Lost scriptures: books that did not make it into the New Testament (2 page)

The issues I have been addressing in the previous paragraphs are highly involved, of course, and require a good deal of discussion and reflection. I have dealt with them at greater length in the book written as a companion to the present collection of texts:
Lost
Christianities:
The
Battles
for
Scripture
and
the
Faiths
We
Never
Knew
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). There I discuss the wide ranging diversity of the early Christian movement of the first three centuries, the battles between “heresies” and

“orthodoxy,” the production of forged documents in the heat of the battle by all sides, the question of how some of these books came to be included in the canon of Scripture, on what grounds, and when. The present volume is intended to provide easy and ready access to the texts discussed in
Lost
Christianities
—that is, revered texts that were
not
included in the canon.

Many of these texts were excluded precisely because they were thought to embody heretical concerns and perspectives. Others were accepted as “orthodox,” but were not deemed worthy of acceptance in the sacred canon of Scripture, for one reason or another.

I have called this collection of other sacred texts “Lost Scriptures,”

4

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

even though the writings I have included here are obviously no longer lost.

But most of them
were
lost, for centuries, until they turned up in modern times in archaeological discoveries or in systematic searches through the monasteries and libraries of the Middle East and Europe. Some of them are known only in part, as fragments of once-entire texts have appeared—for example, a famous Gospel allegedly written by the apostle Peter. Others are cited by ancient opponents of heresy precisely in order to oppose them—for example, Gospels used by different groups of early Jewish Christians.

Yet other books have turned up in their entirety—for example, the Gospel allegedly written by Jesus’ twin brother Judas Thomas. And yet others have been available for a long time to scholars, but are not widely known outside their ranks—for example, the account of the miraculous life of Paul’s female companion Thecla.

Scholars have never devised an adequate term for these “Lost Scriptures.” Sometimes they are referred to as the Christian “Pseudepigrapha,”

based on a Greek term which means “written under a false name.” But some of the books are anonymous rather than pseudonymous. Moreover, in the judgment of most New Testament scholars, even some of the books that were eventually included in the canon (e.g., 2 Peter) are pseudonymous.

And so, more often these texts are referred to as the early Christian

“Apocrypha,” another problematic term, in that it technically refers to

“hidden books” (the literal meaning of “apocrypha”), hidden either because they contained secret revelations or because they simply were not meant for general consumption. A number of these books, however, do not fit that designation, as they were written for general audiences. Still, so long as everyone agrees that in the present context, the term “early Christian apocrypha” may designate books that were sometimes thought to be scripture but which were nonetheless finally excluded from the canon, then the term can still serve a useful function.

The present collection of early Christian apocrypha is not meant to be exhaustive, nor is this the only place one can turn now to find some of these texts. Most other collections of the lost Scriptures, however, cover only certain kinds of documents (e.g., non-canonical Gospels)2 or documents discovered in only one place (e.g., the cache of “gnostic” writings discovered near Nag Hammadi Egypt in 1945).3 Or they include several of the “other” scriptural texts only as a part of a wider collection of early Christian documents.4

The major collections that contain all of these early Christian writings—and even more—are written for scholars and embody scholarly concerns.5 The 2See, for example, the handy collection by Ron Cameron,
The
Other
Gospels
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1982) and more recently by Robert Miller,
The
Complete
Gospels:
Annotated
Scholars
Version
(Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1994). 3E.g., James Robinson, ed.
The
Nag
Hammadi
Library
in
English
, 4th ed. (New York/Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996). 4For example, Bart D. Ehrman,
After
the
New
Testament:
A
Reader
in
Early
Christianity
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

5Most accessibly, J.K. Elliott,
The
Apocryphal
New
Testament:
A
Collection
of
Apocryphal
Christian
Literature
in
English
Translation
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), and yet more comprehensively, Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed.
New
Testament
Apocrypha
, 2 vols., tr. R. McL. Wilson (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1991).

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

5

purpose of the present collection is to provide the non-scholar with easy access to these ancient Christian documents that were sometimes regarded as sacred authorities for Christian faith and practice. I have organized the collection in traditional rubrics, based for the most part on the genres that eventually came to comprise the New Testament: Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses (including in the final two categories related kinds of writings).

I have also included several “canonical lists” from the early centuries of Christianity—that is, lists of books that were thought by their authors to be the canon. This final category shows how even within “orthodox” circles there was considerable debate concerning which books to include.

Altogether there are forty-seven different texts here, each provided with a concise introduction. Most of the texts are given in their entirety. For some of the very long ones, I have given sufficiently lengthy extracts to provide a sense of what the books were like. Each is in a modern and highly readable English translation. Nineteen of the translations are my own.

In conclusion I would like to thank those who have made this volume a possibility: my wife, Sarah Beckwith, whose insatiable curiosity and vast knowledge make her, among other things, an extraordinary dialogue partner; my graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carl Cosaert, whose diligence as a research assistant is
sans
pareil;
Darryl Gless, my unusually supportive Senior Associate Dean, and the entire dean’s office at UNC-Chapel Hill, who provided me with a much needed academic leave from my duties as chair in the Department of Religious Studies, allowing me to complete the project; and especially my editor Robert Miller, who convinced me to produce the book and once more went above and beyond the call of editorial duty in helping me bring it to completion.

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NON-CANONICAL

GOSPELS

8

NON-CANONICAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES

There were many Gospels available to early Christians—not just the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John familiar to readers of the New Testament today.

Even though most of these other Gospels have become lost from public view, some were highly influential within orthodox circles throughout the Middle Ages. These would include, for example, the intriguing Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which tells of the miraculous and often mischievous deeds of Jesus as a young boy between the ages of five and twelve, and the so-called Proto-Gospel of James, which records events leading up to (and including) Jesus’ birth by recounting the miraculous birth, early life, and betrothal of his mother, the Virgin Mary—an account highly influential on pictorial art in subsequent centuries.

Others of these Gospels played a significant role in one community or another in antiquity, but came to be lost—known to us only by name until modern times, when uncovered by professional archaeologists looking for them or by accident. Of these, some have been uncovered in their entirety, as is the case of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, a collection of 114 sayings of Jesus, some evidently representing actual teachings of the historical Jesus, but others conveying “gnostic” understandings of Jesus’ message. Other Gospels have been recovered only in fragments, including the famous Gospel allegedly written by Peter, Jesus’ apostle, which, among other things, records the actual events of the resurrection, in which Jesus is seen emerging from his tomb, tall as a giant. Yet others are known only as they are briefly quoted by church fathers who cite them in order to malign their views, including several Gospels used by various groups of Jewish Christians in the early centuries of the church.

I have included fifteen of our earliest non-canonical Gospels in the collection here. They are of varying theological persuasion: some appear to be perfectly “orthodox” in their views (e.g., Egerton Papyrus 2); others represent a form of Jewish Christianity that later came to be condemned as heretical (e.g., the Gospel of the Nazareans); yet others appear to have been written by early Christian “Gnostics”1 (e.g., the Gospel of Philip). These texts are not completely representative of the various forms of early Christian belief about Jesus’ words, deeds, and activities; but since they derive from a wide range of time and place from within the first three centuries of early Christianity, they give some sense of the rich diversity of Christian views from this early period of the church.

1For the views of Gnostics, see Ehrman,
Lost
Christianities
, 113–34.

The Gospel of the Nazareans

Jewish Christians in the early centuries of the church were widely thought to have preferred the Gospel of Matthew to all others, since it is Matthew that stresses the importance of keeping the Jewish Law down to every jot and tittle (5:17–20) and that emphasizes, more than any other, the Jewishness of Jesus.1 According to a number of ancient sources, one group of Jewish Christians, sometimes known as the Nazareans, produced their own version of Matthew, translated into Aramaic, the language of Jesus and of Jews living in Palestine.2 This version would have been produced sometime near the end of the first century or the beginning of the second.

Eventually this “Gospel of the Nazareans” fell into disfavor with the Christian community at large, both because few Christians in later centuries could read Aramaic and because the Gospel’s Jewish emphases were considered suspicious. As a result, the Gospel came to be lost. Now we know of it only through quotations of its text by church fathers like Jerome, and by references to it in the margins of several Greek manuscripts of the Gospel according to Matthew.

These quotations reveal clearly the Jewish-Christian concerns of the Gospel and show that the Gospel contained stories of Jesus’ baptism, public ministry, death, and resurrection. It evidently did not include, however, the first two chapters of Matthew’s Gospel, which record the events surrounding Jesus’ miraculous birth. For according to many Jewish Christians, Jesus was not born of a virgin, but was a natural human being who was specially chosen to be the messiah because God considered him to be more righteous than anyone else.

Today scholars debate whether the church fathers were right in thinking that the Gospel of the Nazareans was an Aramaic version of Matthew; it may have instead been an original composition, in Aramaic, based on oral traditions about Jesus that were in wide circulation and available both to this author and the author of Matthew.

1See Bart D. Ehrman,
The
New
Testament:
A
Historical
Introduction
to
the
Early
Christian
Writings
, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford, 2003), chap. 7. 2See Ehrman,
Lost
Christianities
, 99–103.

Translation by Bart D. Ehrman, based on the Greek, Latin, and Syriac texts in A. F. J.

Klijn,
Jewish-Christian
Gospel
Tradition
(VCSupp 17; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992) 47–115.

9

10

NON-CANONICAL GOSPELS

The following are the fragments of the Gospel quoted in our surviving sources.

1 It is written in a certain Gospel that locked up in prison. (Eusebius,
Theo-

is called “according to the He

phania
, 4, 22)

brews” (if in any event anyone is inclined

to accept it, not as an authority, but to

3 But [the Lord] taught about the reashed some light on the question we have son for the division of the souls in

posed) that another rich man asked [Jethe houses, as we have found somewhere sus], “Master, what good thing must I do

in the Gospel used by the Jews and writto have life?” He replied to him, “O man, ten in Hebrew, where he says “I will

you should keep the law and the prophchoose for myself those who are good—ets.” He responded, “I have already done those given to me by my Father in

that.” Jesus said to him, “Go, sell all that

heaven.” (Eusebius,
Theophania
4, 12)

you have and distribute the proceeds to

the poor; then come, follow me.”

4 In the Gospel that is called “according to the Hebrews,” for the But the rich man began to scratch his