Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (93 page)

Thus we are told that Beliar caused “many in Jerusalem and in Judah” to “depart from the true faith” (1.9) and there is reference to the great “apostasy of Israel” under Manasseh (2.1–6). In 3.1 “Belchira … appeared as a false prophet in Jerusalem, and many in Jerusalem joined with him.” The prophet Isaiah is martyred because of his vision of Christ (3.13, 5.15) and the Jewish leaders and people look on in approbation (5.12). Christ too is opposed by the people of Israel: “The adversary envied him and roused the children of Israel against him.… They delivered him to the king and crucified him” (11.19; note that here, as in the Gospel of Peter, it is the Jews who kill Jesus). There are parallels between the deaths of Isaiah and Christ: the former is executed because of his vision of the latter; both suffer at the hands of the people of Jerusalem inspired by Beliar; the death of both involve tree imagery (crucified on a tree; sawed in half by a treesaw). It should be emphasized that all these things were predicted in advance, not only by the prophet Isaiah but also in all the Psalms and prophets (4.21). The Jews, in other words, should have known.

In addition to these individual passages, it is important to consider the overall thrust of the book, as Greg Carey has done in an important article.
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Carey’s thesis is that the book as a whole embodies a kind of anti-Jewish polemic: “Its narrative rhetoric argues that a prominent Hebrew prophet such as Isaiah knew the pattern of Christian proclamation centuries in advance, that his knowledge was rejected in Jerusalem, and that Isaiah’s martyrdom resulted from his proclamation of the Beloved.”
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As Carey observes, Christian authors of the second and third century
commonly used the book of Isaiah in order to promote their anti-Jewish agenda. The Epistle of Barnabas uses Isaiah to advance his view of Christian supersessionism (14:5–8, quoting Isa. 42:6–7, 49:6–7). Justin uses Isaiah to show how Jews have falsely rejected the virgin birth and shown their own hardheadedness (Dialogue 43; 66–67, 77–78, 84). Origen uses Isaiah to very similar ends in the
Contra Celsum
(1.28–29, 32–38), stressing Isaiah’s message that the proclamation will be taken, then, to the gentiles (2:78, citing Isa. 65:1; 1:53 citing Isa. 42:4).

And so, at the time of the writing of the Ascension, Christians in other contexts were engaged in anti-Jewish polemic and using the prophecies of Isaiah to accomplish these ends. As we will see in Chapter Twelve, an attack on Jews is not the only emphasis of the Ascension—or even its only polemical thrust—but it is certainly one of them. As Carey summarizes: “Despite its Christological and visionary emphases, the apocalypse’s entire narrative structure communicates an apologetic against non-Christian Jews.”
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We have already considered the Coptic Gospel of Thomas with respect to its rejection of an apocalyptic eschatology, and there is no need here to repeat my introductory comments on the book as a whole.
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One other area of obvious polemic in the book involves the sayings that discuss Jews and the Jewish religion. Here there is a fairly specific orientation: the relevant logia may vary in their harshness, but they uniformly demean both Jewish cultic practices and the Jewish people.

This is the first saying in the collection that broaches the issue of Jewish acts of piety, as the disciples ask Jesus about how they are to be practiced: “Do you want us to fast? And how should we pray? Should we give alms? And what kind of diet should we observe?”
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One immediately thinks of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus deals with some of these issues; but as DeConick has pointed out the order is reversed in Matt. 6:1–8 (alms, prayer, fasting), so there is probably not any literary dependence.
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What is most striking is that the Jesus of Thomas does not seem to answer the disciples’ questions—or at least the answer is delayed until saying 14. So close are the two logia that some scholars have argued that they were originally a unity separated in the course of transmission, either because a page came to be displaced (the question appeared on the bottom of the page and the answer at the top of the next, but another page came to be intercalated
between the two),
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or because of a fluke at the oral stage of the tradition in a recitation of the sayings of Jesus.
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Even taken as an integrated saying, as it stands, logion 6 appears to disdain these acts of piety—which are to be understood as Jewish, not simply human (see saying 14 and its appeal to kashrut).
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Jesus’ reply vitiates the need to fast, pray, and give alms, that is, to engage in external acts of Jewish piety. Instead, one is to be truthful and to observe the negative golden rule. It is personal behavior that matters before God, not Jewish religious customs and laws: “For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and nothing that is covered will remain undisclosed.” Acts of Jewish piety are therefore irrelevant at best.

If, as it seems, the response of saying 14 is to be taken with the questions of saying 6, then acts of Jewish piety are not merely irrelevant; they are harmful: “Jesus said to them, ‘If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves; and if you pray, you will be condemned; and if you give alms, you will do harm to your spirits.’” The next part of Jesus’ response may seem, at first, irrelevant to these conditional clauses and their condemnations, but in fact it may be the key to understanding them. Jesus moves into the question of food, specifically whether those engaged in the Christian mission should try to observe kosher food laws. He answers with a resounding no:

And when you go into any land and walk in the countryside, if they receive you, eat whatever they place before you and heal the sick among them. For whatever goes into your mouth will not defile you; rather, it is what comes out of your mouth that will defile you.

The concerns of missionaries are not food regulations. They are instead the welfare of other people (“heal the sick”) and proper speech. What one eats is not what defiles a person, but the speech that comes from the mouth. The Christian missionary proclamation is to have precedence over kosher concerns. Is this the original context for the denigration of the other pious activities at the opening of the logion? Acts of Jewish piety are far less important than the mission. A similar concern, with a similar perspective, is found elsewhere in the Jesus tradition, especially Luke 10:8–9. There, however, Jesus speaks of entering a different “town” whereas here he speaks of entering a different “land.” The mission has expanded since the logion preserved in Luke, and naturally it is harder to find kosher food in foreign lands than in the various towns of Israel.

The stress on “what comes out of your mouth” may have a deeper meaning in the context of the Gospel of Thomas. This is a Gospel that is all about discourse. It consists exclusively of sayings of Jesus, sometimes set in dialogic context; and it is the “interpretation of these sayings” that provides eternal life (saying 1). Teachings are of ultimate importance for this author, and presumably for his community. As Valantasis puts it, “The search for the interpretation of the sayings takes precedence over the traditional pious practices.”
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But the matter can be expressed even more firmly. Traditional practices are not only bypassed by the need to read, interpret, and teach; engaging in these earlier practices is seriously detrimental, leading to sin, condemnation, and spiritual damage. This is a new religion that displaces the old and declares it harmful.
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It is clear that saying 27 must relate to the preceding two in its condemnation of cultic practices. But how does it do so? On the surface it seems to embrace what they spurn, by claiming that one will not “find the kingdom” if one does not “fast from the world,” and will not “see the Father” if one does not “make the Sabbath a Sabbath.” Does this not require Jesus’ followers to practice acts of Jewish piety: fasting and Sabbath observance?

It is worth noting that fasting here is not said to involve abstention from food (the normal meaning of the word, not just in Jewish piety), but from the world. As such, the saying appears to embrace a broader ethic than a periodic religious fast: it means abstaining from the pleasures and activities of life in order to obtain the kingdom of God. Rather than pushing for a Jewish ritual practice it is urging a more rigorously ascetic lifestyle, a disengagement from life.

A variety of interpretations have been proffered for the enigmatic injunction to “make the Sabbath a Sabbath.” It could mean, for example, that one should truly observe the Sabbath (make it a
real
Sabbath); alternatively, it could be playing on the term
rest
, and be saying that one should rest from taking a day of rest—that is, precisely,
not
observe the Sabbath.
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The latter interpretation would coincide well with both the first part of the saying and with sayings 6 and 14, and so is probably to be preferred.

Another option has been proposed by Peter Nagel, who points out that the words used for “Sabbath” are given variant spellings in the surviving Coptic text (SAMBATON and SABBATON). This leads him to suggest two meanings for them: in one instance Sabbath refers to the day of the Sabbath, and in the other it
means “week” (as in Luke 18:12; Mark 16:9).
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This leads to a possible reconceptualization of the saying, as spelled out in the expansive translation/interpretation of Plisch:

If you do not refrain from the world
(and not only from a part of it, as certain food, etc.)
You will not find the kingdom;
If you do not observe the (entire) week as Sabbath
(instead of only some “holy days”)
You will not see the father.
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In this rendering, it is important for the Christian to enter into repose permanently, not just temporarily. In that sense, once again, Jewish practices are superseded and no longer in force. They are, in fact, harmful. Jewish language, then, is being used to oppose Jewish religious practice.

This saying presents a direct polemic against Jewish Pharisees and scribes. They know how to enter into God’s Kingdom and can provide this knowledge for others, but they have refused to do so. They “have taken the keys of knowledge and hidden them. They have neither entered nor let those wishing to enter do so.” And so the Jewish leaders have not only condemned themselves before God, they have brought about the condemnation of other people.

The polemic is comparable to what one finds in the New Testament, especially in the famous set of “woes” found in Matthew 23. The saying itself appears to be a conflation of tradition otherwise known from Matt. 23:13 and Luke 11:52. The obvious contrast in the Gospel of Thomas is with Jesus himself, who not only has the keys of knowledge but reveals the divine secrets, the correct interpretation of which can bring eternal life (saying 1).

This brief saying may not be directed against Jews and Judaism per se, but against anyone who is not rooted in God: “A grapevine has been planted outside of the Father. And since it is not strong, it will be pulled up by its root and perish.” Plisch takes it as a reference to people in general who do not find the source of their sustenance in the Father.
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So too Valantasis understands the saying as
polemical, but simply directed against “another religious community.”
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But it should not be overlooked in this connection that the Hebrew Bible sometimes portrays Israel as a grapevine or vineyard, occasionally with negative implications about its viability (Ps. 80:9–10; Isa. 5:1–7; Jer. 2:21). Read in light of these passages, the saying does not provide an aphoristic truth claim about “any” grapevine that happens to be “planted outside of the Father.” Instead it makes a statement of fact, that a grapevine “has been planted outside the father.” This specific grapevine is weak, and will be destroyed. It is hard not to take the saying as directed against historical Israel, to be destroyed because it is not located within the sphere of the true God.

This saying is surprising in several ways. For one thing, it begins with a challenge from the disciples to Jesus, which stands at odds with the normal Thomasine portrayal of the disciples as obedient, if sometimes slow, students of the master: “Who are you to say these things to us?” Jesus’ frank reply is damning especially in the broader context of the Gospel of Thomas: his disciples do not understand who he is, despite his teachings. Since it is only through understanding Jesus’ teachings that one can have eternal life, the consequences of their ignorance—and the challenge of his authority—are rather stark.

But Jesus castigates them even further, likening them to “Jews”: “Rather, you have become like the Jews; for they love the tree but hate its fruit; and they love the fruit but hate the tree.” This is surely a negative characterization in which the disciples are damned by association. But is there a specific meaning to “fruit” and “tree” in this context? Valantasis thinks there is, but gives a rather palliative interpretation. The tree represents Judaism and the fruit represents Christian faith: “The saying suggests that it is futile to differentiate such tree and fruit, loving one and hating the other. Even with animosity between the sibling religions, the mutuality and correlativity of the two traditions coexist inseparably.”
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Surely the negative characterization of Jews and Judaism elsewhere in the text, however, does not favor an interpretation endorsing mutual love and respect. DeConick’s view is better. The disciples are like the Jews who are unable to decide whether to love the tree or the fruit: “This is the voice of a community which is in the process of separating itself from its Jewish roots.”
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