Apocryphicity

The first complete lecture for the NT Apocrypha course took place last night (May 5). We began with a discussion of canon formation and the concepts of orthodoxy and heresy. I assigned readings on canon lists and the first chapter of Walter Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. In all of my reading of conservative, anti-Apocrypha apologetic, I have found that, while some take issue with Bauer and his successors (Koester, Ehrman, etc.), no-one denies the fundamental accuracy of his chapter on Edessa.

For those who have not read Bauer, it is the author’s claim that, despite the legend reported by Eusebius that Christianity came to Edessa in the first century as the result of a correspondence between a certain King Abgar and Jesus, the earliest form of Christianity in Edessa was Marcionite (followed soon by Bar Daisan who championed the use of Tatian’s Diatessaron over Marcion’s gospel). (BTW, Mark Goodacre has posted links to new photographs of the Greek fragment of the Diatessaron. You can see them HERE). Orthodoxy was slow to take root in Edessa, leading to the orthodox group being christened “Palutians” after the name of their bishop Palut—the title of “Christianity” was given to the region’s first Christians: the Marcionites. Helmut Koester, in a 1965 article, augmented Bauer’s theory in light of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library. Koester claimed the first form of Christianity in Edessa was that of the “Thomas group” reflected in the Gospel of Thomas, the Book of Thomas, and the Acts of Thomas. Regardless of which heretical group was there first, “orthodox” Christianity was not normative in Edessa until at least the fourth century.

Bauer’s work is helpful for making the point that the labels of “orthodoxy” and “heresy” depend on one’s perspective. The acrobatics that Bauer must perform to make this point are impressive; he must examine several sources for Christianity in the area and determine that many of them have been invented (including the Abgar correspondence, the Doctrina Addai, and 3 Corinthians) or interpolated (sections of the Edessene Chronicle) by later orthodox Christians (the production of Apocrypha is not limited to so-called heretics). If accurate, Bauer shows that orthodox Christians are quite effective at rewriting history to buttress their claim that in all places Christianity began as orthodoxy and was later corrupted by heretics. Though they accede that Bauer is correct about Edessa, conservative writers do not want to accede that Christianity could have developed similarly in other places. Certainly we should be careful not to make arguments from silence, but it is possible that the evidence is simply lost to us. Bauer also illustrates the need to treat orthodox claims about their origins with suspicion; as he states regarding the orthodoxy portrayal of Christian history: “I do not mean to say that this point of view must be false, but neither can I regard it as self-evident, or even as demonstrated and clearly established” (p. xxiv).

Bauer’s statement is a manifesto that can be (and should be) applied universally—i.e., throughout one’s university education and beyond. If students learn nothing else from this course but that one sentence, I’ll be happy.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 6th, 2010 at 2:48 pm and is filed under 2010 NTA Course. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.