The Word from Nag Hammadi

What apocryphal writings can teach us.

Recent discoveries in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, have turned up a Gospel of Thomas and other works that have attracted the attention of the press. For example, John Dart, religion writer for the Los Angeles Times, has written a popular exposition of the Nag Hammadi discovery entitled. The Laughing Savior (Harper & Row, 1976). These discoveries raise important questions: how do the apocryphal gospels compare with the four canonical gospels? What are these apocryphal gospels like? Have the words of Jesus been preserved outside the New Testament? A consideration of these issues can help us evaluate canonical traditions in a broader perspective.

The Apocryphal Gospels

The apocryphal gospels are non-canonical writings of a motley variety about the purported deeds and revelations of Jesus Christ. Though the Greek word apocrypha originally meant “hidden,” the church fathers used it to describe spurious writings foisted as gospels. Irenaeus refers to “an unspeakable number of apocryphal and spurious writings, which they themselves (i.e. heretics) had forged, to bewilder the minds of the foolish.” Although some of them are patterned after the canonical gospels, many bear little resemblance to them. As Origen noted, “The Church possesses four Gospels, heresy a great many.” Of the fifty-some apocryphal gospels, many are known simply by title only or by a few scattered quotations and allusions in the church fathers. A number of works, especially of the popular infancy gospels, have been preserved in late manuscripts and versions. Egypt has preserved some early papyrus and parchment copies, most notably in the Gnostic library discovered at Nag Hammadi.

Most apocryphal gospels fall into two categories: legendary, or heretical. The former category encompasses the infancy gospels. These are highly imaginative accounts of the Virgin Mary, the Nativity, and the childhood of Jesus. The second category includes works that were written to set forth the peculiar views of Jewish-Christian sects and Gnostics. Eusebius describes such works as follows: “Again, nothing could be farther from apostolic usage than the type of phraseology employed, while the ideas and implications of their contents are so irreconcilable with true orthodoxy that they stand revealed as the forgeries of heretics.” M.R. James in 1924 published a handy collection of extracts and abstracts of the apocryphal gospels in The Apocryphal New Testament (Clarendon, 1924). This has now been superseded by E. Hennecke and W. Schneelmecher, New Testament Apocrypha, I (Westminster, 1963).

Gospels of Jesus’ Infancy and Parents

The accounts of the birth of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, and the one episode of Jesus as a child in Luke 2:40–52, did not satisfy the curiosity of many Christians. Some people therefore invented infancy gospels that attributed numerous miracles to the child Jesus. This Jesus appears as a grotesquely petulant and dangerously powerful youngster.

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas was composed in the second century as Irenaeus alludes to an incident related in this work. It purports to describe miracles that Jesus performed between the ages of five and twelve. When Jesus was five he made twelve sparrows from clay, and then caused them to fly. When the son of Annas the scribe disturbed the pool that Jesus had collected, he cursed the child: “You insolent, godless dunderhead, … See, now you also shall wither like a tree.” A lad who accidentally bumped into Jesus was smitten dead. Others who accused him were blinded. A teacher who attempted to teach him the Alpha and the Beta was rebuked by the precocious Jesus. As an assistant in his father’s carpenter shop, Jesus was able to stretch beams of wood to the proper size. A desire to glorify Mary and to establish her perpetual virginity motivated some writers to describe the “brethren” of Jesus as the children of Joseph by a previous marriage (on this subject see John J. Gunther, “The Family of Jesus,” Evangelical Quarterly, 46, 1974, 25–41).

Among such works the earliest is The Protevangelium of James, which was composed in the second century in Egypt but which was not published until 1552. It served as a basis for the later Pseudo-Matthew, the Arabic and the Armenian infancy gospels, and the Nativity of Mary. These expanded accounts were incorporated in the Golden Legend, which had an enormous influence upon medieval Europe.

The Protevangelium describes the parents of Mary as the aged Anna and the wealthy Joachim. In a narrative patterned after the story of Samuel, Mary is dedicated at the age of three as a kind of Jewish “vestal virgin.” She is nurtured at the temple by angels until the age of twelve, when she is betrothed to Joseph, who is miraculously selected from a number of suitors. Joseph is portrayed as a widower with sons, an attempt to explain away the reference in Luke 2:7. Before the consummation of the marriage Joseph is horrified to discover that Mary is already six months pregnant. Both Mary and Joseph, however, demonstrate their innocence by drinking the waters of conviction (cf. Numbers 5:11–31). The birth of Jesus takes place in a cave, a tradition that is also mentioned by Justin Martyr. Mary is assisted in her delivery by a Hebrew midwife, and her virginity, notwithstanding the birth, is attested by Salome who is brought to the cave by the midwife.

The sixth-century Gelasian Decree condemned a work, The Assumption of Mary, which was composed in Greek in Egypt about AD 400. This work describes how after his ascension Jesus appears to Mary to announce her impending demise. After her death miracles of healing take place through the agency of her corpse. Mary, restored to life in her body, is then transported to Paradise. The Marian legends of the infancy gospels, especially as incorporated by Jacobus de Voragine in The Golden Legend (AD 1298), became widely known. The influence of the apocryphal gospels on literature and art through the Middle Ages (especially the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries) was enormous. These stories inspired Giotto to paint “The Exclusion of Joachim from the Temple,” Raphael to paint “The Betrothal of the Virgin,” and Titian to paint “The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple.” They contributed to the exaltation of Mary that culminated in the dogma of the assumption of the Virgin into heaven promulgated by Pius XII in 1950.

The Nag Hammadi Gospels

The discovery by accident in 1946 of twelve Coptic codices (manuscripts in books rather than scrolls) and a fragment of a thirteenth near Nag Hammadi in upper Egypt ranks as one of the most significant discoveries of all times. Among the fifty-three treatises are a number of works that are clearly Gnostic compositions, including some gospels. Gnosticism was a dualistic heresy that proclaimed salvation through gnosis or esoteric knowledge. It flourished in the second century AD. Whether it already existed in the first century AD or even in the pre-Christian era, as Bultmann assumed, has been a matter of great controversy.

The Coptic Gospel of Philip is a translation of a Greek composition of the second century. It belongs to the Valentinian sect of Gnosticism. There is an unusual stress on sacraments—baptism, chrism, “redemption,” and a “bridal chamber”—which recalls the Valentinian Marcosians. It is uncertain whether “the bridal chamber” was a symbolic rite or whether it was physical.

The Gospel of Philip 104.26–30 (#23) seems to be an attack on those who maintain a resurrection of the flesh: “Some are afraid lest they rise naked. Because of this they wish to rise in the flesh [it is they who are] naked.” In contrast, the Gospel of Philip 121.1–5 (#90) defends the concept of a present spiritual resurrection (cf. 2 Timothy 2:18): “Those who say, ‘They will die first and rise again,’ are in error. If they do not first receive the resurrection while they live, when they die they will receive nothing.’ ”

Another Valentinian work, perhaps by Valentinus himself c. 140–145 AD before his break with the orthodox church, is The Gospel of Truth. As part of the codex bought for the Jung Institute in Zurich, it was the first of the Nag Hammadi works to be translated, appearing in 1956 as the Evangelium Veritatis. This maddeningly unsystematic essay is a meditation on the Gnostic understanding of the universe and salvation. Its opening words are: “The Gospel of Truth is a joy for them who have received the boon, through the Father of Truth, of knowing it by virtue of the Word who came from the Pleroma.” Ignorance about the Father produces anguish and terror; man without gnosis is like one who is enmeshed in a fog. It is Deceit who elaborated matter by a process of emanation, and who in anger nailed Jesus to a tree. Thereupon “having divested himself of these perishing rags, he (Jesus) clothed himself with the imperishability which none has power to take from him.”

The Gnostic antagonism to the material world resulted in the Docetic view of Christ; the Gnostics denied that “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh” (1 John 4:3). As Christ had only the semblance of a body his sufferings on the cross were apparent, not real. According to the Gnostic Basilides it was a substitute Christ who died on the cross, a teaching echoed by Muhammad in the Qur’an 4:157.

The Agrapha of Jesus

The Greek word agrapha literally means “unwritten” things. The term Agrapha has come to designate sayings of Jesus not found in the authentic text of the canonical gospels. The most important recent study of the Agrapha is Joachim Jeremias, Unknown Sayings of Jesus (Alec R. Allenson, 1964). He selects eighteen sayings (including 1 Thess. 4:15 ff.) that he considers “perfectly compatible with synoptic traditions, whose authenticity admits of serious consideration.” Not everyone would agree with Jeremias’s estimate of the authenticity of extra-biblical sayings.

There are in the New Testament itself apart from the Gospels a number of sayings attributed to Christ: Acts 1:4 ff.; 11:16; 20:35; First Thessalonians 4:15 ff. (cf. Matt. 24:30 f.); and First Corinthians 7:10 (cf. Mark 10:11). Codex Bezae inserts at Matthew 20:28, “But seek to increase from that which is small, and from the greater to become less.” It is conceivable that the pericope of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53–8:11) and the longer ending of Mark (16:9–20) were Agrapha later incorporated into the Textus Receptus.

The earliest attempt to collect the extra-canonical sayings of Jesus was by Papias of Hierapolis in Phrygia. Tertullian (De baptismo, ch. 20) reports that Christ said: “No man can obtain the kingdom of heaven, who has not gone through temptation.” Clement of Alexandria (Stromateis I. 24.158) records that Jesus said, “Ask for the great things and God will add to you what is small” (cf. Matt. 6:33). A popular statement, which is quoted or alluded to over fifty times in the church fathers, is the saying of Jesus. “Be approved money changers.” We should be like the money changers who can detect counterfeit coins from the genuine (cf. 1 Thess. 5:21).

A sensation was created in 1905 by the discovery of papyri at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, some of which contained purported sayings of Jesus. Among the papyri is an amulet that relates an incident in which Jesus confronts a self-righteous high priest and rebukes him as follows: “Woe to you blind that see not. Thou hast bathed thyself in water that is poured out, in which dogs and swine lie night and day and thou hast washed thyself and hast chafed thine outer skin, which prostitutes also and flute-girls anoint, bathe, chafe and rouge, in order to arouse desire in men, but within they are full of scorpions and of badness of every kind. But I and my disciples of whom thou sayest, that we have not immersed ourselves, have been immersed in the living … water.”

The Gospel of the Nazaraens (cited by Jerome, Adv. Pelag. iii. 2) has the following amplification of Matthew 18:21–22 with the Lord saying to Peter, “Yea, I say unto thee, until seventy times seven. For in the prophets also, after they were anointed by the Holy Spirit, the sinful word was found.” The point is that if even the holy prophets were not faultless, one should be willing to forbear a fault in a brother.

Origen cites the same work in his commentary on Matthew 19:16 ff., the story of the rich young man: “But the rich man then began to scratch his head and it pleased him not. And the Lord said to him: ‘How canst thou say, “I have fulfilled the law and the prophets?” For it stands written in the law: Love thy neighbor as thyself; and behold, many of thy brethren, sons of Abraham, are begrimed with dirt and die of hunger—and thy house is full of many good things and nothing at all comes forth from it to them!’ ” (Cf. James 2:15–16; 1 John 3:17). Jeremias argues that this may be an independent version, but others maintain that this is a novelistic expansion of the original story.

The Gospel of Thomas

Among the Nag Hammadi texts one of the most significant is The Gospel of Thomas, which was probably composed in Edessa in Syria about AD 140. It consists entirely of 114 login or sayings of Jesus—the most extensive collection of non-canonical sayings of Jesus extant. Of these a number parallel sayings found in the Oxyrhynchus papyri, dated to AD 150. Forty of the logia are entirely new.

Most of the sayings are clearly colored by an ascetic variety of Gnosticism, or by Encratism, a movement that also stressed sexual abnegation. Some scholars, however, have argued that some of the sayings are based on an independent Aramaic tradition.

Among sayings regarded as possibly authentic is logion 8, which has a parable that may be compared with the parable of the hidden treasure (Matt. 13:44) and of the pearl of great price (Matt. 13:45–46): “And He said, ‘The man is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea, he drew it up from the sea full of small fish; among them he found a large (and) good fish; that wise fisherman, he threw all the small fish down into the sea; he chose the large fish without regret.’ ”

Logion 82 contains a saying that is also known from Origen: “He who is near me is near the fire; he who is far from me is far from the kingdom!” Jeremias believes that a possible early allusion to this saying may be found in Ignatius’s statement to the Smyrnaeans that he was “near to the sword, near to God.”

The final logion reads: “Simon Peter said to them: ‘Let Mary (Magdalene) go out from among us, because women are not worthy of the Life.’ Jesus said: ‘See, I shall lead her, so that I will make her male, that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ ” This refers to the ultimate reunification of the sexes, which would overcome the separation of the sexes that the Gnostics blamed for the origin of human evil.

A Secret Gospel of Mark?

In 1973 Morton Smith, a distinguished ancient historian, published a manuscript that he had discovered in 1958 at the monastery of Mar Saba, southeast of Jerusalem. The eighteenth-century manuscript, copied on two-and-a-half blank pages of a book, contains part of a letter ascribed to Clement of Alexandria who flourished AD 164–214 (Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, Harvard, 1973, and The Secret Gospel. Harper & Row, 1973).

With considerable erudition Smith presents a strong case for the authenticity of the letter, which maintains that the Carpocratian Gnostics derived their doctrines from a secret gospel of Mark. It asserts that after Peter’s death at Rome, Mark came to Alexandria and composed a more spiritual gospel for those who were being perfected. Passages that are cited from this gospel include the description of the raising of a dead youth by Jesus. After his resurrection the youth came to Jesus with only a linen cloth over his nude body, “and he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God.”

Smith, however, goes far beyond the evidence in suggesting that this alleged gospel is earlier than canonical Mark, and in speculating that the original essence of Christianity was erotic magic. Clement’s letter seems to be no more than a testimony to still another apocryphal gospel. Only those who are prepared to believe the worst about Christianity will welcome his radical views about the hitherto unsuspected nature of Christ as a purveyor of erotic magic.

Comparative Evaluations

The apocryphal gospels, even the earliest and soberest among them, can hardly be compared with the canonical gospels. The former are all patently secondary and legendary or obviously slanted. Commenting on the infancy gospels, Morton Enslin concludes: “Their total effect is to send us back to the canonical gospels with fresh approval of their chaste restraint in failing to fill in the intriguing hidden years.”

A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, the editors of the Ante-Nicene Library, observe that while the apocryphal gospels afford us “curious glimpses of the state of the Christian conscience, and of modes of thought in the first centuries of our era, the predominant impression which they leave on our minds is a profound sense of the immeasurable superiority, the unapproachable simplicity and majesty, of the Canonical Writings.”

The study of the Agrapha, particularly in the apocryphal gospels, reveals the relative poverty and inferiority of the mass of the extra-canonical literature, and by contrast highlights the precious value of the sayings of Jesus preserved in the New Testament. As Jeremias concludes: “… the extra-canonical literature, taken as a whole, manifests a surprising poverty. The bulk of it is legendary, and bears the clear mark of forgery. Only here and there, amid a mass of worthless rubbish, do we come across a priceless jewel.”

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