Apocryphicity

Those interested in the work of Bart Ehrman (either supporters or detractors) may find interesting a new site called The Ehrman Project. The site describes itself as:

As a scholar, professor, and author, Dr. Bart Ehrman has undeniable influence over students and much of the American public. Yet there are equally qualified scholars who deal with the same issues and come to very different conclusions than Dr. Ehrman. The Ehrman Project is a website dedicated to engaging the ideas that Dr. Ehrman is famously expounding in the complex and nuanced realm of Biblical scholarship. It is not intended to answer all of Dr. Ehrman's claims nor answer the ones it does completely. Rather it is intended to give small snapshots that will potentially motivate viewers to research more information on the particular topic.

After interacting with many students over the years, Miles O’Neill, a campus minister at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, began considering an online resource in response to Dr. Ehrman’s popular claims. Dustin Smith, a Religious Studies major of UNC-CH, enrolled in Dr. Ehrman’s New Testament course in the spring of 2009. Soon after, Mr. O’Neill and Mr. Smith started collaborating together on The Ehrman Project. With the help of numerous students, colleagues, professors, and friends, EhrmanProject.com was able to launch in early 2011.

I have only had a cursory look at it thus far, but found entertaining the videos by Ben Witherington (on the canon) and Dom Carson (on biblical inerrancy). Also featured are Darrell Bock, Dan Wallace, and Michael Kruger.

I have been working recently on an introduction to a book on the Christian Apocrypha aimed at a popular audience. The introduction contains a short autobiographical section on what attracted me to study the Christian Apocrypha. I thought it might be of some interest to readers of Apocryphicity.

Why am I such an advocate for the Christian Apocrypha? Have I been “burned…by orthodox Christianity” as Ben Witherington suggests (in The Gospel Code: Novel Claims About Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Da Vinci [Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2004], p. 172-174, and What Have They Done With Jesus? Beyond Strange Theories and Bad History—Why We Can Trust the Bible [San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2006], p. 4-5)? Am I trying to prove I am a “good critical scholar” by “discrediting” the New Testament? Or have I been “misled…by the powers of darkness”? I hope the answer to all of these questions is no. But the answer is connected to faith—or more rightly, a reaction to a faith once held.

I grew up in England in a Roman Catholic home, though my family was not particularly devout. My father was greatly interested in religious questions—Who was Jesus? What happens when we die? Did Marian apparitions truly occur? When will the apocalypse happen?—but not overly concerned with religious practice; indeed, we rarely attended church. But I did believe. I believed the gospels were written by the apostles of Jesus, I believed I had to be good if I wanted to avoid eternal damnation, and I worried intensely about signs of the endtime indicated by the escalation of Cold War tensions.

These beliefs stayed with me into my years at university in Canada. My curiosity and anxiety about religious questions led me to select a major, along with English Literature, in Religious Studies. My first course was “Apocalypticism”—a study of primarily Jewish texts that, on the surface at least, predict a cataclysmic endtime when God will intervene in history, bringing rewards for the faithful and punishment for the wicked. That single course changed my entire perspective on the Bible. I saw how the troubling imagery and dire warnings of the Christian Apocalypse of John (also known as the Book of Revelation) were a first-century development of literary and theological motifs found in the earlier apocalyptic texts; they were not the product of an ecstatic vision of the future, but were incorporated into a carefully composed and finely crafted example of a genre of literature completely understandable to ancient audiences but somewhat mysterious to modern Christians. Reading these texts in their original contexts tamed the horror of them for me. I learned then that even a small amount of biblical literacy could go a long way toward reducing the anxiety brought on by my Catholic upbringing. The course also introduced me to apocalypses that are not found in the Bible—texts like 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. I had no idea that there were other ancient Jewish and Christian books outside of the Bible. Which left me with the question: why didn’t the church or my schools ever mention this material?

While at university I became involved in student journalism, rising up the ranks in a few years from an entertainment writer to editor-in-chief of the school newspaper. It was in this environment that I was initiated into a new belief system: freedom of the press. The staff railed against censorship in any form—whether it was a university administration seeking to cover up stories harmful to its image, or other student papers facing discipline for publishing Gay and Lesbian supplements, or a local bookstore facing pressure about stocking a controversial novel.

By the time I entered graduate school, these two interests—non-canonical literature and censorship—combined into a passion for exploring the Christian Apocrypha. One text in particular commanded my attention: the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. This text, with its stories of a precocious and often maleficent young Jesus murdering and maiming those around him, seemed to me to have been seriously misunderstood by scholars. They uniformly disparaged the text—calling it “ridiculous,” “immoral,” and “utterly worthless.” However, I was convinced that whoever wrote it, and those who originally read or heard it, must have felt that its portrayal of the young Jesus was consistent with how they viewed the adult Jesus; modern readers may find it crude and offensive, but surely ancient readers felt differently—why else write such a text? And why else has it been copied and translated into numerous languages over the centuries? This sympathetic view of the literature has stayed with me to today, continually informing how I read the texts. It has led also to pulling away from the notion that any one religious text—whether canonical or non-canonical, Christian or non-Christian—is any better than another. That doesn’t discount that a text might get historical events more correct—for example, the synoptic gospels are still probably the best sources for the life of Jesus—but when it comes to religious truth, all texts are equal because they all speak to their adherents’ spiritual needs. And all religious texts tell us something about the past—each was written in a particular time and place by a particular author for a particular reason, and all of these elements are important to know if we have an interest in history.

My views on censorship have led me also to become an advocate for apocryphal texts. This is literature that Christian orthodoxy did not, and indeed still does not, want us to read. We can debate the validity of this position—the process of selecting a canon of sacred texts is a common phenomenon and is, in some ways, necessary for the survival of the faith—but part of me still thinks it wrong. Texts should be available to all, ideas should flow freely, and to censor them is nothing but cowardice. This is particularly so today. For the church to censor texts in the fourth century, and many centuries thereafter, may be understandable given the times, but for Christian groups and Christian writers to advocate doing so now is unconscionable. Of course, in an age of the free flow of information, censoring the texts is no longer an option, but actively discouraging others from reading literature, sometimes by distorting their contents to instill fear in the potential reader, is just as insidious.

It is remarkable that any of the Christian Apocrypha have survived. Thanks to the efforts of scholars, archeologists, thieves, and middle men, we are able to read these texts today. And they contain many delights for those with an appetite for knowledge and amusement.

Acadia Divinity College's Lee Martin MacDonald, author of The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (1995; 2nd ed. Hendrickson, 2007) and co-editor of The Canon Debate (Hendrickson 2002), has recently released Forgotten Scriptures: The Selection and Rejection of Early Religious Writings (WJK 2009).The title is somewhat misleading–it reads as if it is a collection of apocryphal texts, when in reality it is a study of the canon selection process for the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. MacDonald is a true expert on this topic and what he has to say is an excellent corrective to the anti-CA apologists (often discussed here) whose knowledge of canon-selection (and its implications for the study of the CA) tends to be limited and constrained by their faith commitments. I may have occasion to post on some of MacDonald's observations at a later date.

In this final post of my critique of Andreas J. Köstenberger’s and Michael J. Kruger’s The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity has Reshaped our Understanding of Early Christianity (Wheaton, ILL: Crossway, 2010) I focus on K&K’s chapter on the Christian Apocrypha: “Establishing the Boundaries: Apocryphal Books and the Limits of Canon.” 

This chapter asks the question, “whether the diversity of apocryphal literature threatens the integrity of the twenty-seven-book canon as we know it” (152). Again, K&K are challenging the pop-scholarship of Bart Ehrman which asserts that all Christian texts, canonical and non-canonical, are equal, that some apocryphal texts could easily have made it into the canon.  K&K justifiably, I think, criticize Ehrman for a statement he makes in Lost Christianities in this regard: “But where did [the New Testament] come from? It came from the victory of the proto-orthodox. What if another group had won? What if the New Testament contained not Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount but the Gnostic teachings Jesus delivered to his disciples after his resurrection? What if it contained not the letters of Paul and Peter but the letters of Ptolemy and Barnabas? What if it contained not the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John but the Gospels of Thomas, Philip, Mary, and Nicodemus?” (Ehrman, p. 248). Ehrman’s point is sound, that the New Testament represents the views of one particular group (or several likeminded groups) in early Christianity; whether or not they are a group with greater claims of being true to the message of Jesus, while an issue of great concern for K&K, is immaterial. It is unfortunate, however, that Ehrman has chosen some texts for his argument that are unlikely to have been contenders for canonicity by any Christian group. For example, the Letter of Ptolemy to Flora is not apostolic—i.e., it makes no claim to be written by an intimate of Jesus. Mind you, 1 Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas are also not apostolic and they were considered scripture by some proto-orthodox Christian groups for some time. Also, the Gospel of Nicodemus is a late (5th/6th cent.) reworking of the earlier Acts of Pilate, and thus makes a poor example of a possibility for inclusion.

K&K make the point that the other texts cited were never included in discussions of the canon by orthodox writers (Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius). “Although much is made of apocryphal gospels in early Christianity,” they write, “the fact of the matter is that no apocryphal gospel was ever a serious contender for a spot in the New Testament canon” (157). However, that does not mean groups who valued these texts did not consider them scripture. Indeed, all of our evidence of discussion of the contours of the canon is by (proto) orthodox writers; we have no evidence of such deliberations on the part of heretical groups, save for Marcion, whose canon was rather limited (Luke and select letters of Paul). It’s possible that these groups did discuss which texts were authoritative, and likely this list would include some of the texts now found in the New Testament, but they also may have felt it unnecessary to place such limits on their literature.

K&K raise another good point about the amount of early agreement among proto-orthodox writers on which texts were valuable. By the time of Irenaeus, there seems to have been substantial agreement on the status of Paul’s letters and the four gospels. I would argue also that heretical groups would have also found these texts foundational, though certainly they would have interpreted them differently. K&K should not, however, diminish the amount of disagreement (and sustained disagreement at that) about the other texts that were contenders for the canon. They argue that the canon was essentially determined early (second-century?), whereas Ehrman et al see it as closed fairly late: “in the end, one’s definition of ‘closed’ depends on whether one views the canon from a merely human perspective (whatever is finally decided by the fourth-century Christians) or from a divine perspective (books that God gave to his people during the apostolic time period). By myopically focusing only on the human element, the Bauer thesis cannot allow a ‘closed’ canon, in any sense, until the fourth-century” (171). Both sides need to remember, however, that even after the fourth-century the canon was not really “closed” at all, as we see evidence of other texts being included in biblical codices and constant interplay between canonical and non-canonical texts and traditions throughout the medieval period. And as noted in my previous post, Christian groups outside the influence of Rome had different shapes to their canons.

On a final note, I take issue once again with K&K’s invoking of the Holy Spirit or divine providence in the shaping of the canon. Their conclusion to this chapter sums up this perspective: “In the end, we have no reason to think that the plethora of apocryphal literature in early Christianity threatened the integrity of the New Testament canon. The historical evidence suggests that under the guidance of God’s providential hand and through the work of the Holy Spirit, early Christians rightly recognized these twenty-seven books as the books that had been given to them as the final and authoritative deposit of the Christian faith” (175). Supernatural forces were also at play in the canon process to prevent the proper selection of books: “One area that is regularly overlooked (or dismissed) is the role of spiritual forces seeking to disrupt and destroy the church of Christ…their existence gives us greater reason to expect there would be controversy, opposition, and heresy in early Christianity” (160). Ehrman et al do not consider the impact of such forces because of their “anti-supernatural assumption” (155).

I think it is important for moderate voices to be heard in this debate. Ehrman is intentionally provocative in his statements about the possibilities of other books being included in the New Testament; and K&K are adamant about defending church tradition and bolstering the confidence of Christians that the Bible contains the rightfully-selected, apostolic, and doctrinally-correct writings. As historians, we should be careful to avoid either of these extremes. Forces were certainly at work in the canon-selection process, but they were not supernatural. And these natural forces more likely worked from the ground up, reflecting the wishes of a majority of Christians who valued these particular texts and preferred to live as best as possible in the world rather than to deny the world as most heretical Christians groups advocated. Orthodoxy won out over heresy because its point-of-view was more palatable to the greater number of Christians, and by its nature it was better organized—it championed structure and tradition. It’s unfortunate, mind you, that orthodoxy felt it had to destroy opposition in order to achieve success.

Whether or not orthodox Christianity is “true” or more authentic to the life and teachings of Jesus is not a question for historians. Similarly, whether or not the canon is the “right” selection of texts is also not a determination that we should be making.

The remainder of K&K’s book deals with NT text-criticism; this final section is called “Part 3: Changing the Story: Manuscripts, Scribes, and Textual Transmission” and challenges Ehrman on his views as expressed primarily in his book Misquoting Jesus. While I find the debate on these issues important and fascinating, they belong on a different blog.

I resume my critique of the Andreas J. Köstenberger’s and Michael J. Kruger’s The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity has Reshaped our Understanding of Early Christianity (Wheaton, ILL: Crossway, 2010) with the final chapter of the first section of the book: “Heresy in the New Testament: How Early Was It?” The chapter essentially minimizes the observable differences between various texts within the NT and among early Christian leaders (Peter, Paul, James). I am not going to argue with K&K much on this topic, except to say that the interpretation of the evidence depends on one’s presuppositions, for the most part, about the book of Acts. Early in their discussion, they say, “Assuming the historical accuracy of Luke’s account…” (p. 75). Doing so leads to an opinion of the early church and its leadership as harmonious and united. My own view is that Acts is a relatively late text (80 CE at the earliest but possibly even later) that has little interest in an accurate portrayal of the early history of the church. Acts minimizes the conflicts that we see more transparently in Paul’s letters; thus, one who considers Acts reliable will be inclined also to minimize these conflicts.

However, my primary objection to this chapter is with the assumptions K&K attribute to proponents of the Bauer-Ehrman thesis. They complain strongly about the “anti-supernatural bias in Bauer’s historical method” (102). “What we are arguing,” they write, “is that the Bauer-Ehrman thesis is wrong not just because these scholars’ interpretation of the data is wrong, but because their interpretation proceeds on the basis of a flawed interpretive paradigm” (101). First, I don’t consider Bauer-Ehrman’s “anti-supernatural” approach to be a “bias” but a choice of methodology—namely, the application of historical-scientific principles to the data, a little something biblical scholars have been attempting to do since the Enlightenment. Second, it is disingenuous of K&K to criticize Bauer-Ehrman proponents for having an “anti-supernatural bias” when they operate under a clearly supernatural bias. This is evident throughout the book, but to provide one example: “The Bauer-Erhman thesis insufficiently recognizes that at the core, power was a function of divine truth, appropriately apprehended by selected human messengers, rather than truth being a function of human power” (101). My problem with this perspective is that the positing of divine guidance or interference in historical events precludes thorough historical analysis. “Because God made it so” is not a scholarly argument.

The detrimental effect of this perspective is most apparent in K&K’s discussion of the canon, the focus of the second section of the book, “Picking the Books: Tracing the Development of the New Testament Canon.” Here they make the argument that canon is not strictly a late development combining disparate texts, nor a reaction to Marcionism, but a natural outgrowth of Jesus’ mission to inaugurate a new covenant: “canon is inherent to and derives its function from the concept of covenant” (112).  But, more importantly, the canon process was not as haphazard as Ehrman et al claim; indeed, it had divine guidance: “the canon is a phenomenon that developed not so much because of formal church decisions (though the vital role of the church cannot be discounted), but because of something that was already inherent to these particular books—the power of the Holy Spirit” (123). The role of the Holy Spirit is emphasized throughout this chapter—e.g., “the church plays a vital role, by the help of the Holy Spirit, receiving and recognizing the books God has given” (108 n. 10); “The function of the apostolate was to make sure that the message of Christ was firmly and accurately preserved for future generations, through the help of the Holy Spirit, whether written by its members directly or through a close follower of theirs” (117); and, “Theologians have historically affirmed that the critical link between the covenant books and the covenant community is the work of the Holy Spirit” (122).

I realize I shouldn’t be surprised that a book aimed at the evangelical market would invoke divine guidance for developments in church history, but it just strikes me as so archaic, a throwback to times when the only explanation needed to make or refute any argument is that “the Bible tells me so.” The Bauer-Ehrman “anti-supernatural bias” allows, at least, for the consideration of tangible, measurable, provable factors in (for example) the canon selection process. Perhaps there are flaws in some arguments made by Bauer-Ehrman theorists—maybe orthodoxy was not influenced by Marcion, maybe the NT writers did self-consciously write their texts as scripture—but to credit the formation of the NT to the Holy Spirit is hardly an effective refutation of these arguments.

Nevermind how problematic it is to invoke divine inspiration for a book that has taken so many forms over great time and distance—if the 27-book modern Bible is the correct one, then why did the Holy Spirit allow eastern churches to include 3 Corinthians and eliminate Revelation for so long?  Is it a different Holy Spirit that established the 35-book canon of the Ethiopian church? And why did the Holy Spirit guide Paul only for the (chronologically) 2nd and 4th letters to the Corinthians? It is unclear also how the Holy Spirit could work through such champions of orthodoxy as the author of 2 Clement when he uses texts that became canonical but not when he uses those that became non-canonical (whether the sayings he uses are from the Gospel of Thomas, or the Gospel of the Hebrews, or even oral tradition).

The real frustration for me in reading K&K’s discussion of the canon is that it illustrates vividly how futile it is for K&K to write a book refuting the Bauer-Ehrman thesis if they refuse to interact with it on the same methodological plane. Like other anti-CA apologists, the authors write only for an audience already disinclined to embrace the views of the Bart Ehrmans of the world, and those who are attracted to Ehrman’s works will not pick up this book.

This is the second in a series of posts on Andreas J. Köstenberger’s and Michael J. Kruger’s recent book, The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity has Reshaped our Understanding of Early Christianity (Wheaton, ILL: Crossway, 2010). Since the first post, I have come across two other on-line responses to the book from Tim Henderson (at Earliest Christianity) and from Michael Bird (at Euangelion).

The first part of The Heresy of Orthodoxy deals heavily with the Bauer thesis and it’s most vocal and visible recent defender Bart Ehrman. The first chapter outlines the thesis in a fairly neutral fashion, save for the occasional remark about how it has led to a championing of diversity in today’s age. The authors also mention some of Bauer’s critics and supporters.

The second chapter, “Unity and Plurality: How Diverse was Early Christianity?”, explicitly challenges the Bauer thesis.  Bauer examined five urban centres and made the argument that heresy preceded orthodoxy in these areas.  K&K’s criticisms are valid at times; indeed, we have a lot more information about heretical groups (thanks largely to the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library) than Bauer had in his time, and we also have more nuanced views about what constituted “Gnosticism” in the early centuries. So, for several of these urban centres, Bauer’s arguments are now unsustainable; particularly because, as K&K note, Bauer neglects much of the first-century evidence for some of these areas. However, he does so with reason: “the New Testament seems to be both too unproductive and too much disputed to be able to serve as a point of departure. The majority of its anti-heretical writings cannot be arranged with confidence either chronologically or geographically; nor can the precise circumstances of their origin be determined with sufficient precision” (Bauer, p. xxv). Other writers have tried to apply the Bauer thesis to the first-century, but Bauer himself was more cautious.

While I concede that orthodoxy (or proto-orthodoxy as I would prefer) was fairly established in first and early second-century Rome, Asia Minor, and Macedonia and Crete, I think Bauer’s arguments about Alexandria and Edessa continue to hold some weight. The origins of Egyptian Christianity are rather murky; we have no NT text that hails from there, nor do we have any that mention Egypt at all (even Acts is silent about the origins of Christianity there). The forms of Christianity that emerge in Egypt in the second-century, if not entirely heretical (i.e., clearly Gnostic), are distinctly different from Christianity in the West (Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Origen all have their un-orthodox sides).  And the Epistle of Barnabas, which K&K try to rescue for orthodoxy, is still a non-canonical text with plenty of un-orthodox elements. True, it is not Gnostic (as K&K strain to point out, and which Bauer, incidentally, claims himself), but it does not have to be Gnostic to be heretical. K&K also raise the point that of the 14 second- or third-century papyri found in Egypt, only one (the Gospel of Thomas) reflects a Gnostic context, and the Gnostic quality of GT is debatable.  However, the list of 14 early papyri listed in Robert Funk’s Honest to Jesus (p. 118; which, I admit, may be different from the list K&K are using, but there certainly would be overlaps), includes seven non-canonical texts (Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Mary, two copies of Gospel of Thomas, the Infancy Gospel of James, and two untitled gospels). Again, Gnosticism may be a heresy, but not all heresies were Gnostic—this is a mistake often made in K&K’s book and in books by other anti-CA apologists. K&K also do not discuss the presence in Alexandria of such non-canonical texts as the Gospel of the Egyptians and the Gospel of the Hebrews, both of which may have been very early compositions, and were considered useful by Clement of Alexandria and other “orthodox” writers. Nor do K&K discuss Bauer’s argument that Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria from 189-231, appears to be the first hint of “ecclesiastical” Christianity in Alexandria (Bauer, p. 53-56).

As for Edessa, K&K focus only on Bauer’s view that Marcionism was the earliest form of Christianity in that area. They say Marcionism was more a corrective than a converting movement, so Pauline or Jewish Christianity would have to be present before it could take a foothold (48-49). Since Bauer’s day we have learned more about the so-called “Thomas school” and Bauer’s successors (including Helmut Koester) have made arguments that the Christianity present in the Gospel of Thomas may have been present in Edessa before Marcion.  This possibility is mentioned only in a footnote (p. 48 n. 30) and dismissed with the statement, “Koester’s argument is interesting because it exemplifies the lack of consensus concerning what type of Christianity first appeared in Edessa even among those who are committed to the thesis that heresy preceded orthodoxy in that location.” K&K’s argument (shared by James Robinson and other Bauer thesis supporters) that some form of Christianity must have been present in the century before Marcion is valid; and there are other possibilities besides Thomas, including Jewish-Christianity (which does become a heresy), the Christianity of the Odes of Solomon, and the forms that influenced Tatian, Quq, and Bar Daisan. K&K also, once again, neglect other aspects of Bauer’s argument for the late arrival of orthodoxy in Edessa, including the third-century composition of the Abgar Correspondence to validate the mission of the bishop Palut (whose descendants, the orthodox of the fourth century, were called “Palutians” because, it is argued, the name Christian was already taken), and that the church in the West barely took note of Edessa until the fourth century. Edessa remains the best example for diversity in early Christianity and for the minority position of orthodoxy (if not its complete absence) in the first two centuries.

K&K’s final argument in this chapter is that the church fathers were the voice of early orthodoxy and that they were largely unified. Gnosticism, on the other hand, was diverse. Their point is that Gnostic Christianity was not a viable contender for becoming “mainstream” Christianity. Three reasons are offered: Gnosticism was diverse, it organized later than orthodoxy, and orthodoxy’s numbers were greater and therefore more influential (see pp. 58-66). I have four problems with this line of argument. First, it equates second-century orthodoxy with NT “orthodoxy” (yes, the church fathers trace their thought to the first-century, but so does every Christian group, sometimes with equal validity) and with 3rd, 4th, and later orthodoxy (which is problematic for the same reason). Second, it again ignores other forms of heresy, including Jewish-Christianity, which, more than any other form of Christianity, has a claim for being the most valid successor to Jesus’ mission. Third, it equates the success of a particular group (the orthodox) with the claim that it is “true.” And fourth, does anyone, even Ehrman and Pagels, argue with the point that orthodox Christianity was most well-equipped to be successful? Or, to use K&K’s words, “any assessment that concludes that Gnosticism was organized earlier than the second-century is ultimately an argument from silence” (61); who makes this claim?

What I find objectionable about K&K’s arguments is that they seek to discredit the Bauer thesis by dismantling only minor points that, at times, even Bauer is cautious about or are tertiary to his principal argument (e.g., that Marcionism was the earliest form of Christianity in Edessa, that the Epistle of Barnabas is Gnostic). For my part, I am not certain that heresy preceded orthodoxy in even Edessa and Alexandria, but the evidence does indicate considerable diversity in those areas and that orthodoxy was not solidified there for some time. I am more inclined to envision early Christianity as represented in a broad spectrum of beliefs (about Jesus, about proper practice, etc.) that led to the forms we find in the second century and beyond. Whether any of these forms of Christianity is the “true” one is a theological, not a historical, argument.

This is the first in a series of posts on Andreas J. Köstenberger's and Michael J. Kruger’s recent book, The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity has Reshaped our Understanding of Early Christianity (Wheaton, ILL: Crossway, 2010). It is one of a number of books written in reaction to works by scholars (particularly Bart Ehrman) associated with the “Bauer school”—i.e., influenced by Walter Bauer’s landmark book Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum, originally published in 1934). I suppose that I, too, would be considered a member of this “school”; so, I am very interested in critiques of Bauer’s work and those who have followed in his footsteps. Also, I have written previously, both here and in print, on examples of what I have called anti-Christian Apocrypha apologetic. And K&K’s book certainly falls into that category.

First, a basic description of the book. Like previous works of this kind, it is published by a press known for fairly conservative (or simply theological) books: Crossway. The testimonials filling the opening pages are all by conservative writers, several of whom have written books very much like this one (e.g., Darrell Bock, Dan Wallace). The forward by Howard I. Marshall seems to anticipate any criticisms of the authors’ theological perspective: “The authors write as adherents of what would probably be identified as an evangelical Christianity that maintains a belief in the divine inspiration of Scripture, but, so far as I can see, their arguments are not dependent on this belief and rest on solid evidence and reasonable arguments” (12). He couldn’t be more wrong.

K&K describe the purposes behind their work in language of alarm. They are concerned that the modern attraction to diversity is interfering with the determination of what is truth. On the title of the book they say, “It is an epithet that aptly captures the prevailing spirit of the age whose tentacles are currently engulfing the Christian faith in a deadly embrace, aiming to subvert the movement at its very core” (16). After describing the viewpoint of the Bauer school (called here the “diversity doctrine” but most often, “the Bauer-Ehrman thesis”), they add, “The main reason why we feel so strongly about this issue is that the scholarly squabbles about second-century geographical expressions of Christianity, the formation of the canon, and the preservation of the text of Scripture are part of a larger battle that is raging today over the nature and origins of Christianity. This battle, in turn, we are convinced, is driven by forces that seek to discredit the biblical message about Jesus, the Lord and Messiah and Son of God, and the absolute truth claims of Christianity. The stakes in this battle are high indeed” (18). These “forces” are more fully described at the very end of the book, where they are given supernatural form: “we must proceed prayerfully, recognizing that it is the god of this world who has blinded the minds of unbelievers. With God’s help, we should wage spiritual warfare circumspectly and seek to demolish demonic strongholds n the minds of people” (234).

The book is then divided into three parts: “The Heresy of Orthodoxy: Pluralism and the Origins of the New Testament,” “Picking the Books: Tracing the Development of the New Testament Canon,” and “Changing the Story: Manuscripts, Scribes, and textual Transmission.” For our purposes, the first two parts are most important as they discuss and dispute the Bauer thesis in great detail and devote considerable space to Bauer’s and Ehrman’s views on the CA.

[To be continued…]

Darrell Bock, author of The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the truth Behind Alternative Christianities (2006), has a new book out this month entitled Recovering the Real Lost Gospel: Reclaiming the Gospel as Good News (you can read the promotional blurb HERE). Bock is one of several evangelical scholars who have written some critical, though largely uninformed, indictments of the Christian Apocrypha and the scholars who study it. To read more about their literary endeavours, click HERE.

The short article I wrote for the JBL Forum a few years ago entitled "Heresy Hunting in the New Millennium" (read it HERE and some reactions and discussion HERE) has now appeared in its original longer form in the latest volume of the journal Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses (contents and abstracts available HERE).

The 2008 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature begins tomorrow and I have been so busy working on my presentation on the Syriac tradition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas that I have neglected the ongoing discussion of my “Heresy Hunting” article. I don’t have time enough yet to respond to Darrell Bock’s formal response, but I will quickly respond to Rob Bowman’s last post.

First, Rob took issue with my characterization of previous work on Gos. Thom. 114. I wrote:

“In response, Bowman excerpted a number of non-conservative scholars (including Pagels, Patterson, and Meyer) who agree that the saying is indeed misogynist. These may not be the best scholars to appeal to in this debate, however, as they write often for popular audiences and their comments on the texts may suffer from the same lack of depth as the apologists I criticize.”

And he responded: 

“I expect to be at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in a couple of weeks, and I would love to get Burke in a room together with Pagels, Patterson, and Meyer to hear him defend this statement. Pagels, Patterson, and Meyer are without a doubt three of the top mainstream scholars working on the Gospel of Thomas. I also cited Antti Marjanen, whose publications that I cited cannot possibly be described as intended for popular audiences. Burke says nothing about Marjanen, perhaps for this reason. But his statement about Pagels, Patterson, and Meyer is indefensible.”

Now, I don’t want to be in a room with these people. I think I can take Pagels, but Meyer’s a big guy and I’m pretty sure he could kick my ass. My point, however, was not that they were not accomplished scholars, but that the works that Bowman was appealing to (some of them, that is, particularly Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels) do not present a range of opinions on the topic. And my objection to the apologists’ comments on Gos. Thom. 114 is that they state only that it is misogynist, as if there are no other ways to interpret the saying. So, by “lack of depth” I simply meant that some of these other works (by Pagels, etc.) also only present one interpretation of the saying. Bowman is right, however, to object to my generalization of all four of the scholars as writing for popular audiences; Marjanen’s contribution is certainly not in the same vein.

As for the bulk of Bowman’s response I will limit myself to a few general comments:

1. The debate over the meaning of Gos. Thom. 114 was part of a larger argument I was making about the apologists’ tendency to focus on what they saw as negative aspects of the CA. Bowman remarks that they do so to counter “the mistaken notion being peddled by some popularizers that the Gnostic writings represent an egalitarian or even feminist variety of Christianity.” It seems I should be forgiving of conservative simplification if it counters liberal simplification. In my ideal world, nobody would do so. Also, dismantling the feminist interpretation of Gnosticism is not the only reason why the apologists discuss apocryphal texts; The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, for example, is not Gnostic, nor does it say anything about women, but some of the writers denigrate that text and others for no apparent reason other than to ridicule them. For example, Komoszewski et al (Reinventing Jesus) discuss the infancy gospels in a chapter intended to describe what “other gospels” were “really like” and why they didn’t “make the cut” (p. 152). There is nothing wrong with countering another scholar’s opinion on a text, but it is better, I think, to do so by drawing upon a range of scholarship (preferably the most recent and most in-depth) and with requisite scholarly objectivity (well, as much as possible anyway). 
2. Bowman asked me to cite scholarship on Gos. Thom. 114 that indicates it is not misogynist and that it may be a late addition to the text. While a few sources come to mind, I have stated already that I am no expert on the text and would rather not get into a protracted debate over it. Should you listen to my opinions on the text? Probably not, but my point was only that the saying should not be quickly dismissed as “misogynist” without discussion of other interpretations of it. Even Bowman notes some interpretations of the saying that draw upon ancient notions of spirituality. He states also, “One must first demonstrate that one of these more female-friendly interpretations is correct.” Again, he is missing my point: I am not championing any particular interpretation of the saying, whether “female-friendly” or misogynist; I simply expect a good scholar to acknowledge the range of possible interpretations before presenting his argument to his or her audience.  
3. I have been charged again and again with bias, that my “liberal” bias is just as bad as the “conservative” bias I identify in the works I criticize. None of my critics are able to cite an example from my own scholarship of such a bias (well, probably because no-one reads my scholarship), but worse than that they occupy their time on the minutiae of the article and ignore the final paragraph, which states (diplomatically, I think):

“But perhaps we are not doomed to repeat the errors of the past. There is no good reason for either the apologists or the CA scholars not to pay closer attention to each others' works and their implications. Some CA scholars are indeed "radical" in the esteem they grant this literature and their idyllic portrayals of the groups that valued them. It would be wise of them to consider the responses of their critics. Likewise, the apologists would be served well to consult a broader range of scholarship in their assessment of the CA and in other aspects of their scholarship; such openness might lead them to reconsider their beliefs that the CA are all late, derivative, and ultimately deserving of censure. If the two groups can set aside their guiding assumptions, they may find they have more to discuss than they expect.”