Apocryphicity

Rob Bowman has posted another response to my Heresy Hunting in the New Millennium article, this time focusing on the apparent “misogyny” of Gos. Thom. 114. Just to recap the discussion, I stated previously that assessments of the logion as “misogynist” were anachronistic and showed a lack of awareness of scholarship on the text. 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. Mind you, I’m no expert on this text, so I hesitate to say too much about it. But I will limit myself to a few points in my defense.

1. I don’t think Rob can argue that the apologists say little about the logion besides labeling it misogynist. Rob simply supports their conclusion with the views of other scholars. My concern was with the neglect of other scholarship which would more rightly put the saying in its context. Put simply, it looks misogynist to us, but to the author and audience, it may not. That’s what I mean by anachronistic. Far too often these texts are evaluated through modern eyes. The same care that we see being employed with Paul’s “misogyny” in 1 Cor. (i.e., evaluating his comments in the context of life in Corinth, or being careful to consider them in the context of his letter or letters as a whole, or considering the possibility of interpolations, etc.) should be applied also to CA texts.

2. The logion should not be taken too literally. Making a female male can have a range of possible interpretations, including encratism (celibacy and a refusal to bear children). Therefore, Jesus’ statement that he will “make her male” is not hatred of women. Also, keep in mind that the text is arguing against the statement of Peter here that “women do not deserve life,” not supporting it. If we are to see the various apostles in Christian literature as representing different forms of Christianity, then Thomas is portraying Peter as a spokesperson (likely) for orthodoxy. So, who is “misogynist” now?

3. Again, it is important to read a given section of a text in the context of the whole. When discussing log. 114 in my classes I direct the students also to log. 22 in which it states: “And when you make the male and the female into a single being, with the result that the male is not male nor the female female.” This appears to reflect the text’s theology of returning to a state of the primordial, androgynous, undivided human. Perhaps this is the key to understanding log. 114.

4. Also to be considered is the possibility that Gos. Thom. is a document that has gone through multiple stages of composition (much like some of our canonical materials). Log. 114, which to some extent stands out in contrast with other sayings in the text (such as 22), may be a late addition to the gospel and therefore not a good reflection of the author/community’s theology. I realize that we must avoid eliminating sections of texts we find unattractive with such theories, but it should be considered given that we have evidence of the text (and other CA texts) changing considerably over time.

I am not trying to rescue the text for the view that Gos. Thom. reflects an early Christian feminism. I have nothing invested in such an idea. All I am suggesting is that an offhanded comment taking one saying out of 114  and using it to label a text “misogynist” is not being fair to the text. It is also a disservice to the reader to ignore scholarship that looks at the text in more depth and/or presents a different interpretation.

This week’s New Testament Apocrypha class focused on John and his Opponents. Taking a page from Gregory Riley and Helmut Koester, we looked at the possibility that characters in John are intended to represent other Christian groups with which John’s community was in conflict. Doubting Thomas, therefore, represents the group behind the Gospel of Thomas (which too seems to “doubt” physical resurrection) and Mary Magdalene represents the group behind the Gospel of Mary (which seems to portray Mary as a visionary). I’m not entirely convinced by the Riley-Koester argument but I do think it’s worth considering (everything is “worth considering,” especially when I don’t feel compelled to take a stand).

One student commented on how so much early Christian literature is devoted to conflict between Christian groups. And it’s a good point. Christian proselytizing seems to have been primarily an oral discipline, while texts were for apologetic or polemical purposes.

Our orthodoxy/heresy discussion focused on two aspects of John. The first is John’s sources. As many scholars maintain, John was constructed in layers with the primary layer being a “Signs Gospel.” Like Q, this text no longer exists and is not included in the NT and therefore is non-canonical, but it is preserved in a sense through John’s use of it, which makes it canonical. Another source for John is the story of the Woman Caught in Adultery. This story is not original to the text, and even shows up in the Gospel of Luke (and, incidentally, according to a note in one manuscript of John, it ultimately derives from a “Gospel of Thomas”). Technically, this is a non-canonical story—text critics should argue for its removal from John (like Romans 16:24, which can be tricky to find in many Bibles)—but it is a treasured story so it remains canonical.

The other aspect of John related to orthodoxy and heresy deals with John’s relationship to the Synoptic Gospels. I had the students read an article by D. Moody Smith (“The Problem of John and the Synoptics”). In the article, Smith discusses the assumptions made about apocryphal gospels—they are late, derivative of canonical texts, and contain bizarre embroideries and expansions of canonical texts. By such a definition, John looks like an apocryphal gospel. Matthew and Luke seem to consider Mark “scriptural”—it is clearly an authority for them and they follow its structure and style. But John does not. Also John is not featured as prominently as the Synoptics in the Apostolic Fathers, and its esteem among non-proto-orthodox groups made orthodox writers suspicious (the Muratorian Canon features a lengthy justification for its inclusion in the list; Hippolytus wrote a defense of John against Gaius who wanted it eliminated because it disagreed with the Synoptics). In essence, Smith is saying that John is apocryphal because it does not follow Mark, but its inclusion in the NT makes it canonical.

Our discussions of Thomas and Mary were fairly standard fare (overview of sources, theories of origin, etc.). We focused more on the use of the characters of Mary and Thomas and possible parallels between the texts and John than on each text’s particular theology or christology (I have to hold some things in reserve for next semester’s Gnosticism class). I like to spend time on both liberal and conservative arguments for the value and utility of these texts. This time we looked at Craig Evans’ statements (from Fabricating Jesus) about the composition of Gospel of Thomas; my summary was very quick and may have been unclear, but it can be read in my post about Evans’ book HERE.

Update on Secret Mark: if you want to continue to follow the discussion of the authenticity of Secret Mark, click HERE for Peter Jeffery’s extremely polite response to Scott Brown’s lengthy review of The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled.