning of "The Sermon on the Mount!"
The Sermon on the Mount is the longest continuous teaching of Jesus in The New Testament. The Sermon on the Mount is unique to Matthew among the canonical gospels. Individual teachings from the Sermon on the Mount appear scattered throughout Luke, particularly in Luke's "Sermon on the Plain." The Sermon on the Mount is probably the richest vein of data we will find for our specific purpose throughout this entire study. We will ruminate on it over and over again.
At the outset of chapter five, we see that Jesus' ministry is going well. It's going so well that Jesus witnesses "crowds" and decides to retreat to a mountain. The crowds follow him. The exact location of the sermon is not known for certain, but, for centuries now, a mountain just northwest of Capernaum has been venerated as the spot. It is now known as the Mount of Beatitudes, and is the site of a Franciscan Chapel.
So... what is a "beatitude," you may ask?
The word "beatitude" comes from the Latin "beatus" meaning "blessed." For our purposes, then, beatitude means "a great blessing." The Beatitudes are a series of eight "great blessings" that Jesus bestows upon, or reveals to, his followers at the beginning of The Sermon on the Mount. The Beatitudes begin here in Matthew 5:3, and we are going to take them slowly, as they all constitute critical data for us.
The First Beatitude reads: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
The Beatitudes all take this "blessed is... for..." format. Jesus is telling us who he esteems as righteous, and what he believes life will yield for those righteous ones. Here, Jesus starts out telling us that the poor are blessed, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs.
So, the very first morsel of moral data we get from Jesus in The Bible is that poor people are blessed in spirit, and are the rightful owners of the kingdom of heaven.
Is that not a powerful statement? Does that not give us some sense of where this Galilean Ministry might be heading? The very first actionable moral precept to come out of Jesus' mouth in the whole Bible is, basically, "poor people are more worthy of good or reward than their wealthier contemporaries."
Now we're finally in the thick of it. Hallelujah.
Join us next time for another beatitude, and more New Testament Apocrypha!
Thank you so much for reading. Please share this writing.
Love.
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For the index of Christ's words, click here.
